and something else in another. When you see such apparent inconsistency in
a legal document, your assumption should be that you don’t understand the
point, and you should make the effort to go back and see how they can both be
true illustrations of some larger concept.
If we are to assume Divine authorship for the Word (and we do) we must
then also assume that this same principle applies – that because the Word
is the work of one author, it must be internally consistent. Since it does not
appear to be consistent as to its letter, perhaps we need to look at it in a new
way to discover where its consistency lies.
There are many things in the Word which are appearances of truth that
yet contain within them genuine, spiritual truths – principles which can
govern all aspects of our lives. It does no harm for us to think simply about
the appearances, as long as we do not then try to twist scientific truth to make
them true, for in so doing the truth is harmed, as are the principles contained
within them.
Take an example from something very simple and familiar: the saying that
the sun rises in the morning. Certainly, that is the appearance. When we look
to the east early in the morning, we see the sun appear from below the horizon,
and then begin to climb. We have no sensation of motion for ourselves, and
the sun appears to be much smaller than the earth. Therefore, even though
we all know intellectually that what we are actually experiencing is the earth
turning while it orbits the much larger sun, still we say that the sun rises and
sets. Everybody knows what we are talking about, and everybody knows that
it is not strictly true, but it is an appearance that we accept and use. Such a
convention of speech causes no harm.
However, there were those who believed that the truth of the Word lay in
its letter, that made it a matter of religious faith that the earth was the center of
the universe, and that the sun, moon and stars revolved around it. Then, after
the invention of the telescope, when scientific evidence began to c