The theological principle of Accommodation is that God, while being in his nature unknowable and unreachable, has nevertheless communicated with mankind in a way in which humans can understand and respond.
Prof John Byl discusses different kinds of accommodation in an article here: http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2010/03/accommodating-error.html (Read on under comments)
One kind of accommodation he mentions, was suggested by Calvin: "For it is too violent a cavil to contend that that Moses distributes the work that God perfected at once into six days for the mere purpose of conveying instruction. Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men,” said Calvin (Commentary on Genesis 1:5).
ReplyDeleteIs it biblical to assume that man’s limited capacity to understand cause God to accommodate this limited “intelligence” in His revelation of Himself? (Read on)
Prof Byl quotes Francis Schaeffer (Liza, you will like this!) : "Here is the great evangelical disaster-- the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this – namely accommodation: the evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age. First, there has been accommodation on Scripture, so that many who call themselves evangelicals hold a weakened view of the Bible and no longer affirm the truth of all the Bible teaches – truth not only in religious matters but in the areas of science and history and morality. As part of this, many evangelicals are now accepting the higher critical methods in the study of the Bible. Remember, it was these same methods which destroyed the authority of the Bible for the Protestant church in Germany in the last century..." (p.37 of his last book, The Great Evangelical Disaster)
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