Biblical Warning about Elementary Ideas

I was educated in Christian and secular schools that emphasized our classical heritage. I memorized many Bible verses and also read Homer. I learned to think with the Western concepts of time and matter and to use science as a standard of truth. I also believed the Bible was God's word, the truth. My teachers often labeled simple evidences for creation and the flood as scientific. I became very proud of our scientific heritage to which many famous Christians contributed.

As I grew older, I came to see many contradictions between scientific evidence and the Bible. This was especially evident in the age of the stars and rocks. I asked God to show me the answer to the conflict between science and the Bible. I discovered this text. Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles [stoicheion] of the world, rather than according to Christ.” The word see [blepo] is in the imperative, a command. It means to watch out, be on guard, to look. Paul says that elementary principles [stoicheion] can take us captive [sulagogeo] like prisoners sold as slaves, the booty of war. Euclid (about 300 BC) named his book Stoicheion because he built his geometry on simple, elementary ideas. In philosophy, the stoicheion are the basic ideas, first principles, that serve as the foundation for understanding the world. The word stoicheion can even refer to the letters of the alphabet. Learning the alphabet is the first elementary step in learning to read.

Paul grew up in Tarsus the chief city of the Roman province of Cilicia. Strabo, a Roman geographer during Paul’s youth, wrote that Tarsus “surpassed Athens, Alexandria, or any other place that can be named” in their devotion to education and philosophy. Paul mentioned bondage to elementary ideas in Galatians 4:3 “So also we while we were children were held in bondage under the elemental things [stoicheion] of the world.” Like Paul, I also was trained to think using the elementary principles invented by pagan Greek philosophers. Paul's warning suggests that my childhood education may have imprisoned my mind to elementary ideas. Yet the Greek philosophers supposedly set us free from myths and established logic and reason.

As I pondered this, I realized that none of the Old Testament writers could have written a scientific account of earth-history. The elementary ideas necessary for scientific thinking were not even invented until after the close of the Hebrew scriptures. Moses and all the Old Testament writers could not think scientifically. Yet I always attempted to interpret biblical earth-history with logic and science, the system that began with the Greek philosophers. Was this why the simple statements of the Bible sometimes clashed with scientific explanations? Was this the source of my double mindedness? Lord please show me these elementary ideas that I might be set free. Please help me to make your truth the foundation for my thinking about your universe.

Creative Commons License by Victor McAllister
Last edited 10/23/2008