It was a late morning and I sat in a Moroccan cafe sipping the strongest coffee I had ever tasted. The Arab men sitting around me were entirely disinterested in my presence. They spoke to each other and I ate my fruit quietly. It hadn’t occurred to me that the women I was travelling with would not be welcomed in this cafe. They would be left to find breakfast on their own as this particular place was restricted to men. Culturally the concept was just so foreign to me that I hadn’t even thought to reflect on this possibility. Often when it comes to learning new cultures we utilize the principle of analogy. This principle says that parts of a culture, or cultures as a whole, are understood by analogy with those cultures that we already know. I had no analogy for this kind of gender-biased bistro, so I ate breakfast and the women in my group ate granola bars. The principle of analogy helps us break out of the closed-culture perspective by reminding us that God has built into the world pointers to himself.
We have said over and over again in this series that far too often the impersonalist worldview of many Bible critics presupposes the incompatibility of their position with the doctrine of inerrancy. Far too often Christians too pick up these building blocks and reason that inerrancy is impossible to believe or, at best, just impractical. But God is continually present and involved in this world that he has created. He is involved in this world, he keeps this world going, and he makes himself known through what he has created (Rom. 1:18-25). Vern Poythress points out:
God has built into creation analogies like these through which we know him. And these analogies include analogies within the very structure of culture itself. Earthly fathers offer an analogy with God, the original Father. And so on. (Inerrancy and Worldview, 119)
The assertion by some that we cannot know God, not definitively, because he is foreign to our cultural context does not hold up within a Biblical framework. God can be known because he has built into the world analogies that point to him.
Just as we learn about other cultures by analogy to our present culture so we can learn about God by analogy to our present culture. Romans 1 makes clear that man is without excuse in regards to the knowledge of God. How can Paul say that? Because the principle of analogy identifies ways in which we can know this self-revealing God even within our cultural context. Sociological principles can help us know God better and even be reconciled to the doctrine of inerrancy. The tension that some see between the discipline of sociology and the doctrine itself is often more grounded in an assumed worldview already at odds with the Bible. In actuality, the principle of analogy can help us to arrive at Biblical conclusion.
The truth is that in that Moroccan cafe I did have reason to consider the possibility that our women wouldn’t be allowed to join us. My culture too is full of gender-biases, and though I don’t experience them personally I know they exist. All sorts of analogies existed for me to draw from if I were thoughtful and reflective. The truth is I was probably less bound by my cultural limitations in that scenario than I was simply insensitive…or maybe I was just in need of coffee.
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