Re: Where has the church has had to change

glenn morton (mortongr@flash.net)
Thu, 09 Dec 1999 22:06:06 +0000

At 11:33 AM 12/9/99 -0500, MccarrickAD@nswccd.navy.mil wrote:
>After a discussion with another church member last night, I was thinking of
>issues that have caused the "church" to adjust its teaching of what the
>Bible requires. Help me with my history. Of course a simple one that came
>to mind was the Heliocentric verses Geocentric issue.

While no one today likes Andrew White or his _History of the Warfare
between Science and Theology_ anymore, but he lists a whole lot of areas
where the church has had to adjust.

Antipodes--Because Paul said the gospel had gone into all the world, and
people knew that no one had actually been to the other side of the round
world, the assumption was that no one actually lived on the other side of
the world. Some of the Church fathers apparently thought you might not be a
Christian if you believed such nonsense as people living over there. The
church had to adjust when Magellan brought back some people from there.

Vaccination. Some Christians had to adjust to the idea that vaccination
was OK. It seems that this was sometimes believed to be interferring with
God's ability to bring pestilence and plague. The same went with lightning
rods because God couldn't zap a sinner in his house anymore.

Of course we are still in the throws of trying to deal with evolution,
geology, the antiquity of man and other areas that the church has simply
refused to adjust to.
glenn

Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm

Lots of information on creation/evolution