The facts (as I had them from Ramm shortly before his death, and as I have
discovered them myself on a visit to BIOLA's archives) are that Ramm began
teaching at BIOLA in 1944. At that time BIOLA had a required (apologetics)
course on science and the Bible, a course Rimmer had taught himself
(apparently) at least once, a course that perhaps he had helped to design.
In any case a Rimmer book (Harmony of Science and Scripture, I would guess)
was used for that course when Ramm was given it to teach in 1946. Ramm,
himself a grad student in philosophy of science at USC (where, incidentally,
one of Rimmer's sons was also a student), soon tired of criticising this
text and quit using it. He told Rimmer about this but had no response.
This course became the basis of his book, which was published in October
1954.
As for Ramm's later views, I can say only this. I heard him talk at a
meeting of the old Eastern Pennsylvania section of the ASA (which has just
been revived this past fall, thank God), at Eastern College or Eastern
Baptist Seminary (I forget which) in 1979, the year I left my post at a
Christian school in Philadelphia to become a grad student in HPS at Indiana.
His topic: The Christian view of Science and Scripture, 25 Years Later. I
still have my notes, though not in front of me as I write this. Mainly he
said that, if he were writing it again today, he would emphasize more the
role of literary genre in helping to shape our interpretation of a given
passage of scripture. I don't know whether or not he drifted into
neo-orthodoxy, a position for which I have much sympathy (though not full
agreement) myself.
Ted Davis
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 25 2001 - 13:57:24 EST