An addendum to my previous critique of Hasel. I realized upon rereading the
selections that Hasel does what anti-evolutionists and YECs regularly do.
He attributes the views of those he disagrees with to "philosophical
notions," "philosophical, non-biblical, pagan modes of thinking," "the new
world-view of uniformitarianism." This rhetorically dismissive language
does a great injustice to thinkers like Augustine and medieval theologians,
who studied and applied the Bible diligently, and respected philosophical
modes of thought but did not let them dominate their faith. Augustine's
views on Genesis are to be found in two commentaries entitled, "Literal
Commentary on Genesis." Yes, literal. The medieval theologian Thomas
Aquinas used Aristotelian philosophy, but he maintained the doctrine of
creatio ex nihilo against Aristotle's argument for the eternity of the
world, and his extensive analysis of the text of Gen. 1 appears in the first
part of his "Summa on Theology," in the section on creation. I suspect that
what Hasel means by "non-biblical" is what YECs regularly mean: "not
according to my reading of the Bible!" And, of course, to YECs the word
"pagan" is radioactive.
Bob Schneider
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
To: "Allen Roy" <allenroy@peoplepc.com>; <Cmekve@aol.com>;
<panterragroup@mindspring.com>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 6:20 AM
Subject: Re: History of 6000 Year old creation
>
> Thank you for putting these extracts onto the list as it demonstrates one
of
> the major problems everybody is up against and that is people who publish
> stuff which is so flawed as to be misleading and useless. I annotate some
of
> the points where Hasel has gone astray.
>
> This popular misunderstanding is rife among Christians of all persuasions
> and secular writers (Winchester's biography of William Smith is a typical
> example)
>
> I haven't a clue who Hasel is but the level of his scholarship here is pla
in
> appalling.
>
> The trouble is that many will believe him and think he's a fine Christian
> scholar.
>
> Michael
>
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