Michael wrote:
<< Most impoortant is to see that YEC has always been a minority outlook
within
the Christian churches, and that it is more signiificant now than it ever
was in the past. >>
Not with regard to the age of the earth. From the beginning of church history
until modern times, all Christians believed the world was less than 6000
years old. [For the first and second century see Theophilus to Autolycus
3:28, The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.2, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899, p.120. Also, Josephus, Ant.1:1:13, "The
things narrated in the sacred scriptures...embrace the history of 5000
years..." Cf. 2Enoch 72:6 and The Assumption of Moses 1:2,3] Fifteen hundred
years after Christ, Luther wrote, "Now, we know from Moses that about six
thousand years ago the world was not yet in existence..." [Luther's
Commentary on Genesis Vol.1, Grand Rapids: Zondervan,1958, p.3]
Even into the middle of the nineteenth century many if not most conservative
Christians continued to think of the world as only about 6000 years old. [ F.
C. Haber, The Age of the World: Moses to Darwin, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins,
1959, p.246. Cf. John Gill, Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical
Divinity Vol.1, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978 repr., p.370; D. Young,
Christianity and the Age, pp.19-25.] The belief that the world was created
c. 4000 B.C. was not the invention of Bishop Ussher as some suppose, but is
the historic doctrine of the Christian church.
It is not as easy to show that a global flood was the historic doctrine of
the Church, but, the anthropological universality of the Flood certainly was;
and that makes the historic doctrine closer to modern YEC's than to the rest
of us.
The problem underlying YECism is not serious departure from the historic
doctrine of the Church, but the extra-biblical assumption that the plenary
inspiration of Scripture is equivalent to plenary revelation, that is, that
the science in the Bible is not a divine accommodation to the science of the
times but is just as much a revelation from God as is the theology.
Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 07 2001 - 17:33:46 EST