From: Rich Blinne (richblinne@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 20:51:04 EDT
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Terry M. Gray
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 4:36 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: "charismatic" theologies and science
>Interestingly, during and after my trial in the OPC, with my appeals
>to Warfield and even Machen, I heard men say that these stalwarts
>would not be ordainable in the OPC today given their published views
>or, more likely, they would no longer hold the views that I was
>pointing to if they knew what we knew today. Although I typically
>count myself as a follower of C. Van Til, this is one area where his
>presuppositional thought has played into the hands of young-earth
>creationists among conservative Presbyterians. Many OPC people see
>the Princetonians openness to old earth geology and evolution to be
>an extension of their "erroneous" evidentialist apologetic and
>epistemology.
This is an excellent point. Van Til had the concept of antithesis
between Christian and non-Christian worldviews. For YECs, the clash of
worldviews includes evolution and the age of the earth.
Greg Bahnsen, one of Van Til's disciples, said the following in "On
Worshipping the Creature Rather Than the Creator":
"Biblical creationism is accurately pitted against scientific
evolutionism in their outlook. The logical antithesis between the
two[68] has always been recognized.
[68] This antithesis admits of no synthesis as long as one refrains from
reconstructing the antithetical members. Admittedly some have tried to
synthesize evolution to creation as the mode of God's operation;
however, this requires a reconstruction of the antithetical member under
discussion (viz., biblical creationism). Some creation ideas might be
made evolutionary, but the biblical teaching could be made so only by a
discriminating (rather than unconditional) subject to the words of
Christ or by a candid spurning and remodeling of orthodox hermeneutics.
Robert L. Dabney's words should ever be kept in mind in this regard:
Other pretended theologians have been seen advancing, and then as easily
retracting, novel schemes of exegesis, to suit new geologic hypotheses.
The Bible has often had cause here to cry, "Save me from my friends." .
. . As remarked in a previous lecture, unless the Bible has its own
ascertainable and certain law of exposition, it cannot be a rule of
faith; our religion is but rationalism. I repeat, if any part of the
Bible must wait to have its real meaning imposed upon it by another, and
a human science, that part is at least meaningless and worthless to our
souls. It must not expound itself independently; making other sciences
ancillary, and not dominant over it [Lectures in Systematic Theology
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, [1878] 1972), p. 257]."
Now it would be unfair to lay this all at the feet of Van Til. In
Christian Theistic Evidences, Van Til said,
"Together with thinking of the results of science as they are offered to
us
in various fields, we must think of the methodology of science. Perhaps
there is greater agreement among scientists on the question of
methodology
than on the question of results. At any rate, it is quite commonly held
that
we cannot accept anything that is not consonant with the result of a
sound
scientific methodology. With this we can as Christians heartily agree.
It is
our contention, however that it is only upon Christian presuppositions
that we can have a sound scientific methodology. And when we recall that
our main argument for Christianity will be that it is only upon
Christian
theistic presuppositions that a true notion of facts can be formed, we
see at once that it is in the field of methodology that our major battle
with
modern science will have to be fought ... The chief major battle between
Christian and modern science is not about a large number of individual
facts, but about the principles that control science in its work. The
battle today is largely that of the philosophy of science."
Origins was not an issue early in the history of the PCA. Many held to
a day-age view and the Framework Hypothesis was gaining ground when the
PCA was founded in 1973. Presbyteries where Greg Bahnsen's thought was
popular correlate well with hotbeds for YEC within both the PCA and the
OPC. That is, the Southern California Presbytery in the OPC, and
Louisiana and Westminster Presbyteries in the PCA. Add to that the
re-ascendance of Southern Presbyterian thought as promoted by Greenville
Seminary and Morton Smith and the sources of the current conflict become
obvious.
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