From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. (dfsiemensjr@juno.com)
Date: Sun Oct 05 2003 - 18:53:39 EDT
Darryl,
I understand the problem. I recently got a letter from a brother saying,
"I find no definitive Bible that we CAN accept as inerrant.... they never
identify the inerrant Bible they do accept nor do they make any effort
(as far as I know) to give evidence for what they believe IS the credible
portion of God's Word." He was upset about cutting out the coneys and
hares, mistakenly identified as ruminants. The answer to the problem is
really simple if we go back to the Reformers rather than the
Fundamentalists. The confessions and catechisms that mention scripture
specify that they are inerrant in matters of faith and morals, what we
need to believe in order to be saved and how we need to behave in order
to honor God. Even Augustine, a millennium earlier, did not believe in a
patty cake man given breath.
If we take Paul's declaration (II Timothy 3:16) of the purposes of ALL
scripture, we ought to come to the conclusion of the reformers: all
scripture is the inspired Word of God intended to lead us to trust and
obey him, with no fear of going astray, but it does not lead us into
other areas of truth.
Dave
On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 15:55:04 -0500 "Darryl Maddox" <dpmaddox@arn.net>
writes:
Glenn you know I agree with you most of the time and I don't disagree
with you here, but I do have a question and an opinion.
Q: If we through out a 6 day creation and a universal flood, by what
criteria do we stop throwing out stuff?
I've been trying to answer this one objectively for most of my life and
have yet to even get close to an answer but that doesn't mean it hasn't
been done or won't be done. But if it has I am not aware of it and that
leads to my opinion -
Opinion: My opinion is that it is the fear that the lack of such a
hard-and-fast, publishable, debated and agreed upon by all, criteria for
separating analogy from fact that causes most YECs to stay that way
inspite of everything. Once they start throwing out stuff they are
afraid they won't know how or where to stop and that could leave them
with consequences they would rather not face. The fact that they
compromise, select for acceptance, and ignore as irrelevant passages on
other issues is a small and seldom thought of contradiction to their
stance on the age of the earth and the nature of the flood so they try to
stand pat on the big ones and hope the small ones will take care of
themselves eventually.
Darryl
----- Original Message -----
From: Glenn Morton
To: Dawsonzhu@aol.com ; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 10:03 AM
Subject: RE: RATE
Hi Wayne, you wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 8:20 AM
Wayne: What I don't quite understand about YEC folk is that even at that
time,
with all the raging hormonal processes and rebel-without-a-cause matters
of adolescence, I knew deep in my heart-of-hearts that God actually
could have equally created through evolution. I sometimes used it to
shut Christians out with "the buzzword", but I could not run away from
that thought in the back of my mind.
GRM: I too had that same feeling when I was a YEC. I knew deep down that
the position I was publishing on was in deep trouble. Yet I continued
because I believed! I suspect lots of YECs are just like that. And I
didn't want to beleive that my fellow christians would fill my head with
mush. Christians are supposed to be honest in all their dealings.
Wayne: Is it that some people just simply don't even want to consider
examining any other possibilities than a 6000 year old earth? Is it that
they
just want to be left alone and don't want to be challenged to think? Is
it fear
of facing oneself and doubt? I can understand doubt, but this level of
denial is hard for me to understand.
GRM: The fear is that if one accepts evolution you have to accept that
the Bible is false! That last statement will get the hackles of the
old-earthers up! But before the complaints and defenses come in, hear me
out. YEC leaders constantly tell these people that if evolution is true,
then the Bible is false. They are programmed to follow that line of
reasoning and thus when faced with obvious data that doesn't fit or
flatly contradicts their viewpoint, they look into the precipice and see
atheism. And they recoil. That programming is why I have struggled with
these issues for years.
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