Re: Assurance of faith

Samantha, you wrote: "...I'm afraid I still feel that the materials here
focus on the creation end of the story and not the eschatological end..."

>From what you wrote before, I got the impression that assurance of faith was
your problem, not (theoretical) eschatology. Eschatology has two aspects, a
practical and a theoretical one. The practical one revolves around the
assurance of faith and the joy of our "blessed hope" for our future after
Christ's return, based on the few clear promises Scripture gives us for our
practical life of faith today.

Theoretical eschatology, on the other hand, deals with the question of what
we can know about what will happen, in what sequence, etc. As biblical
evidence for these topics is notoriously difficult to interpret, theologians
have come up with various different, often incompatible views about this.
And various sects or groups have settled on particular speculations, which
we better ignore. Jesus said (Matthew 25:13) "Therefore keep watch, because
you do not know the day or the hour."

As far as science is concerned, we can know and learn lots of things about
the past, but only tentative extrapolations about the future. And
eschatology, (teaching about the last things) is completely off-limits.
Therefore it's quite natural that the ASA list focuses, among other topics,
on creation, but hardly, if at all, on eschatology.

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)