[asa] Best Way to Approach YECs?

I am a member of ASA and of a Baptist church which offers elective classes on Wednesday nights. One class early last year consisted of a six-week presentation of a DVD of Ken Ham's Creationism seminar as presented at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in 2002, followed by a brief Q&A each evening (at which I was the only dissenting voice out of around 25 attendees). It was a very slick presentation of YEC, at the end of which our senior pastor said: "We're going to offer this again. Tell everyone how good it was. I want more of our church family exposed to it." He was not at any of the Q&A sessions.

Immediately thereafter I began working on a syllabus for a six-week course on alternatives to YEC. Until a week ago, it was basically an overview of the entire field. Then I had a thought: Since YECs believe that God's Word trumps God's works every time, the only approach that would have a chance of succeeding in getting YECs to consider the possibility of OEC would be to demonstrate that the Bible can be interpreted to support OEC, and that I should focus on this approach for the syllabus. For example, Genesis 1:1 interpreted as ". . . had created . . .", the possibility of an undetermined period of time between the days of creation, the use of "let" in Genesis 1:9 and 1:11 implying the use of natural processes, references to an old earth in Habakkuk 3:6b and in 2 Peter 3:5a, etc.

I would use as sources C. John Collins's Genesis 1-4, Henri Blocher's In the Beginning, John Walton's NIV Application Commentary on Genesis, Hugh Ross's Creation and Time, Rodney Whitefield's Reading Genesis One (on order), David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (on order) and a whole bunch of PSCF and other papers on the Flood.

I think I have enough credibility with the ministerial staff (having taught adult Sunday School classes, etc.) that I might be allowed to give a six-week course, though that remains to be seen. I have not yet shared my syllabus with any of the staff.

I have the following questions for the list:

1. Does this seem like a reasonable approach? If not, why not?

2. Has anyone tried it, and if so, how did it go?

3. Are there additional resources I should investigate for "Biblical Support for Old Earth Creationism"?

Paul Bruggink

Clarington, PA

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Received on Wed Jul 19 16:34:47 2006