Re: [asa] Best Way to Approach YECs?

On Wed, 19 Jul 2006, Mountainwoman wrote:

> 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"?

  My wife and I have done this sort of thing. With a multi-week Sunday
school, we would tackle topics in roughly the following order:

1. Science and religion are not in conflict. How we can understand
    science in a Christian perspective. The "two books" of nature and
    scripture.
2. Some principles of biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), and some
    lessons we can learn from the Galileo incident. Affirm the authority
    of scripture. The goal is never to replace scripture with science;
    the goal is to discover the BEST interpretation scripture.
3. List a wide variety of ways that Genesis 1 has been interpreted by
    theologians throughout church history. Discuss pros and cons,
    especially in light of good principles of biblical interpretation.
    (A good resource on interpretation is the first chapter of
    "How to read the Bible for All Its Worth" by Gordon and Fee.)
4. List a whole spectrum of views which Christians take on origins issues
    (not just two positions -- old/young earth -- but a whole specturm).
    Discuss pros and cons.

Two resources I can suggest:
1) http://www.calvin.edu/~lhaarsma/greentree.html
  has handouts of a lecture series. This series was an expanded version
of an adult Sunday school series. If the handouts look useful, you can
request by email the full lecture outline/notes.

2) http://community.gospelcom.net/csi/assets/FossilsandFaithSamples.pdf
(linked from http://community.gospelcom.net/Brix?pageID=2959)
  a sunday school curriculum aimed at high schoolers, but adaptable for
adults.

Loren

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Received on Thu Jul 20 10:23:30 2006