RE: [asa] Best Way to Approach YECs?

Paul wrote,
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."

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JD: I agree with many of the responses you have received to date. I would only add a suggestion regarding texts. A couple of the ones you have suggested are a bit dense and several have an academic way of writing that will put off many people. For example John Collin's Genesis 1-4 is a very interesting read (I'm just finishing it up) but his discussion and emphasis on discourse analysis will really turn the uninitiated off. I do highly recomend C. John Collin's "Science and Faith" because it is very readable and has several excellent chapters that ask and provide very plain answers while at the same time providing enought depth to satisy even the well read Christian. His chapter on providence is especially good and provides a good foundation for building a discssion of Genesis.

I would also take this chance to again highly recommend a short book that takes a age-indeterminant view of Genesis 1. It is "God's Pattern of Creation: A covenental reading of Genesis 1" by Robert Godfrey. It would make an excellent and affordable text for a class.

Regards,
Joel
Akron OH

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Received on Sun Jul 23 16:23:46 2006