Re: [asa] Best Way to Approach YECs?

I would also like to suggest James Montgomery Boice's commentary on Genesis. I do not know how much respect he has in a Baptist denomination, he had a lot of influence in the PCA, and was an otherwise conservative theologian.

But in this commentary he rejects YEC because there are "too many lines of more or less independant evidence against (the YEC) case on behalf of a young earth."

He also says of theistic evolution that it is possible (within a conservative biblical interpretation of Genesis) and that "many theories of science were once declared to be antichristian but are now held by Christians and non-Christians alike with no apparent ill effects to Christianity."

At the end Boice leans towards progressive creationism. But his acceptance of theisitic evolution as a possibility and his rejection of YEC is enough to at least pave the way for anyone that would want to explore further.
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Paul Seely
  To: asa@calvin.edu ; Mountainwoman
  Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006 2:36 PM
  Subject: 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.

  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"?>>

  Creation science is already armed with answers to Hugh Ross and other concordist theories; and to a large extent they are closer to the historical-grammatical meaning of Scripture than are the concordists. Nevertheless, if you present an array of Evangelical concordist interpretations, you should be able to win, as has been done in conservative Presbyterian churches, intellectual space to believe in modern science (sans evolution) without being rejected as an infidel.

  This approach seems to be the most practical and most strategic approach. At the same time, I think it is important to address the root problem: Conservative Evangelicals have made an apriori commitment to a view of Scripture which lifts it out of its historical rootedness. They accordingly miss the fact that the Israelites had ingrained cultural ideas about history and science (and morals) before the revelation granted to Moses ever came along.

  Jesus recognized this historical rootedness when he said the law of divorce in Deut 24:1-4 was a concession to the Israelites' hardness of heart, that is, their culturally pre-ingrained idea that a man had a moral right to divorce his wife for trivial reasons. Calvin picked up on this and found similar concessions in Scripture in other OT laws such as those regarding slavery, and he recognized that for purposes of effective communication God also accommodated popular ignorance about the sciences.

  Genesis 1-11 contains important theological revelation, but it is clothed in the pre-existing cultural ideas about science and pre-history, which are not the gift of revelation but the package in which it was given to the ancient Israelites. You will find this approach laid out in general in Peter Enns' book, Inspiration and Incarnation, and more specifically in Conrad Hyers' book, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, in John Stek's chapter in Portraits of Creation, in John Walton's NIV Commentary on Genesis (chapter one), and with regard to Warfield and especially Calvin in my various papers in the Westminster Theol Journal, especially those on the firmament and the water above, and on the Tower of Babel: www.thedivinecouncil.com/seelypt1.pdf , www.thedivinecouncil.com/seelypt2.pdf, and http://www.occasioncameras.com/creationdays/pdf/seely.babel.wtj.2001.pdf

  Please keep us informed on how your efforts are received, and if you need any specific help, I am sure most on this list would be glad to pitch in.

  Paul S

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Received on Mon Jul 24 06:09:24 2006