Fw: [asa] YEC prior to 1950

> This I go along with - even though at first glance I wondered why Ted was
> going back to the mid 17th century for a Civil war:):)
>
> However I would start from that Civil War and stress that despite Ussher's
> famous calculations of 4004BC (sensible for 1656) There is much more
> variation over the age of the earth the Flood and all that from 1660
> onwards.
>
> In the late 17th century many (in theories of the earth) adopted a flood
> geology but slightly extended the time for the date of creation and the
> likes of Whiston et al opened up a crack in Genesis one (pre gap theory)
> which was then extended in the 18th century by the unorthodox - eg Buffon
> and the orthodox - many savants to all for more time . By 1770 or so most
> savants accepted deep age - see Rudwick's BLT [Bursting the limits of time
> not a Bacon Lettuce Tomato sandwich as we call it) There is a strong
> continuity from Whiston , Burnett et al in the late 17th century and those
> 50 - 100 years later. Those Whiston et al accepted an earth which was
> young and that the flood was the main cause of the strata they were too
> open ended to be described as YEC. They had the best explanation for their
> day.
>
> I have struggled to find opposition to deep time from those who could be
> termed YEC before 1800, the only weak example I know is the Frenchman
> Chateaubriand is his Genius of Christianity. After that in UK a few
> evangelicals grumbled but only really came to the fore after 1817 with the
> publication of Gisborne's Testimony of Natural Theology and then with Bugg
> and others who are described but not understood by Mortenson. Their chief
> targets where Christian geologists who accepted Deep Time like Buckland
> Sedgwick, Conybeare and evangelical theologians like Sumner Faber and
> Chalmers. In fact it was evangelicals and other conservative Christians
> who opposed themand they virtually disappeared after 1850.
>
> My main researches on this has been on the Anglican Church and having
> considered hundreds of clergy writers from 1800 to today my findings are
>
> 1800-1855 15-20% of Anglican clergy could be deemed young earth with
> many changing to old earth after a few years
>
> 1855-1970 Out of hundreds read only ONE was YEC and that was WH Griffith
> Thomas an Englishman who went to Canada in c1910 and a founder prof at
> Dallas Theological Seminary in 1922? His major texts written in England
> show him as a moderate TE a la James Orr, but by 1919 due to McCready
> Price became YEC. From 1900 most evangelical Anglican clergy were TE.
> Again proper research is needed
>
> Since 1970 YEC has grown among Anglican clergy and is now 5-10%. This is
> obviously as delayed result of the publication of TGF which was published
> in UK in 1968. I put 1968 as the key date for the UK on Creationism. To
> justify that I graduated in 1968 in geology and never heard of YEC. (which
> was just as well as I was converted weeks before graduation and if some
> keen Christian had given me a copy of TGF I would have responded
> robustly.) I worked abroad and returned in 71 to find fellow evangelicals
> from Univ caught up in the whole issue. Recently I have identified at
> least one Archdeacon (immediately below Bishop) and suspect one suffragan
> /assistant bishop.
>
> The situation among Scots Presbyterians is almost identical to Anglicans
> and of non-conformists eg Methodists Baptists Congregationalists etc , the
> more liberal were TE from 1880 and the conservatives tend to go for Gap
> Theory or Day age and less likely to be TE
>
> I hope this gives the British version of Ted's account!! They clearly
> cohere
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
> To: <asa@calvin.edu>; <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
> Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2008 2:01 PM
> Subject: RE: [asa] YEC prior to 1950
>
>
>> The standard account of the history of YEC, from Ron Numbers (himself a
>> former SdA believer) is as follows.
>>
>> (1) The combination (key word) of young (probably 6-8k years) earth and
>> flood geology (virtually all fossiliferous rocks are produced by Noah's
>> flood in human history) was mostly gone from conservative Protestantism
>> in
>> the period between (roughly) the Civil War and Eisenhower's presidency.
>>
>> (2) In the latter part of the 19th C, it was the official view of
>> Seventh-day Adventists, who took it from their prophet, Ellen White. She
>> claimed to have seen a vision of the creation, in which God showed her
>> both
>> a recent creation and flood geology. [Ted: Ron's biography of White,
>> which
>> I've only skimmed quickly long ago, shows how she "cribbed" various other
>> things from specific writings already out there in the culture; I
>> wouldn't
>> be the least surprised if her "vision" of creation pretty much came out
>> of
>> American or British scriptural geologists. By the 1830s, the scriptural
>> geologists were gone from serious geological circles, but still had a
>> fairly
>> wide popular following that, IMO, never entirely disappeared. This is a
>> place where a graduate student in history of science or religion could
>> find
>> a dissertation topic.]
>>
>> (3) White's most influential disciple, Canadian school teacher George M
>> Price, popularized this well outside of SdA circles, starting in 1906 but
>> really taking off in the 1920s. [Ted: He wrote numerous articles for the
>> Sunday School Times and the Westminster Theological Journal (among
>> others)
>> at that time. I have a couple dozen such on file.]
>>
>> (4) [Ted: But Harry Rimmer and other fundamentalist leaders did not
>> generally adopt the flood geology. They *did* typically believe that
>> geology supports the historicity of Noah's flood, whether global or
>> local,
>> but they did not typically endorse flood geology. They *loved* Price's
>> antievolutionist stuff, however. Bryan wanted to have Price as a
>> "scientific" witness at the Scopes trial, but Price was abroad at the
>> time.]
>>
>> (5) John C Whitcomb, Jr., wrote a dissertation on Price and Genesis in
>> the
>> 1950s at Grace Seminary. Not long after he encountered Henry Morris, an
>> admirer of Rimmer, and they collaborated on The Genesis Flood. In that
>> version of Whitcomb's dissertation, the influence of Price is greatly
>> muted
>> though it is minimally acknowledged.
>>
>> (6) Since the 1960s, this has taken off and gone worldwide.
>>
>> As for the long intermediate period between 1860s and 1960s, I don't
>> think
>> we really know very much about what was going on at the level of popular
>> religion in conservative Protestant circles. It's much easier to see the
>> books and articles by the leading theologians and preachers and biblical
>> scholars, even the small number of scientists associated with
>> "fundamentalists" in the Scopes era such as L Allen Higley at Wheaton
>> (where
>> the president absolutely forbade the teaching of evolution). My
>> suspicion
>> is, that there was quite a bit more of the YEC stuff out there, but I
>> don't
>> have hard data to point to, only anecdotal evidence from various people
>> at
>> the time such as Kirtley Mather (a leading geologist who went to Dayton
>> to
>> testify at the trial). Among the more visible stuff, however, Ron's
>> general
>> account is right: genuine YECs were thin on the ground, and mostly
>> confined
>> to SdA or very conservative Lutheran circles (Lutherans were among the
>> most
>> conservative Protestants around, on science issues, in the 1920s. There
>> is
>> hard data for that.)
>>
>> Nearly all publications I've seen from the early to mid-20th century,
>> coming
>> from conservative Protestants, endorse or allow either the gap view
>> (probably that was more popular, since it was taught in the Scofield
>> Bible)
>> or the day age view (Bryan's view). Rimmer liked the gap, while his even
>> more widely known friend William Bell Riley (first president of the
>> Worlds
>> Christian Fundamentals Association) like the ages; they even debated this
>> issue publicly on one very well known occasion, with Rimmer (as usual)
>> claiming victory. ASA member Frank Roberts told me many years ago, that
>> he
>> had surveyed the books about origins at (I think) Dallas Seminary, the
>> books
>> that were published in this period, and he found almost nothing other
>> than
>> gaps or ages. That's consistent with what I've seen myself, and I've
>> looked
>> at a lot of books from this period.
>>
>> Finally, this thread has 1950 in the title, but the key year is 1961. No
>> Whitcomb & Morris, which has sold more than a quarter million copies,
>> then
>> no scientific creationism today. Ron was right: they wrote the "bible"
>> of
>> the movement.
>>
>> Ted
>>
>> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>>
>>
>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Aug 24 02:14:57 2008