Gordon, that comment is spot-on.
I often think that modern YEC-ism ignores the fact that the garden is a
garden. Instead, as far as I can tell, YEC theology sees the whole earth as
a garden, with nothing particularly distinctive about Eden. Paradise in,
paradise out.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 1:07 PM, gordon brown <Gordon.Brown@colorado.edu>wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Aug 2009, Dehler, Bernie wrote:
>
>
>> David said:
>> “Explain to us how this ancient theology is going to cause millions of
>> Christians to lose their faith?”
>>
>>
>>
>> Because Christians learn a certain popular apologetics, which state that
>> Adam brought sin and death into the world. That is ancient theology and
>> wrong. When they learn that death was in the world long before Adam, they
>> will throw out everything else in Christianity too, because their
>> apologetics teacher told them this was foundational to the faith.
>>
>>
>>
>> …Bernie
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> I don't know the history of Christian teaching on the origin of the death
> of nonhumans, and so I don't know whether what you describe should be called
> ancient theology. Before the discovery of fossil evidence it probably wasn't
> a pressing issue. When I was in my teens and twenties, the Scofield
> Reference Edition seemed to be the preferred Bible of evangelicals, and its
> advocacy of the gap theory was widely accepted as authoritative. A key
> feature of this theory was the destruction of the original creation
> including animal life in Satan's fall prior to its restoration and the
> creation of humans. I was not aware that this raised an issue for anyone
> regarding animal death prior to Adam. After all, the context of the
> scriptural references to one man bringing death into the world indicate that
> this is about death of humans. It is only since the rise of modern YECism
> that I have become aware that this was an issue for many people.
>
> Gordon Brown (ASA member)
>
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Received on Mon Aug 24 13:24:50 2009
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