Martin Luther to the Present (YEC)

Luther did not agree with Augustine that God created everything suddenly.  He was challenging the
Greek view at the time that the universe was eternal.  For Luther, only God is eternal.  Luther like others did believe the world was about 6000 years old. 

Calvin wrote that Moses was not doing science or trying to give a scientific description of the cosmos.  What one does find is  both Luther and Calvin believed was the Bible taught that the sun and the stars went around the earth.  When Copernicus put his idea forth that the earth went around the sun, Luther called him a heretic and Calvin said he was mad and possessed by the Devil.  Like other Christians before them, they struggled with how to deal with new discoveries of science in how it related to their understanding of the Bible.

Charles Darwin published his Origen of Species in 1859.  Through the theory of evolution, science, and the fossil record, he concluded that the fossil record revealed an old earth rather than a young earth.  Many clergy of the time that believed in the inerrancy of the Bible also believed in an old earth.  They did not see a contradiction between scripture and science, clergy like Henry Newman, Charles Kingsley and the famous conservative fundamentalist B. B. Warfield

William Paley was the forerunner to the intelligent design movement.  Some of the scientists of this group viewed god more deistically as winding up the universe clock and letting it go on its own afterwards.  The Scopes monkey trial pitted evolution and creation against each other in a political way.  What people fail to understand about William Jennings Bryan was his issue was not as much the actual theory of evolution as it was the dangers of science without a moral code.  Social Darwinism is the real enemy of religious faith, not the science of evolution.

Historically, its been mainly the Seventh Day Adventists who have claimed the world is only 6000 years old.  The conflict between science and religion before this has not been over a hyper-literal reading of the Genesis story.  It has only been recently since Henry Morris published his Genesis Flood and later Ken Ham promoting young earth creationism that these ideas have come to the forefront. 

The religious front is now split over these issues but in the scientific community, there is no debate over whether the earth or universe is young or not.  Why?  Because there is no scientific evidence to support YEC.  This is not an issue of rebellion against God as YEC suggests but rather a lack of factual evidence.


(A Review of chapter 4 of Joel Edmund Anderson "The Heresy of Ham")

The Early Church to Today (Genesis 1-11)

Chapter 4 of Joel Edmond Anderson is a powerful quick tour of how the early church fathers interpreted the early chapters of Genesis which was spiritually and sometimes historically but not scientifically.  Anderson shows the whole history of the early church from its beginning to modern history has interpreted the book of Genesis very differently than YEC (Young Earth Creationists) who have tried to suggest that this is how every true believer has interpreted Genesis throughout church history.  Anyone who will look at the history of the church will discover that YEC is a very novel and modern invention and not an ancient understanding of the biblical text.

Early exegetes like Philo, Origen, Augustine, and the Cappadocian fathers understood the early chapters in Genesis very differently than the conclusions of modern creation-science folks of today.  The early Christians were not explaining biology but salvation.  They even understood development, progress, and growth as God calls us to a kind of spiritual evolution of loving as God loves us.  Christians through the ages have been more concerned about readers of the Bible understanding not so much that Adam was a historical person (which many of them did believe) but how the story of Adam is the story of us.

Thomas Aquinas taught that God did not create everything instantly but rather nature has the capacity to develop over time and God is continually creating new life.  The problem with YEC is the Enlightenment assumptions they impose on the biblical text and then go further by imposing it on everyone else if you are a faithful believer in Christ.  If evolution would have been taught in the early church's day, many of the early curch fathers would have understood it to simply be the process which further proved God's providence in the world around us.  Next week I'll finish Anderson's chapter that covers the Protestant Reformation to today.

Walking the Plank on Noah's Ark

I have just started reading Joel E. Anderson's book which is a fascinating study of one Christian teacher who lost his job because he did not believe in YEC (Young Earth Creationism).  Most Evangelical Christians believe in a very literalistic young earth view of history even if the details do not all match Ken Ham's version of it.  Sadly, YEC is becoming a litmus test for Christian school's hiring policy and most Christians think not only is evolution false, but it is evil and puts people on the slippery slope towards atheism.

Some of the things that YEC teaches that people may not be aware of are things like:

1.  Adam and Eve possessed a perfect genome and stood anywhere from 12 to 16 feet tall and had super intelligence (what evidence scientific or even biblically is there for this?)

2.  There was no death before the fall except for plant and bug life because they technically don't count as "life?" (really, plants and bugs don't count as life?  And what about the fossil record of animal death?)

3.  Adam and Eve were vegetarians and did not kill animals for food (what about our teeth as mammals are made for ripping and tearing flesh?)

4.  Incest was okay until Moses said it was wrong due to genetic mutations (how do we know incest was okay for Adam and Eve's family especially if God created the first pair of humans in community and not just a solo family interpretation?  If you take the risk of genetic mutation away, do we really want to say that incest then is okay in all situations?)

5.  It never rained before the flood for there was this perfect like canopy until God made it rain? (how on earth do you explain no rain, no sun or moon at one point in the creation story and the questions just go on and on).

6.  The pre-flood civilization were highly intelligent and they had advanced technology that dwarfs even our modern technology today.  Go to the Noah Ark exhibit and check this out for yourself.  Of course all this advanced technology got blotted out by the universal flood so there is no evidence for it today.  The flood not only explains away all geology against a YEC interpretation but it covers the loss of this early advanced technology as well.

7.  Dinosaurs were on the ark and they fit by being small newborns (where exactly is that in the Bible?)


(Excerpts and ideas from Joel Anderson The Heresy of Ham (2016)