Ken Smith wrote: [snip]

If Don has difficulties because I don’t mention Genesis specifically, I’m sorry, but I refuse to distinguish between Genesis and the rest of Scripture.

Don:

“How Are We Meant to Understand *Genesis*?

Note the topic. It seems like Ken wanted to deal with anything but the topic. My post of May 2 laid out my reasons for believing that Genesis is primarily history. There were 14 points.

Here are some notes on what has or has not been covered by Ken (I will not repeat the details that were in the original post):

Some reasons why I take Genesis 1-11 as a straight-forward historical account:

1. I am a Christian, a follower of Christ, and so I follow his example in his attitude to the Old Testament scriptures.

We have had a lot of stuff on inerrancy, much of it obfuscation about such things as the content of the Canon and Ken’s misconceptions about what inerrancy entails, but that’s about all. Does Ken share Jesus’ view of the OT? Ken has not shown how I err compared to Jesus’ view of the OT.

2. Jesus clearly regarded the account of Adam and Eve’s creation as factual, as well as the Flood.

When Jesus said, ‘the flood came and destroyed them all’, was he correct or not? I have to sympathize to some extent with Thomas Huxley, ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, who asked: ‘I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately among “types” and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question, or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that “the Flood came and destroyed them all,” did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not?’ (‘Science and Hebrew Tradition Essays’ 1, p.232, 1897).

When Jesus said, ‘At the beginning He made them male and female’, was Jesus mistaken? (see http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/1101ankerberg_response.asp)

3. Genesis was written as history. Not dealt with.

4. Hermeneutical principle: Scripture interprets Scripture. The rest of the OT takes it as history. Untouched. Ken’s hermeneutical rule seems to be ‘[uniformitarian] science interprets scripture’. I have pointed out that it is appropriate to use science only in a ministerial sense (serving and illuminating Scripture) but not magisterial (judging, over-ruling).

5. Hermeneutical principle: Scripture interprets Scripture. The NT takes Genesis as history.

Here Ken nitpicked over how many *quotations* there were in the NT, whereas I had said ‘quotations or allusions’. But he did not deal with the issue, which is that the New Testament takes Genesis as history. Just how many references to Genesis’ history would be necessary from the NT to make the point?

6. The history of Genesis is necessary for an effective and biblical theodicy. Untouched.

7. The history of Genesis is foundational to the Gospel. The meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is tied to what Adam did in Genesis. Untouched.

8. The history of Genesis is necessary for a cohesive and coherent biblical Christian worldview. Untouched.

9. The church fathers accepted the ‘young earth’ historical time frame and global Flood of Genesis.

All Ken has done here is repeat the error of Numbers, that ‘creationism’ is a recent invention, and dispute over minutiae regarding particulars of Augustine’s beliefs, for example (Augustine still believed in a young earth). Ken has not engaged the hard historical evidence that belief in an ancient earth is the modern aberration and that from the beginning the church fathers overwhelmingly believed Genesis was historical (good creation in six days, Adam and Eve were real people, animals and humans created vegetarian, the Fall, when corruption came to the created order, global Flood of Noah, etc)— pretty much as AiG teaches.

10. The Reformers understood it as history.

Here again we got obfuscation: Calvin expressed geocentrist views. So? (And leaving aside the equivocal language of reference frames that we use today, and evidence from Hoyle and Ellis that you can choose any frame you like). What about what Calvin said about the days, the Fall, etc.? What about Luther? Luther criticized Augustine’s allegorization of the creation days and was crystal clear about creation days, flood, etc. Archbishop Ussher (‘Annals of the World’) did not work in a vacuum; just about everyone thought similarly. The first edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica had the creationist view of history as the official view. Look at a Young’s Analytical Concordance under ‘Creation’ and you will find a table showing the range of chronologies of the age of the earth, from many sources, consistent with biblical history from Genesis 1ff. Nicolas Steno (1631-1686), regarded as ‘the father of stratigraphy’ (the study of sedimentary rocks), believed that the earth was created covered in water, later Noah’s Flood and biblical time scale; He writes about these things in his ‘Prodromus’). And what about the English ‘scriptural geologists’ who wrote at length defending six days, global flood, etc., in the first half of the 1800s? See ‘The origin of old-earth geology and its ramifications for life in the 21st century’ by Dr Terry Mortenson http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v18/i1/oldearth.asp#f3 Dr Mortenson did his doctorate on the origin of old-earthism and the opposition to it from various geologists. History shows that Numbers is wrong in suggesting a modern origin to ‘creationism’.

And Ken gave the game away by insisting that I only refer to *modern* theologians to back up my claims (showing that he knows that it is his view that is the modern aberration)! .

11. Historical naturalism (cosmic, geological and biological) is a tenet of faith for the atheist, which should be sufficient for any informed Christian to realize the foolishness of denying the historicity of Genesis to accommodate it.

Ken has tangentially touched on a little of this with his posting on cosmology, much of which was unnecessary because AiG has no problem with general relativity. Ken would know this if he really were an expert on all things creationist. Ken tried to claim that big bang cosmology has no anti-Christian assumptions. I quoted from the very books he quoted to show that anti-Christian assumptions are foundational to the BB model. Ken also quoted ‘god talk’ from various physicists, right out of context, to try to make out that the big name BB cosmologists really aren’t anti-Christian.

12. Abandoning the historicity of Genesis leads to heresy and apostasy. Untouched.

13. Disbelieving the history of Genesis disconnects the Bible from the real world, transforming Christian faith into an ‘upper storey’ irrelevance. Untouched.

14. There is only one reason not to take Genesis as straightforward history: the fallible reasoning of fallen mankind, in the guise of historical, or origins, ‘science’.

I guess an answer to this is implicit in everything that Ken has ‘science’ says … so therefore we must reinterpret what the Bible says, even when the clearly intended meaning does not allow it, or it even undermines the Gospel. Perhaps if Ken were actually a scientist he might be less trusting of the conjectures of historical science.

As I said in the first post: ‘Theology is the queen of sciences.’ That’s why we are ‘Answers in Genesis’, not ‘answers in science’. We must begin with what God has said. If we cannot agree that God has indeed spoken, that (all) the Bible is His Word, then we cannot even get started in the discussion of science. Once we agree that God has spoken and agree upon what He has said, then we can begin to interpret the ‘facts’ of history accordingly.

Ken has said almost nothing about what he believes re Genesis, only cherry picking about what I have stated, along with a lot of innuendo about us creationists misquoting or not being ‘real scientists’, or calling us liars, idiots and blasphemers, etc.- while demanding civility from me. It is clear where I stand; I can only guess where Ken stands (and I could be wrong). When pressed on his failure to actually say what he believes about Genesis, Ken suggested that he would need to spend 20 years studying theology to make a stand. But in proposing this he undermines the Reformation (and Baptist) principle of the perspicuity of Scripture. Apparently the new priesthood is to be the theologians and scientists. Does Ken believe that Adam and Even were real people? Was there a Garden? Did their sin usher in corruption of God’s ‘very good’ creation? How does Ken’s view of Genesis mesh with the rest of the Bible? How does the New Testament theology of salvation, where Jesus is called ‘the last Adam’ work if the first Adam was a metaphor or a myth (an ‘ape-man’ or such)?

Unless Ken makes a substantial effort to engage these issues, I can see little point in continuing this interaction. I cannot pin the tail on the donkey when there is no donkey.

I apologize to any who feel snubbed that I have ignored them; there is only one of me and my prime purpose was to debate Ken — I have a life outside this forum. 🙂 I apologize to any I have offended with my direct manner. I don’t like waffle (I will blame my rural upbringing). I have not intended to offend, only to challenge and engage. There has not been a lot of engagement, unfortunately, but I hope at least someone has been helped, is a little better informed about something, or, if not, at least entertained in some devious way. 🙂

Blessings to you all,

Don