Would you mind expounding on your thoughts here? To me, there seems to be a lot of theology that can be and has been put forth that is internally consistent, but is totally wrong when looked at from outside the bubble. Jesus in fact showed that to the Pharisees, showing their theology was wrong when seen in the light of Christ.
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First my criticism of this video …
[Added edit: This entire reaction was written under the impression that I had watched something intended to have real content. Now that I’ve been reminded that it was just a few minutes trailer of a longer documentary … please take the ‘video criticisms’ in the first paragraph with a grain of salt. Some things I wrote might still apply - but … maybe not!]
This Jesus Camp video is nothing more than the same sort of fear-based hype of the type that is driving so many right-wing devotees down their respective fear-mongering tunnels of delusion too. Anybody can find snippets of video showing emotionally charged participants all rallied behind their cause ‘x’, set it to music and roll it all with the accompanying background drone of some selectively fear-inspiring facts. This style of fact-lite presentation is what has chased so many of our loved ones so far away from reality. With such videography you can make the most staid and stable congregations with the most level-headed leadership look like cults too. We can do much much better. I’m not saying that the depicted Bible camp was all above board or didn’t have problems - perhaps even abuse. All I’m saying is that if it did - it failed to capture any of it. Making it more like a piece of indoctrination in and of itself! I’m sorry, but if you think that young kids tearfully declaring allegiance to Jesus (as well as allegiance to much lesser things like Bibles or yet further down … flags! be they Christian or American) is fringe or occult within the world of evangelicism over the last thirty years, then you’ve not been in touch with much of American evangelicism. It is heavy indoctrination to be sure - but nothing unusual or new in that regard - nor unique to evangelicism.
All that said … (now for such resonance as I have with those who find all this ‘new revelation’ so alarming…)
It is appalling that Christendom (particularly in the U.S. - can’t speak one way or another regarding elsewhere) has gone down the same brazenly commercial hole of psychological manipulation rather than steady and disciplined training up of young minds to love Truth. All those same teary-eyed tots, if they aren’t very soon given a diet of real-life nourishment that cultivates a desire for honesty, integrity, and sober self-reflection; then they will be the same teenagers and disillusioned young adults who will just as quickly flee to the next emotionally-titillating adventure the moment Christianity stops “working” for them and something else makes a more attractive emotional appeal. I’m not suggesting that emotions should be absent from worship (much less calling them always bad); I’m only suggesting that they tend to be the ‘candy part’ of what ought to be a much more expansive and wholesome diet.
And I’m not immune to or unaware of legitimate alarm that should be had over how expansively divisive all this warfare thesis has become, not just in some churches - but in schools too, both public and private. The political partisanship that has become bundled with so-called Christian ‘righteousness’ has frighteningly ripped through school systems, silencing any voices of reason, and lending megaphones to voices of extremism. I never thought I would write the following sentence, but … I may be looking back with nostalgia on the day when some of my excitable compatriots can even just become more nationalistic again. They are so bogged down in politically partisan loyalty, that for them, even ‘nationalism’ would be an improvement - even just believing in something bigger than their own political party. I know … they will claim that they are aspiring toward a national dream - one in which their political party dominates and permanently controls everything. It may surprise some to see what one of the patron saints of Protestantism, John Calvin, had to say about this in his institutes. So I’ll wrap this up with a Calvin quote from the Institutes (4.20.14):
For there are some who deny that any commonwealth is rightly framed which neglects the law of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. How perilous and seditious these views are, let others see: for me it is enough to demonstrate that they are stupid and false.
…from which Calvin goes on to describe that, quite apart from any theocracy, it is enough that the common law of a nation be based on the common natural law available to all. And he has quite a lot of ideas about what all can get bundled into that, which will be foreign and harsh to today’s cultural ears - but still, even as just the one quote shows, he saw nothing admirable (but in fact seditious) in any program that would attempt to supplant its hosting secular regime with a theocracy.
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My husband and sister-in-law watched Jesus Camp and said it was like footage of their childhood. My husband thought it was funny remembering being pushed to the ground because he wasn’t getting slain in the spirit fast enough for the pastor’s liking and my sister-in-law said it gave her PTSD symptoms. So, yeah, variety of damages.
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Well then … and look how you all turned out! (granted - probably in spite of some of those memorable events more than because of them.) But hey! Survivors do exist.
How’s that for an educational commercial? 
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Being consistently wrong is still wrong. If the Bible consistently said that the Earth is flat it wouldn’t suddenly flatten the Earth.
So you think it would be better to cling to false science in the name of theology?
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The most chilling part for me was the dance with the kids in military dress, and the pushing of “Us vs Them” mentality. Could this kind of thinking help explain the Christian Nationalism of Jan 6?
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Science is supposed to be consistent with observation and evidence?
YEC is devoid of interest in actual science. There is no curiosity about the process of how things came to be, no real desire for understanding. All that matters is to somehow wrangle some interpretation which fits with a young earth, and once that is done, what is the point of any more investigation? Yeah, the earth is young. Neat. Next thing to explain away. So utterly tedious.
Did you watch the full documentary? As documentaries go, it was very well done. There was hardly any narration, and the participants got to speak for themselves.
I believe it is part of it. Christian nationalism is another item we listed in our exit letter to our pastors. Even if it doesn’t present as violent in many of the churches I know, it’s in the water, and it syncretism.
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Ahhh! … no. I just watched what you linked which was a few minutes trailer. No wonder I was thinking there was nothing there! Okay - not sure I’ll take all the time to watch the whole thing, but I’ll have to retract my earlier criticism until I do.
Hoopla Digital has the full movie. Your library might give you free access to Hoopla.
Good question about the 20 billion number…we don’t have that many people on earth NOW!!
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I think that in fact Jesus was not telling the pharasees and Sadducees that their system of laws was wrong, rather the way in which it was being utilised to further their own elevated status in society was wrong. JEsus was demonstrating not that the law were not applicable and relevant, rather the way in which they were being enforced was a burden to the people. He [Jesus] did not say, throw out the law…Jesus actually lived by the laws of God… perfectly!
There is a big difference between what Jesus did and what Theistic Evolution is doing. Theistic Evolution is saying that entire books of the Bible, and authors of those books do not know/understand what they have written about. Essentially Theistic Evolution is saying that these writers (such as Moses, Daniel, Paul, James, and John) are wrong and the reason why these Bible writers are wrong is because a non Christian Darwinian Evolution “theory” says they must be wrong!
I fail to see how a Christian can determine that a humanistic world view be taken as authoritative over the Christian Bible? You are either Christian, or not!
As Dr Kurt Wise said once, after removing passages of the Bible that conflict with the Darwinian and secular scientific view, he was left with a book that was in complete tatters. IT was at this point he began his quest to discover a Scientific world view that supported the Biblical account instead of what you do, change the Bible to suit a non Christian Scientific world view.
For me, as one who studies Bible theology very deeply, the theology of the Bible is highly intricate…it starts with the literal historical account in Genesis and ends with the prophetic ending we are given by John in Revelation. I have read posts on these forums where it appears that Biologos followers do not even believe in Salvation. It appears that the very reason for this heresy is that in order to believe in Salvation, they could not bring themselves to also to believe in the theology that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)
Since a secular science world view cannot accept a God, Theistic Evolution is left with the dilemma that the story of the creation and fall of man cannot coexist in its self evident Biblical form, and that prior to the fall of man there was no death because there was no sin. The resulting conclusion is therefore “out the window goes the entire biblical plan of Salvation!”
I put it to you jpm…
If the Biblical statement “the wages of sin is death” is a fallacy, I believe that TEism claims this simply because God didn’t strike Adam and Eve down dead on the spot and, in light of the fact that in the time of Noah, 120 years of grace was given for people to repent and follow Noahs preaching rather than the flood immediately destroying them all and Noah and his family being miraculously lifted up into heaven whilst the flood ravaged and then cleansed the earth purging it of all evil…
From a theistic evolutionary world view,
What was the point of the sanctuary service if not to point towards the death of Christ for the sins of all mankind and to facilitate the restoration of sinners back to God and the former perfection that Mankind had prior to the fall of Adam and Eve? Could anyone other than a man who lived his life in complete harmony with the Mosaic laws have died for the sins of all mankind according to what the Sanctuary model illustrated? What is the point of the Second coming as outlined in the book of Revelation?
Are you saying that you support the Mormon world view…that we seek of our own accord to attain a self-elevated status thus becoming Gods of our own worlds? (This is not what the Bible preaches…hence the Mormons wrote their own version of it…funnily enough called “The book of Mormon”)
And that, my friend, is their theology. It was wrong, as Ham’s theology is wrong, in my opinion. AIG places their theology, their interpretation of the Bible, above all else, much as the Pharisees did.
No, it does not. What it is saying is that AIG type interpreters do not understand what the human authors of those books were saying. They think the authors were describing scientific descriptions of the mechanisms of creation, when the authors were expressing revelation as to who God is. Their focus on the 7 days of creation is a perfect example of what Jesus was critical of in Mark 2:27: Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" meaning that God rested on the sabbath not because he needed to do so, or that the sabbath was to be followed out of blind obedience to a law, but because it was good for man.
Darwinian theory says nothing about the writers of the Bible being wrong. (Not that Darwinian theory is really what modern biology follows these days, as a lot has happened in the last 180 or so years) Evolutionary Creationism does say the YEC interpretation of the Bible is wrong, of course. But the Bible remains correct.
A strawman argument. No one is saying that. They are saying that there are other faithful ways to understand what the Bible is saying.
I’ll ultimately leave that up to God, but my definition of Christian pretty much falls in line with the major creeds, and if anyone holds to one of those creeds, it is not my place to question their faith, though we may disagree on the details.
Of course, you realize that this forum is open to everyone, and there are participants who do not claim to be followers of Christ, much less Biologos followers. In fact, you are by your definition a BioLogos follower, as one who is following and participating in this forum.
Again, it does not address whether there is a God. You are confusing science with the philosophy of scientific naturalism.
Your conclusion based on your faulty interpretations and misconceptions. And a very destructive conclusion it is, as many have believed it and fallen from the faith.
And these are but a few of the more obvious misrepresentations and misunderstandings you put forth in your post. I suggest spending less time telling EC folks what they believe, and more time trying to understand their position. The YEC position is pretty clear here to most, as it is where most of us who support the EC position came from before coming to harmonize both Biblical truth and scientific observations of material existence, but feel free to explain why only your interpretation is correct and foundational to Christian faith. It seems to me you place your faith primarily on a physical and material basis rather than spiritual, and as such is a house built on the sand. How do you see your faith as dependent on that?
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It’s the evidence that demonstrates that the Earth is old, there was no recent global flood, and that life evolved from a common ancestor. It isn’t theories that are saying this. It is the creation itself.
Is following the evidence a humanistic world view?
Believing that God used the natural process of evolution to create biodiversity is not a secular science world view.
Since you reject the “secular science world view” do you also reject all natural explanations for the phenomena around us? Do you reject the scientific discovery that germs cause infectious diseases? Do you reject the basic physics that causes different weather? Do you reject gravity as the cause of planetary orbits?
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I disagree with some of this…i do not think that Biologos theology understands a literal Genesis account in the Bible at all. This is supported in your philosophy (your own fundamental beliefs, Biologos, just like all TEism followers (its a just a new name for old theology btw), denies that the author of Genesis knew what he was talking about when he wrote it. To then turn around and link any future biblical writers who substantiated the writings of Moses concerning creation in a similar manner…those new testament writers didn’t understand the science either apparently.
Here is the problem with the Biologos view that a modern understanding of Science best interprets scripture…
If “In the Beginning God” remains consistent across both theologies (ie YECism and TEism), how then is it that YECs accept that God is not only capable of existing outside of time and space because he created them, and in accepting this read Genesis account literally because other writers of the Bible, and indeed even early Christian Church writers, support this same view…how then can TEism make the claim God isn’t capable of ensuring that his own authors adequately understand the principals of our existence?
Now before you answer this, also remember that the bible specifically set a timeline on when God would cease to provide us with enlightenment such as that already provided through the prophets and the apostles. After the book of Revelation was written, the story is complete…nothing beyond this point is canonical. So if it does not fit within the constraints of overall biblical themes, and a variety of biblical authors, then it is heresy.
Even within my church, E.G White is looked upon from some members in a manner that can be viewed by outsiders as adding to the Bible. I think that as time progresses Adventists are starting to realise that they have inadvertently promoted an elevation of her to such great heights, the bible has taken a second chair to her writings. Even EG White herself did not wish for that…but it appears to have happened anyway. That is my same fear when I read Biologos fundamentals…elevating humanism, secular science, evolutionary theory above the bible, then mould the bible around those non Christian world views. That is a huge danger in my opinion.
Should we be using Science to precede and or override the very questions that drive us to even be scientific in the first place?
“TEism” denies that the author Genesis was writing to address modern scientific concerns that didn’t yet exist. Which is why …
Which is right - because there was little-to-no science there to understand. It wasn’t about science.
It’s a good thing that Biologos doesn’t do that then.
What about truth? Is there any room for truth in your canon? While the canon of scriptures is closed, why do you limit the work of the Spirit in the lives of all people since? Why do you think it is impossible for people today to find or be given truth except for what’s mentioned in scripture?
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According to the Bible, the earth doesn’t move. But according to secular science the earth does move. So what do you think, Adam? Which side are you on?
but it does do exactly that. You make the following claim for example:
- The bible writers were not explaining the science. That is true, however, they most definitely do directly address the epistemological questions of our existence and very specifically address the one about how we got here…“God created us” and more importantly, “He (God) bent down close to Adam and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.”
It is not possible to honestly interpret a designer physically bending down and breathing the breath of life into His creations nostrils any other way other than God doing exactly that. Prior to the breath of life entering Adam’s body (formed out of the dust of the earth) and then into his lungs, Adam was nothing more than a lifeless object.
Evolution of man from a primitive form into a human being is not at all consistent with God bringing a lifeless fully formed body into a state of consciousness and a living being!
Evolution says that Adam was already alive prior to this, just in some other more primative form. That is not possible to reconcile with the Genesis account…so what does TEism do, it says oh Moses doesn’t understand science (because apparently God doesn’t either or simply didn’t see fit to tell him)!
Sorry but the theological inconsistencies with Theistic Evolution ie how the physical act of God bending down and breathing into Adams nostrils and in that moment him (Adam) becoming a living being… I do not believe they can be reconciled with the evolutionary model without ignoring vast and overwhelming biblical evidence to the contrary. It destroys the theme of the entire Bible I think.
So you must think that God is a physical being, if he has to physically bend over to reach Adam? And you haven’t answered my first question.
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