So he is rejecting YEC and OEC in one fell swoop by rejecting both interpretations of Genesis that treat its narration as factual and concordant with reality?
Because if he was asked more specifically if the earth is old or young, and answered that way, I would consider his response evasive and a non-answer.
Vinnie
Thanks for the heads up.
J.I. Packerâs Fundamentalism and the Word of God came to mind. Itâs a book Iâd like to read. Shy of that I found a nice review with this helpful quote:
âOver the course of the last decade or so the term âevangelicalâ has come in for its own season of abuse, and is now so closely associated with US right wing politics, that a great deal of clarification and qualification needs to go into unpacking what is meant when one talks about âan evangelical church,â or âevangelical theology.ââ
Ackshually ⌠this isnât true. Iâm a certified English teacher who taught public school. Thereâs something called âBloomâs Taxonomyâ that every teacher knows. From the earliest grades, but especially from middle school on, teachers are pushing kids to go beyond understanding a story on the literal level or just identifying its genre. The fact that a large sect of Christians ignore their basic training in interpreting texts isnât the fault of public schools.
Generally love N.T. and I understand why he answered as he did, but I agree with you. If he was asked if the earth was flat and said that was an American question, I wouldnât be impressed either.
Hmmm. I see Asbury is in Kentucky, but are you sure about the student body? I only ask because I know Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan, where @JRM teaches, is associated with the Free Methodist Church, and they arenât YEC.
The kids I taught my last year of teaching are now about 40 years old. In our North West Accreditation Process the staff was absolutely obsessed with finding ways to teach critical-thinking skills with every breath the kids took. I feel like we failed utterly.
Not in my experience. Almost every politically liberal leaning person I meet who is also a Christian tend to leans towards a more liberal reading of theology. Iâve not met a single conservative alt right person who has a liberal approach to theology. But i would have to see how you define it. Everything in America has tons of definitions now days. In some places you canât even say woman without ignoring a storm.
I never heard the arguments about good vs bad teeth. Maybe in Austin Powers I feel like something was mentioned. Iâve always heard it as white British people drink a lot more tea or something and had stained teeth but never thought much about it since in the south eastern parts of USA tea is very common and plenty of people still have really white teeth. Though not all but i canât imagine those are from tea xd.
I see a lot of scenes in films where there are British people dressed up in suits drinking hot tea and eating some kind of biscuit or cooking. Iâm not sure though. None of the people I meet from the UK ever actually just show up in a suit and cross their legs for a tea party and so I just figured it was some kind of odd trope nodding to James Bond villains or something.
Officially the Asbury College required faculty to have âa commitment to the âcreationist view of origins.ââ in a new contract in1967 though it seems the contract and the then college president didnât last long. History: 1960-1969 â Asbury University
However the college and the seminary, Asbury Theological Seminary, are independent. Wright seems to have been visiting the Seminary.
I checked and it is not aligned with a particular Methodist denom but is âWesleyan-Holiness traditionâ and attracts a lot of Free Methodist kids. I donât think Free Methodists as a denom have a position on the age of the earth, but among Methodists, they tend to be theologically conservative, and in the US at least that correlates with YEC.
I know how you feel. The problem with teaching is you donât know how your students turn out in the end. But my final answer is âNah.â I did my best. The rest is up to God and them. On the upside, the literalists are a minority, however theyâre counted, and I love and actually have great hopes for Gen Z.
Yeah, all that makes sense, especially for a seminary in Kentucky (Asbury) as opposed to Rochester (Northeastern). Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony both called Rochester home.
I would definitely fall in different places on those, which possibility does seem not to have come to the mind of many I know.
Thatâs the first time I can remember hearing anything definitely positive (I have heard some objective, neutral comments) about âpeople my age [implied âpresent company excludedâ]â from someone over 25.
Oof. Iâm 60. But I was a full-time teacher of middle- and high-schoolers from 2001-2016, and I love those kids. They have more empathy individually than all my generation of evangelical Boomers lumped together.
Wright is right until a science professor or a skeptic pushes the point. Of course, the Creator can do what He said He did any way He wanted to, so a young or old Earth is entirely possible. However, if He delivered the Initial Singularity in the first picosecond of time, then John 1: 1-3 explains the ex nihilo âbeginning.â Then, the de novo âLet there beâŚâ creations of Genesis by His Word become the Creatorâs eyewitness account of His speaking His earthly " beginnings" into place. Scientifically, this process is completely consistent with Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and the Standard Model of Elemental Particles listed in the Periodic Table of Elements.
Wright is absolutely right for those who consider the issue âirrelevant,â but, unfortunately, many young believers have walked away from their faith because they were unprepared to answer the scientific challenge from a professor or skeptic.
We all know that the Bible is not a science book, but The Word of God is always true. Our challenge is to know it, trust it, and understand how it works spiritually and in reality.
Only in a theoretical world. In the real world we actually live in, itâs clear the earth is not young, regardless of whether or not God could have made it 6,000 years ago. We know he didnât.
Christy,
Thanks for your comment regarding my post. I recognize N. T. Wright as a well-respected Christian author, and I was a little surprised by his short answer to the Asbury student. My grandson and his new bride graduated from Asbury last year, and a family friend is a responsible department head in their Seminary. My interest in BioLogos originated with the Language of God book when Dr. Collins was active in ASA3, so I have worked over the past five years on a manuscript constructing the scientific view consistent with the Biblical account.
The verse I like here is: Matthew 19:26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, â With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible .â
I donât think the YEC view is scientifically correct, but, as I said in my post, the Creator can do it any way He likes. His wisdom shows the limits of our knowledge. I agree with Francis Collins, who warns against embarrassing the Lord by pointing to the âGod of the gapsâ.
I wish I could discuss this âstumbling blockâ with N. T. Wright because the scientific answer does not dismiss the issue as âirrelevant.â Skeptics see that as âdodging the bulletâ rather than addressing the creation issue. Neither science nor theology can evidentially prove the Creation because the Creator was the only one present, however, John 1: 1-3 does explain it.
YECism , intelligent design in general, is nothing more than pseudoscience and terrible hermeneutics.
I guess I donât understand (or maybe donât agree with) what you are saying. I agree that with God all things are possible and that God could have created a fully formed world by his decree. But just because that is theoretically possible doesnât make it a good explanation of reality, which clearly points to God creating in a different way. Itâs simply not the case that old earth and young earth are equally plausible options. The only way one gets to a young earth conclusion is by ignoring all of science and privileging a highly literal interpretation of some Bible passages as the only epistemological tool for acquiring knowledge about the worldâs origins.
If you read a bit further on the original post, you will see that this was just a part of his answer, and he elaborated further. I think the point of his opening statement was that he did not consider it to be a major issue, and there were more substantive issues in his opinion, and the emphasis on age of the earth was not one he deemed as important as the American audience seems to do. Perhaps that more complete answer not quoted was more in line with the gracious way Wright is known to speak.
I was thinking Iâve never really seen him give a short answer. Though itâs always been in podcasts where the point was to talk but I am pretty sure Iâve heard episodes of podcasts where it was something like a campus talk and he typically seems to talk a lot. Not quite as much as Scott Mcknight lol. Iâve heard McKnight go on like 20 minutes before getting to the answer lol. I like it though. Tim Mackie is pretty good at studying very much to the point and deferring unrelated statements to specific moments of bantering.
I really like Scottâs style of talking though. I was listening to the Pepperdine series where he was at that CoC College and he mixed a lot of funny borderline snarky jokes into his conversation. I know some were offended who listened to it but I found it amusing. But Iâm also not in the âdenominational cult â mentality that some fall into. Those that think their particular denomination is not a denomination but is in fact the one and only true church and all denominations are just man made branches of heresy type of stuff. Itâs in his âKingdom Rootsâ podcast episodes 72-79.
Is this a Twitter conversation that could be displayed as screen shots? Or does it go to a video?
âLet your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.â -Colossians 4:6
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