It was just a quote from a kid in the chapel:
"NT Wright just cleared a boy on Old Earth v Young Earth and it has me crying 
āthatās sort of like asking whether Iām voting democrat or republican in the next election. Thatās an American question and the rest of us donāt vote in that electionā
I just thought the idea that YEC/OEC is an American thing no one else cares about according to the rest of the world was kind of interesting.
I agree.
Itās one more way we are exceptional.
Iād prefer things like: thoughtful, intelligent, reflective, perceptive, generous, kind, peace-loving, etc.
Exactly rather than āAmerica firstā Iād prefer America, good global citizenā.
Swoon!
Thatās almost too much, Mark!
One can dream.
Yeah itās entirely aspirational.
Thanks again, Christy. So now, I think we can get on the same page.
Phil McCurdy correctly noticed that I did not see more from an original post where NT Wright responded more in-depth to the student. Unfortunately, I didnāt see the original post. So, I jumped to a premature assessment, but we still need this conversation to clarify my thinking regarding a scientific response to the creation issue. It is a āstumbling blockā issue.
Also, Skovand correctly discounted āpseudoscience.ā
Please donāt discount my view of biblical creation in a scientific context too quickly. Instead, let me explain the scientific part of what I didnāt make clear in my first response.
Einstein, Planck, Maxwell, and a few other Nobel laureates do not constitute a pseudoscience platform, nor do they endorse a spiritual worldview. The caveat is that John 1: 1-3 explains ex nihilo creation from the mind of God by His Word, which matches a scientific delivery of the Initial Singularity. (Caused by the Creator, possibly using gravity.) Science calculates the finite age of the universe back to about 13.8 billion years when time started with the Planck epoch, nicknamed the Big Bang. The following 385,000 years constitute the āCosmic Dark Age,ā where no light could escape from the new creation, a colossal astrological and cosmological blind spot. Our Milky Way Galaxy with planetary earth did not follow for about ten billion years later. (God mentioned to Job that He was at work when āthe sons of God rejoicedā at His handiwork.) Biblically, this work constitutes phase one of Creation, the prequel to Genesis.
The āLet there beāā¦ creative events of Genesis are scientifically consistent in the biblical context of de novo new beginnings. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is the scientific explanation for our physical reality. The Standard Model of Elemental Particles accounts for all of the materials we know on the Periodic Table of Elements. The principles of interacting fields are well-tested and accepted by most scientists worldwide. Therefore, I conclude that the Word of the Creator instructs directions into the universal homogeneous electromagnetic field to initiate and maintain His creative works.
So, Christy, I agree with Dr. Collins that the Bible is not a science book. However, it does always tell the truth. The scientific challenge is to answer the "How can it be? question with biblical integrity. What I did not make clear earlier was that the ātheoreticalā idea of āGod can do anything He choosesā is a āspiritualā issue. Spiritually, literal interpretations, in my view, have been perfectly acceptable in the sight of God for the past two thousand years. Science should not be pushed as a āstumbling blockā to void faith-based thinking. Secular professors and skeptics push that agenda. However, the principle of Progressive Revelation provides tension for the scientific community to keep faith-based theology relevant in light of our new information. God created the rules science is discovering, and He uses them for His purposes.
Thanks again for considering my posts; I find thoughtful responses helpful.
Of course.
However, unlike in past centuries, people have access to facts about the ancient earth. What I often witness with many YEC believers is not people simply doing the best they can with the Bible and the belief that God can do the impossible, itās people actively rejecting facts in a sort of performative faith display. It becomes a sort of works righteousness (complete with judgmental attitudes towards those not inclined to join them in their performance) to suppress their cognitive dissonance and ābelieve the plain truth of the Bibleā as an act of will. I donāt think this disqualifies their faith in any way for God, but it certainly affects their credibility with non-believers and their own children that they are trying to raise in the faith.
Seems to me that it stems from the usual US dogma that no one else in the world is statistically relevant.
I can say that our church across the globe does not accept ancient earth and has a very large base in Australia (by church standards) and its not usually included with the US version of what Evangelicals are. The funny thing is that generally, my church gets blamed for starting the YEC movement. Whilst I donāt accept that this is true, its not a bad badge to wear.
As an evangelical and fundamentalist Christian since the age of 18, the issue of Old Testament chronology and the age of the earth has been an issue that has gnawed at my brain over the years. And as Iāve tried to address this issue by reading a number of varying viewpoints and literature, I have reached one certain conclusion. We can study the glorious book of Genesis and other works of the Old Testament the entirety of our lives and will continue learning new perspectives and takes on them until we meet our Savior. Ironically, God may have such a sense of humor that he is having his proverbial cake and eating it too. The Biblical timeline of 6,000 ā 8,000 years does seem to rightfully correspond to the emergence of large-scale cities in Mesopotamia (beyond large village-size settlements seen elsewhere at earlier dates). Among the four rivers flowing out of the garden is the āTigrisā which in Hebrew has among its meanings āenforced governmentā. And so, these Jews supposedly writing the Torah in exile disagreed with the timeline of the Sumerian Kings List adhered to by the Babylonians and somehow managed to come very close to the timeline on the emergence of civilized governments. How ironic. And the Jewish exiles mockingly referring to the first city in the Bible (Irad ā meaning āfugitiveā), which sounds intriguingly like Eridu (long held by Babylonians and Sumerians as the first city). Both the Biblical timeline for Irad and archaeology for the emergence of Eridu are strikingly close. And yet, in spite of this, one has to wonder whether God truly intended for the lifetimes of the pre-flood patriarchs to be literal versus symbolic mockery of the Babylonian system (built on the Sumerian and Akkadian histories and cultures) which adhered to a chronology spanning more than 200,000 years (ironically close to the age of homosapiens). I say this because the entire concept of viewing the entirety of the Bible as a āchronologyā, as opposed to chronological in part and metaphorical in other parts, seems to be an outgrowth of Hellenistic thinking. Even when the Septuagint was written, the chronology and ethnological timeline found in Septuagint and what is now our modern Bible was not quite enough to satisfy the Greeks who wanted and desired more ā something akin to the works of Manetho and Berossus. So, in less than 100 years after the writing of the Septuagint, along comes Demetrius and his āKings of Judeaā. While the writings of Manetho, Berossus and Demetrius are lost to time, others would later attempt to replicate what had begun as a Hellenistic endeavor by what some scholars have now described as Greek and Roman ābootlicking" who desired to somehow legitimize the history of the Jews to the curiosity of their Greek and later Roman overlords. See Generally the writings of Bickerman, Dillery, Milikowsky and Momigliano for an introduction to Hellenism and Greek obsession with chronology and ethnology. Josephus would render a similar chronology and arguably was inspired by the writings of Demetrius. In the 1st Century CE, the Seder Olam would follow the work of Demetrius, arguably, and render a chronological history of the Jews back to creation. More than 1,500 years later, James Ussher would narrow things down to the exact date and time with his āThe Annals of the Worldā in 1658, and as a result, for centuries, English Bibles would have dates in their margins showing the year in which an event took place ā with creation occurring at 4004 BC. So how much of our obsession about a chronological reading of the Bible comes from Hellenistic influences? We donāt really know. Jesus did not speak to it. Perhaps I am wrong, but I donāt believe that the Dead Sea Scrolls contained a copy of or fragments of Demetriusā work (I gladly seek feedback on this even if wrong). If they were not concerned with his writings, and if Jesus did not seem to be overly concerned with his writings, are we perhaps overly concerning ourselves with the age of the world? Did Jews prior to the Greek and Maccabean era in Palestine really concern themselves with the age of the earth?
This implies that we should only care about knowledge the Jesus cared about. Jesus didnāt care/know about germ theory, but itās been useful to humanity. I agree that making the Bible into a timeline for earth history is not very worthwhile. But just because you canāt get the age of the earth from the Bible doesnāt mean you canāt get the age of the earth from science. The Bible and the scientific method can be seen as complimentary sources of knowledge/truth.
(You can see it here: https://vimeo.com/771602090 @ 1:21:00)
Good thoughts.
Sorry. I should have been more clear. No disagreement with your comments on the importance of science and a need to understand the age of the earth. My questions were aimed at the context of divinely inspired scriptures and whether we, as Christians, should be looking at the Old Testament as a chronological road map back to creation.
That is what I inferred as well. I didnāt think that you were speaking to scientific concerns but faith ones, not denying that we can get the age of the earth from science nor saying that we should only be concerned about the science Jesus was concerned about.
Of course heās gracious. I missed the more complete answer the first time around, but I still wish he had been more straightforward. I also think he represents a British Protestant point of view, not necessarily a global Protestant POV. American evangelicals have been busy exporting YEC and other culture war topics through SBC missionaries for decades. As one prominent example, fundamentalist Vodie Baucham is presently Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Zambia.
Definitely interesting. Iām glad you brought it up.
Be careful about attaching an initial singularity to Jesus as the Logos.
Edit: TL/DR
You rather make Christyās point.
One point that needs to be made concerns the dating of the layers in, for example, the Grand Canyon. These layers and the fossils found in them were identified in the 19th century at a time when there was no good method for dating these layers. Hence, there was no debate, the time frame could be ālongā or 6000 years. Then, along comes my crowd with radioactivity and provides a method for dating. Suddenly, there were good data indicating a 4.5 billion-year age for the earth/solar system. That, coupled with modern studies where the age of ānearly allā meteorites show that same 4.5 billion-year age, ignited the debate about the 6000-year chronology in Genesis. Why is this largely an American debate? Because the best long-term example of the time profile of the earth is here in Americaā¦the Grand Canyon. See Carol Hillās fantastic book about the Grand Canyon for details. My father used to say āpaper will lie still and you can write anything on itā, to the debate goes on, but the data consistently show the 4.5 billion-year age for the earth and solar system.
It is an interesting phenomenon. I think most people in our congregation really do not reject an old earth, and marvel as we do at the ancient discoveries in geology, archeology and cosmology just as we do, yet suppress that and cling to a young creation in church settings. At least my experience is that they really donāt like discussing it as it causes cognitive dissonance, other that a few vocal individuals who are heavily vested in the argument. In some respects, they hold to a dual nature of reality. I can go along with some of the literalism in dating by just realizing what is literal to them is figurative and symbolic to me, and that is OK. And for the most part, they do not ask my opinion, because they do not want to hear it.
I donāt know if this is what you were referring to, but she is the senior editor:
The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth
A gorgeous book, and of the eleven contributing authors, nine are Christians. (A digital version is not available, but my local public library bought it upon my request.)
Also, there was no debate because geologists had figured out by the mid-to-late 1700s that features like Mount Etna or the extinct volcanoes in southern France took longer than 6000 years to form. The general consensus at that point was āOkay, thereās a bunch of earlier history than Genesis doesnāt bother withā and āGeology agrees with the Bible that history is finite and linearā.
āLet your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.ā -Colossians 4:6
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