In the book "The Chronology of the Old Testament" by Dr Floyd Nolen Jones, published by Master Books in 2005 reference is made to the work "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hislop, published by Loizeaux Bros in 1916, Dr Jones gives background to the decision of church fathers in AD 440 to settle upon December 25 as the day to celebrate the birth of the infant Christ. The day was selected to coincide with the Roman heathen festival of Saturnalia which was held annually in honour of the birth of the son of Semiramis, the Babylonian "queen of heaven" (see Jeremiah 7:18, 44:15-30).
Dr Jones goes on to say "The origin of this can be traced back to Babylon at the time of the Tower of Babel. The Tower was under the direction of the founder of the world's first kingdom, Nimrod-bar-Cush, the son of Cush ("the black one") and grandson of Ham ("the dark or sunburned one"). Secular records state that Nimrod (Orion, or Kronos [a corona or crown] "the horned one") married the infamous Semiramis 1. She is reputed to be foundress of the Babylon "Mysteries" and the first high priestess of idolatry. Tradition also ascribes the invention of the use of the cross as an instrument of death to this woman.
Apparently when Nimrod (a black) died, Semiramis became pregnant out of wedlock. The child, like its father, was white. Semiramis acting to save the moment declared that Nimrod's spirit had become one with the sun (incarnated with the sun) and that he had come to her in the night so that she had miraculously conceived a god-son. As the first mortal to be deified, Nimrod thus became the actual "father of the gods." Semiramis presented the infant to the people and hailed him as the promised "seed of the woman" - the deliverer. Thus was introduced the "mystery' of the mother and child, a form of idolatry that is older than any other known to man. ... The whole system of the secret Mysteries of Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man while Semiramis gained glory for her dead husband's "deification." The people did not want to retain God in their knowledge, but preferred some visible object of worship. Wherever the Negro aspect of Nimrod became an obstacle to his worship it was taught that Nimrod had reappeared in the person of his fair-complected, supernaturally conceived son (Hislop p 69: Chaldeans believed in transmigration and reincarnation): thus the father and son were one. It was Satan's attempt to delude mankind with a counterfeit imitation that was so much like the truth that man would not know the real Seed of the woman when He came in the fullness of time.
Eventually this mystery religion spread from Babylon to all the surrounding nations. Everywhere the symbols were the same. It became the mystery religion of the seafaring Phoenicians and they carried it to the ends of the earth. It was known as Baal (Nimrod, the sun-god) in Phoenicia where the mother was known as Astoreth and the child as Tammuz (Tammuz Adonis). In Egypt the cult was known as that of Osiris, Isis and Horus. The mother and child were worshipped as Aphrodite and Eros in Greece, Venus and Cupid in Italy (in Rome the child was formerly known as Jupiter). The Chinese called the mother goddess Shingmoo or the "Holy Mother." ... Among the Druids, the "Virgo-Paritura" was worshipped as the "Mother of God." In India she was known as Indrani. In and near India, the mother and child were known as Devaki and Krishna; in Asia they were Cybele and Deoius.
The mystery religion of Babylon, which had begun under Nimrod's direction until its dispersal at the Tower of Babel (Gen. 10 and 11; Isa. 47), continued over the centuries to flourish in the "land of Shinar." When Babylon fell in 539BC, the high priest fled with a group of initiates and their sacred vessels and images to Pergamos (Rev. 2:12-17; see J.D Pentecost, p 365-267, where he cites H.A. Ironside). There, the symbol of the serpent was set up as the emblem of the hidden wisdom. From there, many of them crossed the sea and settled in the Poe Valley of northeast Italy where the Etruscans lived. When Rome conquered the Etruscans, the Etruscans brought their Babylonian cult religion to Rome where the child was known as Mithras (the mediator). Thus, when Christianity came to Rome, the whorish cult, the counterfeit, was waiting to join in an unholy union with it.
Well, Dr Jones provides a helpful insight into the title written on the forehead of the woman referred to in Revelation 17:5:
MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH
JC Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, England in the 19th Century, gave caution in his work "Warnings to the Church." He rightly said heresies start out with a seeming small departure from Scripture or doctrine.
What seems a reasonable and harmless absorption of a tradition of the world soon turns to poison. For the Church of Rome it seemed harmless, even beneficial to absorb the mother and child pagan legend - after all, it had so many elements of truth as pertaining to the blessing bestowed upon Mary by the angel and the subsequent birth of the Son of God. Neverthless, it is a corruption of the Will and Word of God. As in the Garden of Eden, it was a slight distortion of the Word of God, it was seeing that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also for gaining wisdom. Sad for the partaker, it is a breach of trust in the Lord God - it is a destroyer!
The Church of Rome has lain with the harlot.
But surely the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney has, with the Reformers, rejected the mother and child heresy initiated by Semiramis and later absorbed into Romanism? Yes, this is true. But what does the Evil One, the Father of Lies do to lure the Diocese to become one with the harlot?
Again, the seduction comes via the world. Those who knew not God proposed a theory on the origins of life contrary to the Word and Nature of God. The proposition spread throughout the world, so prevalent that it has become a tradition. One is ridiculed for not adopting the tradition. One will not be accepted by the world if one does not absorb it, if one does not lay with it! What to do? Well, just a minute - the tradition does look good for gaining wisdom, it does seem to conform well to the world as it appears today and absorbing it will sustain us well in the world. After all it is only a slight revision of the Word of God isn't it?
Yes, I, the high priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Sydney, shall take and eat. Others will follow.
And so, if the high priest of Sydney has not lain with THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH he has been intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Sam Drucker
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56 comments:
Don't rely too much on Hislop. He cherry-picks from history to support his viewpoint. Even worthy viewpoints don't justify unsound evidence to support them (cf. CMI's Arguments Creationists Should Not Use). The historical Semiramis is centuries too late to have been Nimrod's wife, and there is simply no information in the Bible or anywhere else about Nimrod's skin colour or family.
Another big claim by His Slop was arguing that the letters I.H.S. on Roman Catholic communion wafers stand for "Isis, Horus, Seb", i.e. "The Mother, the Child, and the Father of the gods" or the alleged "The Egyptian Trinity".
Yet it is perfectly reasonable to take the RCs at face value when they claim that the letter stand for Iesus hominum salvator (Jesus, Saviour of men). This makes perfect sense given the RC doctrine of Transubstantiation — they believe that the wafer and wine really become the literal body and blood of Christ. It makes no sense that a Latin-using church would use the Greek names of Egyptian deities.
Ktisophilos, thanks for the advice about Alexander Hislop.
What are your thoughts about the work of Dr Floyd Nolen Jones' - "The Chronology of the Old Testament"?
Sam
Having now read through a bit over half of the posts on this blog, I admit to being a bit confused.
What is the motivation for this blog? It seems to be somewhere between an attempt to attack the Anglican Diocese of Sydney (hence the name). But then the rubric for comments says 'the point of the blog is the meaning and significance of Genesis 1-3.'
I would have thought that it can't be both about the heresy of Sydney Diocese and about the meaning and significance of Gen 1-3.
So what is the point of this blog? And what motivates that particular point?
in Christ
Mark Baddeley
Mark,
I didn't start the blogspot but was invited to contribute soon after. With that qualification I put forward my response to you question.
As I understand it the blogspot arose in response to some perceived nastiness to fellow Christians who held to the 'as it reads' interpretation of Genesis 1. The venue for that treatment was the forum on the Sydney Anglican website on the thread 'Peace With Evolution.'
One thing that has shaped the discussion here has been the proud 'we have it all - we are the church' attitude some fellow writers here have detected in Sydney Anglicanism. All this yet, for seemingly so many Sydney Anglicans, a departure from mainstream, reformed Christianity of the past on Genesis 1.
How do you read it? Do you hold to Scripture saying that God created the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in them in six X twenty-four hour (approx) days and that, according to the chronologies the earth is approximately six thousand years old?
Sam
Hi Sam,
That fits with the impression I got from my reading, although I didn't know which thread had been the catalyst.
You seem to be wanting to distance yourself from aspects of the tone of the blog a bit. Is that a fair impression I have of what you've written? One of the questions I have about the blog is whether all the contributors are happy with the tone of all the posts, or whether you raise concerns with each other at times when you think someone's stepped over the line?
As for the famous Sydney Anglican arrogance, well that's a common observation. Given so many different people claim to see it, there's probably some truth to it. But in my experience, those who get upset about it rarely seem to be paragons of humility themselves - they seem to be reacting to a quality they see in us that they seem to have a good dose of too.
Certainly, I don't know of an official Sydney Anglican site set up solely to call another group of people committed to the Bible heretics. I'm curious as to what the purpose of this blog is - I'm not sure you've really answered that. You've told me the circumstances behind it being set up, and a reason for its tone. But I want to know what it is trying to do.
Is it an act of love? Of service to the people of God? A work to bring honour to the Lord Jesus? Or is it just bad grapes because of a forum thread that went sour? If it does have a positive purpose, what is it?
As to departing from the Refomed mainstream, I suppose you're probably right. But then Sydney Anglicanism departs from the mainstream on lots of issues. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's not Reformed, it could just mean that it is an unusual expression of the Reformed tradition. Just being Anglican makes it unusual compared to the majority of Reformed theologians. I'm not sure that young earth is normally considered a litmus test of whether someone is reformed. (I've never heard of such an idea until now).
As for my take on Genesis? It's interesting that you haven't asked me about evolution, but only about a 6 day creation and a young earth. Quite a number of the blog entries seemed to suggest that evolution was the issue because of the spectre of philosophical materialism (I think I got the name right there). I'm not sure how a young earth/old earth has much to do with a materialistic philosophy. If the real concern is 'the authority of the Bible' then your questtion makes sense. As it is, it's another aspect of the blog that I don't get. What is driving this - what is the basic concern that would lead you to call someone a 'heretic' (Given that's such a grave charge).
For my part, I don't really know about six literal days. I don't really care either. I'm fairly sure the universe is old, not young, but if that turns out to be wrong I won't lose any sleep over it. I'm very sceptical about evolution, but again, if that turns out to be right (not in its pure form, but as an expression of providence) then, again, it won't phase me. These questions all seem a bit tendentious to me as I read the Bible (and I say that as someone who was once very passionate about young earth et al).
I expect to get taken to task for my position, given what's on the site. That's fine. But I genuinely what some answers to my questions too.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark,
Again, I can only speak for myself. I have seen language used that I have had to go into print to distance myself from. I think that was only twice. I have also seen phrases I would not have used but would not be prepared to take the user to task about. I expect others have thought the same about things I have written.
You touched on what I think is the root of the matter and, I suspect, the reason for the title of this blogspot. It is the authority of Scripture.
Each of Evolution, Progressive Creation and Old Earth models of origins conflict with Scripture in several places whereas creation over six days and around six thousand year age for the earth does not conflict with Scripture.
My past blogs reflect my position on this. I am convinced from my reading of history that 'seeming' harmless departures from standards lead to bigger problems. I have observed a departure by biblical scholars in recent centuries which has maligned the character of God through a rereading of his Word on matters of origins and, in so doing, they have portrayed to the world a monster God. They have undermined the authority of Scripture in Genesis and have opened the door for present and later generations to go all the way and emasculate the rest of Scripture.
It is not just Genesis 1 they reinterpret it is other passages they have had to reread including the direct utterance of God in Exodus 20:11 and, by implication, the surrounding utterances of God in Exodus 20.
I risk repeating unnecessarily things I have said in earlier blogs eg my first blog "Did God Really Say?" so I won't labour the point.
On this subject I think it helpful to try and take a 'bird's eye view' of the trend in biblical scholarship on the reading of Genesis 1 and other related passages since the Sola scriptura stance and reading of Scripture on origins by people such as Luther and Calvin. Surely a 'bird's eye view' would reveal to you a movement. For me and, I suspect, objective viewers the observed movement is away from what a plain reading of Scripture, the bulk of church fathers and the later reformers say.
In this sense I think the word 'heresy' is not out of place. I think a person can hold a heretical view and, yet, still be a Christian. It is when the heresy moves into the realms of apostacy that the unregenerate label emerges.
I don't have a problem with labelling some Sydney Anglicans (which I prefer to call Episcopalians for a particular reason) heretics when they ascribe to God and thus my Lord Jesus Christ a creative process which is abhorrent and far out of step with his character as revealed in Scripture, his incarnate activity and his foretold recreative activity.
I am interested in your comment that you were once a young earth creationist. Where and how did the change come about?
Sam
Hi Sam
Ok, that's useful - so the blog's a kind of alliance of like-minded people, and has a fairly minimal official position on tone and content. More or less each person speaks for themselves. Is that a fair assessment of what you've said?
Is it also the case (I got this impression too) that while 'This blog does not allow anonymous comments' is the rubric for visitors like me (and so we need to post under our real names and so be held accountable for what we say and how we say it) most or all of the official contributors post and comment under pseudonyms and hence the cloak of anonymity? Have I got that right?
You also still don't seem to have answered the question I've asked twice now. Let me requote it from the last time:
But I want to know what it is trying to do.
Is it an act of love? Of service to the people of God? A work to bring honour to the Lord Jesus? Or is it just bad grapes because of a forum thread that went sour? If it does have a positive purpose, what is it?
I still don't think you've really answered this - is this blog being motivated by distinctively Christian qualities?
Moving on, you say it is about the authority of Scripture (for you at least, I take it I can't presume that that is the issue for others who seem, from their posts, more concerned about philosophical materialism, or just a general beef against the Jensens). If you are wanting to uphold the authority of Scripture, this blog would only make sense to me if the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican church needs to be singled out within the Australian context as a particularly large threat to the Bible's authority. Given the state of the Anglican church in other dioceses, the Baptist Union in many States, the Presbyterian Church in many states, the Uniting Church generally - is there some reason why you think the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church needs to be singled out like this? Why isn't the blog titled something like The Australian Denominations Heretics? And if the authority of Scripture is your fundamental concern, why focus on Young Earth? Given the multitude of ways in which the Bible is sidelined these days, that seems to be a fairly strange thing to make the key issue. Why not Christology? Atonement? Doctrine of God? Eschatology? Gender? These would all seem to closer to the heart of the gospel.
You say:
I am convinced from my reading of history that 'seeming' harmless departures from standards lead to bigger problems.
I have to say 'no' Sam the way you've phrased it here. If you had qualified this statement at all I could agree. As it stands you are suggesting the following:
1. Seeming harmless departures from standards lead to bigger problems.
2. This is a seeming harmless departure from standards
3. Therefore it will lead to bigger problems.
Point 1 is the problem - it seems to imply that all departures from 'standards' (I assume you mean classical Reformed thought by the term) are problematic. In which case you can throw away any idea that the Reformed church keeps on reforming. Any reform would be a departure from a standard. I've know such ideas from some Presies in Brisbane where I grew up who told me (quite bluntly) that the Westminster Confession is the authorative interpretation of Scripture - and so nothing can change from the Confession. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?
I'm curious as to what you make of two departures from the standards then.
When the Reformed mainstream left the Reformers' conviction that the sun (and the planets and stars) all move around the earth, was that wrong? And do you think that the Reformed mainstream did so on any basis other than the findings of modern science pushing them to reexamine texts that the Reformers' thought had a 'plain reading' that the sun moves around the earth?
Similarly, when Jonathan Edwards left the Reformed Mainstream by introducing elements of Lockean epistemology and anthropology was that a problem? Or when the Princeton theologians introduced elements of Common Sense Realism into their epistemology? These were all small and seemingly harmless departures from 'standards', I would think.
I think I know what you mean by the following statements, but at the risk of getting you to repeat former posts do you mind briefly sketching out the following?
they have portrayed to the world a monster God.
and have opened the door for present and later generations to go all the way and emasculate the rest of Scripture.
It is not just Genesis 1 they reinterpret it is other passages they have had to reread including the direct utterance of God in Exodus 20:11 and, by implication, the surrounding utterances of God in Exodus 20.
When you say:
On this subject I think it helpful to try and take a 'bird's eye view' of the trend in biblical scholarship on the reading of Genesis 1 and other related passages since the Sola scriptura stance and reading of Scripture on origins by people such as Luther and Calvin. Surely a 'bird's eye view' would reveal to you a movement. For me and, I suspect, objective viewers the observed movement is away from what a plain reading of Scripture, the bulk of church fathers and the later reformers say.
I find less plausible any argument buffered by an assurance of what 'objective viewers' will see. If you'd learned from Calvin's teaching on the noetic effects of sin, I don't think you'd be so quick to enlist 'objective viewers' (unless you mean God, and if so, just say so) onto your side. Let your argument stand or fall on its merits.
As to whether there's been a movement, of course there has been. It is possible that if we come back in a century the 'mainstream reformed position' might even have moved to something closer to mine. But there's been movements on lots of issues--and each movement has in some sense overturned the plain reading of Calvin and Luther. (Like when the Westminster Confession opted to take the Sabbath command literally for Christians - Calvin is quite clear that that is wrong).
As to sola scriptura, you will have to tell me what you mean by that. In my limited experience of talking with people who have a young earth view, their view of sola scriptura usually seems analogous to the anabaptists and is a view that Luther and Calvin attacked, not propounded.
As to the early church fathers, I'm doing a Masters on patristics at the moment in preparation for a doctorate on Athanasius. I haven't gone out of my way to look at them on creation, but my moderate experience of reading the Fathers is that they aren't really where you are on the six day issue. The lecturer on Pre-Chalcedonian theology, who wouldn't really care one way or another on the issue (and so is at least disinterested, if not objective) made the comment in his lecture that for the early church the six days were understand typologically as a general rule--because the early church found the idea that six days was too long given that God is omnipotent and outside time. So I'm not sure they are as straight forward a witness as you might want. Given that guys like Origen and Augustine were very influential and didn't agree with you, suggests that this issue didn't function in the early church the way you think it should.
You can call us Episcopalians if you like. I mean, you've called us heretics, after all. But Anglican is actually the name of the denomination. To give us your own name suggests a fundamentally hostile stance. To reject someone's self-label in favour of a different one, is invariably a sign of deep disagreement.
When you say:
In this sense I think the word 'heresy' is not out of place. I think a person can hold a heretical view and, yet, still be a Christian.
Then I think you have moved outside of the position of the early church and the Reformed mainstream on what 'heresy' means.
One does not consider a heretic to be one's brother. Heretics are false teachers - I'd be interested to see some Scripture to suggest otherwise. You cannot call us heretics and at the same time suggest that you're fine with our Christian credentials. Heresy is more than doctrinal error. It forms a boundary condition for whether a person walks in the light or not. By calling the Sydney Diocese 'heretics' and by having posts where you suggest that the Diocese is involved with the harlot of Revelation, you are putting the Diocese outside the faith. There is no sense in Revelation that Christians are involved with the harlot.
As to where and why I moved? I moved when going through my twenties in Brisbane. Why I moved, is hard to crystalise clearly this far on, but involved the following kinds of things:
Talk of 'creation evangelism' and 'creation evangelists' didn't sit right with me. To affirm God as creator made sense, but I couldn't see any NT warrant for treating a particular reading of the first couple of chapters of Genesis either part of the gospel, or an important prologommena to it.
Reading testimonies in creation science type magazines where the glory for a changed life seemed to be given to a view of creation rather than to the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Realising that if creation was the issue, then I should study science rather than the Bible, that I needed to be able to show how science actually aligned with 'plain reading' of Gen 1-3 more than I needed to grow in my knowledge of God and his gospel if I was to evangelise people or build up God's church.
A general sense that the more that people got into creation issues the less they became the kind of people I wanted to become - they seemed a bit bitter, triumphalistic, argumentative, and bored with theology. There were exceptions, obviously, and like all these kinds of judgements (like the 'Sydney Anglicans think they are the church' one) it was highly subjective - but I could see it having that effect on me.
Finally, as I kept reading the Bible the gospel just seemed to have more power than seemed to be implied by making a young earth the key issue on which faith or unbelief in the Word of God existed. The answer to unbelief was preaching the cross of Christ, not trying to show why science was wrong in its account origins.
I'm not venturing any of these as reasons why there's a problem (although some of these I might), but these are the reasons why I personally moved. The fruit seemed wrong, and it seemed to displace Christ and a knowledge of God for a pop knowledge of science. There, that'd summarise it. For what it's worth, that's why I moved.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark,
You have asked many questions and proposed things.
Working day commitments and then home commitments now impinge upon my capacity to spend regular time on blogs and comments.
It will take some time to respond to all you have raised. It won't happen today so bear with me.
I must caution you, though, that I am not likely to allow anyone to lead me along in some sort of game.
Sam
Sam,
That's fine if it takes time.
I don't play games when it comes to God.
You can have a look at the threads I was part of on the Sydney Anglicans website to get a feel for my style and approach.
I don't particularly try to win arguments either - I try and push people hard as a way of seeing what substance there is to their views as a prelude to considering them myself.
Given that I have come across this website that is set up to call me a heretic, I'm particularly keen to push you and your allies hard to see if I should be taking your charge of heresy seriously. I want to see the integrity of your position.
I also want to ask questions about the Christian character behind your actions. I really hope you haven't been saying these things as a game or as sour grapes.
The fact that you raise questions about my motives (without any indication of what it is in my comments that would suggest that I play games) doesn't do anything to allay my questions about this site.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark,
Everyone has settled down at home here so I am going to try a response to you. It will be sharp, not as an attack but for brevity.
I can only speak for myself, not others. From my recollection, after this blogspot got going, I was contacted by Eric (he knew my views on origins and my ministry in the Diocese) and invited to contribute. I don't have a lot of free time but I accepted.
I use a pseudonym because I have seen in the Diocese people taking camps on a variety of things - a sort of 'them' and 'us' on doctrinal and church order matters. I have decided to use a pseudonym for ministry and family reasons.
As I recall, the banning of 'Anonymous' came when there was beginning to be a proliferation of 'Anonymous' commentators and Eric decided to avoid confusion. I think Eric said it was okay for people to use a pseudonym.
In response to your questions about the nature of the blogspot I observe it to be more an act of love for the Lord God and defending his character. In my case, love for an errant brother has an outworking in strong words and symbolism to provoke a rethink. I don't see a lot of variation in approach to that adopted by the Apostle Paul. Indeed, I see most of the purpose of the blogspot being a replication of Paul's utterance to the church in Corinth (2 Cor 10:1-5). There may have been an element of reprisal from one person for this site to have emerged (sour grapes, if you wish) but, as I see it, the site has moved on from there.
Why Sydney Anglican Heretics and not other denominations? For my part it is because of an attachment to the denomination - at least the evangelical side. Why Sydney? I suppose because I am here and I think all of the contributors are from Sydney. I write blogs and comment to proclaim a problem, a 'cancer' has manifest itself within the Diocese and its theological college. As the Lord God raised up prophets to speak out against Judah and Israel it just might be that I have the Lord's call top speak out here.
I am not omniscient. I can't see everything, so I wasn't implying that every departure from standards have, historically, resulted in bigger problems. But it has happened much.
As I have read it Luther and Calvin, while upholding the authority of Scripture and requiring Scripture to interpret Scripture, got themselves into trouble when saying something of the 'natural' world that Scripture did not say. Luther's deep interest and hope for alchemy is a case in point.
Regarding your example of Jonathon Edwards I am not sufficiently familiar with his works on this to address your inquiry.
Concerning the next series of matters you question me on and seek explanation of, I have to decline repeating all I have said before - insufficient time! I shall just say that I see know way of reading Exodus 20:11 and concluding it allows either of evolution, progressive creation, gap theory or day-age models of origins. Further, for theistic evolutionists to infer that our Lord Jesus Christ used a disease, mutation,suffering, death and dead end riddled process of creation is a severe maligning of his declared and demonstrated nature. It is highly offensive. It is, in my view, heretical. As I have said earlier in this blogspot, my Oxford Dictionary defines heresy as "Opinion contrary to doctrine of Christian Church or to accepted doctrine on any subject." I thus have no problem in the use of 'heretic' in this instance. If you have reformers statements to the contrary I am prepared to consider them.
Regarding the views of early church fathers on origins I can provide with some names to look for. Origen had some 'out there' views on a few things. Augustine doesn't seem to be sufficient ally for either side of the debate. Consider the writings of the following:
Theophilus of Antioch
Methodius
Lactantius
Victorinus of Pettau
Ephrem the Syrian
Epephanius of Salamis
Basil of Caeserea
Cyril of Jerusalem
Ambrose of Milan
In one of his blogs in June or July a correspondent on this blogspot called John posted some lengthy quotes concerning some early church fathers.
I note your experience and movement on the matters of interpreteing Scripture on origins and your perception of the relevance. I just need to say that the Word of God has been and still is under assault on many fronts. To use an analagy - the European theatre of World War 2 was fought on many fronts. That one front received much attention and resources demonstrated the importance of defending or assailing that front. So it is with defending the Word of God, indeed, the character of God on origins. The issue has implications right through to the saving (or is it salvific?) activity of God in Jesus Christ.
I'll leave matters there. This site will go on by the will of God. For my part I feel compelled to alert conservative churches in the USA of a problem which requires attention in the Sydney Episcopalian Church and its theological college. They are more familiar with the term Episcopalian than Anglican. Perhaps they will come to the rescue?
Sam
Sam,
There’s no need to apologise for brevity – you made your points quite clearly. (Gordo’s always telling me to cut the posts down, but our styles are very different).
I’ll try and keep this briefish and pick up just two things now and some others things you say later.
You stated that:
As I have said earlier in this blogspot, my Oxford Dictionary defines heresy as "Opinion contrary to doctrine of Christian Church or to accepted doctrine on any subject." I thus have no problem in the use of 'heretic' in this instance. If you have reformers statements to the contrary I am prepared to consider them.
I’m uncomfortable with people getting their theology from the Oxford Dictionary (despite my general respect for the academic credentials of Oxford University overall). I’m not sure it is really a precise enough tool for the job—it’s not really a theological dictionary.
As to Reformers’ statements, I’m not sure what you mean exactly. I do have some evidence from Calvin, which I offer for your consideration.
We’ll begin with the notorious Servetus incident. While I don’t have access to a translation of the primary sources here, the general consensus of historians (speaking as someone who has taught Reformation history for a few years at a BDiv level) is that Servetus was charged with heresy and that heresy carried the death penalty. Given that the Consistory regularly dealt with people who had opinions contrary to doctrine of the Christian Church and rarely executed them, I think this would count as evidence that there is a difference between ‘heresy’ and ‘doctrinal error’ (all heresy is doctrinal error but not all doctrinal error is heresy).
As far as Calvin’s own words go, the two key passages from the Institutes seem to be from 2.15.1:
THOUGH heretics pretend the name of Christ, truly does Augustine affirm that the foundation is not common to them with the godly, but belongs exclusively to the Church: for if those things which pertain to Christ be diligently considered, it will be found that Christ is with them in name only, not in reality.
This seems fairly straightforwardly what I was claiming. Heretics only pretend the name of Christ and Christ is ‘with them in name only, not in reality.’ Calvin appears to be saying that heretics do not have the reality of Christ, they only claim they do i.e. they aren’t really Christians.
Similarly when he says ‘the foundation is not common to them with the godly, but belongs exclusively to the Church’ it would seem he is implying two groups: heretics in one and the Church (or the godly) in the other. In other words, heretics are not part of the Church.
The other passage is in 4.2.5 where Calvin is responding to Roman charges that Protestants are heretics and schismatics and seems to give as close as a definition of heresy as I could find in the Institutes:
As to their charge of heresy and schism, because we preach a different doctrine, and submit not to their laws, and meet apart from them for Prayer, Baptism, the administration of the Supper, and other sacred rites, it is indeed a very serious accusation, but one which needs not a long and laboured defence. The name of heretics and schismatics is applied to those who, by dissenting from the Church, destroy its communion. This communion is held together by two chains—viz. consent in sound doctrine and brotherly charity. Hence the distinction which Augustine makes between heretics and schismatics is, that the former corrupt the purity of the faith by false dogmas, whereas the latter sometimes, even while holding the same faith, break the bond of union (August. Lib. Quæst. in Evang. Mt.). But the thing to be observed is, that this union of charity so depends on unity of faith, as to have in it its beginning, its end, in fine, its only rule. Let us therefore remember, that whenever ecclesiastical unity is commended to us, the thing required is, that while our minds consent in Christ, our wills also be united together by mutual good-will in Christ. Accordingly Paul, when he exhorts us to it, takes for his fundamental principle that there is “one God, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Nay, when he tells us to be “of one accord, of one mind,” he immediately adds, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:2, 5); intimating, that where the word of the Lord is not, it is not a union of believers, but a faction of the ungodly.
I’d want observe the following points. First, charge of heresy (like schism) ‘is indeed a very serious accusation’. Second, it involves destroying the communion of the Church. As the context goes on to indicate, Calvin does not envisage people breaking with the visible Church on issues other than ‘the faith’ (and this is made even clearer in section 6 of 4.2 where he justifies leaving the Roman church in order to cling to Christ). So what’s on view is a public breaking of fellowship with the body of professed Christians—in the 16th Century, that tended to mean that they were not considered a true Church. Third, the last sentence seems to spell out the contrast he has in mind. It is not just any old doctrinal impurity, but ‘where the word of the Lord is not, it is not a union of believers, but a faction of the ungodly.’ That is, heresy involves an absence of the word of the Lord resulting in the congregation not being a union of believers.
This fits with how Calvin seems to use ‘heresy/heretic’ throughout the Institutes. I won’t give you every reference I could find (unless you request it) , but I’ll give a representative sample:
Christology By far the most frequent use of the term!
For we must put far from us the heresy of Nestorius, who, presuming to dissect rather than distinguish between the two natures, devised a double Christ. 2.14.4
They indeed find a blustering defence of their heresy in its being said, that “God spared not his own Son,” and in the communication of the angel, that He who was to be born of the Virgin should be called the “Son of the Highest,”2.14.7 (context shows is Servetus and those who share his views)
Nay, let us consider what happened in the second Council of Ephesus when the Eutychian heresy prevailed. 4.9.13
This refutes the Apollinarian heresy as well as that of those who are called Monothelites. 2.16.12
Doctrine of God
Were any one to infer from this that the blood by which sins were expiated was divine, and of a divine nature, who could endure so foul a heresy? 3.11.8 (speaking of idea that the blood shed by Christ was divine blood)
I wish all had observed the method which Augustine prescribes in his Third Book against Maximinus, when he wished to silence the cavils of this heretic against the decrees of councils 4.9.8 (Maximinus opposed Nicaea)
Soteriology
I admit it was used by ancient ecclesiastical writers, and I wish they had not by the abuse of one term furnished posterity with matter of heresy, although in some passages they themselves show that they had no wish to injure the truth. (speaking of the term “merit”). 3.15.2
He here without ambiguity calls it sin, because the Pelagian heresy being now refuted, and the sound doctrine confirmed, he was less afraid of calumny. 3.3.13
For after the heresy prevailed, that there behoved to be priests to sacrifice for the people, as if the Supper had been handed over to them, it ceased to be communicated to the assembly of the faithful according to the command of the Lord. 4.18.7
(This one might just fit your category, if you think Calvin didn’t see resacrificing Christ as something that imperilled one’s soul.)
OT ‘Heretics’
The truth is there unanimously condemned. Micaiah is judged a heretic, is smitten, and cast into prison. So was it done to Jeremiah, and so to the other prophets. 4.9.6 (This seems to bring out the more extreme nature of the doctrinal error, because the prophets were imprisoned or killed, not something done just for doctrinal diversion).
And there’s even an example where Calvin’s view of the Early Church’s approach to heresy is implied.
Calvin’s view of the Early Church’s view of heresy:
Ancient writers often make mention of this custom. Pope Leo says (Ep. 39), “If any one returns from heretics, let him not be baptised again, but let that which was there wanting to him—viz. the virtue of the Spirit, be conferred by the laying on of the hands of the bishop.” Our opponents will here exclaim, that the name of sacrament is justly given to that by which the Holy Spirit is conferred. But Leo elsewhere explains what he means by these words (Ep. 77); “Let not him who was baptised by heretics be rebaptised, but be confirmed by the laying on of hands with the invocation of the Holy Spirit, because he received only the form of baptism without sanctification.” 4.19.4
Here ‘heretics’ are a clear group outside the church, whose error is so serious that the Church has to work out whether their baptism can even be recognised if someone repents of the group and joins the Church.
Overall, given how rough Calvin is with those he disagrees with, it is surprising how rarely he uses the term. I’ve included about half (maybe a third) of all the examples I could find—and every one that I thought might help your case. Calvin’s sparing use suggests that ‘it is indeed a very serious accusation’ for him.
I would suggest that ‘heretic’ means more than ‘they got a doctrine wrong’ in classical Christian usage. That’s why the medieval Church burned heretics, but didn’t burn everyone who said something that hadn’t been said before.
Onto the second point:
As I recall, the banning of 'Anonymous' came when there was beginning to be a proliferation of 'Anonymous' commentators and Eric decided to avoid confusion. I think Eric said it was okay for people to use a pseudonym.
OK, that’s a bit indiosyncratic in my experience of ‘not allow anonymous comments’ – the comments can be anonymous, they just can’t be signed ‘anonymous’, but that is internally consistent. One rule fits all (even if visitors like me might get thrown by the peculiar take on what ‘anonymous’ means).
However, when I when we move from the consistency to the reason for the anonymity I have some concerns:
I use a pseudonym because I have seen in the Diocese people taking camps on a variety of things - a sort of 'them' and 'us' on doctrinal and church order matters. I have decided to use a pseudonym for ministry and family reasons.
Why Sydney Anglican Heretics and not other denominations? For my part it is because of an attachment to the denomination - at least the evangelical side. Why Sydney? I suppose because I am here and I think all of the contributors are from Sydney. I write blogs and comment to proclaim a problem, a 'cancer' has manifest itself within the Diocese and its theological college. As the Lord God raised up prophets to speak out against Judah and Israel it just might be that I have the Lord's call top speak out here.
You are an anonymous prophet? Exactly how does that fit in the Bible’s account of standing up and speaking the truth in love? You want the freedom to anonymously rebuke the Diocese with the boldness of the prophets and the Apostle Paul. And at the same time you don’t want to suffer any consequences in ministry or relationships of your stand for the truth of God.
Can you see that your conduct at this point might undercut the plausibility of the messenger? (And the same point goes for your anonymous mates who are also contributors, given that you imply that they also speak out only due to such a maturely Christian love for the Sydney Diocese). Did Jesus, the prophets, or the apostles act like this? Or did they speak the truth of God, trusting in God and not fearing men?
What is your biblical justification for wearing the prophetic and apostolic mantle in your expression of love while hiding behind a curtain?
In Christ,
Mark
In answer to a few points:
Floyd Nolen Jones is KJV-Only, which makes him suspect. And it makes him wrong about the spurious Cainan in Luke.
As has been shown on this site, most of the Church Fathers taught literal creation days. Some regarded these literal days as types for thousand-year periods or earth history, with the 7th day as a type of the Millennium. Note, they did NOT regard the creation days AS a thousand years but a TYPE.
Even the allegorizers like Origen and Augustine clearly taught that the earth was "young", i.e. Origen said it was <10,000 years old, and Augustine <6,000 years old. And there are explicit statements by other fathers as well as Luther and Calvin that the 6000th year had not yet arrived.
As has been shown here, compromising on millions of years makes uniformitarian "science" the authority over the Bible on earth history. And it denies the clear biblical teaching that death is "the last enemy" and "the wages of sin", not something that was around for millions of years before Adam sinned.
Sam,
In my case, love for an errant brother has an outworking in strong words and symbolism to provoke a rethink. I don't see a lot of variation in approach to that adopted by the Apostle Paul. Indeed, I see most of the purpose of the blogspot being a replication of Paul's utterance to the church in Corinth (2 Cor 10:1-5).
I'm glad that is your self-perception of the motivation. I would suggest though as a reader, that if the site's intention is to bring repentance, the way it is going about things is calculated to have the opposite effect. As far as I can guess from my nine year acquaintance with Sydney Anglicans, I think most would be even more convinced that what you are standing for is wrong after reading some of these blogs entries.
I am not omniscient. I can't see everything, so I wasn't implying that every departure from standards have, historically, resulted in bigger problems. But it has happened much.
Fair call. There's no disagreement between us here.
As I have read it Luther and Calvin, while upholding the authority of Scripture and requiring Scripture to interpret Scripture, got themselves into trouble when saying something of the 'natural' world that Scripture did not say. Luther's deep interest and hope for alchemy is a case in point.
Well, they got themselves in trouble more than that--what about the Lord's Supper? Do you agree with Luther's plain reading of the words of institution or do you take a poetical reading of them the way the Reformed branch did (and so was considered heretical by Luther)?
And when they opted for the sun going around the earth they had the plain meaning of Scripture on their side, even though I agree that opposition to the new astronomy was not primarily based in Scripture.
I suppose my issue with your use of sola scriptura is that the Reformers do not seem to take the Bible literaly except where it can't be--they are quite sensitive to the fluidity of language.
Regarding your example of Jonathon Edwards I am not sufficiently familiar with his works on this to address your inquiry.
Fair enough, and I think you've already established the general point above that this was an example of.
From your response about a bunch of your specific complaints, it looks like I'm going to have to go back over your Did God Really Say post- that'll have to wait a few days as we're going away.
As far as the list of writers from the Early Church, I might be prepared to hunt them down and look at what they are saying in the context of their thought overall. But, given that I already have the view of a very reputable scholar here who has looked at the issue and disagrees with your take on the Early Church, I'd only be prepared to do that if it mattered to our discussion.
If you were wrong on this point, and the Early church either didn't teach six literal days of creation, or didn't see it as an important issue, would it change anything?
I agree with the fronts analogy. But it is not the case that you are defending a front and we are abandoning it. It is that both of us think the other's defensive strategy is wrong headed.
Finally,
I'll leave matters there. This site will go on by the will of God. For my part I feel compelled to alert conservative churches in the USA of a problem which requires attention in the Sydney Episcopalian Church and its theological college. They are more familiar with the term Episcopalian than Anglican. Perhaps they will come to the rescue?
Knock yourself out Sam. Ring your anonymous bell. And perhaps your cavalry can come in (anonymously or publically, who knows?).
I have no idea who you think is going to respond to the call that would have any sway here though. Our position is not that unusual among conservative evangelicals.
And I'm sure the site will go on. In my experience people who are conscious of being raised up by the Lord will usually plough on regardless.
I didn't come here on a mission to stop the site. I came merely to discover whether you were saying something I should heed. So your blog is safe from me.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark, Thank you. I am mindful of the early heresies. Thank you for restating Calvin's opinion on heresy and schism.
I remain convinced of the possibility of someone believing or teaching (for a time) a heresy and yet still be in the Lord.
As regarding my anonymity, I remind you that not all prophets are named in Scripture eg 1 Kings 13. I wouldn't be prepared to go as far as you and mandate God to use only named prophets. Look, in all seriousness, don't get bogged down with trying to ascertain who I am because, unless you want to do me in, it is my message you have to deal with. Let my message stand on its merits. Accept it or reject it according to its worth in accordance with the revelation of God in his Word written and Incarnate.
When a denomination used much of God in times past and for which I hold an affection, when it is today treading a destructive path I feel compelled to cry out.
As Bruce Hornsby (I think) sang "That's The Way It Is!"
Sam
Ktisophilos, thank you for your comments. As I understand it Dr Floyd Nolen Jones places more reliability on the Hebrew Masoretic Text (which the 1611 King James Version translators used) as it makes best sense of the chronologies. He asserts the later King James Version has vatiations from the Hebrew text.
Anyway, while Jones' work provides a well fit chronology of events (he maintains its discordance with actuality is reduced to within 10 years) I was puzzled, for one thing, with the implication that Saul was between 12 and 16 years of age when he fathered Jonathon.
There is no need to respond further on this topic. There are other matters at hand.
Sam
Hello Ktisopholis,
I assume the latter part of your comment is offered somewhere in my direction. Thanks for joining the conversation.
As has been shown on this site, most of the Church Fathers taught literal creation days. Some regarded these literal days as types for thousand-year periods or earth history, with the 7th day as a type of the Millennium. Note, they did NOT regard the creation days AS a thousand years but a TYPE.
Assessing what the Church Fathers taught is a scholarly task, it’s something that gets worked out through what one of your mates delightfully called ‘anaemic academia’. Given the general contempt your site tends to have for that enterprise, you’ll forgive me if I take your assurances on this point with an artery clogging amount of salt. Particularly when I have contact with a Patristic scholar who doesn’t care about the outcome, who has dedicated his life to understanding the theology of the early church, and who disagrees with your findings.
Who would you accept under these circumstances? The guys who have contempt for scholarship and are already convinced they’re right before they look at the evidence? Or the guy who has no stake in the outcome and has sat with the material for a couple of decades?
If you were wrong about the early church, would it change anything? I’m prepared to go and look things up (which would cost me a couple of days) if you think this point is that critical to your argument. But not if you’ll just fall back behind another level of argument.
Even the allegorizers like Origen and Augustine
Yep, ‘even’ two of the most influential teachers of the Early Church. You do realise that it’s not a matter of counting heads? It’d be like saying—‘well yes, Luther and Calvin might have thought that, but look at what these twelve pastors in Southern Germany thought’ as a way of working out what the Reformed position was.
If Origen and Augustine did not take the six days as literal the early church did not treat the issue with the importance you place on it.
Surely that’s just obvious?
clearly taught that the earth was "young", i.e. Origen said it was <10,000 years old, and Augustine <6,000 years old. And there are explicit statements by other fathers as well as Luther and Calvin that the 6000th year had not yet arrived.
Ah, so it’s not the meaning of Genesis 1 that’s the real issue. It’s ok to treat the six days typologically as long as you still come up with a young earth. So when you’re concerned with the authority of the Bible, it’s the authority of the genealogical tables that you care about?
This doesn’t look like a interest in the Bible’s authority, it looks like just coming up with answers that overturn science.
As has been shown here, compromising on millions of years makes uniformitarian "science" the authority over the Bible on earth history.
You guys like your insults don’t you? Scarcely a post or comment is published with some unnecessary adjective thrown in or begging the question verb used. ‘Compromising’ and ‘uniformitarian’ are hardly dispassionate ways of sketching out the issue. They feel like the blogging equivalent of ‘point weak, so shout.’
As for the substance of your point, well obviously. The Bible is not the authority on earth history (except in so far as it gives us the theological meaning of earth’s history). Whoever suggested that it was? Where is the history of the Aborigines, China, the Aztecs, or what was going on in Antarctica? Does it record everything that has happened?
I suppose you think that ‘compromising on medicine makes “science” the authority over the Bible on health and sickness” from what you’ve said.
Science is a legitimate enterprise for humans to take. Calvin certainly thought so. The things God made should be studied in their own right and we should draw the conclusions that derive from there.
If at points findings seem to contradict with the Word of God we then need to look carefully at what is going on. Maybe science got it wrong, maybe we misunderstood what the Bible is really saying. The Bible can’t be wrong, but we can be. And sometimes that can be brought to our attention by something from a field outside biblical studies.
And it denies the clear biblical teaching that death is "the last enemy" and "the wages of sin", not something that was around for millions of years before Adam sinned.
It is the clear biblical teaching that death is the last enemy and is the wages of sin. Death is the penalty for sin. That is what the Bible says about death. It does not say it is part of futility, or of groaning. It says it is the penalty for sin.
Do animals sin Ktisophilos? Or are you going to take a non-literal meaning of the words of scripture at this point?
In Christ,
Mark
Mark, Thank you. I am mindful of the early heresies. Thank you for restating Calvin's opinion on heresy and schism.
I remain convinced of the possibility of someone believing or teaching (for a time) a heresy and yet still be in the Lord.
Sure, I doubt that the Christian mainstream has ever seriously doubted that either.
This would seem to be a significant shift from your earlier statement that heresy is just departing from Christian doctrine. You are now acknowledging that by calling us heretics the blog is of the view that we are in danger of losing our salvation because of our views on Gen 1-3. Even if we never change another doctrine, we cannot persist in a non-literal view of Gen 1-3 and be saved. (That’s the implication that there is a possibility of someone teaching a heresy for a time and still be in the Lord. If they persist, then the possibility is gone yes?)
That is, for the blog, the correct reading of Gen 1-3 is a salvation issue.
I would make three observations as a result.
A number of comments on the blog by anonymous contributors complain how Sydney Anglicans ‘aren’t interested’ in the subject but just want to preach the gospel. I would suggest that this is one of the fundamental points of difference. Whether your little band realised it or not you think this is a salvation issue. We don’t. And so because we think this is not a salvation issue, we see what you are doing as adding to the gospel—and hence taking away from the finished work of Christ. You are adding something other than faith in Christ as necessary for justification. If you are genuine that you are trying to ‘reach’ us out of an obligation of love, then this is a hurdle you are going to have to get over. Convince us that there is another gospel other than that we learned from Paul and his expositors Luther and Calvin.
Second, the persistence has already occurred. This is no mere momentary falter by the Diocese, but is a position held fairly ubiquitously by its laity, clergy and leaders (in my experience). The Bishops, the College, and important autonomous bodies that have links with the Diocese (like Matthias Media and CASE) all hold this view (speaking in broad brush strokes - I have no idea about the views of individuals by and large). Despite what "John" on the other comment thread believes, I don’t get the impression that this is due to mass ignorance and the fact that no-one in the Diocese has done what you ‘real men’ have done and talked to real people but have just been off in the academic clouds. It is a considered and thoughtful position. So it would not fit the qualification you have placed of ‘for a time’. For good or ill, Sydney is at the moment convinced of the non-literal nature of Gen 1-3 and needs to be viewed accordingly.
Either decide that is not really a salvation issue (and so drop the term ‘heretic’) or accept the implications of your position and declare us devoid of the Spirit of God. But don’t insult God by saying that we can be heretics and still have life. Surely twenty or more years is enough time to have passed for your qualification to have elapsed?
Which brings me to my third point. When the Lutherans saw that the Reformed branch was not taking the words of the Institution literally, they could not consider them their brothers. For them it was clear that, whatever else the Reformed branch got right, they fundamentally denied the word of God by not taking the plain meaning of the words of Institution. And so they broke all fellowship and partnership.
Similarly when the Anabaptists found themselves let down by their former Churches and teachers who would not take all the Scriptures literally, they left and considered the Reformers to be roughly on a par with Catholicism.
I suggest we have a similar scenario. Like the Reformed with the Lutherans we think your position is acceptable if problematic. But like the Lutherans with the Reformed you see it differently and consider us heretics whose exegesis betrays a fundamental lack of confidence in the power of God.
Like the Anabaptists with the Reformers you see our actions as treachery against the Word of God. And like the Reformers with the Anabaptists, we see you as troublemakers and sectarians who wish to exalt marginal issues and so obscure the gospel.
As regarding my anonymity, I remind you that not all prophets are named in Scripture eg 1 Kings 13. I wouldn't be prepared to go as far as you and mandate God to use only named prophets.
Sam, this seems a strange way to justify your actions. Do you really think that because the prophets aren’t named by the Bible they were anonymous? Why stop there? Maybe the fact the Bible doesn’t name them means they didn’t have names. Maybe the centurion who said, “Surely this is the son of God” was anonymous. I’m sure the Roman army had a real strand of anonymous officers in its midst.
Seriously, surely you read the Bible as a selective account of the events it relates. It doesn’t give us the names because they don’t matter for the point it’s making. It is not because they didn’t have names or because the names were secret!
The prophet in 1 Kings 13 may not have announced his name, but he declared his rebuke publicly, and in full view of people. He had to trust God for the consequences. It has minimal similarity to what you are doing.
I’ll reiterate, I see your actions here as seriously in conflict with Scripture.
Look, in all seriousness, don't get bogged down with trying to ascertain who I am because, unless you want to do me in, it is my message you have to deal with. Let my message stand on its merits. Accept it or reject it according to its worth in accordance with the revelation of God in his Word written and Incarnate.
I couldn’t care less who you are Sam, and I have no desire ‘to do in’ you or any of your mates. I’m not asking these questions of you to bring about a change in you.
I am asking them for my benefit.
I am not asking you to change your behaviour, I am asking for an explanation. Just as I am asking questions about the ideas. I’m not asking the questions about conduct as a way to avoid the ideas, I’m pursuing both.
And I can’t just forget you (or your anonymous mates) and just look at your message. Because the Bible instructs otherwise.
You raise the possibility that you might be raised up of God like the OT prophets for this task. Well, the people had to be aware that there were false prophets who spoke simply from their own imagination and whom the Lord never sent. In the NT there are apostles, there are false brethren, and there is another category:
1 Timothy 6:3-5 3 If anyone advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
Titus 3:9-11 9 But shun foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law; for they are unprofitable and worthless. 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.
This is the kind of Scriptural teaching that I think lies behind Calvin’s understanding of schismatics. They aren’t quite false teachers, but the end result is very similar. Rather than focus on the gospel they have a morbid interest in controversial questions, out of which arises envy, strife and abusive language.
How does one tell a Paul who speaks hard words out of love from a schismatic? Or a true prophet from a false? Doctrine and life.
So I’m asking questions about both.
This isn’t a forum like Sydney Anglicans to just discuss ideas. This is a blog set up (you state) to express deep mature Christian love and to address people to repent—not just to discuss ideas. Can’t you see that that means, if you want to be taken seriously, then these questions about what kind of person you are, are necessary?
To properly take seriously what you are doing, I need to get a sense of what you are saying in light of the Word of God. And I need to get a sense of the kind of people you are, also in light of the Word of God. That’s what one does in this situation. Hence, two sets of questions.
In Christ,
Mark
B: Assessing what the Church Fathers taught is a scholarly task, it’s something that gets worked out through what one of your mates delightfully called ‘anaemic academia’.
This site quotes what they actually said, not what some claim that they said.
B: Given the general contempt your site tends to have for that enterprise, you’ll forgive me if I take your assurances on this point with an artery clogging amount of salt. Particularly when I have contact with a Patristic scholar who doesn’t care about the outcome, who has dedicated his life to understanding the theology of the early church, and who disagrees with your findings.
Then let him prove it. The online book Creationism and the Early Church by Dr Robert Bradshaw, Chapter 3 The Days of Genesis 1, is most useful.
B: Yep, ‘even’ two of the most influential teachers of the Early Church. You do realise that it’s not a matter of counting heads? It’d be like saying—‘well yes, Luther and Calvin might have thought that, but look at what these twelve pastors in Southern Germany thought’ as a way of working out what the Reformed position was.
Again, a misrepresentation, typical of compromisers. The point is that without the rise of uniformitarian "science", Bible commentators had no doubt that it teaches a young earth, global flood, death coming through sin.
B: If Origen and Augustine did not take the six days as literal the early church did not treat the issue with the importance you place on it.
Mainly because the deity of Christ was a more pressing issue at the time, while most of the church didn't doubt that the creation days were ~24-hr or that the earth was <6000 years old at the time of writing. But the church has a duty to defend the Bible wherever the enemy is attacking it. Today, the Bible is attacked on its history.
B: Ah, so it’s not the meaning of Genesis 1 that’s the real issue. It’s ok to treat the six days typologically as long as you still come up with a young earth. So when you’re concerned with the authority of the Bible, it’s the authority of the genealogical tables that you care about?
I didn't say that I agreed with their typology, just that it is false to claim that they believed in 1000-yr creation days. And I take it that you don't care about the authority of the genealogical tables any more than you care about the rest of the Bible?
B: As for the substance of your point, well obviously. The Bible is not the authority on earth history (except in so far as it gives us the theological meaning of earth’s history). Whoever suggested that it was? Where is the history of the Aborigines, China, the Aztecs, or what was going on in Antarctica? Does it record everything that has happened?
What tomfoolery. I never said that the Bible is exhaustive, but authoritative. I.e. in what it does say, it says truthfully. And it teaches certain things about the time frame and order of events of creation and a global flood that contradict what uniformitarian evolutionary "science" says.
B: I suppose you think that ‘compromising on medicine makes “science” the authority over the Bible on health and sickness” from what you’ve said.
Rubbish. Another confusion between truth and exhaustivity. Unlike medicine, uniformitarian "science" expressly conflicts with Scripture.
B: Science is a legitimate enterprise for humans to take. Calvin certainly thought so.
Of course it is. But uniformitarian geology and biological evolution are NOT science, but materialistic pseudo-histories of earth and life that exclude God a priori.
B: The things God made should be studied in their own right and we should draw the conclusions that derive from there.
One should never draw conclusions that follow from interpretations derived from a philosophical framework that excludes God's special creation and global flood. I.e., general revelation should be interpreted in the light of special revelation, not vice versa as compromisers do.
B: If at points findings seem to contradict with the Word of God we then need to look carefully at what is going on. Maybe science got it wrong, maybe we misunderstood what the Bible is really saying. The Bible can’t be wrong, but we can be. And sometimes that can be brought to our attention by something from a field outside biblical studies.
Then prove that the traditional understanding is wrong from the text, not from outside ideas that reject creation and the Flood a priori. Instead, compromisers truth the ever-changing theories of "science" and reinterpret God's Word.
B: Do animals sin Ktisophilos? Or are you going to take a non-literal meaning of the words of scripture at this point?
Nope, they are part of the groaning of the whole creation, affected by the fall of the one who was given dominion over them. E.g. many of them are no longer vegetarian as they were originally created. Note also, there are fossils of Homo sapiens "dated" to over 100,000 years before the biblical date of Adam. That's a huge problem for compromisers. See also The Fall: a cosmic catastrophe.
B: In Christ,
Which Christ? The one who cited Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as historical documents that provide the basis for marriage (Mark 10:6 ff)?
Ktisopholis,
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I am here to engage you in a debate where we can all make our arguments, finish by calling each other names and move on. The usual course of an internet meeting of minds.
I'm not.
You say I'm a heretic. I'm taking the accusation seriously. That's the basis of this discussion.
So let me ask the question again. If you were wrong about the Early Church on the issue of creation, would that change anything?
I am not going to run around trying to veryify a point of your argument if you then tell me it is irrelevant if the outcome doesn't go your way.
Yes or no. If you are wrong about the Early Church, does it matter?
And if yes. How much does it matter? I don't have infinite time any more than the rest of you.
I am prepared to do the work if it is critical to your argument.
Again, a misrepresentation, typical of compromisers.
:-D
Sam, want to know why I started to move away from creation science?
Because of things like this.
Ktisophilos, I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I believe his death paid the penaly for our sin. I believe in miracles, in Hell, and that faith in the Lord Jesus is the only way to God. All of these arouse far stronger negative responses in people I meet than a young earth - that is usually just seen as a bit stupid. But the things I've listed above tend to be seen often as more morally wrong to believe in.
I am sceptical about evolution, which as 'John' has pointed out is a far more serious intellectual sin in our culture than an old earth. ('evolution is the one thing that can't be wrong').
You really think you can just dismiss where I am coming from by throwing a name at me? You really think that I am intimidated by my culture and so have self-consciously folded?
So be it, I hoped you could rise above it, but my experience suggested the name calling would start. Knock yourself out guys, call me whatever you like. Let's start with 'compromiser' and see what we can add from there.
I'll still listen to you as carefully as I can.
The point is that without the rise of uniformitarian "science", Bible commentators had no doubt that it teaches a young earth, global flood, death coming through sin.
This is in response to my point about Augustine and Origen.
Ktisophilos, the point of my comment had nothing to do your response - indeed I agree with your point here, something that should have been clear from my suggestion that sometimes discoveries outside biblical studies can tell us that we have misunderstood the Bible.
I am trying to pin down what the heresy is. Sam claims it is 'the authority of the Bible'. John claims it is 'evolution'. You seemed to claim it is 'not taking the six days literally'. And yet all of you seem to think you are saying the same thing, and you in particular brushed over the fact that two of the most important figures of the early Church didn't take them literally.
When we come to your answer to that we get:
Mainly because the deity of Christ was a more pressing issue at the time, while most of the church didn't doubt that the creation days were ~24-hr or that the earth was <6000 years old at the time of writing.
So because they disagreed with what everyone believed about the 24 hours no-one had a real problem with their orthodoxy?
That doesn't sound plausible.
And the Church was not just fighting for the Deity of Christ, it was also fighting opposing views of creation during the first few centuries. That's something I do know about from my own work. So that part of your argument is wrong too.
I suggest that Augustine and Origen are not decisive, but they suggest the picture of the Early Church on the issue of how important a literal six days is is not in your favour.
And I take it that you don't care about the authority of the genealogical tables any more than you care about the rest of the Bible?
Yep, Kristopholis, I don't care about any of the Bible, that's fairly obvious from what I've been saying throughout these discussions.
What tomfoolery. I never said that the Bible is exhaustive, but authoritative. I.e. in what it does say, it says truthfully.
Yep, tomfoolery, I'm just playing games again.
Ktisophilos, you didn't give me a definition of what you meant by 'authority' and what you said seemed to imply the meaning I put forward there as best as I could read it.
You've now clarified that your meaning for the term is exactly the same as the one I proposed so we can know move forward together on this point.
But uniformitarian geology and biological evolution are NOT science, but materialistic pseudo-histories of earth and life that exclude God a priori.
They are science, science isn't infallible. They might be wrong but they are science.
The implication of your view here is that every geologist in the world has little idea what they are doing.
And science can't exclude God a priori, despite the attempts of secularists to try and make out it can.
Honestly, you are buying the farm the atheists are trying to sell, just like John.
Then prove that the traditional understanding is wrong from the text, not from outside ideas that reject creation and the Flood a priori. Instead, compromisers truth the ever-changing theories of "science" and reinterpret God's Word.
Prove that the sun doesn't go around the earth from the text Ktisopholis, without any reference to philosophies from outside the Bible. Then we'll see if there's only one compromiser in this discussion.
Finally, in answer to my question about the link between sin and death and the death of animals:
Nope, they are part of the groaning of the whole creation, affected by the fall of the one who was given dominion over them.
And where literally does the Bible say this?
The Bible is explicit that death is the penalty for sin.
It does not say that it is 'part of the groaning of the whole of creation, affected by the fall of the one who was given dominion over them.'
You want to play that card, prove it.
And while you are at it, convince me that you aren't doing the very thing you are accusing me of in doing so.
Which Christ? The one who cited Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as historical documents that provide the basis for marriage (Mark 10:6 ff)?
Yes, Ktisophilos, that one. When Jesus said, "Believe in God, believe in me also" I'm sure he meant, "believe in a literal six day creation" as part of what it means to truly have faith in Christ.
Sam,
I think arising out of Ktisophilos' comment I have enough information now to gather my view as to the character of the people on this blog, so you don't need to answer my questions about your anonymity et al.
Let's just focus on the ideas now. That'll make things easier all round.
in Christ,
Mark
ufumtukuMark, no time to respond tonight. Will try later but I suspect you may be temporarily absent when I respond.
Sam
In responding to my view of a heresy you construct a position not mine but an invention of your mind and, seemingly, is designed to lead to a preconceived representation of my position. I suspect too that your comments undermine your declaration of a willingness to be convinced of an alternative view to your own. Instead it reveals you have come on here for a stoush. This reminds me of one of the worst traits in many nowadays graduates of Moore College. They present a veneer of 'niceness' but their heart is calculating to almost exclusion of love. Their ploy is to do all that appears decent on the surface but underneath the motivation is all wrong.
To gain something of an understanding of my person I refer you to my post "A Perilous Path" elsewhere on this blogspot.
The core issue for me is the integrity of God revealed in his Word written and Incarnate and I include in this the nature of God. This is part of the gospel, not all the gospel, but part. It can't be just that Jesus died for our sins can it? - otherwise the Mormons would not be regarded as heretics by the church traditional. No, they are regarded as heretics not because of their belief that Jesus Christ died for them but because they deny him his glory and majesty as revealed in Word and Being.
I disagree with your contention concerning the name of the prophet from Judah being known to hearers in each scene described. The onus rests on you to demonstrate from Scripture how it was known.
I disagree again with your inferrence that I should only speak when giving my name. Again, you should be able to accept or reject the message without colouring it with the identity of the speaker.
As I have implied, I seek to call people back to knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as he has been revealed consistently in word and action and foretold.
My response to your other assertions will rest in what I have said in the forgoing.
Sam
Mark,
Here's a very short list of some quotes from early Christians concerning the age of the earth and the length of the days. I would expect that it was a non-issue among Christians who weren't influenced by pagan influences (the same holding true today!), particularly the Platonic variety, because they thought the language in Genesis and Exodus so straightforward.
So why didn't your mate, the patristic expert, point you to the following?
1. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS BOOK III.
CHAP. XVI.--UNCERTAIN CONJECTURES OF THE PHILOSOPHERS.
But I wish now to give you a more accurate demonstration, God helping me, of the historical periods, that you may see that our doctrine is not modern nor fabulous, but more ancient and true than all poets and authors who have written in uncertainty. For some, maintaining that the world was uncreated, went into infinity; and others, asserting that it was created, said that already 153,075 years had passed. This is stated by Apollonius the Egyptian. And Plato, who is esteemed to have been the wisest of the Greeks, into what nonsense did he run? For in his book entitled The Republic, we find him expressly saying: "For if things had in all time remained in their present arrangement, when ever could any new thing be discovered? For ten thousand times ten thousand years elapsed without record, and one thousand or twice as many years have gone by since some things were discovered by Daedalus, and some by Orpheus, and some by Palamedes." And when he says that these things happened, he implies that ten thousand times ten thousand years elapsed from the flood to Daedalus. And after he has said a great deal about the cities of the world, and the settlements, and the nations, he owns that he has said these things conjecturally. For he says, "If then, my friend, some god should promise us, that if we attempted to make a survey of legislation, the things now said," etc., which shows that he was speaking by guess; and if by guess, then what he says is not true.
CHAP. XXVIII.--LEADING CHRONOLOGICAL EPOCHS.
And from the foundation of the world the whole time is thus traced, so far as its main epochs are concerned. From the creation of the world to the deluge were 2242 years. And from the deluge to the time when Abraham our forefather begat a son, 1036 years. And from Isaac, Abraham's son, to the time when the people dwelt with Moses in the desert, 660 years. And from the death of Moses and the rule of Joshua the son of Nun, to the death of the patriarch David, 498 years. And from the death of David and the reign of Solomon to the sojourning of the people in the land of Babylon, 518 years 6 months 10 days. And from the government of Cyrus to the death of the Emperor Aurelius Verus, 744 years. All the years from the creation of the world amount to a total of 5698 years, and the odd months and days.
"On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth come from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before the stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it" (2:15)
2. Lactantius: "Therefore let the philosophers, who enumerate thousands of ages from the beginning of the world, know that the six-thousandth year is not yet complete. . . . Therefore, since all the works of God were completed in six days, the world must continue in its present state through six ages, that is, six thousand years. For the great day of God is limited by a circle of a thousand years, as the prophet shows, who says, ‘In thy sight, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day [Ps. 90:4]’" (Divine Institutes 7:14 [A.D. 307]).
3. Basil the Great: "‘And there was evening and morning, one day.’ Why did he say ‘one’ and not ‘first’? . . . He said ‘one’ because he was defining the measure of day and night . . . since twenty-four hours fill up the interval of one day" (The Six Days Work 1:1–2 [A.D. 370]).
4. Ambrose of Milan: "Scripture established a law that twenty-four hours, including both day and night, should be given the name of day only, as if one were to say the length of one day is twenty-four hours in extent. . . . The nights in this reckoning are considered to be component parts of the days that are counted. Therefore, just as there is a single revolution of time, so there is but one day. There are many who call even a week one day, because it returns to itself, just as one day does, and one might say seven times revolves back on itself" (Hexaemeron [A.D. 393]).
Our latest AngloCompromiser spruiketh:
"Prove that the sun doesn't go around the earth from the text Ktisopholis [sic], without any reference to philosophies from outside the Bible."
Why should I? Learn some elementary physics, so you would realize that you can choose any reference frame you like? Or are you pedantic when someone refers to a "sunset", or a speed limit of 100 km/h, which also validly use the earth as a reference frame. So do planetaria. The Bible uses this perfectly valid reference frame as well, and there is nothing physically wrong with this.
It just happens that the centre of mass of the solar system is a good reference frame when discussing the solar system as a whole. Because then the mathematical descriptions involve simple elliptical motion, discovered by the YEC Johan Kepler. He had no problem with this, because he knew that this is also a valid reference frame not contradicted by anything in the Bible. See again my discussion of exhaustive v authoritative truth, as well as The Galileo affair: history or heroic hagiography.
The centre of our galaxy is a good reference frame for discussing motions of its stars. Something near the galaxy's centre seems to be the centre of the universe.
Mark,
I wonder if, with all that training and knowledge you have, you would mind providing us YECs with a few examples from God's Word which support Peter Jensen, John Woodhouse, Perry Wiles, Andrew Katay's et al contention that the world is extremely old. Throughout this blog we have set out clear statements that show that the world can't be old. For example, considerations based on grammar, theological and soteriological problems associated with having huge amounts of time before the Fall, commonsense aspects like 'day' next to an ordinal carries the sense of an ordinary day, statements from early the Church and others who understood it to be young, and the problems created when Exodus 20's Sabbath command is turned into a non-literal one.
Oops! typing error. I apologise.
Mark, in paragraph 2 of my post dated 25 October delete the word "person" and substitute the word "position".
BTW, Hi 'Gordo' if your still out there watching from the sideline.
Sam
I'm not sure what is good etiquette at this point as I have posts from three people (assuming it's one pseudonym per person) to interact with. I'm going to multiple post - one per person. If that's a problem, please let me know.
Sam,
In responding to my view of a heresy you construct a position not mine but an invention of your mind and, seemingly, is designed to lead to a preconceived representation of my position.
I'm not sure what you are referring to at this point. I'm going to need something to help focus my attention a bit if I'm to respond intelligently.
If it was my observation about your shift on what heretic implies, then perhaps you could explain to me how your words don't mean what I said they mean, rather than adding another accusation to the growing list that I'm accumulating here.
You said:
I remain convinced of the possibility of someone believing or teaching (for a time) a heresy and yet still be in the Lord.
If someone can only believe a heresy for a time and yet still be in the Lord, does it not follow that if they continue in it then they are not in the Lord?
I don't see how that is forcing a meaning onto your words that you never meant - please explain how I have done so.
And the 'predetermined position' I've 'forced' you into is simply the view that I think is held by mainstream Christianity. So it's hardly an insult. It's the view I hold as to what heresy entails too!
I suspect too that your comments undermine your declaration of a willingness to be convinced of an alternative view to your own.
I don't see how you've gotten here. You haven't show me how my reading of your words in the bit I quoted indicates such perfidy on my part. Perhaps you could show me the steps, rather than just jumping straight to the accusation.
Instead it reveals you have come on here for a stoush. This reminds me of one of the worst traits in many nowadays graduates of Moore College. They present a veneer of 'niceness' but their heart is calculating to almost exclusion of love. Their ploy is to do all that appears decent on the surface but underneath the motivation is all wrong.
Well, that's a mutual assessment, except I don't think that the blog is even trying to present a veneer of niceness. But as I said, I'm passed the stage where I'm weighing that up.
I'm not interested in a stoush. But that doesn't mean I am going to just accept your serious accusation without some serious debate and argument. If you can't see the difference between hungering for a stoush and arguing to get to the truth of a serious accusation, then just add hypocrite to the descriptors your colleagues are generating about me.
Just let me know once we get to that point though ok? In my experience of internet discussions, once that point is reached, conversation is pointless and my goals of assessing your accusation won't be able to be reached by talking with you.
To gain something of an understanding of my person I refer you to my post "A Perilous Path" elsewhere on this blogspot.
Sure, give me a link and I'll read it. Once I've responded to Ktisophilos and John here I'm going to tackle "Did God Really Say". I'll add this one to the list.
The core issue for me is the integrity of God revealed in his Word written and Incarnate and I include in this the nature of God. This is part of the gospel, not all the gospel, but part.
OK, I can see that that is where you are coming from Sam.
But this is both profoundly true and being used as a bit of a blunt instrument in this case.
Yes, the character of God must be tied up with the gospel. But again to go:
Character of God--impugned by this false teaching--therefore gospel denied.
Which is what you seem to be implying (and by all means let me know if that is not what you are trying to imply--preferably without another accusation). This again leaves us in the situation that any wrong doctrine denies the gospel.
Antinomianism, egalitarianism, the idea that Christ is physically present in the sacrament, all fit the criteria you have just laid down. Yet I wouldn't classify them as heresy (and I think I've shown that in the first and third case, the two Calvin knew of, he didn't classify them as heresy).
It can't be just that Jesus died for our sins can it? - otherwise the Mormons would not be regarded as heretics by the church traditional. No, they are regarded as heretics not because of their belief that Jesus Christ died for them but because they deny him his glory and majesty as revealed in Word and Being.
I never said that the gospel was just that Jesus died for our sins. I've sketched it out in my response to John on the other comment thread if you want to chase it down.
My point is that 'gospel' is a body of truths that need to be believed to be saved. Six day creation has never been considered one of them. Hence, not believing it can't be heresy.
Unless you decide it is a salvation truth.
I disagree with your contention concerning the name of the prophet from Judah being known to hearers in each scene described. The onus rests on you to demonstrate from Scripture how it was known.
I disagree again with your inferrence that I should only speak when giving my name. Again, you should be able to accept or reject the message without colouring it with the identity of the speaker.
This is passe for me now, but I'm willing to keep discussing it if the opinion of a heretic on this matter matters to you.
I don't think I was saying that people knew the prophet's name in each case. I'm saying that the fact that he did it in person in public in full view of people meant he was not anonymous even if people didn't know his name.
Your reason for being anonymous is to avoid the hypothesised consequences of your stand for Christ. I'm saying that you can't use him as an example of that. His only protection was a miracle that was not guaranteed in advance (presumably).
If you were standing physically in full view of people and denouncing the Diocese then you'd be in line with the prophet. But as it is, it's more like John Smith writing a book and taking the name 'Ezekiel' to avoid any consequences.
And as I said I don't care who you are. My questioning was about the morality of an anonymous public rebuke sustained over months on a blog set up for that sole purpose.
I wouldn't care if you turned out to be Gordo. Surprised, certainly, but your identity was not the issue, your character was.
Seriously, you don't even seem to get the question I was asking--which could just mean I'm being really unclear. Let's just move on.
in Christ,
Mark
Ktisophilos,
Our latest AngloCompromiser spruiketh:
That’s EpiscoCompromiser to you, Ktisophilos!
"Prove that the sun doesn't go around the earth from the text Ktisopholis [sic], without any reference to philosophies from outside the Bible."
Why should I?
How about just because I asked you to?
I have tried to answer every question that has been put to me so far (although a couple have required a fair bit of work, and so are still to be done), and make a comment on every thing that one of you have said when it seemed that it mattered to you.
You claim you want to convince me, and not just trash my arguments.
I don’t ask these questions just for the sport of it. They matter to me. So what reason do you have for not answering them?
Then we get this:
Learn some elementary physics, so you would realize that you can choose any reference frame you like? Or are you pedantic when someone refers to a "sunset", or a speed limit of 100 km/h, which also validly use the earth as a reference frame. So do planetaria. The Bible uses this perfectly valid reference frame as well, and there is nothing physically wrong with this.
And yet John, on the other thread said:
One of the reasons that we creationists become so exasperated is that Moorites routinely read back into ancient documents modern expectations.
These two comments don’t seem to add up.
You are claiming that the Bible can be understood in light of ‘elementary physics’. By which you seem to mean Einsteinian physics, that dissolved any fixed reference point. It’s a theory, a ‘philosophy’ to use your terminology, like evolution or uniformitarian geology. And yet it is obvious the Bible uses it?
How many Biblical commentators thought that the Bible was using Einstenian physics before Einstein Ktisophilos? I suggest that you are doing what you accuse us of – changing the meaning of the text in light of the theories of modern, unbelieving, science. I think the traditional explanation, once people were again convinced that the earth moved around the sun, was that the Bible often spoke phenomenologiclally—how things appeared. Not that the Bible was committed to a view of no fixed reference point!
If you’re right, why did Calvin and Luther get this so wrong then?
And if we didn’t know about elementary physics, would we read Psalm 19:2-4 or Joshua 10 any other way than it’s ‘plain sense’: that the sun turns around the earth?
The centre of our galaxy is a good reference frame for discussing motions of its stars. Something near the galaxy's centre seems to be the centre of the universe.
And this cosmological speculation has precisely what to do with my heresy or the authority of the Bible?
In Christ,
Mark
Mark,
Your disagreement with us reminds me of a man who took his car to a motor mechanic. He was told that he needed to get his oil changed. The man demanded to know why. He was told that by not doing so his engine would prematurely wear. He demanded proof. The mechanic presented a technical discourse to him, stating how important clean oil was for a proper functioning of the car, and that although the car would go on doing its job with dirt oil, in the end the dirty oil would start to cause lots of problems. The mechanic then replied that the man could either trust him because he’d studied and practised for years or the man could do his own research and come to the same conclusion as it was a case of understanding the straightforward and objective facts. The man did neither but continued to batter the mechanic with what seemed to him an argument against the mechanic’s point. What could the mechanic do but just shrug his shoulders and continue working on another’s vehicle. Over the years the mechanic had met a lot of customers like this man who fooled themselves into thinking that they knew what they were talking about.
You threw into the ring the [false] argument, ultimately based on the fallacy of authority, that early Christians weren’t so enamoured with the idea of a young earth. We quoted several ancient men who showed you that you were wrong. No comment from you. Yet you persisted in arguing about fine matters of this and that which have nothing to do with whether the Bible unambiguously argues against an old earth and evolution. We can’t go on talking about this forever when we’ve provided a number of links which would give more information about the subject. Also, there are the following threads which address a few of your points:
1. A New Phariseeism? (January)
2. Sydney’s solipsistic heresiarchs
3. Gordon’s straw-man (Feb)
4. Marcionite Atavism
5. Flash Dave (March)
6. For the sons of this world (May)
7. Singing is moving prayer (June)
8. A Sydney Episcopalian CASE (July)
9. Anon accepts the challenge
10. Some more of the same
I suggest that you do some homework and then come back with any genuine questions or relevant disagreements.
What we have tried to point out to you (and others) is that we believe that you may very well be saved. Only you and God know that. However, the problem is that you have not come to a “full[er] knowledge of Christ” because you and the others have taken an unbiblical position that rejects the truth of Christ as creator. The Gospel does not make sense if the saviour isn’t the creator. The Anglican Church has substituted something else for this latter role or has diluted it, whether that be by evolution, time and/or chance. The Gospel, the real one, says that only the Creator can resurrect physically to be our Saviour. (This is the principal objection I have to the Jehovah Witnesses theology in that their Jesus doesn’t resurrect physically and so doesn’t really demonstrate the perfection of His creation.) The Anglicans believe in a physical resurrection but it has no logical completeness to it when one understands that their creator is one who has physical death operating I the creative order right there at the beginning, incorporates loads of time in order to allow chance mutations to eventuate, or some permutation of these. Theirs presents only a partial story and theology.
But arguably the most serious objection is that the lost are searching for God and you guys continually tell them a pagan myth about creation. Furthermore, you tell them that what appears in the Bible as straightforward historical statements (I didn’t say ‘scientific’) about the beginning – these seem to us and the atheists etc that they are historical propositions – are in fact poetry, copies of or improvements upon pagan stories, or simple stories which catered to a backward Jewish audience. When these lost reject Jesus the Creator because of this and completely swallow the evolutionary lie, it’s obvious that you guys have put a huge stumbling block in front of them. For this your guys are guilty of something serious, particularly when we have presented reasons why the Bible can’t be taken the way that you guys claim it should be.
As Paul states, Christ is much more than a crucified saviour: He is all the wisdom of God. I have written elsewhere where you guys remove this from the Gospel.
John,
I don't know if you're the same 'John' as the other thread, if so feel free to collate these two threads together if you'd like.
Let's begin with your last post and pick up the other two as they raise issues not covered in that one.
Your parable about the guy and the car mechanic is inaccurate, I believe. I have no interest in raising the temperature any further, but I would suggest that the issue would be more like:
A man who has devoted his adult life to the study of automobiles and now teaches on automobiles finds out that a website is set up to denounce him for his view on automobiles. The writers are all anonymous so he can't check whether they are authorities in their field, but generally they seem to dismiss authorities and study. He reads their treatises and finds them unconvincing. However, he wants to make sure that he isn't dismissing their concerns too hastily, so he starts to talk with them.
This little allegory has the virtue, over yours, of factoring in both that I know something (rather than nothing as yours suggests) and that you are anonymous (and so not a certified 'motor mechanic' with credentials as yours seems to suggest). You are a bunch of voices in the dark crying 'heretic'. And you make the claim against people whose lives are dedicated to hearing and teaching the Word of God, not people who know nothing. Write a story that takes those facts into account.
You threw into the ring the [false] argument, ultimately based on the fallacy of authority, that early Christians weren’t so enamoured with the idea of a young earth. We quoted several ancient men who showed you that you were wrong. No comment from you.
No, the sequence went:
1. Sam claimed (among other things) that your view was that of the Early Church.
2. I indicated my doubt, given that I had the view of someone who knows Early Church theology very well and who disagrees with you.
3. Sam produced a whole bunch of quotes, Ktisopholis claimed the blog had proven the case.
4. I stated that I was prepared to look into the Early Church Fathers on the issue if it was important to your case that I was a heretic.
5. No answer from Ktisophilos or Sam.
6. You then post more quotes, take a jibe at the scholar I refer to and now represent the sequence differently with the seeming intention of making out I introduced the Early Church on no basis other than one scholar's say so and have ignored evidence.
I have tried to lay out the sequence as dispassionately as possible. It doesn't square with your version.
I will repeat my position again, John. You, Sam, or Ktisophilos can feel free to answer. I'll even quote it from my earlier comment so you can see I'm not making this up:
So let me ask the question again. If you were wrong about the Early Church on the issue of creation, would that change anything?
I am not going to run around trying to veryify a point of your argument if you then tell me it is irrelevant if the outcome doesn't go your way.
Yes or no. If you are wrong about the Early Church, does it matter?
And if yes. How much does it matter? I don't have infinite time any more than the rest of you.
I am prepared to do the work if it is critical to your argument.
It's not a trick question. It's not a tap or a maneuver in some-oh-so-clever attempt to push you guys in a corner. Either answer it or let's ignore the Early Church for this discussion.
Yet you persisted in arguing about fine matters of this and that which have nothing to do with whether the Bible unambiguously argues against an old earth and evolution.
Most of my comments are interacting with the points you and your mates make John - as should be clear from the amount of bold text in them where I'm quoting you (usually). So if they're the fine points of this and that then that's your issue not mine. Given that my questions are sidelined as often as not I don't think you can blame me for what we've been talking about. (Except Sam and my discussion about anonymity - that was certainly my agenda originally, and it was good of him to answer).
We can’t go on talking about this forever when we’ve provided a number of links which would give more information about the subject.
No. You lot cry time poor when you have a chance to try and persuade one heretic (despite Sam's claim that's what this blog is set up for). But you've got the time to sink months into writing blogs that would convince almost no-one in Sydney.
I don't need more information John, I need some of you guys to be prepared to engage me in a sustained argument/debate/conversation about the issues you think are key. Not pass over the points I make (like the words of the Institution, or that death is the penalty for sin, and is never said to be part of what 'groaning' means).
I know what your position is (at least in general terms - you guys seem to disagree with each other, so I can't always be sure). I held it for several years. I want to have the chance to see if you can persuade me to reconsider it.
That won't happen with blogs, but with debate. I can't question or challenge a blog, or show why I think an argument is weak with a blog. Nor can a blog reply and show me something I haven't seen yet.
It's your call at this point. Either one of you three, or one of the other small cloud of witnesses who contribute.
But if you are just going to keep adding more and more blogs for me to reread this is a waste of my time.
Of the 10 blog entries you offer me, pick one. When I've interacted with "Has God Really Said" I'll move onto it. We can't discuss 11 blog entries simultaneously.
What we have tried to point out to you (and others) is that we believe that you may very well be saved.
Rubbish.
You and Ktisophilos have said nothing about the matter.
Sam's final two statements on this issue was
1. that a heretic can be in the Lord if they only stay in their heresy for a while
2. to get upset with me for what I said his position 1 meant.
And if you think you can call us heretics and think that we are saved, then I think you are theologically incompetent.
The classical position (as I showed from Calvin) is that heretics are not saved.
If you think we are saved drop the heresy label. If you think we are heretics stop claiming we can be saved. You can't have both and be in line with classical Christian thought as to what 'heresy' means.
The rest of your two paragraphs have a lot of good content that I would like to interact with.
I'm going to finish this comment here so your other material doesn't come at the end of dealing with this stuff. I it deserves better.
Sam, this means there'll be one more comment from me on John's most recent comment before I get to 'Has God Really Said.' Apologies for the change in plan - another day or two probably.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark, At the time of posting this comment I haven't had the opportunity to read your most recent comments so there may be some doubling up on things you have raised.
I perceived your preconception to be that of Biblical Creationists asserting that because a person doesn't hold to a Biblical Creationist view then that person can't be a Christian. This is a constructed defence barrier many in the church have retreated behind to avoid engaging with us on the clear Word of God on origins. You go on to imply we add to the gospel. I have encountered this before. If you were to read my earlier blog 'A Perilous Path' you will see that, with Puritan John Owen, I see dangers in the professor of Christ demeaning the "offices" of Jesus Christ and, in this respect, the "office" of Jesus Christ Creator. John Owen made the following striking statement: "The whole foundation of all gospel faith rests in the glory of Christ's person and offices." This is a far more glorious and Christ honouring perception of gospel truth than you have thus far elaborated.
I don't know your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You may well be of the Lord. I suspect, by the grace of God, you might go through this world holding and teaching an errant and demeaning (and, I suggest, heretical) belief on one of the offices of Christ and yet still be saved. However, I fear for those to whom you teach that errant view because it may be a barrier to their 'coming to Christ.' I wonder too as to what extent the Lord God will honour your words to those to whom you speak if you speak something other than what he has expressly made clear about his person and activity. We live under grace so we enjoy provision from the Lord but we ought not test his grace, especially not insult him.
There may also be instances of people going on in the Lord Jesus but later developing an heretical belief on the person or an office of Jesus Christ. I suspect the same applies.
I wonder what you think of the late Charles Templeton, renowned Atheist. At the outset he professed Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and was on a par with Billy Graham as an Evangelist. His book "Farewell To God" details his descent to atheism because he failed to grasp the truth of Jesus Christ in his office as Creator. Whether you will hold to him never having been a Christian or a Christian who lost faith (I suspect you will take the former view) the root cause of his unbelief was an errant (and I say heretical) view of the person and activity of Jesus Christ in his office as Creator.
Sometime earlier you asked me something along the lines of whether I would still hold to my Biblical Creationist position if it was demonstrated that most of the church 'fathers' didn't hold to that which I believe on origins. I see that I hadn't answered the question so I attempt to do so here.
Ultimately, it comes down to what Jesus Christ has revealed in Word written and Incarnate. It is encouraging if the mainstream of church 'fathers' as well as Reformers and Puritans are saying the same thing as a plain reading of Scripture today reveals. When mainstream at higher times of the life of the church agree then that is noteworthy. However, as already said, it is ultimately what Scripture says. An alternative view must not be inconsistent with Scripture.
Sam
Sam,
Thank you.
I really appreciated this last comment. It was everything I was hoping for in coming here - clear, fair and yet strongly opposed to my view, giving me a good bit of information to chew over that is relevant, and done in a tone that I think honours Christ.
I need to respond to John's paragraphs first, but then I'll comment on one or two things you raise here before moving onto "Has God Really Said."
Hoping we can build on what you've done here.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark,
1. I am rather confused at this point. Very early on you stated:
“For my part, I don't really know about six literal days. I don't really care either. I'm fairly sure the universe is old, not young, but if that turns out to be wrong I won't lose any sleep over it. I'm very sceptical about evolution, but again, if that turns out to be right (not in its pure form, but as an expression of providence) then, again, it won't phase me. These questions all seem a bit tendentious to me as I read the Bible (and I say that as someone who was once very passionate about young earth et al).”
Elsewhere you write:
“I know what your position is (at least in general terms - you guys seem to disagree with each other, so I can't always be sure). I held it for several years.”
How can a person twice claim to have been a passionate young earth creationist and yet not “know about six literal days”? Am I missing something here? If you don’t understand the arguments about the 6 days, then you can’t really claim to understand the creationist position. I know many, many creationists who aren’t studying for a master’s and then going on to do a PhD, who left school at 14, yet can tell you why, for example, the Hebrew won’t allow anything other than 6 actual days in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20.
2. SAM SAID: “On this subject I think it helpful to try and take a 'bird's eye view' of the trend in biblical scholarship on the reading of Genesis 1 and other related passages since the Sola scriptura stance and reading of Scripture on origins by people such as Luther and Calvin. Surely a 'bird's eye view' would reveal to you a movement. For me and, I suspect, objective viewers the observed movement is away from what a plain reading of Scripture, the bulk of church fathers and the later reformers say….I am interested in your comment that you were once a young earth creationist. Where and how did the change come about?”
MARK SAID: “As to the early church fathers, I'm doing a Masters on patristics at the moment in preparation for a doctorate on Athanasius. I haven't gone out of my way to look at them on creation, but my moderate experience of reading the Fathers is that they aren't really where you are on the six day issue. The lecturer on Pre-Chalcedonian theology, who wouldn't really care one way or another on the issue (and so is at least disinterested, if not objective) made the comment in his lecture that for the early church the six days were understand typologically as a general rule--because the early church found the idea that six days was too long given that God is omnipotent and outside time.”
To be very unAnglican here (i.e. sarcastic and smug!), what a forceful argument?
We quoted several early Christians who did tackle the issue, who unambiguously claimed, from Scripture, that Scripture describes 6 24 hour days, and who believed it to be true! You then throw in the completely irrelevant item from your life about your present academic qualifications (and future ones!), claim not to have “gone out of my way to look at them on creation”, but concluded that they don’t really believe the 6 days are true. Extra proof? A lecturer of yours who stated that typology was the central claim.
As Hans Frei pointed out, the majority of early Church men who raised the issue didn’t preclude the typological, but it was always built upon the historical reality of the 6 days. As has been pointed out previously, this was true even of Augustine, who, like Origen, was principally influenced by Plato. You totally ignored the men we quoted. It would seem to me that you did this because they are a rebuttal to your case.
Our argument is not that the Church fathers form the basis and the starting point for our position, but that, like us, they looked at Scripture to see what it states without considering the prevailing worldview. In both cases the contemporary worldview says billions of years is the historical reality; we, alongside the early Christians, claim that Scripture says otherwise. It’s plain to anyone that the modern Church has capitulated to this unscriptural worldview. Even the Westminster divines (is that the right title?) held to a young earth, so it really is a recent phenomenon. To claim otherwise is just plainly ignoring the historical facts.
Thus Sam is right: the majority of Christians over the years who expressed a view were convinced 6 day creationists.
3. But I asked you a question about why you don’t hold to a young age earth. Of course, like all the Moorites I’ve discussed this with, they disingenuously “answer” by claiming that it isn’t an issue for them (and for the whole world implicitly). Sam asked you a similar question and you didn’t respond. I suspect you were never, if indeed you ever actually were, a knowledgeable creationist.
4. Why would anyone not take the 4th commandment in Exodus 20 at its plain and simple to mean 6 ordinary days? Why would anyone try to extract the idea that it just can’t mean that? What would originally motivate someone to alter the plain meaning of the 6 days here and transform it into matching something like a contemporary view of origins? Why would they pick that one and not adultery, theft etc? Why would they take literally all the other commandments, including the ceremonial ones, but not the 4th? Why would Peter Jensen claim that Exodus states plainly that homosexuality is a literal sin, but that the 6 days as contained in the Decalogue is not to be taken as a straightforward historical fact as written by the hand of God?
It all seems a bit, to use your word, tendentious!
Good grief, who are we to believe about what the Church Fathers said: Baddelim and his anonymous professor, or the Church Fathers themselves?
So he is an Episcocompromiser then? That explains a lot, coming from the church that had Spong as a bishop and subsequently ordained a homosexual who left his wife and kids for his male partner (but of course, gays are born that way!).
As for the geocentric/geokinetic issue, the Bible didn't have to presuppose modern knowledge among its readers. Rather, it was using language that was accurate in the light of modern physics, but also perfectly understandable at the time.
As for our compromiser's smear on Luther, CMI's Refuting Compromise points out:
Luther’s only recorded comment on the issues is a single off-hand remark (hardly a concerted campaign), during a ‘table talk’ in 1539 (four years before the publication of Copernicus’ book). The Table Talk was based on notes taken by Luther’s students, which were later compiled and published in 1566―twenty years after Luther’s death. Luther actually said:
‘Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Jos. 10:12].’
[The first sentence shows] that a major reason for Luther’s objection was Copernicus’ challenging the establishment and common sense for its own sake (as Luther saw it). At the time, there was no hard evidence for geokineticism.
And Kepler, a devout Lutheran, saw no conflict between the Bible and Lutheran theology. He showed how Joshua 10:12 could be explained as phenomenological language, using Luther’s own principles of Biblical interpretation!
BTW, Mark,
Say hullo to the Archbishop's son for us. We all miss his highly developed intellectual approach to the subject (e.g. "Boo hoo!"), his humility and apologetic character when shown to be wrong (e.g. "[Deafening Silence]....") and how he knows his place in the grand scheme of things (e.g. "I am not my father's son!")
Mark,
Here's a couple of quotes to get your PhD on Athanasius on its way. Sorry I couldn't get the precise source.
1.And all the visible creation was made in six days:--in the first, the light which He called day; in the second the firmament; in the third, gathering together the waters, He bared the dry land, and brought out the various fruits that are in it; and in the fourth, He made the sun and the moon and all the host of the stars; and on the fifth, He created the race of living things in the sea, and of birds in the air; and on the sixth, He made the quadrupeds on the earth, and at length man. ATHANASIUS FOUR DISCOURSES AGAINST THE ARIANS p. 358
2. For as to the separate stars or the great lights, not this appeared first, and that second, but in one day and by the same command, they were all called into being. And such was the original formation of the quadrupeds, and of birds, and fishes, and cattle, and plants; thus too has the race made after God's Image come to be, namely men; for though Adam only was formed out of earth, yet in him was involved the succession of the whole race. ATHANASIUS FOUR DISCOURSES AGAINST THE ARIANS pp. 374-375
I think you should mention to your lecturer that maybe he SHOULD take an interest in the subject because his ostensible disinterest isn't paying dividends.
Hey Badders,
I check in on this blog about once every six weeks to see if anyone's said anything of value, and I'm just mightily encouraged to see you here. It's a good reminder that it's possible to be gracious and wise in the face of...stuff...
anyway, I hope that the discussion is proving useful for your own thinking. I appreciate seeing your brain in action, and especially in the service of the basic truths of the gospel. And some of the other readers here, I'm sure, will be helped.
God bless you and mrs badders and the little one. I hope you settle well in your new place and into your studies, and I guess there'll be less of you here, which will be a loss (but not for you, I think)
With our prayers
Gordon
oops, sorry badders, meant I guess there'll be less of you here once you settle into your studies/place where you are.
G
Well, it was too much to hope that John and Ktisophilos lift the tone of their posts up to the standard Sam set for us.
Sam, I'll try and not lower it too much from what you've done. But the provocation is fairly strong. I hope you understand.
John,
A conversation some willingness to speak in good faith.
When you say this:
Say hullo to the Archbishop's son for us. We all miss his highly developed intellectual approach to the subject (e.g. "Boo hoo!"), his humility and apologetic character when shown to be wrong (e.g. "[Deafening Silence]....") and how he knows his place in the grand scheme of things (e.g. "I am not my father's son!")
When Michael had nothing to do with our conversation, it is gossip and slander. It is in flagrant disobedience to biblical commands on how to speak as a Christian.
Sam and the rest of the contributors, I expect you to show some willingness at this point to show me your commitment to the Bible's authority and ask John to desist, or at least verbalise dissent from the way he is doing this.
I don't think this can be justified in any way and it dishonours our Lord.
Moving on:
However, the problem is that you have not come to a “full[er] knowledge of Christ” because you and the others have taken an unbiblical position that rejects the truth of Christ as creator. The Gospel does not make sense if the saviour isn’t the creator. The Anglican Church has substituted something else for this latter role or has diluted it, whether that be by evolution, time and/or chance.
For the following comments, perhaps you might like to comment as well Sam?
I agree that God created the world through Christ, and that the gospel is predicated on a connection between creation and salvation.
I think that God is able to act through secondary causes. When someone takes medicine I see this as God healing them. I don't see God's role as healer substituted or diluted by medicine being involved. The same goes for when I give thanks for food--God gave it to me even though a lot of people and inanimate physical processes were involved.
If you want to say that the making of humanity (or of things in the cosmos) is different from this principle, that I hope we have in common, could you sketch it out for me?
Otherwise I don't think that your view of creation is the only way to uphold God as Creator.
And, John, could you tone down the abuse as you do so?
The Anglicans believe in a physical resurrection but it has no logical completeness to it when one understands that their creator is one who has physical death operating I the creative order right there at the beginning, incorporates loads of time in order to allow chance mutations to eventuate, or some permutation of these. Theirs presents only a partial story and theology.
I don't know anyone who thinks that humans died before sin came in. I suggest again that 'death' is only an issue for human beings.
I think even your group think that plants died before sin.
Is it really an insult to God that he made animals mortal? They aren't in the image of God, there is no promise of resurrection for them, they are not 'in Christ', and I doubt the tree of life was ever intended for them.
The Bible clearly states that death is the penalty for sin - it has to be speaking of human beings only there. I'd suggest that death is the penalty for sin for those who were made to share in God's eternal life. That's not animals, or plants.
Hence, I would argue that a long earth might actually better highlight God's character by even more clearly demarcating human beings in his image from animals.
But arguably the most serious objection is that the lost are searching for God and you guys continually tell them a pagan myth about creation. Furthermore, you tell them that what appears in the Bible as straightforward historical statements (I didn’t say ‘scientific’) about the beginning – these seem to us and the atheists etc that they are historical propositions – are in fact poetry, copies of or improvements upon pagan stories, or simple stories which catered to a backward Jewish audience.
Well yes, I usually go to atheists to help me understand the Bible better. Do you also go to the atheists to get a view on the late date of the Pentateuch and how it is a pastiche of mutually antagonistic sources, John?
I think what we tell them is that Genesis 1-3 was written to show its original hearers as clearly as possible how to think of the world and God's relation to it.
We think that God accommadated himself to human capacity, but we think all the Bible is accommadated to human capacity. Classically, reformed theology has said that God isn't 'angry' and doesn't 'repent' in a strict literal sense either-they are accommadations to human capacity.
I don't see this as that different.
When these lost reject Jesus the Creator because of this and completely swallow the evolutionary lie, it’s obvious that you guys have put a huge stumbling block in front of them. For this your guys are guilty of something serious, particularly when we have presented reasons why the Bible can’t be taken the way that you guys claim it should be.
Sure, if you're right, when this happens we're guilty as charged.
In my experience, thought it happens rarely. I've had more experience of people rejecting Christianity because they couldn't accept six day creation.
And if we're right, then you are guilty of the stumbling block in those cases by claiming the Bible required a belief that it did not.
That's probably all I can do today. I might be able to get to Sam's post today or tomorrow, then Has God Said? soon after.
in Christ,
Mark
I've only just noticed the paragraph that Ktisophilos has tucked away, and seeing I have made a complaint about John, I think I should raise this as well.
Ktisophilos:
So he is an Episcocompromiser then? That explains a lot, coming from the church that had Spong as a bishop and subsequently ordained a homosexual who left his wife and kids for his male partner (but of course, gays are born that way!).
It's a very neat cheap shot. Sam protested that his calling us Episcopalians was only because Americans would be more familiar with the term.
Ktisophilos continues his fairly relentess abuse and I make light of it by suggesting 'episcocompromiser' for 'anglocompromiser' - a fairly obvious allusion to the interchange between Sam and I.
So, of course Ktisophilos now smears me by connecting me to Spong. Homosexuality and Spong have had nothing to do with the conversation. Indeed, the Archbishop has been called a hypocrite for rejecting homosexuality. But it is such an easy point to get by making the connection.
The rubric for comments says:
back up your views by all means, and keep of the ad hominem grass. Romans 12:10 . . . read it!
An ad hominem argument is where one attacks the person rather than the argument. This is hardly the first time Ktisophilos has done it.
and the passage says:
Romans 12:10 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor;
Whoever has any authority on this blog, could you speak up to bring some of these comments more in line with your own guidlines ?
in Christ,
Mark
Mark,
1. You’ve previously accused me of not answering your questions. So, please respond to the following I’d asked a few days ago.
‘I am rather confused at this point. Very early on you stated:
“For my part, I don't really know about six literal days. I don't really care either. I'm fairly sure the universe is old, not young, but if that turns out to be wrong I won't lose any sleep over it. I'm very sceptical about evolution, but again, if that turns out to be right (not in its pure form, but as an expression of providence) then, again, it won't phase me. These questions all seem a bit tendentious to me as I read the Bible (and I say that as someone who was once very passionate about young earth et al).”
Elsewhere you write:
“I know what your position is (at least in general terms - you guys seem to disagree with each other, so I can't always be sure). I held it for several years.”
How can a person twice claim to have been a passionate young earth creationist and yet not “know about six literal days”? Am I missing something here? If you don’t understand the arguments about the 6 days, then you can’t really claim to understand the creationist position. I know many, many creationists who aren’t studying for a master’s and then going on to do a PhD, who left school at 14, yet can tell you why, for example, the Hebrew won’t allow anything other than 6 actual days in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20.’
2. And why have you not responded to our quoting several Church fathers’ statements supporting a 6-day creation? Why have you consistently disregarded this?
3. And now to your moral highground material.
You seem to think you can lean on the Bible’s authority when it suits you. These opportunistic episodes tend to be when you sense a possibility of “putting the boot in”. As I’ve told you Moorites before, some of us aren’t from the nice middle-class and academic backgrounds that you guys were brought up in. Some of us hang out with “tax collectors and prostitutes” where notions of moral highground are anathema. Should I be more biblical and call you “broods of vipers” or “hypocrites”? Well, should I?
If you had bothered to first check you would have read on this blog these are things Michael said himself in response to arguments and evidence we had presented. It’s you, mate, who owe me an apology for attacking me before you engaged your brain and for allowing your tongue to take the lead.
I knew Michael was in England with you because ‘Less Matters’ had mentioned it. If you regard repeating Michael’s own words back to him as slander then you’ve got some strange understanding of the word.
In any case, Gordon Cheng’s very unchristian attacks on us have been the subject of much discussion here. Neither Gordon nor his supporters have ever given an unqualified retraction for the arrogance and name-calling but instead threw up some pretty pointlessly puerile excuses to avoid showing a cupful from the ocean of humility and love that Moorites are supposed to possess. So, shouldn’t you now come down from your imagined highground and now tackle our quotes and arguments?
4. You write: “I think that God is able to act through secondary causes. When someone takes medicine I see this as God healing them. I don't see God's role as healer substituted or diluted by medicine being involved. The same goes for when I give thanks for food--God gave it to me even though a lot of people and inanimate physical processes were involved.
If you want to say that the making of humanity (or of things in the cosmos) is different from this principle, that I hope we have in common, could you sketch it out for me?”
Taking medicine is not equivalent to what evolution asks. The former only deals with chemistry and as such can only respond to physical laws that God set in place at the beginning and which we can see operating over and over again. These are entirely testable. Also, correct me if I am wrong, but chemistry can only get out what it puts in (or less even if you take into account the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics). Evolution, on the other hand, demands that new genetic information must increase over long periods of time. Notwithstanding the fact that we have never scientifically witnessed this (in fact, the opposite), there are other major problems.
If the apostle Paul’s contribution to the subject is accurate, then we should be able to see the hand of God everywhere. There shouldn’t be one area of the created order where God cannot be “seen”. If God is pulling the strings behind evolution then we should be able to see, not God, but his activity. That is, we should be able to empirically verify that new genetic information is actually appearing everywhere. Since we don’t see this rise of novel biological information then evolution can’t be true and it can’t be the method that God has chosen and uses.
One of the reasons why the 6-day argument is so important touches upon this. The last of the genetic information for the whole biosphere was imbedded in matter by the Logos of the Father, Christ, sometime during day 6. After this no novel information was formed because the Bible tells us that the creative period was finished and perfect. There not being any more information arising is a final nail in the materialist coffin. The materialist argues that there is some principle at work in the natural order which is able to generate new information. If we witnessed this actually occurring then the unbeliever is perfectly rational to conclude that the matter of the universe can produce new biological information without God’s mind doing it, that this information actually popped into existence out of nothing. He’s seen it happen!
No it would entirely remiss of us to beg the question at this point and claim that God was behind this. By not seeing any new information arise, a fact which supports the biblically orthodox belief that that job was done quickly and ended millennia ago, animism, pantheism and other forms of evolutionary paganism can make no truths claims about the world. Matter does not have “spirit” that produces biological information. If evolution were true, matter would be animated, and new biological information would be appearing all around us. If this were the case, it would appear to the unbeliever that matter itself possessed the ability to create life. Biological life can almost be reduced to biological information and if matter seemed to bring forth this non-material information everywhere, continually, how could a person be blamed for concluding that matter itself was the source for life.
Information is not a material entity. If evolution were true we would have an essentially material process generating something new, something non-material. We truly could say something came from nothing, and more importantly, continues forever, having something eternally coming from nothing. The unbeliever can continue arguing that matter does produce biological information because evolution is true. A Christian can’t say that evolution is true AND God is putting the information into the created order. It makes no sense. The Bible’s saying that it was a limited and brief creative period precludes this continual something from nothing event, thus ending any claim that the unbeliever can make that says that the material can produce biological world. The rise of new information was a one-off event, so to speak, 6000 years ago and so God through this revelation gives a direct proof to enable anyone to distinguish between the created thing and the Creator. Evolution is a mythological philosophy which confuses the two and provides the unbeliever with an intellectual excuse for remaining outside of God’s grace.
God principally reveals himself through our minds. The Holy Spirit, whose attributes are knowledge, wisdom and understanding, seeks to engage our minds with the mind of God. If evolutionary theory, empirically false at it is, disengages a man’s mind from God’s by planting a worldview that says matter can do it all, then Christians’ pushing the idea (or even saying that God’s creative methods are not an issue) is sin and blasphemous.
5. Mark wrote: “I don't know anyone who thinks that humans died before sin came in.”
Again, the ‘I’ is the compass. That is, if ‘I’ haven’t seen or heard X, then it can’t exist.
Nevertheless, wasn’t it the Anglican bishop Hugh Montefiore who said, 'The Garden of Eden is a "myth”, i.e. a historical tale embodying spiritual truth. From the viewpoint of anthropology it is exceedingly unlikely that there was a First Man and Woman. Yet the "myth” contains great truths...” and “Human beings are the result of evolution, and shaped by natural selection. Self-centredness and aggression were essential at every stage of evolution...”
Here’s a man who must have believed man died before sin.
6. Mark said: “I think even your group think that plants died before sin.”
For someone who was once passionate about 6-day creationism how come you don’t know what our position is concerning plants?
Taking the Bible as my authority, the existence of, inter alia, breathing through nostrils, having blood and nephesh constitute a living organism. Plants have none of these. Therefore, their “death” is not death.
7. The question of animal death has been discussed elsewhere on the blog. If you want you can search on the Creationontheweb site for worthwhile arguments.
8. Mark wrote: “The Bible clearly states that death is the penalty for sin - it has to be speaking of human beings only there. I'd suggest that death is the penalty for sin for those who were made to share in God's eternal life. That's not animals, or plants.”
Yes and no. We sin, animals don’t. However, the Bible clearly teaches that as a result of man’s sin the whole world was flooded and all land-dwelling life, except Noah, his family and those animals in the ark, were killed. We sin, animals suffer and die as a result. This is the whole creative groaning under death and sin, “waiting on tippy-toes for the sons of God” to be renewed.
Of course, your acceptance of my biblical explanation raises the little matter as to whether or not you hold the Flood account as being an historical and accurate record, doesn’t it, Mark? If my experience with the many Moorites I’ve met is a guiding rule, then you probably don’t read it that way.
9. I wrote: “But arguably the most serious objection is that the lost are searching for God and you guys continually tell them a pagan myth about creation. Furthermore, you tell them that what appears in the Bible as straightforward historical statements (I didn’t say ‘scientific’) about the beginning – these seem to us and the atheists etc that they are historical propositions – are in fact poetry, copies of or improvements upon pagan stories, or simple stories which catered to a backward Jewish audience.”
In reply, Mark sarcastically wrote: “Well yes, I usually go to atheists to help me understand the Bible better.”
See, now you reveal your true self. Not only do you expressly make an irrelevant comment to a specific point, you arrogantly inform that you don’t consider the opening page of the Bible something even an unbeliever can read and understand. So in fact you believe the atheist needs you to understand these passages. We on the other hand believe God loves the atheist and wouldn’t deceive him. We believe that God wouldn’t first have to set up a priestly cast to interpret Genesis 1 for the atheist, like you’re suggesting. Where in the Gospels does it say that “the common people understood Him.”? Face it, Mark, you’re an elitist.
Well, I guess now is about the time you have a righteous dummie-spit and take your bat and ball home with you.
Mark,
One more thing I should add.
Here's a brilliant quote by Richard Dawkins: "Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening."
While Christians continue to promote, overtly or tacitly, an idea which even atheists admit has not been observed (Or is that observed without really being observed? Or is it not been observed while occasionally been observed? Or was that not observed while definitely not been oberved?) they assist the non-believer in continuing to support a myth of origins, a FABLE (one with a lesson!) that stands absolutely opposed to what the Bible claims Christ did in 6 days.
One story says there is no mind; the other says information from the mind of the Father, through His Logos, was placed in matter, quickly and only a moment in time ago.
First John criticises me for not getting to the real issues and comment on some of the blog entries but going on about this and that. Then he keeps claiming I'm ignoring his points.
It's a lose-lose, but I’ll bite. I'll answer John's post here and try and get to Sam later some time and then Has God Really Said.
“For my part, I don't really know about six literal days. I don't really care either. I'm fairly sure the universe is old, not young, but if that turns out to be wrong I won't lose any sleep over it. I'm very sceptical about evolution, but again, if that turns out to be right (not in its pure form, but as an expression of providence) then, again, it won't phase me. These questions all seem a bit tendentious to me as I read the Bible (and I say that as someone who was once very passionate about young earth et al).”
Elsewhere you write:
“I know what your position is (at least in general terms - you guys seem to disagree with each other, so I can't always be sure). I held it for several years.”
How can a person twice claim to have been a passionate young earth creationist and yet not “know about six literal days”? Am I missing something here? If you don’t understand the arguments about the 6 days, then you can’t really claim to understand the creationist position. I know many, many creationists who aren’t studying for a master’s and then going on to do a PhD, who left school at 14, yet can tell you why, for example, the Hebrew won’t allow anything other than 6 actual days in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20.’
The statement about not knowing about six literal days was a very mild figure of speech. I don’t know about six literal days in the sense that I don’t know whether I think that’s what the Bible teaches. I see good arguments on both sides for both a literal and non-literal reading of chapter one. I used to hold to a literal view, now I think the position is less strong than most creationists admit.
Hope that removes any confusion.
2. And why have you not responded to our quoting several Church fathers’ statements supporting a 6-day creation? Why have you consistently disregarded this?
Because I will need to do a lot of work to check this issue out. I will have to take every quote you offered and read them in the context of the author’s writing as a whole. And check if there’s more about the issues in the early church that isn’t part of your quotes. That will take days at a minimum.
And so I have asked you and Ktisophilos several times to tell me if the issue is worth the time. If I come back and show that the Early Church disagrees with you, would that change your views?
I know I’ve asked the question, because Sam has answered it.
Answer the question, John. Then I’ll take the days of time to check out the early church with some thoroughness if you say it does matter.
3. You seem to think you can lean on the Bible’s authority when it suits you. These opportunistic episodes tend to be when you sense a possibility of “putting the boot in”. As I’ve told you Moorites before, some of us aren’t from the nice middle-class and academic backgrounds that you guys were brought up in. Some of us hang out with “tax collectors and prostitutes” where notions of moral highground are anathema. Should I be more biblical and call you “broods of vipers” or “hypocrites”? Well, should I?
John, I’m pretty sure you are able to justify any behaviour you want to do. Either by claiming the alternative is middle class, or educated, or by quoting the harshest language the Bible uses as though it sets a basic standard for Christian discussion.
My family background has as much working class as middle class in it. Treating people well is not just a nice middle-class hang up. Often the working class have just as strong a sense of it.
Your language is abusive.
My ‘putting the boot in’ is in asking for there to be a godly standard of behaviour.
If you had bothered to first check you would have read on this blog these are things Michael said himself in response to arguments and evidence we had presented. It’s you, mate, who owe me an apology for attacking me before you engaged your brain and for allowing your tongue to take the lead.
I knew Michael was in England with you because ‘Less Matters’ had mentioned it. If you regard repeating Michael’s own words back to him as slander then you’ve got some strange understanding of the word.
I read the blog totally dedicated to the noble task of having a go at Michael. That told me he’d come and tried to talk with you guys.
The point is that Michael wasn’t part of our discussion. You weren’t passing on a hello. You were putting the boot in. It had nothing to do with the issues we were discussing.
The content of gossip and slander can be true or false. Gossip and slander have to do with maliciously attacking someone’s good name. That was what you were doing.
But my complaint wasn’t to you. That would be a waste of time. My hope was Sam and the others would show me their commitment to a Christian way of behaviour.
How about it guys? Are you going to stand by John’s and Ktisophilos’ behaviour by your silence?
In any case, Gordon Cheng’s very unchristian attacks on us have been the subject of much discussion here. Neither Gordon nor his supporters have ever given an unqualified retraction for the arrogance and name-calling but instead threw up some pretty pointlessly puerile excuses to avoid showing a cupful from the ocean of humility and love that Moorites are supposed to possess.
I wasn’t part of that discussion. If I had been, I would have spoken out against abuse no matter who said it.
Nonetheless, according to you, everything you’ve done is sterlingly Christian. So I can’t see what Gordo or his supporters could have done that could have been worse than your behaviour here. The only things you and Ktisophilos haven’t done so far is swear or blaspheme. And I find it hard to believe that Gordo did that.
If you have a problem with Gordo’s actions, then acknowledge that you’re speaking on the same level. (And from my experience of Gordo, you’re fighting on a much lower level). If Gordo was being unchristian there, then what of you and Ktisophilos here?
You sketch out a substantial response to my point:
4. You write: “I think that God is able to act through secondary causes. When someone takes medicine I see this as God healing them. I don't see God's role as healer substituted or diluted by medicine being involved. The same goes for when I give thanks for food--God gave it to me even though a lot of people and inanimate physical processes were involved.
If you want to say that the making of humanity (or of things in the cosmos) is different from this principle, that I hope we have in common, could you sketch it out for me?”
I won’t quote you because it is a very full reply, which is appreciated.
I’ll try and summarise your argument and respond to each step. I’ll put my summaries of your position in italics.
First, medicine and evolution are not equivalent because evolution creates new information and chemistry is testable.
This doesn’t answer my point. God is free to act directly (miraculously) or through things he has made. The Bible is clear in both scenarios that God’s hand is behind it.
Evolution does not remove God as Creator, any more than anything else that God works through removes God.
Evolution is unverified and seems to contradict what we know of science elsewhere. So God can’t be doing it.
Well, yes. That’s why I’m sceptical about it as a scientific position. That has little to do with the Bible though. That’s a scientific question. But on this point we’re agreed. It doesn’t seem good science. And hence I’m sceptical that God is actually doing it.
But that’s not a question of heresy. Why don’t we stick with the Bible, rather than keep moving off to science? That’s one of my concerns about your position, the way science keeps invading theological discussion.
The next one is pretty important so I’ll quote it in bold
One of the reasons why the 6-day argument is so important touches upon this. The last of the genetic information for the whole biosphere was imbedded in matter by the Logos of the Father, Christ, sometime during day 6. After this no novel information was formed because the Bible tells us that the creative period was finished and perfect. There not being any more information arising is a final nail in the materialist coffin. The materialist argues that there is some principle at work in the natural order which is able to generate new information. If we witnessed this actually occurring then the unbeliever is perfectly rational to conclude that the matter of the universe can produce new biological information without God’s mind doing it, that this information actually popped into existence out of nothing. He’s seen it happen!
I have problems with this.
“Very good” does not necessarily mean perfect. I will agree that creation was finished by the end of the sixth day.
But does a finished creation mean no new biological information? You claim it does, but I don’t see where Scripture says that. And without Scripture spelling it out, how does a creature know what creating involves?
In fact, if your position on animals is similar to Ktisopholis, then you probably hold to new biological information being created. For you would think that carnivores came into existence after sin. That would involve some kind of new biological information, and so the sixth day is not an absolute barrier for you either in the creation of new knowledge.
As to witnessing it happen and so deciding God is not involved, that argument goes for every natural process in the world. To paraphrase your argument: “The unbeliever is perfectly rational to conclude that the matter of the world can produce (pick whatever you like—new life, beauty, knowledge) without God doing it.” Your argument proves too much, as it denies God working through instruments.
Your final couple of paragraphs seem to be based around the idea that:
Material objects can’t create new information as that is the job of ‘spirit’.
So the answer to the philosophy of materialism is to embrace the philosophy of dualism?
I’ll pass.
I don’t think the Bible requires me to sign up to Greek metaphysics any more than it requires me to sign up to materialism. How information arises, and what is the relation of matter to information is a question for philosophers and scientists. It is really straying beyond the Bible.
I’m neither a materialist or a dualist. And I will never try and preach faith in Christ by attacking one philosophical metaphysic with another. Let’s move on from this point, because if this is critical to creationism I will never embrace it. I will never subordinate the Bible to philosophy, so that it can only be understood on the basis of a pre-existing metaphysic. That really has been the road to heresy and wrong doctrine many times.
5. Mark wrote: “I don't know anyone who thinks that humans died before sin came in.”
Again, the ‘I’ is the compass. That is, if ‘I’ haven’t seen or heard X, then it can’t exist.
Nevertheless, wasn’t it the Anglican bishop Hugh Montefiore who said, 'The Garden of Eden is a "myth”, i.e. a historical tale embodying spiritual truth. From the viewpoint of anthropology it is exceedingly unlikely that there was a First Man and Woman. Yet the "myth” contains great truths...” and “Human beings are the result of evolution, and shaped by natural selection. Self-centredness and aggression were essential at every stage of evolution...”
Here’s a man who must have believed man died before sin.
But he’s not a Sydney Anglican Heretic, is he?
“I don’t know anyone” means, in the context of this site, “I don’t know any Sydney Anglican Heretics”. I thought we were just discussing our heresy.
I didn’t realise we had to answer for everyone else’s as well.
6. Mark said: “I think even your group think that plants died before sin.”
For someone who was once passionate about 6-day creationism how come you don’t know what our position is concerning plants?
Creationism changes over time. I haven’t been one for over ten years. And you guys have a couple of novel twists I hadn’t come across when I was one.
Taking the Bible as my authority, the existence of, inter alia, breathing through nostrils, having blood and nephesh constitute a living organism. Plants have none of these. Therefore, their “death” is not death.
So they die – biological activity ceases. But we agree that that is not what the Bible is speaking of.
Good.
7. The question of animal death has been discussed elsewhere on the blog. If you want you can search on the Creationontheweb site for worthwhile arguments.
I’m not made of time any more than you. You and I are talking. You’re the one investing months of your life to convince the world of my heresy. Make the argument yourself.
8. Mark wrote: “The Bible clearly states that death is the penalty for sin - it has to be speaking of human beings only there. I'd suggest that death is the penalty for sin for those who were made to share in God's eternal life. That's not animals, or plants.”
Yes and no. We sin, animals don’t. However, the Bible clearly teaches that as a result of man’s sin the whole world was flooded and all land-dwelling life, except Noah, his family and those animals in the ark, were killed. We sin, animals suffer and die as a result. This is the whole creative groaning under death and sin, “waiting on tippy-toes for the sons of God” to be renewed.
Of course, your acceptance of my biblical explanation raises the little matter as to whether or not you hold the Flood account as being an historical and accurate record, doesn’t it, Mark? If my experience with the many Moorites I’ve met is a guiding rule, then you probably don’t read it that way.
I think the Flood is a historical and accurate record.
And I think you’ve bypassed my point. It’s not, “Do animals sometimes die because of human actions”—that’s obviously true. God’s judgement on human sin sometimes affects the non-moral creation.
But when the Bible says that death entered the world through one man’s sin, is it referring to the death of animals as well as men? I’d suggest that the context in Romans 5 seems to exclude animals, as do the other places in the NT where death and sin are linked.
9. I wrote: “But arguably the most serious objection is that the lost are searching for God and you guys continually tell them a pagan myth about creation. Furthermore, you tell them that what appears in the Bible as straightforward historical statements (I didn’t say ‘scientific’) about the beginning – these seem to us and the atheists etc that they are historical propositions – are in fact poetry, copies of or improvements upon pagan stories, or simple stories which catered to a backward Jewish audience.”
In reply, Mark sarcastically wrote: “Well yes, I usually go to atheists to help me understand the Bible better.”
See, now you reveal your true self. Not only do you expressly make an irrelevant comment to a specific point, you arrogantly inform that you don’t consider the opening page of the Bible something even an unbeliever can read and understand. So in fact you believe the atheist needs you to understand these passages. We on the other hand believe God loves the atheist and wouldn’t deceive him. We believe that God wouldn’t first have to set up a priestly cast to interpret Genesis 1 for the atheist, like you’re suggesting. Where in the Gospels does it say that “the common people understood Him.”? Face it, Mark, you’re an elitist.
The irrelevant comment I made (left out by you in your quote) was:
Do you also go to the atheists to get a view on the late date of the Pentateuch and how it is a pastiche of mutually antagonistic sources, John?
Atheists tend to read the Bible in a way that confirms their rejection of the Word of God. They don’t just read six literal days. They also read a contradiction between chapter one and two. If you’re going to appeal to atheists to get a sense of the natural sense, then you need to accept their ruling that chapter one and two contradict each other.
Your response to this is to invoke a widespread practice of ANE historical writing—something that is hardly obvious to the average reader, and smacks of the elitism you accuse me of. It’s not the natural sense as an atheist would see it.
And you’ve passed over my point:
I think what we tell them is that Genesis 1-3 was written to show its original hearers as clearly as possible how to think of the world and God's relation to it.
We think that God accommadated himself to human capacity, but we think all the Bible is accommadated to human capacity. Classically, reformed theology has said that God isn't 'angry' and doesn't 'repent' in a strict literal sense either-they are accommadations to human capacity.
I don't see this as that different.
Finally, we have:
Well, I guess now is about the time you have a righteous dummie-spit and take your bat and ball home with you.
If you think your words might have this response, why say them? Sam says you’re trying to win me over because you love me. So why say things you think are likely to provoke me into getting upset and leaving?
In Christ,
Mark
Sam,
I perceived your preconception to be that of Biblical Creationists asserting that because a person doesn't hold to a Biblical Creationist view then that person can't be a Christian.
I thought we had settled this back with my quotes from Calvin. But I’m happy to look at this some more as I think it matters a lot. Let me summarise my views:
1. I do not think that all six day creationists believe that one has to believe in six day creation to be saved.
2. I do think that many six day creationists speak as though this view must be believed to be saved. That could just be over-enthusiasm in arguing for something that they think is critical in the modern world or it could be something worse. As you’ve said, time will tell if what we have there is a small seemingly harmless change.
3. I think that a heretic can’t be saved if they persist in their heresy.
I showed that point 3 is Calvin’s view as well and you seemed to accept that and also agree with point 3.
Point 3 is really the issue. My issue is simply with the word ‘heresy’. Saying that we are deeply wrong, that we dishonour God, that we stumble people looking for God are all serious charges. But calling us ‘heretics’ is an even more serious charge, as the quotes from Calvin showed. Calvin said that a heretic has the name of Christ only, not the reality.
As long as the charge of heresy is on the table I can’t have any other view then that you make this issue necessary for salvation.
This is a constructed defence barrier many in the church have retreated behind to avoid engaging with us on the clear Word of God on origins.
Maybe. However, when I am faced with a Pentecostal (as has happened) who gets angrier and angrier as I talk about the gospel and finally blurts out ‘but miracles are important too’ I suspect that the Jesus Christ is being sidelined by them, and my guard goes up.
Like your group, such Pentecostals claim that Jesus is more than a Saviour, that his glory extends to other areas, such as miracle working. And that by not honouring his miracle-working glory I stumble people who are seeking.
The way you guys talk about this puts me on my guard—it’s one of the reasons why I left the view in the first place.
You go on to imply we add to the gospel. I have encountered this before. If you were to read my earlier blog 'A Perilous Path' you will see that, with Puritan John Owen, I see dangers in the professor of Christ demeaning the "offices" of Jesus Christ and, in this respect, the "office" of Jesus Christ Creator. John Owen made the following striking statement: "The whole foundation of all gospel faith rests in the glory of Christ's person and offices." This is a far more glorious and Christ honouring perception of gospel truth than you have thus far elaborated.
Well, sure. I’ve been trying to re-examine the charge of heresy, so I haven’t been trying to sketch out my view of the fullness of the gospel. I agree with John Owen though. And my grasp of Jesus Christ as Creator is even greater than it was when I was a six-day creationist. Not as a result of that move necessarily, but God has shown me so much more of the sheer wonder of Christ’s gracious Lordship over all things and how he stands at the centre of all reality.
I wonder what you think of the late Charles Templeton, renowned Atheist. At the outset he professed Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and was on a par with Billy Graham as an Evangelist. His book "Farewell To God" details his descent to atheism because he failed to grasp the truth of Jesus Christ in his office as Creator. Whether you will hold to him never having been a Christian or a Christian who lost faith (I suspect you will take the former view) the root cause of his unbelief was an errant (and I say heretical) view of the person and activity of Jesus Christ in his office as Creator.
Sure, I’ve already acknowledged it happens. But I think it’s true both ways. There are others who abandon belief in God because they think they have to accept a six day creation and deciding that’s wrong casts doubt on the whole Christian faith for them. What do you make of those situations? Are they a weakness for your defensive strategy against unbelief like Templeton might be for us?
Sometime earlier you asked me something along the lines of whether I would still hold to my Biblical Creationist position if it was demonstrated that most of the church 'fathers' didn't hold to that which I believe on origins. I see that I hadn't answered the question so I attempt to do so here.
Thanks Sam. I really, really mean that. It’s a gesture of good faith and is appreciated.
Ultimately, it comes down to what Jesus Christ has revealed in Word written and Incarnate. It is encouraging if the mainstream of church 'fathers' as well as Reformers and Puritans are saying the same thing as a plain reading of Scripture today reveals. When mainstream at higher times of the life of the church agree then that is noteworthy. However, as already said, it is ultimately what Scripture says. An alternative view must not be inconsistent with Scripture.
Absolutely agree and well said.
In Christ,
Mark
Mark,
I see that my reponsibilities elsewhere inhibit my keeping up with discussion. I had prepared off-line a reponse to earlier questions you raised and I see you have broached some of the answers in answers to John.
Neverthless, I provide my response here and you can discard that which has already been addressed. Nothing personal is intended here for I would say likewise to anyone who raised similar assertions or questions.
By calling for my intervention at John's comments you have taken me back to my childhood when a sister would be offended at her brother's words or actions and called upon an elder sibling or a parent to chastise the perceived offender. I must advise that I shall not intervene. Your perception is not my perception. I hope you and John can sort the matter out.
Concerning your proposition of God using secondary causes can you tell me - when the Lord Jesus Christ turned water into wine at Cana or when Aaron's staff blossomed and produced almonds - did God use secondary causes and what in the language leads you to your conclusion?
Concerning your assertion about plants dying, I am not aware of any Biblical Creationist who holds that death of plants is equivalent to death of a creature in which is "the breath of life" (nephesh).
Your contention that animals will not share in God's eternal life is an argument from silence. Scripture does not make an overt statement.
In my view, animals will share in God's eternal life and I think a case for this can be mounted from Scripture. Why would the creation(animals included) wait in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed so that they can be liberated from their bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God if they are to be obliterated on that day? (Rom. 8:19-21) If we are anointed by the Lord to judge angels as well as the world (1 Cor. 6:2-3) why not also have authority to decide, for life, a representation of God's created animals? After all, animals' existence and future had been ordained by the Lord God to be subject to rule by man before the fall (Gen. 1:29), brought by the Lord God to Adam to be named (Gen. 2:19) and cursed by the Lord God for usurping the order of creation (Gen. 3:14). Was not a representation of animals brought by the Lord God to Noah to be saved from the flood? (Gen. 7:8-9) If they were slaughtered for the sins of man (Gen 6:5-7, Ex. 16, Deut. 13:15) why not a representation be saved to eternal life? Isn't this what the Apostle Paul is speaking about in Romans 8:19-21? After all, if decay leads to death then the opposite to bondage to decay must be freedom to life.
When our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the reversal or rebirth of all things (Matt. 19:28) does he not include a representation of all that was created in the first place, including animals? In my humble opinion that which was corrupted to death by Satan's evil activity must be representatively restored to relationship with the Creator and thus restored to life else the redemptive work, indeed the Lord Jesus Christ's very words, are unfulfilled - there remains something of Satan's corrupting activities viz cursed animals (Gen. 3:14) which shall stand forever as a triumph of Satan over God.
I agree with the view of Graeme Goldsworthy on page 55 of his book "Gospel and Kingdom" where he says that the universe fell as a consequence of fallen man. Fallen man cannot live outside the garden in an unfallen world. The idea of God creating a world where he uses death, disease and suffering as a means (I think you imply as a secondary cause) of creating is a corruption and insult to the revelation of Jesus Christ in Word written and Incarnate. What do the words "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Gen. 1:31) mean if the animals were disease riddled, mauling and killing one and other? That evasive statement - "good for God's purposes" is unacceptable because it only magnifies the insult to God. Instead, try a little experiment (not that you would) - take a bodkin take your own or a stray dog or cat into you arms and slowly pierce the bodkin into the flesh of the animal, drive it deeper and deeper. Watch it struggle, listen to it cry out in pain and fear and, depending on where you have plunged the bodkin, watch the animal die - is this what you think Jesus Christ says is "very good"? Is this the author of life? Is this love on display? If Jesus Christ ordained animals to be mauling and killing one an other as part of the creative process then he is the cause and he is a monster far removed from the nature of Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture. Such a God of secondary causes viz evolution by natural selection in creation, is a man made God and, as I say - a monster.
No, instead, disease and suffering and death came into the world as a consequence of Adam's sin, not as part of Jesus Christ's creative works. Man's sin affected the whole world.
Sam
Mark,
1. Mark said: “The statement about not knowing about six literal days was a very mild figure of speech. I don’t know about six literal days in the sense that I don’t know whether I think that’s what the Bible teaches. I see good arguments on both sides for both a literal and non-literal reading of chapter one. I used to hold to a literal view, now I think the position is less strong than most creationists admit.”
I assume that when you read Genesis 1, Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 you do see that it actually says that God created everything in the heavens and earth in 6 days.
So now can you please tell us, from the text, why you would not take these verses to indicate 6 consecutive days of approximately 24 hours each?
2. I wrote: “And why have you not responded to our quoting several Church fathers’ statements supporting a 6-day creation? Why have you consistently disregarded this?”
Mark responded: “Because I will need to do a lot of work to check this issue out. I will have to take every quote you offered and read them in the context of the author’s writing as a whole. And check if there’s more about the issues in the early church that isn’t part of your quotes. That will take days at a minimum.
And so I have asked you and Ktisophilos several times to tell me if the issue is worth the time. If I come back and show that the Early Church disagrees with you, would that change your views?”
But I have! I previously made the point that we don’t take our lead from the Church fathers. What this blog’s point pointed out was that the majority of these men held to a literal view of the days. This of course did not discount some of them building upon these typologically, but they always professed the straightforward view, something entirely missing from Moore College courses.
I also pointed out that the Church over its history tended toward the literal and it’s only in modern times that the Church preponderately has surrendered the literal to the typological or metaphoric or whatever. The literal nowadays, particularly in the West, is the minority view. Why the change?
My question is, if you find that there are no riders on these men’s quotes, would you admit that the Church tended toward the literal or are we wasting our time?
3. I wrote: “You seem to think you can lean on the Bible’s authority when it suits you. These opportunistic episodes tend to be when you sense a possibility of “putting the boot in”. As I’ve told you Moorites before, some of us aren’t from the nice middle-class and academic backgrounds that you guys were brought up in. Some of us hang out with “tax collectors and prostitutes” where notions of moral highground are anathema. Should I be more biblical and call you “broods of vipers” or “hypocrites”? Well, should I?”
Mark wrote: “John, I’m pretty sure you are able to justify any behaviour you want to do. Either by claiming the alternative is middle class, or educated, or by quoting the harshest language the Bible uses as though it sets a basic standard for Christian discussion.
My family background has as much working class as middle class in it. Treating people well is not just a nice middle-class hang up. Often the working class have just as strong a sense of it.
Your language is abusive.
My ‘putting the boot in’ is in asking for there to be a godly standard of behaviour.”
Actually, I don’t regard my language as abusive, but rather I’m calling a spade a spade. I don’t know too many working-class people who make it to Oxford after doing a stint lecturing at Moore. Maybe it’s you who’s out of touch and you’re confusing the niceties of your position in the world with the bigger world outside the Anglican’s academic ivory tower.
Have you ever considered – and Moorites tend not to as a rule – that your tone and way of speaking down to people is offensive? Look, Mark, I’m not offended but you do come across that way. Moorites have that attitude to people and I guess it arises from the culture at Moore. I suggest you just take my comments, even if offensive, on the chin rather than working yourself up. For myself, I take the Moorite holier-than-thou attitude with a pinch of salt nowadays as I’ve realised it’s just not representative of the majority of Christians I used to fellowship with in Europe, Africa or the Middle East. Of course I feel sorry that Moorites project their own culture onto others as though theirs is the paradigm. I’m sorry, Mark, but I just don’t like the Moore belief in itself! To me, and many, many others, it is really unchristian and takes itself far too seriously in the greater scheme of things.
It’s interesting that you regard Jesus’ own words (“vipers”, “hypocrites”) as harsh. He was making a very good point against the religious who’s-who. Wouldn’t you consider Moore lecturers and archbishops and their sons part of the religious establishment? I would!
4. I said: “If you had bothered to first check you would have read on this blog these are things Michael said himself in response to arguments and evidence we had presented. It’s you, mate, who owe me an apology for attacking me before you engaged your brain and for allowing your tongue to take the lead.
I knew Michael was in England with you because ‘Less Matters’ had mentioned it. If you regard repeating Michael’s own words back to him as slander then you’ve got some strange understanding of the word.
Mark responded: “I read the blog totally dedicated to the noble task of having a go at Michael. That told me he’d come and tried to talk with you guys.
The point is that Michael wasn’t part of our discussion. You weren’t passing on a hello. You were putting the boot in. It had nothing to do with the issues we were discussing.
The content of gossip and slander can be true or false. Gossip and slander have to do with maliciously attacking someone’s good name. That was what you were doing.
But my complaint wasn’t to you. That would be a waste of time. My hope was Sam and the others would show me their commitment to a Christian way of behaviour.
How about it guys? Are you going to stand by John’s and Ktisophilos’ behaviour by your silence?”
Here you go again. “Oh, I’m insulted. And now you’ve insulted my buddy Michael.” Get a life, mate! Just got to show the world you’re better than someone else at every turn. Yep, typical Moorite!
5. I wrote: “In any case, Gordon Cheng’s very unchristian attacks on us have been the subject of much discussion here. Neither Gordon nor his supporters have ever given an unqualified retraction for the arrogance and name-calling but instead threw up some pretty pointlessly puerile excuses to avoid showing a cupful from the ocean of humility and love that Moorites are supposed to possess.”
Mark replied: “I wasn’t part of that discussion. If I had been, I would have spoken out against abuse no matter who said it.
Nonetheless, according to you, everything you’ve done is sterlingly Christian. So I can’t see what Gordo or his supporters could have done that could have been worse than your behaviour here. The only things you and Ktisophilos haven’t done so far is swear or blaspheme. And I find it hard to believe that Gordo did that.
If you have a problem with Gordo’s actions, then acknowledge that you’re speaking on the same level. (And from my experience of Gordo, you’re fighting on a much lower level). If Gordo was being unchristian there, then what of you and Ktisophilos here?”
I was waiting for it…and it arrived: the “nevertheless”. It’s all kind of déjà vu!
Now can we put all of this behind us or do you want to go another few rounds of attack, counter-attack? It’s all kind of boring for me, but if you want to carry on, I’m your man! However, I’d really prefer to get back to the issues. But because I’m a generous man I’ll let you have the last jibe, as long as you tell me that you want to end it on your last word. OK?
6. Mark writes: “You sketch out a substantial response to my point:
I think that God is able to act through secondary causes. When someone takes medicine I see this as God healing them. I don't see God's role as healer substituted or diluted by medicine being involved. The same goes for when I give thanks for food--God gave it to me even though a lot of people and inanimate physical processes were involved.
If you want to say that the making of humanity (or of things in the cosmos) is different from this principle, that I hope we have in common, could you sketch it out for me?”
You responded: “I’ll try and summarise your argument and respond to each step. I’ll put my summaries of your position in italics.
First, medicine and evolution are not equivalent because evolution creates new information and chemistry is testable.
This doesn’t answer my point. God is free to act directly (miraculously) or through things he has made. The Bible is clear in both scenarios that God’s hand is behind it.
Evolution does not remove God as Creator, any more than anything else that God works through removes God.”
My response: “Maybe what I wrote was unclear. My points were that,
(i) Evolution demands genetic information to be continually arising de novo. It isn’t at all. Therefore evolution is false.
(ii) Let’s assume that it is arising everywhere. The materialist would continue looking for some physical law or whatever that could provide an explanation for this phenomenon. He would have no reason to be circumspect about it and suddenly go, “Aha! God’s behind it!” It’s not a miracle as such because it is a commonplace event.
(iii) However, because creation ended after 6 days and we do not see information arising, just the opposite, we can point to the creative order, in particular the genome, and say, “Science only deals with the non-miraculous i.e. the repeatable and the observable. No new information arising is an observable fact. Yet the genetic information must have a source but there is no law operating which produces it. One of the principles that modern science rests on is that the laws of nature are continuous and that they don’t suddenly pack up and go home. This means that the rise of genetic information was a miraculous one-off event and stands as a direct challenge to evolutionary theory.
(iv) The 6 day account is an historical record that likewise directly challenges the evolutionary story of genetic information appearing over and over again. If the creation is finished, that is if we take the words of Scripture plainly, then we can’t expect an on-going, endless creation of new genetic information. That would mean the creation is still creating and hardly constitutes a finished work by God. What we have since day 6 is a reshuffling of already existing genetic information.
7. Mark wrote: “But that’s not a question of heresy. Why don’t we stick with the Bible, rather than keep moving off to science? That’s one of my concerns about your position, the way science keeps invading theological discussion.”
Mark, I’m not a Platonist and have my (heavenly)theological facts and my (terrestrial)scientific facts in separate baskets. This is a major weakness of the prevailing philosophy of Moore. Many creationists also fall into this trap believing that one has to sift scientific observations through a theological epistemology. But that’s an entirely rather large can of worms I don’t wish to open on a word processor. Come back to Oz and I’ll buy you a beer and we can discuss it.
8. I originally wrote:
One of the reasons why the 6-day argument is so important touches upon this. The last of the genetic information for the whole biosphere was imbedded in matter by the Logos of the Father, Christ, sometime during day 6. After this no novel information was formed because the Bible tells us that the creative period was finished and perfect. There not being any more information arising is a final nail in the materialist coffin. The materialist argues that there is some principle at work in the natural order which is able to generate new information. If we witnessed this actually occurring then the unbeliever is perfectly rational to conclude that the matter of the universe can produce new biological information without God’s mind doing it, that this information actually popped into existence out of nothing. He’s seen it happen!
a. Mark responded: “I have problems with this.
“Very good” does not necessarily mean perfect. I will agree that creation was finished by the end of the sixth day.”
My present response: So, you would take it that a perfect Being would willingly produce something which is sub-optimal? If ‘very good’ does not mean perfect, then it must have had design faults, errors or whatever, akin to what a grade pass-average graduate engineer would manufacture.
When I build a shed or a fireplace I want perfection, which is of course impossible for me a mere human. For God? Come on, Mark, be reasonable!
b1. Mark wrote: “But does a finished creation mean no new biological information? You claim it does, but I don’t see where Scripture says that.”
Well, when you inject new biological information, that’s creating and would mean the biological world is still being created. Scripture says it’s over. Information, of the type that biology requires, ultimately comes from mind. It can’t arise from stochastic processes and doesn’t arise from present, observable laws. Since God put the genetic information directly into matter, if new information were arising then God would be still creating, something which opposes scripture. The Bible says that God rested from his creative activity at the beginning of day 7.
What do you think scripture means by that verse?
B2 Mark: “And without Scripture spelling it out, how does a creature know what creating involves?”
The Bible says God created through wisdom, knowledge and understanding. “Co-incidentally” we humans also “create” by these faculties, faculties of mind. We can know something about the way God creates because he wants us to know this and because we are made in his image we can ascertain a lot about God. The curtain has been torn down and we have access to God’s mind through Christ. God doesn’t create so differently to us that we can’t know something about his ways. Science is a great example of this enterprise.
8. Mark wrote: “In fact, if your position on animals is similar to Ktisopholis, then you probably hold to new biological information being created. For you would think that carnivores came into existence after sin. That would involve some kind of new biological information, and so the sixth day is not an absolute barrier for you either in the creation of new knowledge.”
I doubt very much whether Kt holds that carnivores arose through additional information. The bible tells us that animals did not eat meat in the original creation, just like man didn’t. So, it’s more than likely that a carnivore’s tools were already present but used for an entirely different function.
9. Mark wrote: “As to witnessing it happen and so deciding God is not involved, that argument goes for every natural process in the world. To paraphrase your argument: “The unbeliever is perfectly rational to conclude that the matter of the world can produce (pick whatever you like—new life, beauty, knowledge) without God doing it.” Your argument proves too much, as it denies God working through instruments.”
I agree that beauty and knowledge etc are problems for the non-believer. But biology is right in front of us and is not nearly as intangible as these other phenomena so we can press for an answer without too much philosophical posturing. ‘Beauty’, for example, is quite a slippery beast: One man’s Elle McPherson is another’s Ruby Wax. However, biology isn’t nearly as ethereal and has particular well-defined components. The materialist says life is chemistry + time + chance. The creationist says we also need ‘information’ or ‘concept’ or ‘logos’, and then asks for a material source for a non-material entity. Life explained on the strict creationist model is the perfect apologetic against the materialist because it takes on the materialist on his own turf. We don’t have to speak in heavenly language.
There is no twice-removed causation for biological information’s appearance: God’s mind has directly impressed his thoughts upon chemistry according to a preconceived code (again direct evidence against the materialist worldview), which obeys rules of grammar and syntax (yet again a repudiation of the materialist claim). The rise of biological information defies naturalistic explanation for the laws of physics and chemistry, and, indeed, biology, say it cannot happen…yet it HAS happened. What’s more, it does not happen any longer.
10. Mark wrote: “Your final couple of paragraphs seem to be based around the idea that:
Material objects can’t create new information as that is the job of ‘spirit’.
So the answer to the philosophy of materialism is to embrace the philosophy of dualism?
I’ll pass.”
It’s actually the message of Christianity.
11. Mark wrote: “I don’t think the Bible requires me to sign up to Greek metaphysics any more than it requires me to sign up to materialism. How information arises, and what is the relation of matter to information is a question for philosophers and scientists. It is really straying beyond the Bible.
I’m neither a materialist or a dualist. And I will never try and preach faith in Christ by attacking one philosophical metaphysic with another. Let’s move on from this point, because if this is critical to creationism I will never embrace it. I will never subordinate the Bible to philosophy, so that it can only be understood on the basis of a pre-existing metaphysic. That really has been the road to heresy and wrong doctrine many times.”
So, what do you understand by Christ’s being named ‘Logos’? So all that talk throughout the Bible about wisdom, knowledge and understanding means very little to you?
So the answer for you to all people’s enquiries is solely to preach Christ crucified?
12. Mark wrote: “I think the Flood is an historical and accurate record.”
So do you believe that the whole world was covered with water, destroying all life on the face of the earth and that only Noah, his family and the animals on the ark survived, and that everyone who is alive today has Noah as their greatest of grandfathers, just as the Bible says?
13. Mark wrote: “But when the Bible says that death entered the world through one man’s sin, is it referring to the death of animals as well as men? I’d suggest that the context in Romans 5 seems to exclude animals, as do the other places in the NT where death and sin are linked.”
Well, what about Romans 8:20-23?
Here are a few translations:
“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”
“Everything God made is waiting with excitement for God to show his children's glory completely. Everything God made was changed to become useless, not by its own wish but because God wanted it and because all along there was this hope: that everything God made would be set free from ruin to have the freedom and glory that belong to God's children. We know that everything God made has been waiting until now in pain, like a woman ready to give birth. Not only the world, but we also have been waiting with pain inside us.”
“In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God's purpose it has been so limited - yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God! It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail.”
What do you reckon, might it not include animal death as a result of our sinning?
In any case, can you imagine Adam’s pet dog ripping out the throat of a cat on the 7th day and the creation still being called “very good”? Or what about a lion swallowing a lamb for an entrée on day 6?
14. Mark wrote: “Atheists tend to read the Bible in a way that confirms their rejection of the Word of God. They don’t just read six literal days. They also read a contradiction between chapter one and two. If you’re going to appeal to atheists to get a sense of the natural sense, then you need to accept their ruling that chapter one and two contradict each other.”
This is really a red-herring and a straw-man. The argument is not whether there are internal contradictions in the Bible but whether 6 days with the formula ‘an evening and a morning…this is the X day’ on any non-tendentious reading could possibly mean anything other than 6 normal, consecutive days. Even Christians believe there is a contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2 but what’s interesting is that Richard Dawkins believes that Genesis 1 means what it says. Even an atheist can read plain words but the Moorites find it far too a difficult task. They want to invoke chiasm, repetition, mirroring, numbers etc etc, in order to explain away that Genesis is not accurate history. Of course, we know that the real [t]reason is that science, so-called, has “proved” that the earth is billions of years old, and we know only an uneducated fool would question that, to paraphrase Rob Forsyth.
Now, if I showed an atheist copies of ANE stele etc that have the same pattern of Genesis 1 and 2 he would no longer have an argument. This may all be quite an academic exercise but the reading of Exodus 20 and Genesis 1 is hardly academic, despite Moore’s attempts to make it such.
15. Mark wrote: “And you’ve passed over my point:
I think what we tell them is that Genesis 1-3 was written to show its original hearers as clearly as possible how to think of the world and God's relation to it.
We think that God accommadated himself to human capacity, but we think all the Bible is accommadated to human capacity. Classically, reformed theology has said that God isn't 'angry' and doesn't 'repent' in a strict literal sense either-they are accommadations to human capacity.
I don't see this as that different.”
Was there a real historical man and woman called Adam and Eve?
So, apart from the fourth commandment being an accommodation to human capacity, what other sections of the Decalogue or the other 600 odd commandments are an accommodation? How about the ones proscribing homosexuality?
So, the basis of the fourth commandment is based on an accommodation to humans’ limited understanding of the cosmos. So we today are much smarter than those dumb Jews at the time of Moses and Jesus. They just couldn’t handle the truth that the world was billions of years old. They were probably still counting on their fingers and toes. You’re joking, aren’t you man?
As I said, please contact me if you get back to Sydney and I'll buy you a beer!
OK, I’ve reread “Did God Really Say?”
There’s nothing there for me to interact with. It has a piecemeal argument from Frei backed up with some quotes to show that Luther and Calvin held to a six day creation. No surprises there.
There is virtually nothing about the Bible in the post at all. It appears to be an attempt to show that Sydney Anglicans buy into a non-literal reading of Scripture generally, but then observes that we are inconsistent. This has already been said at some length in comments, and I don’t find the blogspot version of the accusation any more convincing.
I thought from what had been said that it was some strong argument for the literal sense of Gen 1-3 in Ex 20 and elsewhere.
Perhaps the wrong post was mentioned. But there’s nothing here in “Did God Really Say?” for me to interact with. It leaves me even more unpersuaded of your case.
In Christ,
Mark
By calling for my intervention at John's comments you have taken me back to my childhood when a sister would be offended at her brother's words or actions and called upon an elder sibling or a parent to chastise the perceived offender. I must advise that I shall not intervene. Your perception is not my perception. I hope you and John can sort the matter out.
The analogy is hardly similar. You and John are co-workers in ministry and this is not a family squabble. You share in the responsibility for each other’s actions if you stand by.
That you see nothing wrong in John’s and Ktisophilos’ actions doesn’t surprise me. Disappoints me though.
That you’d stand by when I have indicated how offensive I find it (even if you don’t think it’s wrong) also doesn’t surprise me. It fits with the reasons you gave for your anonymity.
If the abuse continues I’ll have to cut this short – not dusting the sand off my shoes, despite John’s comment to that effect. But it’s wearing me down. The atmosphere on this blog is toxic. The only forum I’ve been on with this tone was the Hell forum on Ship of Fools. And I could only stomach that for a while too.
Concerning your proposition of God using secondary causes can you tell me - when the Lord Jesus Christ turned water into wine at Cana or when Aaron's staff blossomed and produced almonds - did God use secondary causes and what in the language leads you to your conclusion?
No, I don’t think God did use secondary causes there.
But that’s a different issue. Whether God used secondary causes in creation is an issue for how we read Gen 1-2. And I’m happy to discuss that.
My point was a response to the idea that if God is said to have used secondary causes, then his role as Creator has been minimised. If you want to argue that point, then argue that point. Don’t move the discussion to a different point.
Either say, ‘yes you’re right, there’s no theological problem with secondary casues, but we still shouldn’t hold it because the Bible doesn’t teach it for the following reasons’ or explain why you agree with John that secondary causes do dishonour God.
Your contention that animals will not share in God's eternal life is an argument from silence. Scripture does not make an overt statement.
Agreed, I gave several reasons why I thought such a view was implied by what the Bible does say.
And your view that animals are created immortal is just as much an argument from silence.
It may be that animals might also be granted immortality in the New Earth—but there’s no reason to read that back into Gen 1-2. I don’t think the Bible teaches that all redemption does is undo sin and return us back to Adam’s situation. The Bible seems to indicate that the glory of the New will be greater than the first. That means we can’t read redemption and glorification back into creation.
And if we’re going to agree that the Bible is silent on the issue, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to make out that opting for mortal animals over immortal animals is heresy or dishonours God. God’s word determines what honours or dishonours God. And God doesn’t say explicitly whether animals are mortal or immortal. So it cannot be heresy.
But if you’re going to move to inferences I think my case is stronger than the one you’ve presented. Simply pointing out that animals are under the headship of humanity does not establish they are immortal any more than it establishes the immortality of the rest of creation. The same goes with the fact that they experience the consequences of human sin. That also goes for the rest of creation.
I’ll restate the main points of my case,:
The link between death and sin in the NT always has humans as the focus.
Animals are not in the image of God.
There is no promise of resurrection to animals.
There is no hint that the tree of life is intended for animals.
Animals cannot be ‘in Christ’, and are not given the Spirit and receive no adoption as sons—all things linked with eternal life.
When our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the reversal or rebirth of all things (Matt. 19:28) does he not include a representation of all that was created in the first place, including animals? In my humble opinion that which was corrupted to death by Satan's evil activity must be representatively restored to relationship with the Creator and thus restored to life else the redemptive work, indeed the Lord Jesus Christ's very words, are unfulfilled - there remains something of Satan's corrupting activities viz cursed animals (Gen. 3:14) which shall stand forever as a triumph of Satan over God.
Sure, if the curse on animals is that they die. But you’re presupposing your answer in this argument.
I agree with the view of Graeme Goldsworthy on page 55 of his book "Gospel and Kingdom" where he says that the universe fell as a consequence of fallen man. Fallen man cannot live outside the garden in an unfallen world. The idea of God creating a world where he uses death, disease and suffering as a means (I think you imply as a secondary cause) of creating is a corruption and insult to the revelation of Jesus Christ in Word written and Incarnate. What do the words "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Gen. 1:31) mean if the animals were disease riddled, mauling and killing one and other? That evasive statement - "good for God's purposes" is unacceptable because it only magnifies the insult to God. Instead, try a little experiment (not that you would) - take a bodkin take your own or a stray dog or cat into you arms and slowly pierce the bodkin into the flesh of the animal, drive it deeper and deeper. Watch it struggle, listen to it cry out in pain and fear and, depending on where you have plunged the bodkin, watch the animal die - is this what you think Jesus Christ says is "very good"? Is this the author of life? Is this love on display? If Jesus Christ ordained animals to be mauling and killing one an other as part of the creative process then he is the cause and he is a monster far removed from the nature of Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture. Such a God of secondary causes viz evolution by natural selection in creation, is a man made God and, as I say - a monster.
I’d be careful at this point. As we get to God’s words to Job where Job is being rebuked for his demand for an answer for the reason for his suffering we get the following:
Job 38:39-40 "Can you hunt the prey for the lion, Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, When they crouch in their dens, And lie in wait in their lair?
Job 39:13-17 "The ostriches' wings flap joyously With the pinion and plumage of love, For she abandons her eggs to the earth, And warms them in the dust, And she forgets that a foot may crush them, Or that a wild beast may trample them. "She treats her young cruelly, as if they were not hers; Though her labor be in vain, she is unconcerned; Because God has made her forget wisdom, And has not given her a share of understanding.
Job 39:26 - 40:2 "Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars, Stretching his wings toward the south? "Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up, And makes his nest on high? "On the cliff he dwells and lodges, Upon the rocky crag, an inaccessible place. "From there he spies out food; His eyes see it from afar. "His young ones also suck up blood; And where the slain are, there is he."
Then the LORD said to Job, "Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it."
There is nothing in chapters 38-42 that suggest that God is speaking of the terrible situation that has arisen as a result of sin. Quite the opposite, chapter 38 opens by talking of the foundation of the world and in these chapters God seems to directly point to the things I’ve quoted as evidence of his wisdom and power. God hunts for the lion. God makes the ostrich forget wisdom so she treats her young cruelly. The hawk soars and his young ones suck up blood by the understanding of God. These things are mixed in with other things that we’d tend to see as more positive things. There’s nothing in the passage that suggests that these ones I’ve highlighted are due to sin, and the others are due to God. All of it is presented together as an expression of God’s unfathomable wisdom and power that makes any questioning of his ways by a human being out of line.
I think the thrust of chapters 38-42 cut against your concerns here. God doesn’t present carnivores as a consequence of sin, but as an expression of his wisdom.
I’d be careful about speaking too quickly on God’s behalf in the face of suffering and using terms like monsters. That was the mistake of Job’s friends. And it was held against them even though they were, on paper, speaking on God’s behalf. Clark Pinnok does much the same thing when it comes to Hell, and I think it’s similarly unwise.
When you touch upon these issues, the book of Job suggests a lot of caution. God only is Creator. As creatures, we need to tread carefully when we speak of him.
In Christ,
Mark
Hello, I don't mean to interrupt the conversation, but I've been reading and I was interested in finding out more about the following comment by john:
... in a nutshell, it was an AME writing characteristic to record a series of events chronologically, then take the most important event and write another account with less chronology.
I didn't know this and it sounds like a useful piece of information. Can john or someone point me to where I can find out more?
Thanks.
Concerning the instance of Charles Templeton, Mark said "Sure, I’ve already acknowledged it happens. But I think it’s true both ways. There are others who abandon belief in God because they think they have to accept a six day creation and deciding that’s wrong casts doubt on the whole Christian faith for them. What do you make of those situations? Are they a weakness for your defensive strategy against unbelief like Templeton might be for us?"
Surely Charles Templeton is the example of those who " think they have to accept a six day creation and deciding that’s wrong casts doubt on the whole Christian faith for them". He was consistent in his logic. He heard the 'world' saying one thing and the Bible saying another. He sought advice from his friend Billy Graham and later completed theological studies. In neither instance did he get help to defend the Bible so he chose the 'world'.
This is the problem. The Church is so underrepresented by those able to demonstrate the failing of the 'world' view and the superiority of the biblical view. God does retain a remnant in times of decline as in the days of Elijah but they have to be sought out - not derided. Instead, those who Mark deems vulnerable to abandoning belief in God because they want to retain some of the 'world' are encouraged by the majority in the Church to engage in synchretism. I am told that one of the things which helped Christianity become widely accepted in the time of Constantine was that Christians were renowned for being good thinkers. Several centuries later the Roman Catholic Church when 'evangelising' in South America permitted people to retain or synchretise their pagan beliefs, figures and festivals with those of Christianity. The result today is a religious belief for many in South America loaded with superstition and hardly the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Two or more centuries ago leading scientists were Young Earth Creationists. This included one regarded by a survey of current days scientists as the greates scientist to have ever lived - Isaac Newton. Solomon son of David was given capacity by the Lord God to rule Israel with great wisdom. His wisdom and his knowledge of the natural world attracted widespread interest and acclaim. He was to be the type of what Christians ought to be today. By and large we are not. As Sam suggested previously in a blog on this site many in the Church today are like Israel with Moses absent from the camp. They have engaged in syncretism. Whereas Israel of old kept something of Egypt and made it into a graven image of the god who rescued them out of slavery many in the Church today want to keep something of the world's view of beginnings and attempt to meld it into a nature of God not revealed in the Bible.
Neil Moore
Mark, my linking of your appeal for intevention to childhood experience is, despite your attempt to discard it, appropriate because in that and your concern each appeals for righteousness to apply. The analogy therefore remains. Further, I couldn't help thinking you were trying a wedge tactic. I didn't think the issue was as serious as you tried to make it out to be and, all things considered, I will not oblige.
For now I note your view that secondary causes did not apply in the instances I cited. Would you now explain what secondary causes were applied in the creation event and what in the language of Genesis 1 leads you to that conclusion?
I have never maintained the belief that animals will or will not be part of the new creation is a heresy. Scripture just does not make an overt statement on the matter. I have cited my opinion because you first suggested the mortality of animals in arguing for death in animals before man sinned. I believe my view on this matter better fits the nature and activity of Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture. I see you have skirted around the Romans 8:19-21 statement of the Apostle Paul. Please, would you explain what the expectation is for animals since they are part of the creation?
Mark when you say "Sure, if the curse on animals is that they die. But you’re presupposing your answer in this argument." You ought also include yourself in this analysis.
Your calling upon the book of Job for your case is intriguing. Consider Genesis 1:29-30 and ask is the eating habit of the lion and the hawk described in Job a post fall or pre fall habit. Would you also inform me as to whether the creatures behemoth and leviathan described in Job 40 were real creatures? I still need you to respond to the scenario I described of stabbing an animal with a bodkin. Is such an act a demonstration of a person who loves?
Sam
Gareth,
You asked about the repetition in Genesis 1 & 2 and this literary device appearing elsewhere.
Kitchen reports that this form appears in the Karnak Poetical Stela where Amun speaks to King Tuthmosis III, the Gebel Barker Stela and the royal inscriptions of Urartu. (Kitchen, K.A., Ancient Orient and the Old Testament).
I can't be sure, but given that Kitchen's book is over 40 years old, there's a good chance that there is more recent research on the subject.
Thank you John, I shall look it up. It's good to be able to make reference to this sort of information when these questions arise!
I don't enjoy doing this as the tone of the discussion has gotten better over the last few interchanges and several of you have taken the time to write fuller and more substantial interactions. It's much appreciated. For the first time in a while I think it might have been possible to go somewhere--especially now that the relationship of sin and death and whether a literal reading of Gen 1 in relation to chapter 2 is necessitated have distilled out for me as the key issues (for me at least). The issue of accommodation was possibly a third issue.
However, I'm going to pull the plug for the three reasons. I'll take the time to spell them out because I think you deserve it given the time that a couple of you have put into the conversation, even though what I say is unlikely to go down well.
First, Eric's 'joke' on the other thread:
I don't think the 10% goal was puny. 500000 people in bible-believing churches; plus getting the 70000 anglicans to join Baptist churches: a huge goal!
while one of the few genuinely funny moments in my experience of this blog with his view that Bible Believing churches can only be Baptist ones, undercut Sam's claim as to his motivation for what he was doing:
Why Sydney Anglican Heretics and not other denominations? For my part it is because of an attachment to the denomination - at least the evangelical side.
Sam joined this blog, he says, at Eric's invitation. So Sam's attachment to evangelical Anglicans leads him to work with a guy whose ultimate view is that Anglicanism has to become Baptist to be, not just fully biblical but Bible Believing at all?
It stretches credulity to the breaking point.
Second, when I read Did God Really Say, Sam says this towards the end:
I do not expect to be heeded by many Sydney Anglicans in this posting. They are entrenched in their way. As a wise writer in the past once said "The worst chains are those neither seen or felt by the prisoner." I write this for the person who comes upon this website and inquires after the subject.
Even more than Eric's comment this undercut his opening assurances that his actions were motivated by an attempt to win us over. The words here indicate the primary audience is not us in the Diocese (we're terribly trapped in chains we can't see after all. At which point the parable of the speck and the log springs to the mind for some reason) the audience is elsewhere. And you write these things about us as part of some bizzare evangelistic strategy--attacking another denomination as a way to win secularists to Christ (again with minimal explanation of the gospel throughout the blog).
The thing that stung about reading those words was that they made far better sense of the way the contributors write: the hostile stance, the inability to say anything good about the Diocese and its leaders, the abusive language, than my attempt to keep trying to interpret John and Ktisopholis' behaviour in light of Sam's assurances that this was all an act of love for me and the rest of the Diocese. Trust betrayed cuts more deeply than if Sam had shown a few more cards at the start and I had begun this conversation with more of a sense of the implacable hostility of the contributors towards me.
Having Sam play 'good cop' to John's and Ktisopholis' more street fighting approach was fine (not really, but I could just wear it), until the point where I'm no longer sure I can trust how Sam presents himself either. At least John and Ktisophilos never claimed to be motivated by anything noble in their speaking.
And then came the kicker. Over the last few days my experience of this blog reminded me of someone I knew briefly in Sydney as we were briefly in the same church. Today I was informed that that person is part of this group.
Sam stated his reasons for anonymity as:
I use a pseudonym because I have seen in the Diocese people taking camps on a variety of things - a sort of 'them' and 'us' on doctrinal and church order matters. I have decided to use a pseudonym for ministry and family reasons.
It's one of those great tactics: "I am going to go public that you are all heretics, but I can't be public about my identity because you lot are so terribly party-minded." Nicely drawing attention away from the fact that an entire blog dedicated to calling the Diocese heretical might possibly also count as 'taking camps on things' - a sort of 'us' and 'them' to use Sam's words.
In fact, the common reason why people want anonymity is because it prevents them from being questioned about the kinds of people they are - whether they are in a position to make the kind of serious charge you all do. Being just a voice gives a certain power as it removes the personal dimension.
I now know who one of you are. And I know the kind of person you are from first hand experience. And that experience does not fit at all with Sam's claims of loving zeal for God's honour and the like. If that person doesn't fit the description of 1 Tim 6:3ff and Titus 3:9ff than no-one does.
I might be a heretic. And if so, I pray that God will reveal it by giving me someone who I should listen to. But that is not you, I'm afraid to say. Listening to you would be in disobedience to the Bible's instructions in the passages I've just mentioned.
And while I expect that you'll see this as yet another attempt to selectively appeal to Scripture, I don't care. Your approval isn't worth much. God has to be obeyed.
As John put it to me before, I need to pick up my bat and ball and bring this to an end.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark, it is farewell then. You never demonstrated to me that you really were here to gain information on the issue of the integrity of God's word on origins but more to defend the Diocese and dissect with words its critics on the subject of origins.
I remember Dick Lucas (was it St Helen's) giving an illustration of John Chapman once leaving the St. Andrew's Cathedral building in Sydney and being asked by a homeless man "Pray for me father?" and John replied "Pray for yourself you lazy coot!" Dick said to his audience that the Lord sometimes raises up rude prophets. This is true.
When Christians present a veneer of niceness while cutting like a knife I find they can do as much damage as the person they criticise for bluntness.
You have criticised John and Ktisophilos almost from the outset and now your parting words are to 'slam' me.
Nevertheless, I wish you well in the knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Sam
Bye Mark.
Now where was I?
Jehoshaphat replied to the king of Israel, "I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses." But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, "Firsts seek the counsel of the Lord."
So the king of Israel brought together the prophets - about four hundred men - and asked them, "Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?"
"Go," they answered, "for the Lord will give it into the king's hand."
But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there not a prophet of the Lord here whom we can inquire of?"
The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, "There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the Lord, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.
The king should not say that," Jehoshaphat replied. 1Kings 22:4b-8
Neil Moore
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