News Flash, January 8, 2018: Moore College takes its lead from science – It’s official: “Jesus did not resurrect,” says new principal, Mike Paget

It appears that our amicable and open-minded Sydney Anglican Heretics’ representative, Mike, has strung together a mini-treatise criticising our use of Lactantius and Theophilus as evidence that the belief in a young earth was the norm rather than the exception for the early Church. (Of course, Mike and his Moore mates would prefer to convince us that, just as they see it today, the issue of age was not an issue way back then. But even Mike’s chutzpa wouldn’t extend that far; for the mere fact that it was brought up by these first Christians evinces it WAS an issue.) I’d like to closely examine Mike’s [para]logical thoughts because like all sophists their strength never lies in what they say but in their capacity to make a listener lose sight of his own argument.

Mike’s attitude to Lactantius, to contextualize it, is that he regards him as somewhat of a dropkick loser, theologically speaking that is. From this Mike concludes that Lactantius can’t be trusted regarding the earth’s age. What can I say, old chap? Well, if you were in one of my logic classes I’d make you sport the dunce’s hat and, mirroring your own paternal discipline, have you sit in the corner for a lesson or two!

You see Mike has just committed the classic fallacy of argument ad hominem in which irrelevant circumstances are thrown in the ring and then the actual argument is dismissed as though these circumstances have somehow weakened or even overturned the argument. Mike’s attitude to logic at this point reminds me of the man who took his car to his local garage but was warned off by a friend because “Joe, the mechanic there, bashes his wife.” Mike presents exactly the same obtuse rationality when he claims that “Lactantius was a B-grade public debater whose extant writings are about as useful for determining early church thought as my quiet time notes would be for understanding early 21st century eccesiology[sic].” Thus, according to Mike’s specious insight, before one is granted imprimatur a man’s theological credentials must be of a certain standard [non-Moore graduates need not apply, thank you very much!], in addition to possessing silver-tongued interlocutory skills.

Apart from his fishy response that begs the question that there is a plethora of early Church writing attesting to Mike’s long-age view, Mike willfully disregards the implicit point of Lactantius’ statement: If you read God’s Word free of external philosophical influences it plainly says that the world is young. Here are Lactantius’ words once again:

"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.”

By now Mike’s sour grapes are fairly well obvious to those who have been following the debate. The challenge from the heretics was that our position is somehow the new kid on the block (in some quarters of his tribe our crime of speaking out loudly is perceived as that of an enfant terrible!), yet we’ve shown that on the contrary theirs is the novelty (not to mention being the unorthodox and embarrassing view). What rattles Mike – though he can’t admit it - is that even a theologically impoverished bloke like Lactantius took at face value the biblical passages that dealt with the age of the earth (after all, from where would he obtain the 6,000 years?). So to cripple Lactantius’ testimony Mike has to accuse the man of committing the theological equivalent of wife bashing or tax cheating. The question was not whether a man gets all his theology perfect, but whether the text at Genesis 1 can be read as Moore College heretics teach. The historical testimony of the Church says it wasn’t. To repeat our argument: the Moore College view of Genesis 1, that it is not an historical report, is a modern perversion.

Mike’s next attack is even more unacceptable. But before demonstrating Mike’s illogic on this matter, I want to point out another instance of his dishonesty.

Mike, like his heretic mates, misrepresents young earth creationists and constructs a straw man. He implicitly argues that because we hold that Genesis 1 should be read straightforwardly, then, in order to be consistent, it follows that all passages of the Bible should be read that way. (This is the enthymematic message behind his frequent mention of geocentricity, domes of water encircling the earth and flat earthism.) Others on this site have reacted to this clear deception by demonstrating that this is a caricature of our position so I won’t spend any time going over the same ground. However, I need to stress that this display of intellectual lassitude toward our actual argument is more or less indicative of the character that Moore College produces in its graduates. (Hence Mike’s alarming remonstration that he is not on earth to jump through, what he perceives as, my hoops.)

Mike imputes to an early Church father – this case, Theophilus – flat earthism. Mike’s general disregard of scholarship raises its head once again. For if Mike had read the whole of the 32nd chapter (in addition to several preceding ones) in Theophilus’ 2nd book, he would of understood that Theophilus was making a rhetorical point. I know that the subtlety of this argument will escape Mike because like all cult members they only want to prove what they have been told to stand up for. And judging by Mike’s attribution of flat-earthism to Theophilus’ text, when it clearly does not even mention these words, I suspect Mike’s source is one of the atheist or heretical theistic evolutionary websites.

So what did Theophilus actually say?

While Theophilus’ entire book is an attack on the competency of pagan ability to accurately record history, the 32nd chapter acts as a mini-conclusion to a very long argument that he has set down prior to that chapter. Unlike the followers of Jensenism (that eponymous heresy sourced in Moore College’s then principal’s Doctrines 1), Theophilus took the first 11 chapters of the Bible as straightforward history. In the 27th chapter he begins to discuss the creation of man. He follows with chapters that carry the reader through all the ancient historical characters, tribes and places mentioned in Holy Scripture. Along the way Theophilus periodically ridicules pagan writing and its erroneous statements which masquerade as true “history”. It is at this point in his 32nd chapter that Theophilus mentions the world being viewed by pagans as a sphere or a cube. By unconscionably ascribing flat earthism to Theophilus Mike misses the wit of the rhetorical purpose behind his statement. After all, no where does Theophilus actually state the world is flat: that’s something Mike has deliberately and erroneously inferred (through mimicking his atheist bovver boys’ websites).

The statement that Mike rips from its context shows that Theophilus is mocking the pagans at this point because they are unable to accurately record even a small “visible” thing as the history of man, yet they issue apodictic statements concerning a far more complex subject, namely the shape of the world. Hence, “But how can [the pagans] say what is true regarding [the shape of the earth] when they do not know about the creation of the world and its population.” In other words, are we really sure we can trust the pagans for cosmological truth when they present such an emaciated understanding of our own history.

One last thing. Mike states that “the only way we can recognize these statements as metaphorical is by the benefit of modern science.” Elsewhere he writes, “I guess my understanding of the mechanism or physical process of creation is quite shaped by contemporary science. A lot of that is obviously highly provisional and still in debate, but I'm happy with current proposals, for example, of lengths of time.” He then goes on to claim, “I would characterise Gen 1-3 as a kind of impressionistic portrayal of the truly important aspects of that creation, drawing attention to it as something genuinely creative, in a language accessible to believers throughout history. These aspects which have been highlighted are almost entirely theological rather than, for example, methodological.”

At last, here we have it: Mike admits that his epistemology is that science should control the Bible’s meaning. In this instance, the short age earth isn’t true because science says the earth is old. All those passages taken at face-value, which appear to say that the world is young, must be understood to be merely a picture of reality and do not contain a straightforward history of events.

Of course, Mike’s epistemology is inconsistently applied. This is exactly what Bultmann, Spong etc take as their epistemological basis for understanding the Gospels: According to science dead people don’t walk out of tombs and so we should take the resurrection accounts as metaphor. It’s the Christ event which is the important thing, not whether Jesus really resurrected and the Gospels are an impressionistic portrayal of the truly important aspects of that seminal moment, drawing attention to it as something genuinely creative, in a language accessible to believers throughout history. These aspects which have been highlighted are almost entirely theological rather than, for example, methodological.

Well done, Mike. You’ve just taken an axe to the tree of Christianity. A heretic you remain.