Hey team... Okay here goes. For my YEC friends, a lot of my work on Gen 1 argues against the typical YEC (e.g. AiG) treatments of the text of Gen 1:1-2:4; Ex. 20:11; Mk 10:6 and others. I also make arguments for what I think is a better handling of these texts (i.e. a literary polemical temple text). However, while I am fairly confident many of you will not change your mind and it would take some incredible argumentation to change mine, here are some things to keep in mind. My main point here is not to change your view, but to call you to better tactics, more effective communication, and stronger argumentation. As Christians, and reasonable thinkers, we should always seek to be as truthful and charitable as possible when engaging those of differing views. So while these are targeted and phrased for those who advocate for the YEC position, there should be a general application of these principles to all persons of all views.
1. Not everyone who disagrees with you loves or believes evolution, we aren’t all compulsively trying to make nice with “secular/atheistic”-science (whatever that even means), we aren’t all Old Earth Creationists, and so forth. I understand that your view is the historical majority within Christendom, and honestly would be happy to believe it if I could be re-convinced of it. But you should also understand that your view is not the only view in historic Christianity or Judaism, and throughout the millennia people did not agree with you view for reasons that had nothing to do with pleasing the scientific establishment. Many people disagree with you for purely textual and hermeneutical reasons and it is simply inaccurate to attempt to lump us all under one category (usually we are all branded is quasi-liberal, evolutionary, OECs verging on Theistic Evolutionists). If you cannot charitably engage with the person you are talking to without hasty generalizations, subjective psychologizing, misrepresentation and straw-manning, you’ll continue to be more and more marginalized because people will simply stop wanting to listen to you.
2. People can believe in perspicuity and not affirm your view. Many will throw out the doctrine of perspicuity as if the doctrine itself means that every passage is equally clear or that any view that rejects a hyper-literalistic (what they call the “plain meaning”) of a passage is somehow rejecting perspicuity. This is simply a redefinition of the historic meaning and application of perspicuity. The Westminster Confession of Faith gives an excellent definition of this doctrine when it says,
“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all. Yet, those things that are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or another, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
Perspicuity refers to the clarity of the broad message of Scripture – those things that are necessary to be known for salvation are clear, open, and repeated in such a way that all people, regardless of training or skill, can arrive at sufficient understanding of them. The major themes of the Bible (e.g. God as Creator, sustainer, sovereign Lord, king, Covenant keeper, etc; Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection as the historical indicative of the gospel; the need for repentance and faith from sin and those sins being clearly spelled out, etc.) are clear to all. But this does not mean that every single passage in Scripture will alike plain or clear – some things will need study! Notice that it says that even the ordinary person will need ordinary means to gain understanding. That is, there is no special mystical ritual needed, no seeing stones in a magic hat, not induction of visions needed to understand the content of the Bible. However ordinary means like study, exegesis, sound hermeneutics, historical backgrounds study, etc. are part of the ordinary way we study and understand any text.
To accuse someone who rejects the YEC handling of Genesis 1 of not holding to perspicuity (or inerrancy or inspiration) is misrepresentative and uncharitable and likely will reflect more poorly on your ability to think critically about your own view and objectively about others, than it will be convincing to many listening to you.
3. Read the primary sources. If you are going to try and directly critique a scholar of a differing view, then take the time to actually read and understand their work, the way you would want them to do for yours. I have found so many YEC’s who are dogmatically critical of what they think is an accurate representation of a Klinean Literary Framework view of Walton’s temple text view, and yet they clearly have no read a single article or book by Kline or Walton. The same goes for other views like those of Ross and Archer on the more OEC side. Nothing will sink your credibility faster than being dogmatically critical about a topic that you clearly are unfamiliar with. If you only familiarity with opposing views is from reading AiG articles and Creation.org articles, then please, dial back the dogmatism. Sure, hold your view and make your arguments. But be humble and know that you have not actually done the work to understand the topic well and be willing to back off points that you are only getting 2nd, 3rd, or 4th hand from others. I doubt you would want others to only get information about your view from BioLogos and never go and read the primary sources on your side. Have the intellectual honesty and courtesy to do the same. And if you do not have the time or resources, that is absolutely fine. There is no shame in not being able to fully study everything, even the things we have strong interests in. But if you cannot, then understand that you are simply working on a very lop-sided and shallow data set, and align your certainty and dogmatic fervor accordingly.
4. Stop using bad arguments that everyone in the field knows are bad arguments. Every single OT scholar and Hebraist knows that the Waw/Vav-consecutive construction does not connote historical narrative, that Yom+ordinal/cardinal number does not always mean a literal 24 hour day, that Yom+”Morning and Evening” is a grammatical hapax legommena and cannot be set as a rule to mean a literal 24 hour day, and so forth. These memes of the YEC movement are replete in the AiG and Creation.com articles and among the YEC popular speakers and advocates, but you will be hard pressed to find them in the commentaries or published and peer reviewed work of any OT scholar or Hebraist, even conservative ones who would themselves affirm a YEC position. When you use these arguments, you show that you are being more slavishly faithful to your favorite apologist for your view, rather than to the text of Scripture. Just because someone says something or makes an argument that would be helpful to your position, does not mean that that argument is valid or working on the best data. Learn to be a critical thinker, even of those arguments that would be used to defend your view. Refine your view and arguments in the fires of critical examination.
5. Be able to separate your view of what the Scriptures say with the question of what the Scriptures actually say. This is a strange way to think for some people but it is important. We Bible believing Christians affirm that the Scriptures are the ultimate authority for faith and practice because they are the inspired and inerrant revelation from God. This means that whatever the Bible affirms and teaches, it does so without error and under the direct inspiration of God. However, some people become so certain that their interpretation of the text is what the text means, that they treat arguments against their interpretation as if they are assaults on the very word of God itself. A quote attributed to C.H. Spurgeon reads, “Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion! Unchain it and it will defend itself.” While not talking about this directly, and I’m aware of the sanctification and evangelistic intent of the passage, surely it has application for my point.
When two believers are debating the meaning of the passage, if they both affirm inspiration and inerrancy, neither of them is attacking the Bible and the other has no need to attempt to defend the Bible as such. What they need to do is to defend their interpretation of the Bible. And this is not an affirmation of Postmodernism (a widely misunderstood and overly abused and misused term within these debates in my estimation). I am not saying we can all have our views and one view is equally true with the others. I think the YEC treatment of Gen 1 is plausibly false but that if their view is true, that the OEC treatment of the text and my treatment of the text are both false. If we have differing views we need to go to the exegetical mat and demonstrate our case via sound hermeneutical practice. One side should not simply fall back on the feeble and sickly retort that their position just is the “Biblical position” and that the other side rejects the plain meaning. That is simply to beg the question and to give up on attempts at reasonable discourse.
6. One’s view of the age of the earth and the early chapters of Genesis does not undermine their faith in Jesus Christ, call their salvation into question, or make their reliance on the Scripture any less than yours. Let me simply and briefly say that to engage in such posturing is to present a false gospel – that one certain view is necessary for Salvation, or at the very least that to not hold that view of a non-essential issue is an indicator that one isnt saved. Despite the person’s faith in Jesus, despite their affirmation of the sufficiency, authority, inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, you are still seeing fit to call their eternal life into question. Nowhere does the Scripture draw a line between one’s view of Genesis 1 and their eternal destiny. If you are right, then that would mean that this thing that is necessary for salvation is actually not sufficiently knowable, clear, or obvious through ordinary means to all people of all skill levels. Ironically, you would actually be the one undermining the doctrine of perspicuity by adding something to the gospel as an entrance requirement that is nowhere plainly taught.
Thank you for taking your time to read through these. For more of my work on Genesis 1 and my engagements with the YEC position, please see my complete work on Genesis 1.
This seems to be a load of straw-man accusations and misrepresentations, not to mention being selective in criticicsing biblical creatonists whilst seemingly ignoring much greater faults in many of their critics.
ReplyDeleteI don't know of any biblical creationists who claim that everyone who disagrees with them believes evolution. They know, for example, that Reasons to Believe accepts deep time but not evolution.
I don't know of any biblical creationists who claim that all of Scripture is equally clear, yet your argument about perspicuity talks as though that is the case. It seems as though creationists thinking something is clear and you thinking that that particular thing is not clear means that creationists think that everything is equally clear.
I also don't know of any biblical creationists who don't think that the primary sources are important. Sure, not every creationist is going to read every primary source, but they will rely on people who have read the primary sources.
"I have found so many YEC’s who are dogmatically critical of what they think is an accurate representation of a Klinean Literary Framework view of Walton’s temple text view, and yet they clearly have no read a single article or book by Kline or Walton."
Well, here is a critic of Walton who has clearly read Walton, because his critisicm is in a review of Walton's book! https://creation.com/review-walton-the-lost-world-of-genesis-one
As for Kline, I could probably find something similar, but I know of a creationist critical of Kline's views who actually studied under Kline. Of course I haven't read either, but I trust those who have read them.
"Nothing will sink your credibility faster than being dogmatically critical about a topic that you clearly are unfamiliar with."
So far, you seem to be rather unfamiliar with biblical creationists, so I could suggest looking in a mirror. But also, there are many critics of biblical creationists who have written books criticising them, but, for example, cite nothing of their work beyond the 1961-published The Genesis Flood. Do you have a similar article calling out those critics for clearly not being familiar with biblical creationist work? Or is this a one-sided criticism?
"Every single OT scholar and Hebraist knows that…"
Every single one? I can't say whether it's based on the particular claims you refer to (the Waw/Vav-consecutive, the yom_number, etc.), but it's clearly false that every single OT scholar rejects that the passage refers to anything other than ordinary days.
"Be able to separate your view of what the Scriptures say with the question of what the Scriptures actually say."
Sounds like good advice for those who reject what the creation account clearly says. Why do you think biblical creationists think otherwise?
"When two believers are debating the meaning of the passage, if they both affirm inspiration and inerrancy, neither of them is attacking the Bible…"
Again, I don't know of any biblical creationists who claim otherwise. But I do know of theistic evolutionists, etc. who reject inspiration and inerrancy, or who simply believe that Jesus didn't know what he was talking about.
"One’s view of the age of the earth and the early chapters of Genesis does not undermine their faith in Jesus Christ, call their salvation into question, or make their reliance on the Scripture any less than yours."
The evidence is that one's view of the age of the earth and whether or not God used evolution does in fact have the potential to undermine their faith. Further, creationists have frequently acknowledged that one can be saved without accepting the biblical creation view. And there is plenty of evidence of people relying more on science than on Scripture.