Do compromised ideas about origins undermine Scripture’s inerrancy and authority?

Dearest hijas and hijo,

Back in the fall of 1978 a group of Christian leaders and scholars came together in Chicago, Illinois for an important purpose. Much like the councils of old that met to define and defend what was Christian belief and orthodoxy against heresy, (as example see my post The Councils of Carthage: Augustinian/Pelagian Controversy Over Free Will), these leaders and scholars met to defend the doctrine of the inerrancy and authority of Scripture in lieu of the growing liberalism within the Church. There were about 300 of them and their meetings became known as the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. After this initial meeting in 1978 they continued to meet several other times over the next ten years.

As a result of this initial meeting they published a document called the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” (hereafter CSBI). You can find both this statement on Biblical Inerrancy and their other statement on Biblical Hermeneutics at: https://defendinginerrancy.com/chicago-statements/. You would do well to read through these statements on inerrancy and hermeneutics when you have time and interest.

The preface to the CSBI contains this statement:

The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God’s written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority.

In Article XII of the CSBI it says this:

WE AFFIRM that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit. WE DENY that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

What is of interest to us, and my reason for the above introduction is that we have been talking about the claims of Scripture for infallibility, inerrancy, and authority in these past few posts. I wish for you to see that others have raised these same issues and addressed them as well, alarmed enough to get together and convene a council. The question I raise in the title of this post is whether the inerrancy and authority of Scripture pertains to origins, and whether any compromise views of origins erodes it.

My conclusion is that all compromise views of origins being promulgated in the Church today (day-age theory (Hugh Ross); gap theory (Thomas Chalmers); framework-hypothesis theory (Meredith Kline); cosmic-temple theory (John Walton); analogical-day theory (John Collins); theistic-evolution theory (BioLogos), etc.) do indeed undermine and erode Scripture’s inerrancy and authority in several egregious ways. No other position upholds Scripture’s claims to inerrancy and authority, except for the historic and orthodox 6-day literal view as held by the Church for 1800 years prior to the early 19th century. Why do I say this?

All old-earth views mentioned above (gap, day-age, framework, cosmic-temple, analogical-day, theistic-evolution) posit a universe and earth billions and millions of years old. They all accept some form of evolution, whether cosmological evolution, geological evolution, or biological evolution. They all deny a global (worldwide) and universal Flood in the days of Noah that destroyed everything by God’s judgment of the then world except Noah and his family and the animals on the Ark. They all significantly downplay or excuse natural evil (earthquakes, tsunami’s, meteorite impacts, mass extinctions, hurricanes, sweeping forest & brush fires, predation, sickness, disease, bloodshed, and death) before the sin of Adam. They downplay or excuse that moral evil (murder, theft, fornication and adultery, etc.) existed before the sin of Adam as seen in people groups that supposedly came long before Adam (e.g. Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, Aboriginal Australians, etc.)—[it was just animalistic behavior].

The historic and orthodox 6-day literal view posits just the opposite. It posits that the universe and earth are recent (thousands of years, not billions) and created in mature form right from the beginning and very good (Gen.1:31). It posits that both natural and moral evil are a result of Adam’s sin and that because of this sin God cursed the totality of His creation (Gen. 3, Rom. 8). It posits that at the time of Noah God judged the whole earth with a universal and globe-covering year-long Flood that destroyed all humans, all air-breathing land animals, and all birds not on the Ark.

The implications of all old-earth views is that they undermine Scripture’s claims to inerrancy and authority in the following manner: (a) sloppy exegesis of Genesis 1&2 and Ex. 20:8-11 concerning ‘days’ and God’s creating in days of normal 24-hours, (b) misunderstanding and mishandling of the implications of the Curse of Genesis 3 concerning natural and moral evil, (c) outright denial of a global and universal Flood of judgment in Gen. 6-9 as shown by the evidence in the fossil record, the soft-tissue (proteins and original tissues) now being found in many of those fossils, and the geomorphology of earth’s land mass and seas (ex. the Whopper Sand of the Gulf of Mexico).

I can’t say it any better than has already been said by others:

The cost of an old earth: Is it worth it?

Follow the link above and read the whole article by Dr. John Byl when you have time, as he lays out the dangerous threats to Biblical inerrancy and authority from all compromise views of origins.

All my love,

Dad

Vaya con Dios!

Noah’s Flood was Global and Universal (Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise)

Dearest hijas and hijo,

It is common to hear in Christian circles, among those who even talk about it; from the pulpit by preachers and in Bible Study classes from elders, that the Flood of Noah described in Genesis 6-9 was a local flood event perhaps contained to the Mesopotamian Valley. This Flood wasn’t global and universal at all, they will say, but only local over the whole of mankind alive in the time of Noah, and specific to that region of Noah’s habitation (the Mesopotamian valley).

This raises a series of questions, however, when one studies the actual account given in Genesis 6-9:

Why did God command Noah to take two of every kind of living thing of all flesh aboard the ark (Gen. 6:19)? Couldn’t God have sent some of these animals out of the local area? Chased them away perhaps on mass migrations?

Why did God command Noah to especially take two of every bird kind (Gen. 6:20)? Couldn’t the birds have flown away, out of the local area and to new areas a local flood event wouldn’t affect?

How was it that a local flood event lasted for more than a year (Gen. 7:11, 7:12, 7:24, 8:4, 8:8, 8:10, 8:12, 8:13-16); Noah’s 600th year, 2nd month, 17th day (7:11), to Noah’s 601st year, 2nd month, 27th day (8:13-14)?. We have local flood events in different parts of the globe all the time, but none that last more than a few days, or weeks perhaps.

Why does the account say that the waters prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered to a depth of fifteen cubits (Gen. 7:19-20)? ‘All’, ‘High’, ‘Everywhere’, ‘Under the Heavens’, doesn’t sound local to me, but more universal, wouldn’t you agree? The Hebrew is pretty strong here with a double use of the Hebrew word kol (all), indicating universality.

Why did the Church believe this Flood was global and universal for 1800 years since its inception in the First Century A.D.? Why did the Jews in their ancient writings believe the same before the Advent of Christ? What changed and when did it change?

There are other questions as well:

Why does Christ compare His Second Coming in Matthew 24: 37-39 with the Flood in the days of Noah? Will Christ’s Second Coming be only a local event and not universal? He’s only coming to judge a local people and a local area and not the entire Earth?

Why does Peter make two references to Noah’s Flood (1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 3: 3-7)? He seems to link the judgment of water in the time of Noah with the judgment of fire at Christ’s Second Coming. How do these parallels make sense if the Flood was only a local event?

Could it be then, that our Christian friends, preachers, elders, co-attendees at church, are buying into the uniformitarian thinking of current scientific consensus; taking man’s word for God’s word?

As you know from my other posts, it was a denial of the worldwide Flood of Noah in the 17th and 18th centuries at the beginning of modern secular geology, that led to the millions and billions of years of secular geohistory (the geologic column), and evolution as its biological counterpart.

So don’t take your pastor’s word that it was a local event, challenge it, do the study. Do the hard work to find out for yourself. There are plenty of scientific evidences in the rocks and in the earth’s geomorphology to disprove a local event. The fossils in the rocks themselves speak to a worldwide event as well. Read and understand the full account in Genesis 6-9, check the math, delve into the words used to describe it. Make yourself a student of God’s Word here, and you’ll be able to challenge others who tell you otherwise.

With love,
Dad
Vaya con Dios mis ninos!

Adam at the End of Creation?

Dearest hijas and hijo,

Did Adam come at the end of creation, millions and billions of years after Christ started creating the universe and the biodiversity of life on earth? If you remember from my last post and the chart we are referring to, modern humans are at the very top.

Why is this significant in terms of Christian theology? Simply put: sin and death. This sin-death causality is and has been a cornerstone of Christian theology since its inception; that the penalty for sin was death. Let me say that again, death is the penalty for sin. It started with God’s command in Genesis 2:17:

but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.

The judgement was declared by the Supreme Judge and the penalty assessed after Adam and Eve disobeyed this command in Genesis 3:19:

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.

The apostle Paul reiterates this sin-death causality in Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin…”

Paul again states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”

He confirms again this sin-death causality in 1 Cor. 15:21: “For since by a man came death…”

Paul also says in 1 Cor. 15:26 that “the last enemy that will be abolished is death.” It is important to understand that Death is an enemy, an intrusion, and it was never part of Christ’s creative work.

Revelation 20:14 confirms this when in the future at the great Judgment “…death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.”

Another important piece here from Romans 8 is that the entire creation “groans and suffers” under God’s judgment (Rom. 8:22). The universal law of decay, known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is conclusive evidence for exactly this truth.

Therefore, and I refer you back to the chart above, if death has been around for millions of years as evidenced in the fossil record, then sin is not the cause of death. If sin is not the cause of death, then Christ’s death on the cross as payment for sin is unnecessary. The question becomes, “Why would Christ die a horrible death on the Cross, for the death He instituted and programmed into His creation in the first place?” This is logically incoherent and makes the gospel message foolish and irrelevant.

Christ then becomes a liar when He says in Mark 10:6:

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

Notice the word ‘beginning’, not at the end, millions and billions of years later. If man came at the end of creation, millions of years after all the rest of the biodiversity of life had lived and suffered and died along the way, then Christ’s words are untrue. And as God wouldn’t He know what He did or didn’t do?

With Love always,
Dad
Vaya con Dios, mis ninos!

Paralyzed Christianity

Dearest hijas,

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I haven’t forgotten about you and this blog, mis hijas, but, you know the story. Perhaps this review of Dr. John K. Reed’s “Rocks Aren’t Clocks: A Critique of the Geological Timescale” has been a bit overdrawn, no? Okay, perhaps, so let’s sum this all up and move on, right?

How does this boil down to the warp and woof of “your” Christian living? How does the rubber meet the road here? Why, for God’s sake, does this have anything to do with anything?

I hope you know by now, mis hijas, that for the sake of God and His character, this does have monumental ramifications. You live in the 2nd decade of the 21st century. You’ll probably be around, God willing, until the 7th or 8th decade of this century long after your Momma and I are gone. We live in a time where many of your Christian friends, pastors, and leaders are paralyzed. Paralyzed by the fear of looking foolish in the eyes of the world. Paralyzed by prognostications of the secular elite on the nature of reality. Paralyzed by secular critics that claim Christianity (especially young-earth biblical Christianity) is opposed to science.

These Christians are paralyzed because they won’t believe their own Bibles. They won’t believe that their own Scriptures speaks authoritatively about a universal and worldwide Flood in the days of Noah that explains the rock layers and washes away the millions of years (Gen. 6-9). They won’t believe that a ‘day’ is a ‘day’ just like we know them today (Gen. 1, Ex.20:8-11). They are paralyzed by current scientific announcements and purported data that says the earth is millions and billions of years old, not realizing the bias of the scientists that make these claims and the eyewitness testimony of the God who was there and wrote it down for us. They are brainwashed to believe the idea that rocks, acting as the pages of nature’s history book, are superior to the history of the Bible.

Such a state are we in, mis hijas.

But remember this, as Dr. Reed points out:

…Christian compromise has proven completely ineffective in stopping the secular juggernaut. Two hundred years of retreat is enough. Perhaps in the 1800’s, such views were more understandable. Today, they only aid and abet a secular culture by weakening principled opposition–all for the fleeting flattery of ‘intellectual respectability’. Deep time is inseparable from evolution. And both are inseparable from naturalism.

There is a web of deceit woven all through the secular worldview. Man and woman, born in rebellion to God, seek to use their own reason and the logical powers of their mind, to explain the nature of reality autonomously; apart from God and His revelation. Their whole being ‘shouts’ to them that there is a God; and not just ‘a’ god, but ‘the’ God of which the Bible speaks, and yet they fight with all their might to push this away. Paul in Romans 1 is very clear on this.

So the question becomes, “If the true nature of reality, the true history of Earth and mankind, is presented in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, especially in Genesis, why have so many Christians accepted and become paralyzed by secular history”?

Dr. Reed responds:

First, few realize they are compromising their worldview. Christianity was the default worldview of the West for so long that the possibility of a secular rival was unanticipated, especially a secular ‘scientific’ opponent rising out of Christianity’s own intellectual tradition. Second, the early secularists were smart. They claimed that there was no conflict with ‘true’ Christianity. The Bible was true as far as it went; it just didn’t talk about geologic time. Moses was ‘primitive’ and ‘unscientific,’ but he was still a nice guy. This scam worked, and the church was lulled into complacency. As time went by, young people were indoctrinated to not question prehistory and evolution.

However, the Bible, mis hijas, claims to be an accurate record and account of history, back to the beginning. It can’t find common ground with secular history that does not acknowledge God as Creator, all peoples on earth, past and present, from Adam and Eve, a worldwide and universal Flood in the days of Noah, and the incarnate Christ come to save us from our sin problem. Bank on it!

With love,
Dear ol’ Dad
Vaya con Dios, mis hijas

‘Death’ Before the Fall?

Dearest hijas,

Have you ever considered one of the arguments that some Christians give for believing in death before the Fall of Adam, and its related corollary of an old earth? It goes something like this: “Well, I don’t believe that death as an entity only came about because of Adam’s sin. That was death for humans only, for surely plants died before the Fall, and animals don’t experience pain in death like we humans do, so animals were peacefully dying long before Adam’s sin, much like the good ole’ family pet, Fido, curled up by the fireplace who simply dies peacefully and naturally”.

It seems like a logical argument – doesn’t it? It seems so logical that many of your Christian friends and leaders stumble over it. A case in point, is the below article and link by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati about R.C. Sproul Jr., who teaches at Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Florida. An otherwise stalwart man of faith and of the Reformed tradition, Sproul Jr. is a young-earth creationist, but seems to be confused about the implications of his position, as Dr. Sarfati points out.

I encourage you to click on the link below and read the article carefully. Within the article are other links to other articles that you can click on and get more information. You may have to read a portion, think about it, read more, and/or come back to it several times as you have time to read through the whole article completely.

R.C. Sproul Jr Blunders on Plant Death

Pay particular attention to the description of plant ‘death’ from a Biblical perspective and to Scripture’s definition of what constitutes a ‘living creature’ or in Hebrew nephesh chayyah.

Pay attention also to the way animals ‘died’ as shown in the fossil record. Did they die peacefully and naturally like our example of the family pet, or were there other things evidenced in the fossil record that indicate this was not so?

Keep asking questions, mis hijas. Don’t be afraid to challenge respected leaders who have compromised on Biblical truth.

With love I remain,
Dear ol’ Dad
Vaya con Dios mis hijas

Jesus Devastates the Old Earth View

Dearest hijas,

In taking a break from the review of Dr. John K. Reed’s book Rocks Aren’t Clocks: A Critique of the Geological Timescale may I direct your attention to this article by Bodie Hodge of Answers in Genesis:

Jesus Devastates An Old Earth

Mr. Hodge draws from Jesus’ own statements about marriage from the “beginning” of creation in Mark 10:6 and Matthew 19:4, and not 13 billion years later as an old earth advocate must believe to hold to her old-earth view. There are interesting parallels with other Jesus AGE verses in Mark 13: 19-20 and Luke 11: 50-51 which you might want to consider and ponder. Jesus, as Creator (Col.1:18) (John 1:3) obviously knows when He created the universe and as God is aware of time and age and how old His creation is, so these are powerful verses which indicate that Jesus Himself taught and expected us to believe a relatively recent creation about 6000 years ago.

There’s an interesting account of Hodge’s discussion and dialog with an old-earth advocate at a Christian conference that Hodge was attending. I won’t spoil the story, so read it yourself and enjoy!

With love and blessings,

Dear ol’ Dad

Vaya con Dios mis hijas!

Philosophical Foundations of the Geologic Timescale: Uniformitarianism

Dear hijas,

From our last post in reviewing Dr. John Reed’s book “Rocks Aren’t Clocks: A Critique of the Geologic Timescale”, we saw that evolution is one of the foundations of the timescale. It is not the only one however. The concept of uniformitarianism that was promoted primarily by Charles Lyell in the 1830’s is also essential to the concept of deep time and the resulting timescale. Uniformitarianism used in its fullest sense means: a philosophy and method that allows science to become the arbiter of history. For Lyell, it was a mix of the methodological principle of uniformity (a principle which all scientists accept) with the gradualistic theory of history. This well-regulated past of imaginary vast eons, paved the way for Darwin and his evolutionary ideas, quite different from Biblical history, and contrary to the concepts of God creating and then overseeing the cosmos.

Reed says that “All three ideas–evolution, uniformitarianism, and deep time–are closely connected. Although many people today reject Lyell’s gradualism and are increasingly skeptical of evolution, the timescale and geologic history remain unscathed. But if all three are intertwined, the selective rejection of evolution and uniformitarianism, with no consequences for the timescale, seems schizophrenic.”

Reed then goes on to talk about James Hutton’s role in the idea of uniformitarianism. James Hutton, you remember, a Scottish natural philosopher and early geologist in the 1700’s, was called by some ‘The man who found time’. Reed says, “Hutton knew Genesis had to be discredited to make way for his deistic view of history. So he went straight for the jugular–there is nothing more basic to orthodox Christianity than ex nihilo creation and the end of the world at the final judgment; for the Bible begins with the famous words, ‘In the beginning’ and then moves immediately outside the ‘system of nature’ in the next words, ‘God created.'”

Remember mis hijas, uniformitarianism is not the same as uniformity, but the secularists like to equivocate here and make them say the same thing. They are not the same thing, however, and you shouldn’t confuse the two. ‘Uniformity’ is an essential axiom of science and is the idea that patterns in nature, or more frequently called ‘natural laws’ operate in the same predictable manner over space, time, and for the most part, scale. Because it is a statement about the nature of reality, it is a metaphysical assertion, justified only by Christian theology. ‘Uniformitarianism’, however, assumes that past causes will be natural ones like those observed in the present. This is not a scientific assertion, but a ‘philosophical’ one. Do you see the difference?

I pray that you do see the difference and that you will be able to share that difference with your friends and colleagues. Uniformity is at the heart of science, uniformitarianism is not.

With Love,
Dear ol’ Dad
Vaya con Dios mis hijas

Assuming Rocks Are Like History Books

Dearest hijas,

We turn now to the 4th fallacy in secular geohistory’s hidden fallacies from Dr. John K. Reed’s “Rocks Aren’t Clocks: A Critique of the Geologic Timescale”, Creation Book Publishers, Powder Springs, GA, 2013. Dr. Reed starts this section by saying:

The fourth error is the belief that a rich and detailed account of the past is available in the rocks–like a book about the Hapsburgs or Hannibal crossing the Alps. There is historical content in the rock record–the error is overestimating its quality and quantity.

The metaphors inherent with this fallacy are that sedimentary strata are like “pages of a book”, and fossils record “the march of time”. But are they, and do they now? Let’s see.

We remember that conflict over natural history is about the presuppositions each side brings to the table. The data remain static. We all have the same data, but it is in the interpretation based on a set of presuppositions that error creeps in. We’re talking about the secularist worldview versus the Biblical worldview.

So the question on the table is this: Do the rocks represent long ages (a secularist worldview) or rapid deposition in a high-energy event (a Biblical worldview: Noah’s Flood)?

The secularist denies the judgment of God in the universal and global Flood of Noah. She claims it never happened. But should a Christian deny an event taking up 4 chapters (Gen. 6-9) in God’s revelatory book about Himself and what He did? I don’t think so. But why, you might ask?

Dr. Reed explains:

If deposited by a global flood, rocks are indicators of hydraulic power, not clocks measuring endless eons.

He continues:

…Christians should see things differently. They can agree that rocks are an historical record and that forensic methods are appropriate. But at that point, their worldview must take them away from the conclusions of naturalism. Because God is the infinite Creator of the physical cosmos and man, the best way to understand nature and time is from His eyewitness perspective. His written record of the past all the way back to the beginning should shape geological inquiry. In theory, it does. It precludes prehistory, clues us in on creation, and describes the destruction of Earth’s face by a global flood. It’s a baby step of logic from there to the conclusion that a large part of the rock record is a result of that great Flood.

As always, I remain,
Dear ol’ Dad
Vaya con Dios mis hijas