Fundamentalism and YECism

Moique,
Thankyou for that article. I have read much material on both sides of the issue and this just added to it. I still however am a YEC for a variety of reasons.
Your posts are always interesting.

 

You are right in what you write. What you have written comes on the tail of a long period of Scottish realism and German rationalism being perpetuated in the church through dispensationalism. The church was very week. It accepted the theories of the world as fact and did not believe the Bible as it is recorded. We have a lot of the same problem through those who perpetuate their won theories and ignorance. Ignorance coupled with listening to people who are convinced of something that is wrong is a lethal combination.

Sometime read about the life of Keil and Delitzsch. They fled to Helsinki, Finland out of fear for their life from the German Christians. Keil and Delitzsch wrote a set of commentaries on the OT that were the standard for probably 100 years. They taught creationism and were ridiculed and nearly murdered at the hands of Christians in Germany. But later the German Christians got what they wanted in Hitler. Early on they endorsed Hitler by his running on an economic platform.

Scripture teaches that we are to be careful of what we listen to. History shows the results of people who listened to the wrong people.

 

Moique please go back to "helens" entry and read that web page and then tell us what you think,please.

 

There are several people here who are fundamentalist and non-YEC. While a YEC view is typical of those who adhere to fundamentalists beliefs, YEC itself is not a fundamental, nor is it required to be a fundamentalist.

Interestingly, a large postion of fundamentalists are also KJVO, yet KJVO doctrine violates fundamentalism.

 

Agreed.

I can't decide if KJVO's are really fundamentalists. Some are, for sure. But some of the extreme variety are not, for the very reason you state.

Andy

 

Plain Old Bill
That webpage Helen provided a link for looks wellresearched to me.

It also proves that there are distinct paralels between YEC thought and the exegesis of many Churchfathers. Some things should be kept in mind however.
-There were no geologists and biologists around to give reasons to Tertullianus and friends for departing from a strictly literal reading of Genesis. And we know that all Churchfathers (to put it mildly) weren't hostile to the notion of non literal explanations of Biblepassages.
-Christian Fundamentalists are in general somewhat hostile to the Churchfathers, all of whom held at least a couple of theological notions that Fundies see as repugnant.
-Early Christian Fundamentalist thought was based on the need of a minimum standard of Christian orthodoxy. It's ideas were founded on the Bible and the current situation back then and not on the ideas of a bunch of theologians who had all died at least 14 centuries earlier.

 

I am YEC, I am not KJVO but I believe YECism IS a fundamental of the faith because Jesus and the Scriptures support the concept of a 7 sidereal day model of creation, and a literal Adam and Eve though whom death entered the world.

However, I don't break fellowship with my brethren who are not YEC because for one reason (among others) it IMO is not a deadly error.

The statements above are statements of my strong conviction and not meant to be a provocation to debate which will go nowhere and IMO does more harm than good to the Body of Christ.

HankD

 

Not a "deadly error" - does not preclude salvation.

HankD

 

Hank
"I believe YECism IS a fundamental of the faith"
Interestingly enough the founders of the Fundamentalist movement didn't.

 

I don't think that an old earth philosophy existed until Darwin's Theory was made public.Given the fact that God is omnipotent He could have said,"let there be a world"and it would have happened insantaneously.
Another thing and this is JUST a thought is that time stands still at the speed of light,theoretically at least.God could have chosen any method He wanted for creation.He did go to the trouble to make it known to us through the book of Genesis that Adam And Eve were the first human beings.They were the first to marry and they were the first to sin. They also were the first to have children. Jesus himself referred back to creation and to Adam and Eve,So did Paul.
Going back to the early church fathers or even to later writers such as Mathew Henry only shows us that no theory like evolution existed.
Thankyou Moique for going to the trouble of reading Helens sources.

 

You'd be incorrect. The Ancient Greek philosopher Anaxiamander (611-547 B.C.) and the Roman philosopher Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) coined the concept that all living things were related and that they had changed over time. The classical science of their time was observational rather than experimental.

Greek philosopher Aristotle developed a Scala Naturae, or Ladder of Life, to explain his concept of the advancement of living things.

YEC literalism as we know it today did not arise until the Middle Ages. In Middle Age culture order was preferred as a sign of intellectualism, and disorder was considered improper (for example, a farmer whose planting rows were neat and orderly was looked upon to be more intellectual; if your house was not neat, you were considered to be, in today's words, white trash). Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland, in the mid 1600's, calculated the age of the earth based on the geneologies from Adam and Eve listed in the biblical book of Genesis, working backward from the crucificxion. Ussher placed the formation of the earth to October 22, 4004 B.C. These calculations were part of Ussher's History of the World, and the chronology he developed was taken as factual and was printed in the front pages of bibles. Ussher's ideas were readily accepted, in part because they posed no threat to the social order of the times; comfortable ideas that would not upset the linked applecarts of church and state.

But geologists, then and prior to then, doubted the idea of a 5,000 year old earth. Leonardo da Vinci calculated the sedimentation rates in the Po River of Italy, and concluded it took 200,000 years to form some nearby rock deposits. Galileo studied fossils and concluded that they were real and not inanimate artifacts.

Georges-Louis Leclerc in the mid 1700's proposed that species could change, in a 44 volume natural history of all (then) known plants and animals.

Later, James Hutton in the late 1700's had concluded that certain geological processes operated in the past in much the same fashion as they do today, with minor exceptions of rates, etc. Charles Lyell refined Hutton's ideas during the 1800s to include slow change over long periods of time.

All of thise precedes Darwin's explorations and writings.

 

So both YEC and OEC people existed at an early time. Shame on me.But thanks for the information this board and discussions like these really do make you smarter.

 

JohnV,
I refer you back to the articles on Helen's first post on page one.Please read.Then we will both be smarter.

 

I did. My two cents is the same as mioque's which were posted earlier. No need to reiterate what was already posted.

 

Right on. I just like to have a good perspective.I am not against science.New medical technology and science saved my life when I had kidney cancer.
There are many pro's and cons evolution/creation science. My biggest impondeable with evolution is how did evolution overcome the mathematical probabilities when the DNA for all plant and animal life has so much information for each plant,animal,sea life,and insects to recreate.The DNA in just one molecule for one species they say would fill a complete encyclopedia Britannicav if it were a thousand volumes.
Then we have an all knowing all powerful God.

 

Because it's my definition of "fundamental" among the dozens that are out there.

There is no real consensus of the term "fundamental" anymore as evidenced by the several attempts during the life of this forum.

However, It could be deadly if within someone's definition of Old Earth they denied the reality of sin and death to accomodate the theory of evolution. No sin, no Savior, no salvation.

I should have qualified my words with additional words such as : "it is not a deadly error as long as Adam's sin and subsequent death upon himself and all humanity are not denied"

HankD

 

Right on Hank!

 

Gorman Gray has proposed an interesting interpretation of Genesis that holds to inerrancy and a literal understanding of the Hebrew text that provides for the possibility that the age of the universe may be quite old while the earth's biosphere and its creation is seven literal days is quite recent.

If you haven't bought his book yet, I would highly recommend it!