wienerdog
July 14th 2004, 12:38 AM
This is in response to a thread in Natural Sciences 101 entitled Why OEC is Biblical (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29316). The charge is that by claiming that God created the universe in a way that would make it appear to be old when it is not is to ascribe deception to God. It's also reminiscent of the Docetism that the Apostle John rallied against, insofar as it maintains that the physical is deceptive and only the spiritual can be trusted to reveal the truth.
Obviously it is dangerous to claim that God intentionally deceives. But the YECs who maintain that God created with an appearance of age (which, according to Dee Dee, aren't that many) are not saying that God is intentionally deceiving us. They are simply denying that the witness of creation can be trusted independently. That is not the same thing as claiming that God intentionally deceives. It may eventualy lead to that conclusion, but they reject that this conclusion follows.
Moreover, insofar as they claim that only the Bible can be trusted to reveal the truth, they may be understood to be affirming the Docetic idea that only the spiritual can be trusted. But this may only mean that they are (unintentionally) "borrowing" this Docetic idea in order to use it on the age of the earth issue. If so, they are not using this idea consistently, because they aren't denying that Jesus had a real physical body like the Docetists did. Their motive for using this Docetic doctrine is because they are trying to be faithful to what they believe the Bible teaches, and requires them to believe.
I think that some YECs do this elsewhere as well: their models of speciation are essentially allopatric speciation, first thought up by Ernst Mayr around 1950, which is a Darwinian macro-evolutionary model. I think their claim that evidence can't speak for itself, but can only be understood from within an interpretive framework is an invalid concession to postmodernism. But these "concessions" as I call them don't mean that the YECs who argue them are thereby heretics.
Obviously it is dangerous to claim that God intentionally deceives. But the YECs who maintain that God created with an appearance of age (which, according to Dee Dee, aren't that many) are not saying that God is intentionally deceiving us. They are simply denying that the witness of creation can be trusted independently. That is not the same thing as claiming that God intentionally deceives. It may eventualy lead to that conclusion, but they reject that this conclusion follows.
Moreover, insofar as they claim that only the Bible can be trusted to reveal the truth, they may be understood to be affirming the Docetic idea that only the spiritual can be trusted. But this may only mean that they are (unintentionally) "borrowing" this Docetic idea in order to use it on the age of the earth issue. If so, they are not using this idea consistently, because they aren't denying that Jesus had a real physical body like the Docetists did. Their motive for using this Docetic doctrine is because they are trying to be faithful to what they believe the Bible teaches, and requires them to believe.
I think that some YECs do this elsewhere as well: their models of speciation are essentially allopatric speciation, first thought up by Ernst Mayr around 1950, which is a Darwinian macro-evolutionary model. I think their claim that evidence can't speak for itself, but can only be understood from within an interpretive framework is an invalid concession to postmodernism. But these "concessions" as I call them don't mean that the YECs who argue them are thereby heretics.