Being a Christian, we typically do not tend to agree on Naturalistic Evolution for origin of life and humans on the earth. However, if you are unaware, it is necessary for you to know that there are two major schooling within Creationism: Young Earth Creationism aka YEC and Old Earth Creationism aka OEC. There are again divergent views within these two groups and sometime they overlap as well.
Having theologically concluded that this difference is non-essential issue for our faith, the latter school of creationism has more volumes of criticism and challenges in Christian circle than the former. This doesn't mean the latter schooling is heresy or unbiblical view but the challenge and objection is from those who strictly hold to literal plain text reading of Genesis 1-11. Also note that, OEC doesn't label Genesis as 'Mythology' as our 'modern language' perceives. It affirms miraculous creation by God and is anti-evolutionist.
If you pick up theological books, you shall find them mentioning either strict recent creation, Gap theory, Framework approach or 7000 years allotted for men under day-age understanding for 6 days as prophetic days. Reformed Systematic theology, One Hundred Bible Lessons, Genesis: The Book of Beginning, etc. are few of those resources.
To be honest, I don't entertain this subject today but this book was the most recommended book I've heard from a believer friend and I only got this on web recently after few years of my search. Therefore, I thought to include this book in Book review.
Literally, I enjoyed this book. After I finished reading it, I regretted why I did not find this book before I prepared my works on series such as 'Dinosaurs in the Bible?' and 'Creation Controversies'. You shall learn these subjects in this book:
1. Role of experience in interpretation of scripture.
2. Discussion about 'Appearance of Age' hypothesis and its insane hidden challenges.
3. Scientific and Biblical problems for Flood Geology i.e. Does Noahic Flood account for vast fossil deposits and geological status of the earth?
4. Why an Old Earth position is not identical with belief in Evolution?
5. Was there Death before the Fall? It is taken as 'primary important topic and cornerstone defense for any theories and objection for an Old Earth' by the author rather than meaning of 'days' in Genesis 1. (44.37% covered throughout the book)
6. Was the world of Genesis 1-2 our usual world or another world?
7. No indication of re-creation, alteration in natural ecology and ecosystem and appearance of new species after humanity mentioned in the scripture.
8. Two distinct views on correlating pre-fall world at Edenic stage and future new heavens and earth restoration are discussed
9. Was there drastic change in the physical world after the fall? Futility and decay of nature.
10. Balance in the nature and dangerous forces in creation.
11. The case of Leviathan.
12. God's wrath and power revealed throughout the creation even before the fall ever happened.
13. The issue of God's Rest: The Sabbath [cf. Exodus 20:11]
14. The Day-Age View vs The Framework Hypothesis
15. Biblical Numerology on number Seven.
16. Discussion on Concordantist science.
17. God of Gaps approach
18. Issue of miracles and methodology of naturalism
19. Candidate of Miracle I: The Big Bang and Christians' typical misconception about it: Was it a random process and anti-theistic propaganda?
20. Candidate of Miracle II: Stars and Planet formation
21. Candidate of Miracle III: Cambrian Explosion
22. Candidate of Miracle IV: Advent of Modern humans on Archaeological scene about 30k years ago
23. Interpreting Genesis 1-2
24. Problem with 'Gap Theory'
25. Discussing meaning of 'Day' and 'Evening...Morning'
26. The Noahic Flood: Local or Global?
27. Theological consequences on changing interpretation: From YEC to OEC
28. Incompatibility of YEC with Intelligent Design Movement
29. Scripture and Theological truths that transcendent effect of OEC view i.e. not affected by issue of an Old Earth position
30. Is OEC a heretic view?
Although I don't usually prefer Concordist approach today and pleased to be open on creation views debate, I have to admit that the book seems to dig very deep unto objections from opposing pole and provide credible insightful answers that compels us to think critically without any barrier about authority and trustworthiness of the scripture.
The author had pondered great deal of logical analysis and systematic flow of arguments in favor of OEC schooling. This book can be different in presenting OEC from those of Dr. Ross, Dr. Schroeder, Newman, Prof. Lennox, Dr. Craig, etc. However, the author honestly presents it as 'possible explanation' rather than 'obvious explanation'. The author is entirely serious about the scripture and how we interpret it. He is also honest with his scientific premise and how both scripture and science can correlate each other.
Total Page: 160 [pdf]
Author: David Snoke
Published date: 2006
Total Chapters: 9
Recommended for every Christian learners who are eager to learn OEC.
To the reader: If you would love to have a navigation through this book regardless of whatever position you currently adhere, please contact me using 'For Any Queries' section on the blog.
For review of book in Nepali language by Honourable Nepali Apologist Kamal Adhikari: Here!
Additional section:
Some important noted insights:
1. On many of these issues, however, Christians have learned that we can fellowship with people with whom we disagree on broad issues of interpretation of Scripture because we know that at least they share with us a strong view of the inerrancy and primacy of Scripture.
2. For some people, this is a cardinal sin. This is one of the most important issues before us. Is it ever permissible to allow our experience to affect our interpretation of the Bible? Or should I strive to study the Bible in an interpretive “vacuum,” with no reference to any of my life experience? Is that possible?
3. There are many things about the natural order that God has seen fit to let us discover by experience, which he does not discuss in the Bible. Most people have no trouble affirming that the theories of electrons, protons, and DNA, while not in the Bible, are compatible with the Bible.
4. Science is just a way of expanding and organizing our experience; therefore, science has the same authority as any human experience. It is illegitimate to place anything generated by human beings in a position of unquestioned authority over the Bible.
5. In general, Christians have found great support for the Bible from archaeology and other scholarly study of the ancient Middle East. Sometimes those studies lead Christian scholars to revise our interpretation of the Bible, however. Interpretations that we might feel are obvious at first glance turn out to be wrong when we study the culture and the history more carefully. Extra-biblical experience and scholarship have brought about a change in our Bible interpretation.
6. First, we rightly want to avoid any hint of concession to worldly views due to societal pressure. Second, we rightly want to avoid a “slippery slope” that would allow us to “explain away” any passage of Scripture. In order to avoid the first pitfall, any argument for a new interpretation of Scripture should present a positive case; that is, it should not simply “explain away” apparently obvious meanings of Scripture. It should show thematic consistency with all of Scripture, a truly biblical worldview. To avoid the second pitfall, a new interpretation should delineate boundaries, defining what is negotiable and what is not.
7. The scientific method provides rules by which theories may be changed, and successful theories last for centuries. In the same way, there are rules of Bible interpretation that do not allow us to easily jettison elements of theology.
8. the picture of faith in the Bible is not a blind leap to trust in an unknown god, but remembering God’s faithfulness in the past as the foundation for our steps of faith into the unknown future.
9. Jesus models what Adam should have done: live a sinless life, spend a short time in humility and submission, then ascend to glory, where he remains (Heb. 2:9).
10. A constant theme of the Bible is that the things of this world are passing away, and the true and the permanent will be revealed only in heaven.
11. Natural evil, including animal death, serves as a judgment held in readiness under the covenant of law, but that is not its only purpose. Even in the absence of human sin, the destructive forces of nature show forth God’s power and divine nature. As such, they are automatically judgments held in readiness, because anyone who offends God must deal with his power. Such displays of power are “very good,” because the sun and the moon do not sin, nor do the land and the sea, nor do the animals. They just are what they are, and do what they were designed to do. Only when we enter in do we wish that God would not have included some of them in the universe—we stumble in the dark, we shiver in the cold, our ships sink in the sea, and we fear rats and microbes and cockroaches and sharks. If Adam had not sinned, we might have observed all of this from a protected place, in the Garden, but now we are flung among it all, still protected from the totality of God’s wrath, but cursed to be “like the beasts that perish” (Ps. 49:12, 20).
12. One of the messages we are told we should see from the creation is the threat of God’s power. The logic goes as follows:
• You should fear me
• . . . because my wrath is evident to you
• . . . . . . in everything that was made in the creation of Genesis 1.
13. Adam was not created in an idyllic state in which he encountered only blessings. From the very start, he was confronted with two realities: blessing and curse, fruition and destruction, peace and power, light and darkness, life and death. Adam lived in a blessed, safe Garden, surrounded by an incredibly vast creation that showed forth the tremendous power of God; this power gave meaning to the word “death,” which God used when he warned of the curse. If Adam had obeyed God, this “very good” creation still would have testified to Adam of the power of God and the wrath that he had escaped. As it is, Adam and all of us are flung out of the Garden to experience the same curse that was made known to Adam. All those who are outside of Christ still live by the same covenant of law as Adam, with the same visible reminders.
14. We may not like the implication, but nature tells us that God is capable of severe wrath and pain. That is what his “power” includes. This is an unpopular doctrine, but it is all through the Bible. Many times people read the Bible and are turned off by the amount of wrath in it. Not only the Old Testament, but the New Testament is filled with wrath. Some people think Jesus preached only love, but we hear more about hell from the lips of Jesus than from any other speaker in the Bible. The entire Gospel revolves around the idea of avoiding God’s wrath; in fact, God pours out his wrath on his Son so that we may avoid it. The book of Revelation has page after page of wrath.
15. If religion is about believing what is true, not just what we wish was true, then surely we must swallow the hard pill that God, the real God who exists and created the world, is not just the way we would like him to be. We may hate the wrath of God, but we cannot say it is illogical to believe in it. What is illogical is to believe in a God who would never harm a flea when we see lots of harmed fleas around us.
16. The threat “in the day you eat of it, you will surely die” in Genesis 2 clearly shows that God wanted to remind people of his wrath even before the fall. Just as God’s threat of wrath existed before the fall, so also the agents of wrath existed before the fall. They were not out of control, or random, but bounded carefully by God’s control in an amazing balance.
17. We must face the facts: if the Bible is wrong, utterly wrong, about the history of our origins, then we should dump it. We cannot avoid this risky aspect of our faith. If we protect the Bible by attacking modern science, or if we protect it by making it speak only about matters of morality and personal faith, we have cut it off from the real world and made it far less than it claims to be.
18. There have been three main philosophical lines of argument for the existence of God. The first, associated with Aquinas, argues on the basis of philosophical concepts about the whole universe, for example the argument from cause and effect. The second, associated with Calvin, argues on the basis of our inner sense of God’s presence and voice. The third, associated with the British theologian William Paley, argues on the basis of the beautiful design we see in nature. All three of these arguments are alive and well today, with the same strengths and weaknesses that they have always had.
19. It is unfortunate that some people oppose the Big Bang theory out of the feeling that it implies randomness in creation, because nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the name leads people to the wrong picture, of a chaotic explosion. On the contrary, modern science10 has shown that incredible balances and tuning were involved in the Big Bang, with precisions on the order of one part in 10100 (ten followed by one hundred zeroes). Without that fine tuning, planets and stars could not exist, and the universe might not even have existed for more than a few milliseconds.
20. The Bible and science do not lie in separate, non-overlapping worlds; therefore it is natural to look for concordance between the two.
21. Most evangelical Christians agree that the proper understanding of any passage of Scripture is the one in which we take the words to mean what they would have meant to a reader in the day they were written. If we take other meanings, we can end up like the medieval mystics who read all kinds of fantastic meanings into the words of Scripture. But recovering the original meaning is not so simple. We cannot strip ourselves of all our cultural background and become blank slates.
22. Miracles leave “tracks”—effects in the real world. This is what distinguishes real miracles from illusions and myths.
23. Our world always has been, even before Adam and Eve fell, a wild place full of powerful, God-glorifying forces meant to be tamed by the king of creation, namely, the race of Adam, and woven by us into the fabric of a greater, everlasting culture of the city of God. Our sin has made this job far harder, but the focus is the same: taming the wilds as God’s caretakers of the earth.
24. An old-earth view is not synonymous with evolution. Even many millions of years is not enough time to make the design we see occur entirely by random, uncorrelated forces.
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