Vibrant Dance 2: Panel Discussion 4: Can Young-Earth and Old-Earth Christians Work Together to Build the Kingdom of Christ? What are the foundations for cooperation? What are the current impediments?

{RJW Note:  The fourth and last panel discussion was discussing the tensions among Christians that hold to different views of Genesis, again moderated by Craig Blaising (CB). The panel members were:  TB(eall), JD(uncan), WK(aiser), JR(eynolds), BW(altke), JW(alton). Also Genesis 1 and 2 are abbreviated as G1 and G2 respectively. Again, this post will be in the form of a pseudo-transcript. Due to some duties as a volunteer at the conference, I missed the first 20-25 minutes of this panel. My apologies, however, I think the gist is probably captured here.}

TB:  There are different levels of working together, and so many opportunities to cooperate, but we have need to be aware of and discuss those differences.

JR:  We need to get over worrying about wondering—if you are in love with someone, you are constantly in wonder of them. If you become skeptical or no longer filled with wonder, you no longer are in love {or love is decreasing}. We should always be in wonder about Christ and exploring and asking questions. We need to fight more and support those we agree with in their writing and research; ‘fight’ being a sincere non-acrimonious debate. Need to support young earth creationists with time and treasure to study actual scientific research to see what support exists there. We’re either nasty or wimpy. We need to disagree agreeably and agree disagreeably (i.e., keep things stirred up to keep up the wonder and keep exploring).

Vibrant Dance 2: Reynolds: Reconciling the Cosmos: Orthodoxy and Beauty

{RJW Note:  The second position paper given was by Dr. John Mark Reynolds, Professor of Philosophy, Biola University, Los Angeles, California, and founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, a great books program, and fellow Celtophile. As a philosopher, he is a departure from the theologian-heavy lineup and his perspective helps also to define the discussions. Dr. Reynolds also comes from a young-earth perspective.

When I asked him for a copy of his notes as we walked down the hall, he stopped, pulled out a notepad and ripped out a single sheet of paper with a loose handwritten outline and handed it to me. Again, the generosity of these scholars in sharing their work for me to share here is humbling and I am very grateful. It is remarkable to see the different styles of preparation and presentation each uses. Today’s post will constitute a merging of his rough outline with my notes. Any inaccuracies in the substance and intent of his message are mine.}

Dr. Reynolds began by making it clear that even at this conference on faith and science, he was neither theologian nor scientist, and plays neither on TV or movies, as some might wonder given he’s in LA. To begin with offering his epistemological perspective, he defined and discussed the nature of science and then theology. He seemed largely unconcerned with the tensions between the two fields, and appears to be a NOMAist, one who adheres to the idea that they are non-overlapping magisteria (that science and faith answer fundamentally different questions and so do not overlap areas of expertise, so the tensions should be in mostly in appearance than reality). This is my assessment of his views, not an explicit statement by Reynolds.

What is science? It is a likely story of sensory experience that becomes rapidly complicated by philosophical assumptions. {See my 8-part series on “What is Science?”} To ask the question, ‘how to do science?’ is not a science question, but a philosophy question. To cloud it further, if you ask {most} scientists how they do science, their answer is {most likely} different than how they actually do it. Furthermore, scientists do not reject the ‘wrong’ model for the ‘right’ model, but make forward progress by getting rid of one wrong answer in favor of another wrong answer. {but maybe, hopefully, less wrong?} To muddy the waters further, it is possible to adopt the right idea at the wrong time and it could retard the advancement of science.

Vibrant Dance 2: Beall: Genesis 1-2: A Literal Reading

The first position paper presented at Vibrant Dance, Theology Edition, was by Dr. Todd Beall, Professor of Old Testament, Capital Bible Seminary, Lanham, Maryland. An apparent late request to each speaker was to start with a brief overview of their epistemology and hermeneutics in the presentation of their specific interpretation. Dr. Beall provided some notes to the audience to aid in his talk. Due to time constraints, he skimmed some sections. He supports the idea that the earth is a few thousand, rather than billions of years old, also known as “young-earth creationism.”

I have debated over whether to present the position papers with or without comment, and have concluded without. At the end of the series, I will offer commentary on the symposium as a whole, which you are welcome to bronze or tar and feather, at your pleasure.

First, there are some things Beall said in the talk that were outside his notes, so I share them here in the order he shared them, but not in the context of his notes. Beall began by affirming his subscription to the Chicago Statements presented by Blaising, primarily Articles 20-22. Also, he commented that he is less concerned with the age of the earth than with reading Scripture clearly, and that he believes that Origins is a subject area outside of the purview of science, so trying to reconcile science and Creation is pointless {my word not his}. Dr. Beall started off college as a pre-med, so has taken a large amount of science classes. He talked favorably about Darwin and Darwin’s passage on the mystery of the eye. He believes Christians can be of any of the three views (young earth, old earth and theistic evolution), and is willing to fellowship with them—we’ll get to heaven and then someone will have to apologize. (tongue-in-cheek tone)

(Incidentally, let me plug the ABBYY Fine Reader OCR software for its amazing job at converting the scanned image to text with very few corrections—it even got most of the Hebrew mostly correct in one pass!! There do seem to be some places where font and formatting have gotten corrupted. I apologize for any confusion.) Here begins Dr. Beall’s notes.

Does our view of Genesis 1 really matter? Yes, it does. Creation is a powerful witness to God (general revelation: Rom 1:18-21; Ps 19:1). That is why the first few chapters of Genesis are under such attack today.

1.            What does Genesis 1 (and subsequent chapters) actually say?