concordism and YEC

tdavis@mcis.messiah.edu
Tue, 3 Sep 96 09:17:00 -0400

The discussion of concordism and YEC, as to why the
YEC position has become so influential, is most
interesting. Let me suggest a reason, itself suggested
by the late Bernard Ramm more than forty years ago
in the preface to *The Christian View of Science and
Scripture*.

There, Ramm wrote of the "noble" concordist tradition of
the latter part of the 19th century, that "unfortunately...
[it] has not been the major tradition in evangelicalism
in the twentieth century. Both a narrow evangelical
Biblicism, and its narrow theology, buried the noble
tradition."

If Ramm was correct -- and I think he was -- then the
"young earth" part of creationism, which was NOT widely
held for most of this century, is only one part of a much
larger problem, namely, that evangelicals as a group
have not come to terms with their own "narrow" view
of scripture. Of course, that's what the argument is
all about, isn't it...?

Ted Davis