May I add my own experience. I read Ramm's book in 1971 at L'Abri where I
went to learn under F Scaeffer before going to Anglican Seminary in the UK.
I had just returned to Britain after working as geologist in Africa and on
arrival at L'Abri Schaeffer's son-in-law recommended I should read the
Genesis Flood and other Creationist works. I was not pleased but soon
discovered all the flaws. Fortunately at L'Abri were some ex-Wheaton
missionaries who gave me tremendous help and Bob advised me to read James
Orr and Bernard Ramm.
Ramm's book I found excellent and helped me no end, and is one of the
seminal books in my life. My whole understanding of science and Christianity
was started and guided by his work but I have used as the man with 5 talents
in the parable and not the one was given one and buried it.
I have evolved beyond my study of Ramm and still turn to it at times with
profit.
Lastly I find Ted's comment about Ramm saying in 1979 that he would make
more of literary genre interesting as I also have moved down that line. This
brings out a weakness in much evangelicalism in that in our concern to
uphold the authority and unity of Scripture we do not always recognise the
diversity of the literature in the Bible i.e. it's literary genre. Until we
do we are liable to slip into a naive literalism as does Henry Morris on the
last chapters of Job which are a marvellous poetic evocation of God the
Creator and says nothing about fire-belching dinosaurs. These cahpters of
Job provide wonderful passages for preaching about Creation. (Incidentally I
often use Job 28 as the reading and basis for a sermon at funerals for
coal-miners. My town in Wales is an ex-mining area.)
Have I gone neo-orthodox or am I plain orthodox? I would say that I am
closer to Calvin's ideas of "accomodation" of scripture to the ways of
thought of the rude and unlearned.
Looking back I think Ramm kept me on the straight and narrow as no way could
I become a creationist and at that time I was questioning much of my faith.
Michael Roberts
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 6:57 PM
Subject: Ramm, Rimmer, etc
> The facts (as I had them from Ramm shortly before his death, and as I have
> discovered them myself on a visit to BIOLA's archives) are that Ramm began
> teaching at BIOLA in 1944. At that time BIOLA had a required
(apologetics)
> course on science and the Bible, a course Rimmer had taught himself
> (apparently) at least once, a course that perhaps he had helped to design.
> In any case a Rimmer book (Harmony of Science and Scripture, I would
guess)
> was used for that course when Ramm was given it to teach in 1946. Ramm,
> himself a grad student in philosophy of science at USC (where,
incidentally,
> one of Rimmer's sons was also a student), soon tired of criticising this
> text and quit using it. He told Rimmer about this but had no response.
> This course became the basis of his book, which was published in October
> 1954.
>
> As for Ramm's later views, I can say only this. I heard him talk at a
> meeting of the old Eastern Pennsylvania section of the ASA (which has just
> been revived this past fall, thank God), at Eastern College or Eastern
> Baptist Seminary (I forget which) in 1979, the year I left my post at a
> Christian school in Philadelphia to become a grad student in HPS at
Indiana.
> His topic: The Christian view of Science and Scripture, 25 Years Later.
I
> still have my notes, though not in front of me as I write this. Mainly he
> said that, if he were writing it again today, he would emphasize more the
> role of literary genre in helping to shape our interpretation of a given
> passage of scripture. I don't know whether or not he drifted into
> neo-orthodoxy, a position for which I have much sympathy (though not full
> agreement) myself.
>
> Ted Davis
>
>
>
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