From: Jan de Koning (jan@dekoning.ca)
Date: Fri Sep 12 2003 - 11:17:18 EDT
At 10:20 AM 11/09/2003 -0500, Steve Petermann wrote:
>Ted wrote:
> > Is is spiritually dangerous to teach YEC or TE, or some other position on
> > origins?
>
>
>I think the same question could be asked about scientific materialism or
>methodological naturalism. If those approaches are taught as dogma, there
>is, in my opinion, a spiritual risk of fatalism, extreme relativism, or
>nihilism. On the other hand religious positions that stand in stark
>contrast to our scientific take on reality, can create a spiritual crisis
>for individuals who later in life find those positions unreasonable. That
>can lead to a disillusionment and rejection of religion, per se.
The trouble with both approaches as Peter proposes them is, that in both
cases Science is taught as standing on its own. The way Peter proposes
them, one can have Christianity without a thorough Christian view on all of
life. But, our view on Economics, Mathematics, Physics, Justice and so on
is based on our view of God , Jesus, salvation is all part of our view on
the totality of life. That means that we accept what God tells us in his
created reality we take as God telling us something as well. God is
telling us the truth in Scripture as well as in His Creation. He does not
tell us different things.
Besides, the people who heard God speak first had no idea at all about our
scientific progresses and so on. Our language is modern English, formed
through ages of transformations, so that even Shakepearean English is
difficult for us. Modern Hebrew and a modern view of life cannot be
compared with old Hebrew and the view of life the people in the Old
Testament had.. God was not using knowledge He revealed later to confuse
the Old Testament people. Threfor translating the bible has to be done
again and again. There are words in the bible translated differently in
chapters next to each other because our view of life is different now than
it was then.
Jan de Koning
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