On Thu, 20 Mar 1997 11:25:58 -0500, John W. Burgeson wrote:
JWB>Steve Jones asked about the nTSE participants, when he wrote:
SJ>"Fantastic! Did this include dyed-in-the-wool TE/ECs?"
JWB>I don't know that anybody at the NTSE identified himself (or
>herself) in any such terms. Such classification, important as it
>seems to be on this reflector, did not seem importantto the meeting
>participants. At least not when I was listening.
My words were a response to the NTSE's acknowledgment cited by
yourself that:
1. in the past "non-believers and adherents of all the major
branches of Christendom" included those who were "quite hostile
toward the published works of Phillip Johnson".
2. "we should no longer tolerate ad hominen attacks on Prof.
Johnson, with attendant name-calling, bullying and intimidation
("he's just a lawyer... he doesn't understand how science
works...", etc.).
As Johnson himself points out, the major source of this within
"Christendom", were "TE/ECs". The same behaviour has been evident
on this Reflector by some "TE/ECs". I was overjoyed therefore that
"TE/ECs" may have been part of this new "consenus". I sincerely
hope and pray so.
JWB>Insofar as it matters, I am probably a PC myself. But not "dyed
>in the wool." The TE advocates have some powerful arguments, and I
>do not fault them. In the end, I suspect it will turn out that we
>have all been asking the wrong questions. I am quite certain they
>are not terribly important questions, as interesting and
>thought-provoking as they seem to be.
Maybe. But then maybe again they are "terribly important
questions"?
JWB>As J. I. Packer writes, in KNOWING GOD, "Knowing God is
>important; knowing about him much less important." (paraphrase)
This is of course true, although I am not sure that Packer put it
exactly in this way. Perhaps you could quote *exactly* what he
said, or at least the page reference where he said it. But it could
be distorted (as it usually is in our anti-intellectual age) into
"knowing about him" is not "important" at all. Since Packer is (or
was) Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Regent
College, Vancouver, I doubt if he would agree with this.
Elsewhere Packer makes it quite clear that he regards evolutionary
thinking as the historical enemy of Biblical Christianity:
"The conviction of nineteenth-century philosophy, whether empiricist
or idealist, materialist, deist or pantheist, was that the idea of
supernatural interruptions of the course of the natural order was
unphilosophical and absurd. Both science and philosophy relied on
evolutionary concepts for the explanation of all things. Liberalism
was an attempt to square Christianity with these anti-supernatural
axioms." (Packer J.I., "`Fundamentalism' and the Word of God",
Inter-Varsity Fellowship: London, 1958, p27)
"In their day, Liberalism was dominant; the evolutionary outlook of
which it was a product was well-nigh universal, and the
nineteenth-century faith that mankind was progressing towards
perfection, in religion as in all else, was still unchallenged.
faith than it is now. The events of the past thirty years have
shaken evolutionary optimism to its foundation. The supernaturalism
of the Bible does not now seem such an anachronism as does the
evolutionary outlook which once claimed to supersede it." (Packer,
1958, p37)
"The nineteenth-century Liberals tried to remodel the doctrines of
human nature and grace in the light of the theory of evolution,
maintaining that sin was just a transitional stage in the steady
march of mankind, under Christ's leadership, towards inevitable
perfection." (Packer, 1958, p138)
"Then, in the second place, the early Liberals relied on the idea of
evolution as the key to interpreting the religious process out of
which the Bible came. This was understandable, for at that time
leaders of thought were inclined to treat evolution as the
master-key which unlocks the meaning of every process of change,
biological, moral, social and cultural, as well as religious. To
the nineteenth-century mind, 'scientific' study meant study done on
an evolutionary hypothesis, and a 'scientific' explanation of facts
was one which showed, in terms of such a hypothesis, how the higher
had developed out of something lower in the scale of life. But this
use of evolutionary principles to explain biblical religion was
disastrous...In defiance of the biblical evidence, they forced the
religious history of Israel into an evolutionary mould which made
the prophets, not Moses, the first expositors of ethical
monotheism...The background of this reconstruction, with its
complete elimination of redemptive acts of God, was a dogma which
all evolutionary theories presuppose the unbroken uniformity of
nature. Liberal minds were hostile to any idea of supernatural
redemptive intrusions into this world-order, and worked hard to
eliminate them from their faith..." (Packer, 1958, pp148-149).
God bless.
Steve
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