On Fri, 24 Jan 1997 15:57:38 -0200 (BSC), MARCIO ROBERTO PIE - IBI - 397572
#070000# wrote:
MR>Hi! This is the first time I am sending a post for the group, so it would
>be nice to introduce myself. My name is Marcio R. Pie and I am a
>graduate student enrolled in the Ecology Graduate Program of the Campinas
>State University, Brazil. My current research is on Evolutionary Ecology
>of Insects, more especifically on Ant-Herbivore Mutualisms. I am also a
>christian, member of the Mennonite Brethren Evangelical Church of
>Curitiba. It is a pleasure to discuss some of the things that have
>been bothering me for along time and share it with you guys.
Welcome to the Reflector!
MR>Well, the poit is this. I was following the discussions about Adam that
>were carried buy the group and I realised that we do not know the real
>extension of this question.
>The whole traditional teology that is teached in our seminars and
>churches is based on some basic principals. One of the most important is
>the principle of the Fall. The teology considers the existence of a
>definite point in space and time where the man, by his own will, decided
>to sin. This principle has a lot of theological consequences, as the
>Original Sin Theology, etc. This point of view is very confortable for
>the YEC's, since has nothing against their assumptions. But I, like many
>of you, do not believe in the evidences presented by the YEC's (I would
>be very thankful if anyone could give me a name of a scientist wo
>believes in the YEC's and is not a christian)*.
The doctrine of the Fall is common property of all Christian's
whether "YEC", Old-Earth Creationist and presumably Theistic
Evolutionists. (My own position is Mediate Creationist, which is a
type of Old-Earth Progressive Creationist). There are some who
question whether Adam was a single individual. I think he was, but
I would not be unduly troubled if he was a symbol. It is the fallen
condition of mankind that is important, not whether there was an
individual named Adam. The conservative evangelical Bernard Ramm
acknowledged that Adam could have been a symbol, and cited the 19th
century evengelical scholar James Orr (who was one of the
contributors to The Fundamentals):
"There is still the third view that the Genesis account is neither
literal science nor ancient mythology, but a purified,
non-postulational literary vehicle for conveying the revelation of
God. It is argued that the picture of God working like a potter
with wet earth, anthropomorphically breathing life into man,
constructing woman from a rib, with an idyllic garden, trees with
theological significance, and a talking serpent, is the language of
theological symbolism and not of literal prose. The theological
truth is there, and this symbolism is the instrument of inspiration.
We are not to think in terms of scientific and anti-scientific, but
in terms of scientific and pre-scientific. The account is then
pre-scientific and in theological symbolism which is the garment
divine inspiration chose to reveal these truths for their more ready
comprehension by the masses of untutored Christians. This is the
view of James Orr who wrote:
`I do not enter into the question of how we are to interpret the
third chapter of Genesis-whether as history or allegory or myth, or
most probably of all, as old tradition clothed in oriental
allegorical dress-but the truth embodied in that narrative, viz.
the fall of man from an original state of purity, I take to be vital
to the Christian view. (Orr J., The Christian View of God and the
World, 1897, p185)
(Ramm B. "The Christian View of Science and Scripture", 1955, p223)
Pinnock, another leading evangelical scholar has pointed out that
the Hebrew text itself suggests that Adam and Eve may be symbols:
"Conservatives are very "touchy" about the historicity of the fall
of Adam, because of its importance to their soteriology and
theodicy, and, therefore, about the status of the Genesis narratives
on that event (Genesis 2-3). They are reluctant to admit that the
literary genre in that case is figurative rather than strictly
literal even though the hints are very strong that it is symbolic:
Adam (which means "Mankind") marries Eve (which means "Life), and
their son Cain (which means "Forger") becomes a wanderer in the land
of Nod (which means "Wandering")!" (Pinnock C.H., "The Scripture
Principle"n, 1985, p116-117)
As yet another evangelical scholar Donal Bloesch notes, noted
evangelical thinkers have regarded the Genesis of Adam, Eve and the
Fall as being in symbolic form:
"Yet this does not mean that the story of Adam and Eve as presented
in Genesis is itself exact, literal history Not only Niebuhr but also
Jacques Ellul, Paul Althaus, Karl Barth, Raymond Abba, C. S. Lewis,
and many other evangelically oriented scholars Would concur...Lewis
regards the story of Adam and Eve as paradigmatic of the fall of
Paradisal man, who may have included several persons. "We do not
know how many of these creatures God made," he says, "nor how
long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they
fell." (Bloesch D.G., "Essentials of Evangelical Theology", 198,
Vol. 1, pp107,117)
Bloesch himself sees the Fall as a real event that happened in
prehistory, but its symbolic form indicates that it also happens in
universal history:
"We see the fall of man as an event that happens in both prehistory
(Urgeschichte) and universal history. The tale in Genesis concerns
not only a first fall and first man but a universal fall and
universal man. Adam is not so much a private person as the head of
the human race. He is generic as well as first man. He is Everyman
and therefore Representative Man. He is the representative of both
our original parents and of all humankind, and Paul sometimes
combines these two motifs. It is human nature which sins in the
Genesis narrative and not simply the first man." (Bloesch D.G.,
"Essentials of Evangelical Theology, 1982, Vol. 1, p106)
MR>Considering the current
>scientific evidences, I am a evolutionist. That puts me in a very
>confortable position in relation to the current science, but certainly also
>puts me in a very unconfortable position in relation to theology.
>How can I consider the notion of the Fall in the "paradigm" of
>evolutionary creationism? When, and how did the man became a real man, in
>the theological view? What feature makes him a real man?
>Please, give me your opinions.
If you think there are only two alternative positions, "YEC" or
"evolutionist", then by definition everyone who is not a "YEC" is
an evolutionist! This BTW is what both the evolutionists and the ICR
want us to believe, as the following recent examples show. First
Gould:
"We predict that an evolutionary tree built from DNA resemblances
should be congruent with the traditional classification based on
morphology. Creationists, on the other hand, should expect no such
similarity, for God may do as He pleases. Why should entirely
different criteria record the same supposedly nonexistent pattern of
evolutionary branching? (Of course, one might say that God chose to
create with such congruence, but then God becomes meaninglessly
omnipotent-that is, so flexible, so available for invocation to
achieve any conceivable result that He becomes truly impotent for
failure to illustrate any distinctive act that might test the nature
of His unique ways and power." Gould S.J., "Dinosaur in a
Haystack", 1995, p410)
Then Ken Ham:
"Ultimately, THIS IS WHAT EVOLUTION IS ALL ABOUT: man's setting
himself up as the authority and being the judge of God's Word.
Thus, any view that ultimately starts independently of the revealed
Word of God is really 'evolutionary thinking'. What I am saying is
this: evolution is not just molecules-to-life, or ape-like
creatures-to-man. 'Evolution', when it comes down to it, is really
a whole philosophy of life that teaches that man by himself can
determine 'truth'." (Ham K., "What is Evolution?", Prayer News,
Creation Science Foundation: Brisbane, November 1996, pp1-2.
Emphasis Ham's.)
Both Gould and Ham are united promoting what Johnson calls the
"`official caricature' of the creation-evolution debate", namely
that creationism must mean young-Earth creationism and everything
else is evolution:
"The Weiner article and book review illustrate what I would call the
"official caricature" of the creation-evolution debate, a distortion
that is either explicit or implicit in nearly all media and textbook
treatments of the subject. According to the caricature, "evolution"
is a simple, unitary process that one can see in operation today and
that is also supported unequivocally by all the fossil evidence.
Everyone accepts the truth of evolution except a disturbingly large
group of biblical fundamentalists, who insist that the earth is no
more than ten thousand years old and the fossil beds were laid down
in Noah's flood. These baffling persons either are uninformed about
the evidence or perhaps choose to disregard it as a temptation
placed before us by God to test our faith in Genesis. There is no
conceivable intellectual basis for their dissent, because the
evidence for evolution is absolutely conclusive. According to the
official caricature, the finch-beak variation that the Grants
observed on Daphne Island is fundamentally the same process that
brought birds into existence in the first place. Essentially the
same process, extended over immense stretches of geological time,
produced complex plants and animals from single-celled microbes.
Biological evolution at all levels is thus fundamentally a single
process, which one either accepts or (irrationally) rejects."
(Johnson P.E., "Reason in the Balance", 1995, p73)
But there are many possibilities in between the two extremes of
YEC and evolution. My own position is Mediate Creation, which can
accepts that God *could* have worked only through natural causes
(up to and including Neo-Darwinist `blind watchmaker' mechanisms),
but does not assume apriori that God *did* only work through natural
causes, and that He could in fact have intervened at strategic
points in biological history, just as He has done in human history.
My position is encapsulated in the following quote from Christian
geneticist David Wilcox:
"I have no metaphysical necessity driving me to propose the
miraculous action of the evident finger of God as a scientific
hypothesis. In my world view, all natural forces and events are
fully contingent on the free choice of the sovereign God. Thus,
neither an adequate nor an inadequate "neo-Darwinism (as mechanism)
holds any terrors. But that is not what the data looks like. And I
feel no metaphysical necessity to exclude the evident finger of
God." (Wilcox D.L., in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism:
Science or Philosophy?", 1994, p215)
MR>D. Gish went to our University last year to talk about the
>evidences of his "Scientific Creationism". By the audience's
>enthusiasm, I doubt whether anybody believed in what he said.
Interesting. I heard Gary Parker once. My impression was that he
didn't really believe what he said (This is not to say that he was
consciously being dishonest). The tide seems to be turning against
the ICR. Phillip Johnson in one of his recent tapes claims that the
majority of evangelical leaders (eg. Colson, Dobson, Zacharias) are
getting behind his broad creationist movement.
God bless.
Steve
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