Progressive Creationism Part 6
James G. Acker
This is tedious! Wish I had a scanner. Anyways, the
following is from James Montgomery Boice's "GENESIS: An
Expositional Commentary", Chapter 11 entitled "The Sixth
Day":
"HOW OLD IS MAN?
How old is man? This is a troublesome question,
because there seems to be a conflict between the account in
Genesis and the apparent evidence of science on this point.
The various biblical genealogies (Genesis 5 is the earliest
example) suggest that man is on the order of thousands --
perhaps ten or twenty thousands -- of years old. But
anthropologists speak of man or manlike creatures being on
the order of three and a half to four million years old.
The work of the Leakey family in Kenya and Tanzania provides
the best-known examples.
What are we to say of this conflict? It may be
impossible to resolve it finally at this stage of our
knowledge, but the issues can be put in proportion. First,
we must say that this seems to be a real conflict and not
merely a case in which we are dealing with two different
ways of looking at the same evidence. It has been pointed
out by biblical scholars, among them no less a scholar than
Princeton's B.B. Warfield (2: "On the Antiquity and the
Unity of the Human Race," _Biblical and Theological
Studies_, Samuel G. Craig, Ed. Presby and Reformed Publ.
Co., 1968) that the biblical genealogies are not necessarily
inclusive when they list a series of descendants. That is
to say, they may (and in fact do) leave gaps, so that a
person identified as a "son" of the person coming before him
in the list need not necessarily be a literal son but may be
a grandson or great-grandson. (ED. NOTE: For all of those
who thought the Bible was literally without error, this
admission from a Biblical innerantist is AMAZING! -- and
should be NOTED.) Moreover, as the gaps may sometimes be
quite large, as for example, the summation of the geneaology
of Jesus Christ occurring in Matthew 1:1 ("the genealogy of
Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham").
Because of this, it is possible, even probable, that the
geneaology of Genesis, which suggest a creation of Adam in a
time scale of approximately 4,000 years before Christ
(Bishop Ussher's date was 4004 B.C.), are actually
summations of much longer periods. Still, even if we
multiply the figure of 4,000 years three, four, or even five
times, we are far from what most anthropologists are
claiming. An origin of the race on the order of 12,000 to
20,000 years ago is very different from an origin three and
a half to four million years ago.
It helps to put the fossil evidence in perspective,
however, for not all fossils claimed to be human are
necessarily so. Skeletal materials found at sites from
historical times are essentially the same as those of modern
man, called *Homo sapiens* ("thinking" or "discerning man").
But as one goes back beyond historical times there are
increasing differences. Cro-Magnon man, who is prehistoric
and whose remains have been found scattered widely
throughout western Europe, was similar to people who exist
today. He used bone and stone tools and made cave paintings
of animals and other features of his world. Slightly
farther back (on the order of 100,000 years) is the so-
called Neanderthal man. He also used tools and buried his
dead. But he was less human in appearance, having a
receding forehead and a pronounced jaw. He seems to have
been more "apelike". (ED. NOTE: I apologize for Boice's
perspective, but there are important implications here.)
Remains of this "man" were found in Europe, Israel, Zambia,
and Rhodesia. Still farther back are a number of other
essentially "modern" types found in France, Germany, and
England, dating from perhaps 250,000 years ago, according to
the most accepted calculations.
The so-called Peking Man and Java man date from between
500,000 and 1,000,000 years ago. Sometimes crude tools have
been found with these skeletons, but the chief reason for
their being regarded as humans is that they apparently
walked upright, hence are designated *Homo erectus*. Most
anthropologists would call *Homo erectus* the first truly
modern man. The discoveries of Richard and Mary Leakey in
Africa, while frequently referred to as evidences of ancient
men in the secular press, are at best pre-human creatures,
even by the Leakey's own judgments. (ED. NOTE: What does
"pre-human" imply?) They apparently walked upright, but
they were quite small -- about four feet in height -- and
had a brain capacity of about one-third that of modern man.
The general impression one has of the skulls is that they
represent extinct apelike rather than manlike forms (3: See
Young, pp. 146-51, for a summation of the fossil evidence.
This is probably "Creation and the Flood".)
[I now skip a section where Boice discusses the
uncertainty of dating these QUOTE "apparently ancient human
ancestors" UNQUOTE. Again, the implication of Boice even
suggesting that these are human ancestors are ENORMOUS for a
Biblical inerrantist writer who says he has dismissed
evolution! He also cites Paluxy River, which has even been
abandoned by the ICR. Note that he didn't say "ancient,
apparently human, ancestors." Thus, he implicitly accepts
human ancestry. He may not have realized what he wrote, but
it stands in print.]
In the interim what may Christians, who hold to the
truthfulness of Genesis and who still want to be honest (ED.
NOTE: !!!) where scientific data is concerned, conclude?
One scientist, Robert A. Erb of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania,
concludes that fossil "man" is not necessarily man and that
Christians do themselves a disservice when they regard all
such as Adam's descendants. He writes, "I believe in a
historical Adam and would tend to date him near the
beginning of the Neolithic (new stone) age in the Near East
(about 8,000 B.C.). Indeed, this step in the creative work
of God may be the cause of what is known as the Neolithic
Revolution, with the domestication of plants and animals,
the building of cities, the invention of pottery, the
beginnings of writing and such things. That Adam does not
belong to the Upper Paleolithic age of 30,000 years ago is
suggested by: the domestication of plants and animals in
the account of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:2) and Cain building a
city (Gen. 4:17). In about six generations (neglecting the
probable gaps in genealogy), Tubal-cain was working with
metals (Gen. 4:22) and Jubal was making music (Gen 4:21).
(5: Robert A. Erb, unpublished paper on "Miscellaneous
Thoughts on Science and the Early Chapters of Genesis", p.
3.) (ED. NOTE: I can see why it was unpublished. Who is
Erb? Boice does himself a disservice by quoting this
poorly-founded position.)
The conclusion is that, while the earth and universe
may indeed be quite old (on the order of billions of years),
there is no need to insist that man is millions of years
old. His creation by God may be as recent as genealogies
seem to indicate."
Summary of pertinent points, in my (Jim Acker's) view:
1. Boice gives more legitimacy to the anthropological
record than I have ever seen in a Biblical inerrancy
position.
2. Boice apparently supports "progressive creationism"
and discounts "theistic evolution", based on prior reading.
Interpolating his position, then, he appears to believe that
God separately created all these forms: H. sapiens,
Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, H. erectus, and
Australopithecus. Yet he will not admit their ancestry to
man. Since Davis Young "summarized the fossil evidence",
Young must be in the same boat.
3. Yet he comes within a whisker of doing just that,
calling them "pre-human" and "apparently ancient human
ancestors"! I doubt Boice realized what he'd implied, but
there it is.
4. Allowing the comments by Erb leads to the obvious
question: If there was a historical Neolithic Adam in the
Near East, WHO WERE ALL THE OTHER GUYS? Though unfamiliar
with case histories, I know there are numerous Neolithic
fossil sites. Was there a created "generation" of Adams,
with one particular "Edenic" Adam? Poor citation!
I was astonished reading this section, because of the
cited support for Biblical inerrancy in Boice's credentials.
Trust me -- to give this much weight to anthropology in his
scholarly framework is remarkable. I personally can believe
that God "monitored" or "directed" the evolutionary lineage
leading to *Homo sapiens*, tweaking and adjusting the
process at each step, but it would seem utterly foolish to
present this ancestral lineage and still insist on a some
type of creative "isolation" for each separate form.
However, that is what I believe Boice holds.
Feel free to discuss. I'm done (and tired).
Jim Acker
jga...@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50
I know how much work it is - after transcribing the Gish/Ross interview
from Focus on the Family.
Several reactions (more may follow as I think of more):
1. Your astonishment that a strict inerrantist would give such credence
to anthropological findings:
I agree, but perhaps that's a sign of progress. He seems to have recognized
that anthropologists can find and date ancient remains, and those
remains (including artifacts like tools) will tell us something about
what these creatures were like physically and intellectually. But
do manlike form, use of tools, living in communities, etc. necessarily
identify the same creature that the Bible also calls man? The
insistence on separate creation of each manlike predecessor of man
is probably just an artifact of the inerrantist tradition. I once
suggested to a friend that God could well have brought about the
diversity of life by stepping in from time to time and adjusting
both environment and genetic code to get what He wanted. My friend
got red in the face and retorted, "But we know He didn't do that," but was
not able to explain to me *why* we know. I think it's a "slippery
slope" kind of fear. It would be interesting
to see how Boice's thinking has developed since the book was
published. What is the pub date, BTW? It would be refreshing to see
an inerrantist admit that the Bible is trustworthy when used as
intended - as a guide to faith and practice by believers.
2. The assertions found here and there about how evolution is ruled out:
Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative
Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
openly opposing it. It seems to me that once you allow progressive
creation or the day-age theory (which is Young's position), then you've
agreed that the geologists' time scale is correct, that different
sorts of creatures appeared at different times, and that later
creatures seem to have been developed using characteristics of earlier
creatures as as a starting point,
possibly in response to changing environmental
conditions. Now the question is just *how* did these changes occur, and
it seems to me that Boice is where the assertion that God influenced the
genetic development of life by mutations, genetic drift and adjusting
environmental conditions becomes quite plausible. He just doesn't
dare come out and admit it - yet.
3. The mention of the Paluxy "mantracks":
Proves that even scholars like Boice sometimes fall victim to the
credulity which conservative Christians are too prone to. No excuse.
He should have checked his information.
Bill Hamilton
GM Research and Environmental Staff
Class Guest3
: It would be interesting
: to see how Boice's thinking has developed since the book was
: published. What is the pub date, BTW? It would be refreshing to see
: an inerrantist admit that the Bible is trustworthy when used as
: intended - as a guide to faith and practice by believers.
Copyright 1982.
: 2. The assertions found here and there about how evolution is ruled out:
:
: Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative
: Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
: openly opposing it.
Absolutely. That's why I wanted to ask Gish about this next
weekend, but I won't be here! Sob.
: Now the question is just *how* did these changes occur, and
: it seems to me that Boice is where the assertion that God influenced the
: genetic development of life by mutations, genetic drift and adjusting
: environmental conditions becomes quite plausible. He just doesn't
: dare come out and admit it - yet.
A friend of mine is going to 10th Presbyterian and visits
back here often. He's a medical doctor and might have an open mind.
Maybe I could give him a hand-delivered letter.
: 3. The mention of the Paluxy "mantracks":
:
: Proves that even scholars like Boice sometimes fall victim to the
: credulity which conservative Christians are too prone to. No excuse.
: He should have checked his information.
Copyright 1982, I don't think the Paluxy mantracks had been
definitively disproven.
As an afterthought, though Boice presents Young's arguments
against The Flood, he still gives more possible evidence for it, perhaps
an offering to the ICR folks. He leans toward a global flood of short
duration, citing evidence such as huge fossil-bone collections. I would
have thought, based on the creationism discussion, he would have supported
the local-flood hypothesis. Oh well.
(I still think it's race memory of when the Mediterranean
refilled, and yet I hear no one supporting that theory. Shoot me
down, guys. Too early?)
Jim Acker
jga...@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
James J. Lippard
>2. The assertions found here and there about how evolution is ruled out:
>
>Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative
>Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
>openly opposing it. It seems to me that once you allow progressive
>creation or the day-age theory (which is Young's position), then you've
>agreed that the geologists' time scale is correct, that different
>sorts of creatures appeared at different times, and that later
>creatures seem to have been developed using characteristics of earlier
>creatures as as a starting point,
>possibly in response to changing environmental
>conditions. Now the question is just *how* did these changes occur, and
I'm presently reading Ronald Numbers' _The Creationists_, and was quite
surprised to find that things used to be quite the reverse, up until around
the 1920's or later. That is, old-earthers were quite dominant, except in
the Seventh Day Adventist crowd, whose influence through George McCready
Price led to today's creationism. Several early U.S. creationist organizations
were split over heated battles between Price-following flood geologists
and day-age and gap theorists.
>3. The mention of the Paluxy "mantracks":
>
>Proves that even scholars like Boice sometimes fall victim to the
>credulity which conservative Christians are too prone to. No excuse.
>He should have checked his information.
Speaking of the Paluxy tracks, the most recent issue of _Origins Research_
features an article by Glen Kuban addressing (and debunking) the Kayenta
dinosaur/alleged human tracks (near Tuba City, Arizona), which were recently
promoted in the _Creation Research Society Quarterly_.
Jim Lippard Lip...@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy Lip...@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
Mark Isaak
>(I still think it [global flood story] is race memory of when the
>Mediterranean refilled, and yet I hear no one supporting that theory.
>Shoot me down, guys. Too early?)
My big objection to that theory is that I've never seen any evidence
that such a thing as race memories exist, at least in the sense of
memories we're born with. If you're talking about stories passed
verbally from generation to generation, then, yes, the Mediterranean
refilling could be a source, but I strongly suspect that that story
would have been lost in the noise of stories of smaller but more recent
floods ages ago. Also, the Biblical flood talks about rain, which
wouldn't necessarily be a factor in the Mediterranean flood.
I see no reason to doubt that the story was based on a particularly
large river flood. Such a flood could easily cover hundreds of suqare
miles, which, to a peasant farmer, would be the whole world.
Creationists say that such an interpretation means I don't believe
the Bible is True, but that interpretation sure makes the Bible look
less silly than the global flood interpretation.
--
Mark Isaak "Every generation thinks it has the answers, and every
is...@aurora.com generation is humbled by nature." - Philip Lubin
Stanley Friesen
| It helps to put the fossil evidence in perspective,
|however, for not all fossils claimed to be human are
|necessarily so. Skeletal materials found at sites from
|historical times are essentially the same as those of modern
|man, called *Homo sapiens* ("thinking" or "discerning man").
|But as one goes back beyond historical times there are
|increasing differences. Cro-Magnon man, who is prehistoric
|and whose remains have been found scattered widely
|throughout western Europe, was similar to people who exist
|today. He used bone and stone tools and made cave paintings
|of animals and other features of his world. Slightly
|farther back (on the order of 100,000 years) is the so-
|called Neanderthal man. He also used tools and buried his
|dead.
There is some overlap between modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthal.
Modern H. sapiens can be traced back to more than 100,000 years.
[And Cro Magnon is considered 'indistinguishable' from living humans,
not merely similar].
| Still farther back are a number of other
|essentially "modern" types found in France, Germany, and
|England, dating from perhaps 250,000 years ago, according to
|the most accepted calculations.
The dating of the oldest known specimens of 'archaic' Homo sapiens
now stretch back to about 300,000 years (a minor change).
|but the chief reason for
|their being regarded as humans is that they apparently
|walked upright, hence are designated *Homo erectus*. Most
|anthropologists would call *Homo erectus* the first truly
|modern man.
Fairly accurate, but I believe that some African H. erectus are known from
well over 1 million years ago. Also, the association of H. erectus with
the crude stone tools of the paleolithic types is essentially certain.
| In the interim what may Christians, who hold to the
|truthfulness of Genesis and who still want to be honest (ED.
|NOTE: !!!) where scientific data is concerned, conclude?
|One scientist, Robert A. Erb of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania,
|concludes that fossil "man" is not necessarily man and that
|Christians do themselves a disservice when they regard all
|such as Adam's descendants.
Actually, I would tend to agree with this part. The vernacular 'human'
is probably best reserved for Homo sapiens, or even 'modern Homo sapiens.
Still this does not get him much, 100,000 to 300,000 is *still* an order of
magnitude above what he is willing to accept as the oldest figure for Adam.
|historical Adam and would tend to date him near the
|beginning of the Neolithic (new stone) age in the Near East
|(about 8,000 B.C.). Indeed, this step in the creative work
|of God may be the cause of what is known as the Neolithic
|Revolution, with the domestication of plants and animals,
|the building of cities, the invention of pottery, the
|beginnings of writing and such things. That Adam does not
|belong to the Upper Paleolithic age of 30,000 years ago is
|suggested by: ...
Hmm, humanity is defined by *cultural* characteristics???
[Just a nit, but I think that 30,000 years bp is already Mesolithic,
not Upper Paleolithic - I am fairly certain that all 'modern' Homo
sapiens finds are associated with post-paleolithic technologies].
In this regard the difference between 'modern' Homo sapiens and the eraly
forms is illuminated in the rate of *change* in technology. An essentially
identical stone tool technology is found at *all* Homo erectus sites,
for a span of more the a *million* years with *no* noticable change.
Then come the 'archaic' Homo sapiens and Neandethals, with a slightly
more sophisticated stone technology. This lasted with little change
until 'modern' Homo sapiens entered the picture - a period of about 300,000
years in most areas of the world.
In the 200,000 to 300,000 years since then we have gone from stone tools to
space ships! Even prior to the agricultural revolution, however, the rate
of change was staggering (compared to the prior stasis). Any given stone
tool technology only lasted a few thousand years *at* *most*. Furthermore,
extensive *regional* specialization (local cultures) first becomes pronounced
at this time.
So, the real break is between 'modern' Homo sapiens and those that went
before.
| The conclusion is that, while the earth and universe
|may indeed be quite old (on the order of billions of years),
|there is no need to insist that man is millions of years
|old. His creation by God may be as recent as genealogies
|seem to indicate."
Only if you use *learned* behavior, rather than intrinsic capabilites or
anatomical features to define what is meant by 'human'. This has the
unfortunate side effect of making the Australian Aborignes sub-human
(Since thier culture lacks all of the distinguishing features that Boice
lists for his Adamic 'first human').
--
sar...@teradata.com (formerly tdatirv!sarima)
or
Stanley...@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
James G. Acker
: In article <91...@rphroy.ph.gmr.com>, hami...@gmr.com (William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes...
HAMILTON:
: >Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative
: >Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
: >openly opposing it.
LIPPARD:
: I'm presently reading Ronald Numbers' _The Creationists_, and was quite
: surprised to find that things used to be quite the reverse, up until around
: the 1920's or later. That is, old-earthers were quite dominant, except in
: the Seventh Day Adventist crowd, whose influence through George McCready
: Price led to today's creationism. Sev'l early U.S. creationist organizations
: were split over heated battles between Price-following flood geologists
: and day-age and gap theorists.
I just heard this too, in the Sunday class which is accompanied
by Boice's book. Apparently, theistic evolution was a major tenet of
1920's fundamentalists.
It's a shame that we've taken such a step backwards, both in
tolerance and in knowledge (well, I haven't, but several fundamental
branches of the Christian church have.)
Jim, got the mailing address for "Crossroads"? Let's
do it. For the good of the church, if nothing else.
Jim Acker
jga...@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
James J. Lippard
>James J. Lippard (lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu) wrote:
>: In article <91...@rphroy.ph.gmr.com>, hami...@gmr.com (William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes...
>
>HAMILTON:
>: >Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative
>: >Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
>: >openly opposing it.
>
>LIPPARD:
>: I'm presently reading Ronald Numbers' _The Creationists_, and was quite
>: surprised to find that things used to be quite the reverse, up until around
>: the 1920's or later. That is, old-earthers were quite dominant, except in
>: the Seventh Day Adventist crowd, whose influence through George McCready
>: Price led to today's creationism. Sev'l early U.S. creationist organizations
>: were split over heated battles between Price-following flood geologists
>: and day-age and gap theorists.
>
> I just heard this too, in the Sunday class which is accompanied
>by Boice's book. Apparently, theistic evolution was a major tenet of
>1920's fundamentalists.
> It's a shame that we've taken such a step backwards, both in
>tolerance and in knowledge (well, I haven't, but several fundamental
>branches of the Christian church have.)
When the Rev. A.C. Dixon assembled the twelve booklets, _The Fundamentals_,
between 1910 and 1915 (from which fundamentalists get their name), he had
cleric-geologist George Frederick Wright write a chapter for it. The
chapter was originally to be titled "Evolution from the Christian Point
of View," but was ultimately titled "The Passing of Evolution." In it,
he argued for special creation at the species level, but that each species
was "nothing more than enlarged or accentuated varieties, which all admit
are descendants from a common ancestry." (At the same time this was
published, Wright elsewhere, in his 1912 book _Origin and Antiquity of
Man_, stated that "it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, so far
as his physical organism is concerned, man is genetically connected with
the highest order of the Mammalia, but it is equally evidence that he is
not descended from any existing species of that order." Nobody is quite
clear on just what his views were about the limits of evolution.)
Wright was an old-earther who did not advocate flood geology.
The following is an interesting paragraph from Numbers' _The Creationists_,
p. 96:
On occasion [George McCready] Price found himself defending not only
the geological but the scriptural validity of his flood geology. The
amateur historian of science and prep-school science teacher Edwin
Tenney Brewster (1866-1960) especially enjoyed pestering Price with
questions about the compatibility of the new catastrophism with the
Old Testament. How, wondered Brewster, could the author of Genesis,
writing about the antediluvian world *after* the deluge, refer to
familiar geographical landmarks if, as Price claimed, the present-day
topographical features of the region had resulted from the flood? If
the Holy Land rested on stratified rocks deposited during the flood,
one would expect the pre- and post-flood geography of the region to
differ markedly; but Genesis refers to "the same rivers and plains,
the same wildernesses, the same 'Mountains of Ararat,' that Noah saw
before the Great Flood." Seen in this light, wrote Brewster, "the
Prician hypothesis flatly contradicts the Bible."
Chris Colby
>My big objection to that theory is that I've never seen any evidence
>that such a thing as race memories exist, at least in the sense of
>memories we're born with.
In addition, there is a mechanistic problem; racial memory would
have to involve the inheritance of an acquired charactoristic.
Some how thoughts would have to be transferred to DNA so they could
be passed on.
>Mark Isaak "Every generation thinks it has the answers, and every
Chris Colby --- email: co...@bu-bio.bu.edu ---
"'My boy,' he said, 'you are descended from a long line of determined,
resourceful, microscopic tadpoles--champions every one.'"
--Kurt Vonnegut from "Galapagos"
William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50
>In article <91...@rphroy.ph.gmr.com>, hami...@gmr.com (William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes...
>>2. The assertions found here and there about how evolution is ruled out:
>>
>>Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative
>>Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
>>openly opposing it. It seems to me that once you allow progressive
>>creation or the day-age theory (which is Young's position), then you've
>>agreed that the geologists' time scale is correct, that different
>>sorts of creatures appeared at different times, and that later
>>creatures seem to have been developed using characteristics of earlier
>>creatures as as a starting point,
>>possibly in response to changing environmental
>>conditions. Now the question is just *how* did these changes occur, and
>
>I'm presently reading Ronald Numbers' _The Creationists_, and was quite
>surprised to find that things used to be quite the reverse, up until around
>the 1920's or later. That is, old-earthers were quite dominant, except in
>the Seventh Day Adventist crowd, whose influence through George McCready
>Price led to today's creationism. Several early U.S. creationist organizations
>were split over heated battles between Price-following flood geologists
>and day-age and gap theorists.
The following excerpt from "The Fundamentalist Origins of the American
Scientific Affiliation" by D. G. Hart in Perspectives on Science and
Christian Faith v43 no. 4, Dec 1991, pp 238-247 should be of interest.
The point this leads up to is that J. Gresham Machen, who was one
of the authors of "The Fundamentals" - a series of booklets published
in the 1920's, from which the term "Fandamentalism" was derived -
did not see a conflict between evolution and Christianity. I include
some of the preceding material because it gives some background
on Machen and makes some points about the nature of the fundamentalist/
modernist controversy in the 20's that may be surprising.
Mainstream biblical scholarship of the era [1920's]reinforced the separation of
religion and science by identifying Jesus' ethical instruction as the essence of
Christianity. According to sociologist Charles A. Ellwood, New Testament
scholars had through their patient and extensive labors established Jesus as a
"teacher of love." He agreed with Harry Emerson Fosdick, who assured readers
that critics had rediscovered "the historic Christ" and liberated the gospel
from dogma. Meanwhile, many scientists cited the findings of biblical scholars
to defend their own research by demonstrating that evolution did not contradict
Christianity because it did not dispute Jesus' teaching.
Implicit in this truce between religion and science was the distinction between
religion and theology, or between faith and dogma. Many explained the conflict
over evolution as the result of a misunderstanding. Fundamentalists had mistaken
their own doctrines(biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and
the atonement, for example)for the essence of Christianity. But the controversy
all but disappeared once Christianity was understood apart from formal theology.
The Bible, accordingly, was not a book of doctrinal teaching, as fundamentalists
maintained, but a collection of inspirational writings. Furthermore, genuine
Christian faith did not depend upon intellectual assent to theological
propositions. Instead, it consisted of vital religious experience. Nurtured by
the non-confessional character of American Protestantism and philosophical
developments in the late nineteenth-century, this distinction between theology
and religion was best summarized by Shailer Mathews, dean of the Divinity School
at University of Chicago, when he wrote, "Christianity is not a hard and fast
system of philosophy or orthodoxy" but "the attempt of men to rely upon
Christian principles in meeting the needs of their actual life-situations."
Ironically, by drawing the lines so sharply between religious experience and
theological expression, liberal Protestants were in effect ceding concern for
the intellectual implications of Christianity to fundamentalists. To be sure,
liberals were far more involved and established in academic circles than
fundamentalists and could make a good case that their recasting of Christianity
was accomplished with the assistance of modern scholarship. Yet, fundamentalist
attention to the theological ramifications of science was no less intellectually
serious than liberal efforts to adapt Christianity to modern thought. Until
recently, the fundamentalist concern for intellectual coherence was rarely noted
by American historians who focused on the movement's anti-intellectualism. But
some fundamentalists of the period were quick to turn the epithet of
anti-intellectualism back upon the proponents of Protestant modernism.!
None of the fundamentalists made more of liberal Protestantism's tacit
anti-intellectualism than J. Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament at
Princeton and Westminster seminaries, and controversialist extraordinaire in the
Northern Presbyterian Church. Machen himself had the kind of academic background
that gave his charges credibility. He did his undergraduate work and a year of
graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University, finished a masters in philosophy
at Princeton University while completing the course of instruction at Princeton
Seminary, and rounded out his studies with a year of advanced work in New
Testament criticism at Marburg and Goettingen universities. Of course, as a
defender of the New Testament's historicity, Machen's chief gripe against
liberalism was theological. Liberal conceptions of God, Christ, human nature and
salvation, for starters, departed to such a degree from historic Christianity
that they deserved to be called by another name.
Yet Machen also argued that these departures from orthodoxy, though rooted in
the desire to square Christianity with modern scientific conceptions, were
fundamentally un-scientific and anti-intellectual. The science that Machen had
in mind was not biology, geology, or physics. Rather, the latest findings from
New Testament studies, Machen said, showed that the liberal conception of Jesus
as "a mild-mannered exponent of indiscriminating love" was not at all compatible
with modern research that showed the authors of the Gospels portraying Jesus as
a supernatural person, fully aware of his sinlessness and messianic role. To be
truly scientific, then, modern Protestants would have to come to terms with
biblical scholarship. Such a task would force a choice between the Jesus of
liberal Protestant fancies or the historic Christ of the Bible.
Furthermore, liberal Protestantism was anti-intellectual, according to Machen,
because it consigned Christianity to the realm of ideals and experience, a realm
entirely separate from scientific investigation. By reducing Christianity to its
experiential and ethical aspects and by stripping it of its theological and
historical content, liberals could perhaps dodge the grasp of science for a
while, but eventually psychologists and philosophers would subject even the
affective and moral dimensions of Christianity to criticism. Thus, the process
of modifying Christianity to accommodate science showed a lack of intellectual
resolve. Machen's charge of anti-intellectualism infuriated liberals, but made
sufficient sense to be repeated by H. L. Mencken, the irreverent and skeptical
journalist from Machen's home town, Baltimore. According to Mencken, "it is one
thing to reject religion altogether, and quite another thing to try to save it
by pumping out of it all its essential substance ... reducing it] to a series of
sweet attitudes possible to anyone not actually in jail for felony."
[OK. Here's the punch line]
Part of Machen's appeal to Mencken, however, was his avoidance of the
evolutionary controversy. Although Machen avoided the subject in public, in his
correspondence he espoused a view of human origins not unlike his mentor at
Princeton, Benjamin B. Warfield, who argued that God superintended the
evolutionary process and intervened to create the human soul. Of course, this
position was unusual among fundamentalists. But Machen's larger point(that the
compartmentalization of science and religion was in effect an admission that
Christianity did not correspond to scientific descriptions of reality)was one
upon which most fundamentalists agreed. Indeed, one of the central
fundamentalist arguments about science was that because all truth was God's
truth, something could not be true in one sphere and false in the other.
Fundamentalists were deeply committed to intellectual consistency and scorned
liberals for abandoning the enterprise. Machen's way of achieving coherence was
to defend the historicity of the New Testament. Because, at the very minimum,
Christianity was bound up with a man who lived and died in first-century
Palestine, he said, it could not be sequestered from the world of learning.
Fundamentalist objections to evolution followed a similar logic. Because Genesis
made particular claims about the origins of the universe and humankind,
scientific findings on those matters could not be ignored.
Bill Hamilton
GM Research and Environment Staff
Stanley Friesen
|>(I still think it [global flood story] is race memory of when the
|>Mediterranean refilled, and yet I hear no one supporting that theory.
|>Shoot me down, guys. Too early?)
|
|My big objection to that theory is that I've never seen any evidence
|that such a thing as race memories exist, at least in the sense of
|memories we're born with. If you're talking about stories passed
|verbally from generation to generation, then, yes, the Mediterranean
|refilling could be a source, but I strongly suspect that that story
|would have been lost in the noise of stories of smaller but more recent
|floods ages ago. Also, the Biblical flood talks about rain, which
|wouldn't necessarily be a factor in the Mediterranean flood.
Also, the refilling is *way* too early - it predates all known hominid
fossils (though not hominoid). So there was nobody around to *tell* the
story.
|I see no reason to doubt that the story was based on a particularly
|large river flood. Such a flood could easily cover hundreds of suqare
|miles, which, to a peasant farmer, would be the whole world.
Do you remember the flood in India a year or so ago - it *did* cover
hundreds of square miles.
And there is evidence of even larger floods in the Yellow River basin
in China.
Stanley Friesen
|
|between 1910 and 1915 (from which fundamentalists get their name), he had
|cleric-geologist George Frederick Wright write a chapter for it. The
|chapter was originally to be titled "Evolution from the Christian Point
|of View," but was ultimately titled "The Passing of Evolution." In it,
|he argued for special creation at the species level, but that each species
|was "nothing more than enlarged or accentuated varieties, which all admit
Interestingly, this position was almost reasonable in the teens and 20's.
At this time, after the 'rediscovery' of Mendel's work, and before the
Evolutionary Synthesis, it appeared as if Mendel's results contradicted
Darwin's model of natural selection. Thus a continuation of Lyell's
'special creation' model of species origin, or the less theological
variants of it, such as Goldschmidt's mutationism, were reasonable
alternatives to Darwin's ideas.
James G. Acker
: Also, the refilling is *way* too early - it predates all known hominid
: fossils (though not hominoid). So there was nobody around to *tell* the
: story.
Thanks, Stan -- I can't find any references dating the Mediterranean
flood(s). I figured it was "hominoid" era -- not Cro-Magnon, who probably
could have told each other stories. That's why I said race memory, and
will say no more about it.
Jim Acker
jga...@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
mike.siemon
(William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes:
[ concerning the backround of some fundamentalist positions ]
> New Testament studies, Machen said, showed that the liberal conception
> of Jesus as "a mild-mannered exponent of indiscriminating love" was not
> at all compatible with modern research that showed the authors of the
> Gospels portraying Jesus as a supernatural person, fully aware of his
> sinlessness and messianic role.
True enough -- all serious study, and most especially all "liberal"
study must start from Schweitzer's exploding the "gentle Jesus, meek
and mild psuedo-moral-philosopher" image that dominated a lot of popular
discussion of Christianity, and which went hand in glove with the kind
of crypto-Protestant establishment in the USA which operated in some
respects as an "Episcopocracy" (read up on the history of Episcopalians
in the US government :-)) while making a great show of "universalism"
as civic virtue. There are lots of interesting things in this, from a
historical and social as well as religious perspective.
> To be
> truly scientific, then, modern Protestants would have to come to terms with
> biblical scholarship. Such a task would force a choice between the Jesus of
> liberal Protestant fancies or the historic Christ of the Bible.
However, I'm a bit unhappy about the tone of William's constant use
here of the term "liberal Protestant" -- it has some justification in
the historical context, but what he describes has little or nothing to
do with anything in the modern "liberal" denominations. There is some
detritus of 19th century propaganda and knee-jerking when people make
(mostly meaningless) noises about "Jesus, the ethical teacher." But
the only serious advocates of such a position have all migrated towards
Unitarianism (which was indeed drawing off large numbers of folks from
the Protestant churches in the late 19th century, which is one reason
the churches responded by making the sorts of noises which seem to sell)
or further away from any kind of Christianity. A tone of caution about
our doctrines, and a recognition that doctrine is ALWAYS caught up in
the "traditions of men" that Jesus condemned may look to someone with
20-pages of mandatory "beliefs" as if we had no faith and no doctrine.
But 'tain't true.
The Jesus of liberal churches (at least, those I know about) today is
quite solidly grounded in scripture -- but with the recognition that there
are EXTREME problems in making blithe statements about historicity in all
our documents. So that inerrantism is, from the "scientific" point of
view that Machen was claiming, at least as much a "fancy" and a cop-out
as Renan's popularization of Jesus (or even Schweitzer's sounder version;
it remains a matter of controversy -- and intellectual fashions on this
swing pendulum-like over the generations -- whether we can find out much
about "the historical Jesus" from our texts.)
> historical content, liberals could perhaps dodge the grasp of science for a
> while, but eventually psychologists and philosophers would subject even the
> affective and moral dimensions of Christianity to criticism.
Of course. Those who want to "dodge" this are merely wooly-minded.
> Thus, the process of modifying Christianity to accommodate science showed
> a lack of intellectual resolve.
It is perhaps a matter of interpretation just how much "intellectual
resolve" is exhibited by wholesale unwillingness to grant ANY application
of physical, biological or human sciences to religion. Machen could,
I do not doubt, find plenty of examples to ridicule -- Americans of all
stripes have not generally been known for intellectual rigor, and that
was particularly true a century ago and up through the foibles that
Mencken portrayed (one may find plenty of examples today -- on all sides
of liberal/conservative or any other dichotomies.) But Machen's point
looks to me more like a debator's ploy -- substitute an easily ridiculed
target to avoid having to confront the REAL liberal thought of his day
(say, in his contemporaries studying in the burgeoning form-critical
schools -- to use biblical scholarship as he seems to have done, to
discredit what his liberal co-students had no brief for, without going
on to what THEY saw as the implications of this study (say, Bultmann's
work) is a bit disingenuous.
> position was unusual among fundamentalists. But Machen's larger point(that
> the compartmentalization of science and religion was in effect an
> admission that Christianity did not correspond to scientific descriptions
> of reality
The "compartmentalization" so far as it existed in someone like Fosdick
was predicated on the American separation of church and state. Not on
"modifying Christianity to fit <some parts, but not others of> science."
> Fundamentalists were deeply committed to intellectual consistency and
> scorned liberals for abandoning the enterprise.
The political pastors and preachers who dominated in the Northeastern
urban milieu are no more likely to have a commitment to intellectual
consistency than any other politician. The sorts of people Machen is
attacking were in effect the Jimmy Swaggarts (more genteel, of course)
of their day. A call to rigor for the faculties of theology was very
much in order -- and I think that most have pulled themselves up to a
considerably higher standard than prevailed a century ago in America.
American schools of ALL sorts were pretty dismal back then -- why do you
think Machen went to Germany to study?
> Machen's way of achieving coherence was
> to defend the historicity of the New Testament.
But at the level which is needed for fundamentalism, this simply cannot
be done, at least not while claiming to be sticking to the best that
"science" could offer in his day about scripture, or about bibilical
history. A generic "not disprovable" and even "coherent with what we
know about the era" can apply, but not in any way that provides a
foundation for the doctrines involved (Virgin Birth and Resurrection
the most obvious cases here.) I will myself strongly defend the
historicity of the New Testament -- but my defense is not likely to
seem very helpful to a fundamentalist, in that I see no way whatso-
ever to extend that defense to do more than show that essential dogma
about Jesus goes back to about a generation after his death.
Because, at the very minimum,
> Fundamentalist objections to evolution followed a similar logic.
> Because Genesis
> made particular claims about the origins of the universe and humankind,
> scientific findings on those matters could not be ignored.
No, they can't be ignored (by Christians) -- but neither does this give
us a predefined basis for presuming any simple relationship of scritpural
statements to scientific ones, especially not the presumption of medieval
scholastic sic_et_non debate where all statements enter an artifically
constructed domain of supposed equivalent reference. A Christian, at
least one committed to intellectual consistenscy, will want to think about
the issues of creation, and of the Fall, in the light of everything we do
know, or suspect, about the natural world around us (and the findings of
a scientifically-oriented history.) It is a bit odd to PREJUDGE that we
must conclude this examination by talking about these things in the same
terms as people did 1000 years ago, when they DIDN'T know what we know.
The "know" here has a) got to be distinguished from the knowledge of
grace imparted by the Holy Spirit but b) that too has got to stand in
some kind of intellectually honest relation to what type-a knowledge
gives us to understand about ourselves.
--
Michael L. Siemon "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
As the tears scald and start;
m...@usl.com You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer With your crooked heart."
Alan M Feuerbacher
> Thanks, Stan -- I can't find any references dating the Mediterranean
>flood(s). I figured it was "hominoid" era -- not Cro-Magnon, who probably
>could have told each other stories. That's why I said race memory, and
>will say no more about it.
There is a fascinating account of the discovery of the Mediterranean
floods in _The Mediterranean Was A Desert -- A voyage of the Glomar
Challenger_, Kenneth J. Hsu, Princeton Univ. Press, 1983.