Nearly Christmas…
… and already we’re two weeks into the new term at Oak Hill. (Don’t ask about the term dates… it’s apparently all the fault of the Church of England, or something.)
Anyway, in the past couple of weeks we’ve also had a couple of trips back to Colchester, once two weeks ago to see Anne-Marie and Sarah, and then yesterday to go to Tom and Clif’s Christmas party. Have to say I feel slightly the worse for wear today, mainly because I think staying up late last night wasn’t great for fighting off the cold I’ve been battling the past week or so. I’m definitely not feeling 100% today.
Anyway, we have one more week of term (which is a reading week), and then we’re into the Christmas break. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a good thing to have a reading week so soon into the new term, I don’t really know what I should be reading just yet! – but it will be a good opportunity to consolidate a little, I feel.
Either way, just wanted to post up to let you all know that I’m still alive, just in case you were wondering!
Jehovah’s Witnesses and ‘Sola Scriptura’
Sola Scriptura was a term that the reformers – such as Martin Luther – used to determine what they believed about scripture: it means ‘by Scripture alone’ – the doctrine that the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation, in contrast with the Roman Catholic understanding of tradition. Essentially, as I understand it, Roman Catholics understand Scripture and Tradition as two independent strands which contain the same truth. Anyway, how does this all relate to the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Well, recently Mrs Phil and myself have had a few conversations with them. One of the things which they have said in response to our appealing to church history is, “Why do you appeal to church history when you have the Bible?” In other words, they believe that their understanding of the Bible is correct, and there’s no need to look back as to how it’s been understood historically by the church. (In fact, they believe that the church fell into apostasy after the time of the apostles, so they can’t trust what the early church said.)
The reason I’m mentioning all this is because it’s a topic we looked at in our Doctrine lecture yesterday. Why is it that we can’t just say that we have the Bible and forget about traditional understandings of scripture?
The reason is partly because by putting faith in the Bible, you are putting faith in the people who compiled it. Now, I’m not saying here that the Bible was compiled in the sense that a bunch of people sat down in a room one time over a cup of tea and decided which books to put in the Bible out of hundreds of options. I don’t want to go into that discussion now! But the early church did seek to authenticate the books which we now have as part of the New Testament.
Anyone who sees the Bible as authoritative – as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are claiming to do – are implicitly putting faith in the early church for the purposes of the New Testament canon. It becomes a very difficult thing, therefore, for them to claim that the early church were apostate – BUT they were right on with the Biblical canon.
I’d never thought of this before, but it struck me yesterday. I put it up here as an awkward question to ask if you are ever involved in dialogue with the Jehovah’s Witnesses 
Creation / Evolution series on hold
Just wanted to write a quick post to say that my series on Creation and Evolution is on hold at the moment – just started a new course today on the Old Testament, which – amongst other things – looks at the issues around Genesis. There is also a reading list around the subject which I’d quite like to get into before blogging again on the subject, particularly given that I think most people’s objections to evolution and the like would be theological.
So, I probably won’t be finishing my mini-series until early next year. Just a heads up in case you were holding your breath for it!
Reflections after one term
I’ve now been at Oak Hill College for a whole term. I had my one and only exam for this term this morning (New Testament Greek). I thought I’d do a quick post up with my reflections on being here after having completed the initial courses.
My attitudes have changed slightly since my previous post on the subject, now that the courses have finished here’s a quick summary of what I now think:
- Creation & The Doctrine of Humanity – I think this is probably the course which has had the most personal impact in terms of my understanding of God. We often talk about God as redeemer and saviour – but not often as creator. This module really got me thinking about that, and in general I think our understanding of creation could probably do with being taught more in churches – it’s so important!
- Biblical Theology – This was fascinating stuff, particularly when we got to Solomon and typology. That said, I wasn’t sure about how far you could take typology (if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry.) This is a topic I’d like to blog about a little bit more in the future so I’ll continue thinking along those lines.
- Greek – the exam this morning was pretty hard! But overall I’m finding it really good to learn to read the New Testament in the original language… it’s fascinating to be able to pick apart some modern translations and see which decisions they’ve had to make.
In general I think it’s a great college and community, very supportive. The teaching we’ve had has been excellent as well. And this term has been a fairly well-pitched introduction – it hasn’t been too stressful in terms of assignments and deadlines, the workload has been about right for someone who wasn’t in the academic world before coming here.
Creation / Evolution 3: Why evolution?
This is the third instalment of my mini-series, “Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism”. In this post, I intend to explain some of the evidence for us believing in evolution.
Now, this will probably be the second most contentious post in the series (the most contentious one being the theological post I intend to follow up with): I appreciate that many Creationists see the evidence I will present differently. After I posted up the first part of this series, someone on Twitter sent me a link to a book called “Should Christians Embrace Evolution?”, which is a response to the Denis Alexander book I mentioned I was reading. If you want a Creationist response to the arguments I have presented thus far, and here, I suggest reading that book. (Note that I haven’t read it as yet, I am planning to, but from the reviews I’ve read it seems that is a fair assessment.)
Part of the problem with scientific data is that I don’t have the expertise needed to evaluate it fairly. If on the one hand many scientists are saying “evolution is true because…” and on the other hand Creationists are saying “evolution is not true because…”, arguing over the science, because I don’t have the knowledge of biology I can’t determine which are necessarily true. All I can do is present some of the arguments, as explained by Denis Alexander, and claim this is the current ‘scientific consensus’.
Why look at the evidence?
Now I’m sure some people may be wondering why do we need to even look at the evidence for evolution? Surely the most important thing is the Bible: if the Bible says that we were created in six literal days, several thousand years ago, surely that’s enough for us! Why would we even need to look at the evidence?
Well, I believe it’s right to look at the evidence for evolution for a number of reasons:
Creation / Evolution 2: The problems with Creationism
This is the second part of my series “Creation, Evolution, and Evangelicalism“. To be honest, it’s not the most snappy title I’ve ever come up with, but it will do for now.
In this post I will be exploring the reasons I believe that Creationism is wrong. Creationism is the belief that Genesis 1-2 describe literal events, i.e. that the world was created in six literal 24-hour periods. You can find out more information about it than you’d probably ever want to know on the Answers in Genesis website. Now, I should point out before we start that the Answers in Genesis beliefs were my own up until relatively recently (well, 2003, which I will admit is not all that recent.) In my teenage years I used to get magazines which set out the standard Creationist arguments about flood geology and the like. I probably still have some of the magazines at my parents’ house, I should look them out at Christmas!
Anyway, my contention is that there are problems with Creationism which aren’t just to do with believing in evolution per se. Let me try and explain a few objections which I have. Note that I’m not arguing here for evolution, I’m just arguing against a literal 6-day Creationism.
What is a ‘Plain Understanding’ of the text?
If you read through the Answers in Genesis section on the Bible, you will often find that they appeal to a straight or plain reading of the text. In general, if you believe that the ‘day’ of Genesis 1 is not a 24-hour, literal day then you are being influenced by external factors and not accepting the text as it is speaking to you.
Now I think this is a wrong way of looking at it for several reasons:
Creation / Evolution 1: Why it matters
This is the first part on my mini-series Creation, Evolution and Evangelicalism.
I thought I’d start off by answering the question, “Why does it matter?” Why should we bother discussing issues of evolution – is there any difference in whether you believe in a literal 6-day creation or evolution? Well, in some ways I think the answer is “no”, in that – I don’t think it’s a salvation issue. On the other hand, I do believe it is a huge apologetic issue.
If people’s perception of Christianity is that it is at odds with science – that’s going to work as a huge barrier to many people from entering into the faith. My science / faith view is that the book of God’s word and the book of God’s works are never in conflict: God created or wrote both the Bible and nature. This is how science originally started – the early ‘natural philosophers’ believed that by doing experiments and finding out how the world worked, they were finding out about the mind of God, so to speak: a Christian worldview underpins the modern scientific endeavour.
So, I believe primarily the issue with creation and evolution is one of evangelism: it is not our job to make the gospel more offensive. If the Bible is not in conflict with science, we shouldn’t teach that it is. I could be overstating the case here, but it is my belief that people only hear “science has disproved religion” in the media so often because the creationist movement has set it up that way.
Of course, it’s not just a matter of apologetics, it’s a matter of truth. Perhaps I should have put this first, but still! 6-day creationism and evolution cannot both be true. If we’re getting the teaching of the Bible’s creation narratives a bit wrong, then it’s actually our duty as Christians to fix that and get it right.
So I hope this lays out why I believe it’s an important debate to have, and why it matters what we believe. In my next post (a teaser? On this blog? Surely not!) I will examine the reasons why I believe 6-day creationism to be false. Stay tuned. (Or, subscribe to this blog. Or, check back soon. Staying ‘tuned’ to a blog probably isn’t really a good metaphor.)
Creation, Evolution, and Evangelicalism
If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you will know that I don’t shy away from the Big Questions: what I had for tea last night (pasta and chicken), what I think of the latest Coldplay album (at the time of writing Mylo Xyloto – I’m not a fan of it at the moment…), and the colour of the jumper I’m wearing (blue. No, gree – aaaaaaaahhhhh!!!! *ahem* apologies for the Monty Python reference).
However, I thought I’d break the mould this time by writing about creation and evolution: a subject I’ve talked about before on this blog several times. In fact, I have changed my mind since I started writing this blog – when I started this blog back in 2003 I was a 6-day creationist; however after reading a book called “Rebuilding the Matrix” by Denis Alexander I became convinced in the truth of evolution (unfortunately the link in that post to the Crossring forum post doesn’t work anymore as the forums have disappeared into the ether, but still).
In fact, so great an effect did “Rebuilding the Matrix” have on me that I mentioned it in fellowship group a couple of weeks ago – we each had to talk about a book that changed our lives, and I chose that one. And it was that meeting which has spurred me to thinking about creation again: I had previously thought that evolution was widely accepted in evangelical circles, but it seems that this isn’t always the case. I’m not sure how representative the group of people I was with actually were, but there seemed to be a number of questions to do with the theological significance of evolution: can we trust in the Bible still, if evolution is true?
Anyway, Denis Alexander has written another work more recently entitled “Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose?“. I’m half way through reading it at the moment, but he has made some very interesting points already which I’d like to come to in my next post.
QI and Quirinius’ Census
I was watching QI XL last night, and the topic of the Bible came up (you can still see it on the iPlayer at the time of writing – at 20 minutes in). Now, it should be pointed out before we start that Stephen Fry has been known to be wrong before – he is not infallible! And on this particular occasion, I think he was wrong.
Stephen Fry and the panel made a few points about the census described in Luke 2:1-3.
The points were, broadly speaking:
- There was never a census of the entire Roman world;
- People didn’t have to return to their home towns in a census.
So the Lukan account of the census was put it only to account for the Bethlehem prophecy (i.e. Luke made up the gospel in order to account for all the prophecies). He (Stephen Fry) then went on to say “We’ve been cheated of books which should have been in the Bible”, and read an account from an infancy narrative of Jesus which happened to include dragons.
I have to say, I find this disappointing: QI prides itself on getting its facts right. It’s a shame that such a programme would broadcast what is essentially misinformation. On the two points above, there are plenty of sources (that last one looking particularly at the Greek text and the dating of the census, and – if you read on – coming up with what I believe to be an interesting resolution). In short, what QI said is simply not true.
This untruthfulness comes across again when they say it was basically a free-for-all when it came to which books were included in the Bible and which ones weren’t. Now this is such an incredible argument to make because it is totally false: It was used in the Da Vinci Code, for goodness’ sake, and we know how accurate that was! There is an article in my ESV Study Bible on the Canon of Scripture (it’s available online but you have to have an account) which gives an interesting overview of the history of the canon of what we call the Bible. Essentially, the early church didn’t decide what went in and what didn’t in terms of their own agenda, and it wasn’t decided many years after the fact.
The books of the NT were “self-selecting”, as it were; the books that were ‘chosen’ was simply a ratification of the books that already were in use by the majority of churches as authoritative.
Anyway, it’s disappointing to see ‘research’ like this make its way onto our screens, especially on a programme which is watched by millions of people. It’s just sloppy. QI, you have gone down a little in my estimation.
