Creation Science Issues
Man Interprets God
by Greg Neyman
© Old Earth Ministries
First Published 26 January 2015
Last week there was a good article on the BioLogos blog, entitled Learning to Say "Maybe". One thing that stood out was the diagram that the author was shown in one of his college classes. I've reproduced that diagram here:
This diagram has God at the top. The way that God reveals himself to man is through Special Revelation and General Revelation. Both God, and his revelations, are truthful, and contain no errors.
When it comes to Christianity, our understanding of God is a result of mankind looking at God and his revelations, and trying to understand them with human reasoning. As we all know, man is an imperfect creature, and does not possess infinite knowledge, therefore our understanding of God, including the Bible and His Creation, cannot be perfect. We look at science, and try to come up with explanations based on the facts, but we are limited by the facts at hand, which means we may not have the entire picture. When it comes to the Bible, it was written thousands of years ago, in different languages, and intended for various audiences. We must look at the Bible, and interpret what it means. Again, since man does not have infinite knowledge, we can interpret the Bible and come up with what we think it is saying, but we cannot be sure.1
However, the part of Christianity known as young earth creationism insists that their view of Genesis, that the Bible says the earth is 6,000 years old, is absolutely correct. They are making a serious error. Only the top two levels in the picture, the God level and His revelations level, are absolute truth. In insisting that their interpretation is absolutely correct, YEC's are extending the 'absolute truth' level to include mankind. They have elevated themselves to the level of God. To support their belief in a young earth, they look at science, and manipulate the scientific facts, to make it fit with their 'perfect' interpretation of the Bible. Thus YEC's are making two errors...thinking that their imperfect interpretation is perfect, and altering God's creation to fit that interpretation.
When it comes to interpreting the Bible and science, all Christians need to understand that we don't have infinite knowledge, therefore we should not insist that our interpretation is absolute truth.
1 Some Christians would argue that we can know exactly what the Bible says. They would say that the Holy Spirit guides the believer, and helps them understand. I agree to a point. However, when you have both young earth creationists and old earth creationists, both Christians, and both having the Holy Spirit, saying different things, that negates this argument. Clearly both cannot be correct, for the Holy Spirit would be arguing against itself. I believe this goes back to my article "God Doesn't Care about Creation."
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If you are not a Christian, and you have been holding out on making a decision for Christ because the Church always preached a message that was contrary to what you saw in the scientific world, then rest assured that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, and you can believe in Christ and receive salvation, while still believing in an old earth. Click here for more.
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