For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. – Romans 1:20, ESV.
One of the major principles of Protestant Biblical Interpretation by Bernard Ramm is found in the following quote:
(v). The analogy of faith.“Horne defines the analogy of faith to be “the constant and perpetual harmony of Scripture in the fundamental points of faith and practice deduced from those passages in which they were discussed by the inspired penmen either directly or expressly, and in clear, plain, and intelligible language.” The basic assumption here is that there is one system of truth or theology contained in Scripture, and therefore all doctrines must cohere or agree with each other. That means that the interpretations of specific passages must not contradict the total teaching of Scripture on a point. This is similar to saying that Scripture interprets Scripture (scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres).
So important is this principle of non-contradiction that Dr. Ramm spends a large part of the book showing what contradiction means and how Scripture is not truly contradictory. The word is used at least 43 times in his book. Given that his book was (is?) the standard textbook for orthodox Protestant interpretation in the 20th century, it heightens the importance of the analogy of faith and the non-contradiction of Scripture.
This is where YEC runs into a problem. In order to maintain their interpretation they have to deny that what is “clearly seen” is not a YEC interpretation but something else. It does no good to only quote some of the radical secularists to try to show that you have to be a secularist to believe anything but YEC. Ultimately, YEC has to argue that the meaning of Romans 1:20 is only that of some form of limited Intelligent Design. I say limited because YEC Intelligent Design advocates end up spending an awful lot of time arguing against many scientific theories. [Note: before the YEC debates of the 1980s and 1990s, Intelligent Design had a rich philosophical history that did NOT include anti-science attitudes at all. But YEC advocates re-defined Intelligent Design and have essentially destroyed it as a legitimate line of philosophical inquiry.]
Meanwhile, there are many scientists over the course of years who have commented that it is precisely their scientific understandings of the universe that led them to consider the existence of God, precisely because of the orderliness and close tolerances needed for the universe to operate as we see it. [In passing, that is the original form of the Intelligent Design argument, before it was co-opted and stolen by YEC advocated.] For instance:
Although I suspect I will never fully understand, I now think the answer is very simple: it’s true. God did create the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, and of necessity has involved Himself with His creation ever since. The purpose of this universe is something that only God knows for sure, but it is increasingly clear to modern science that the universe was exquisitely fine-tuned to enable human life. We are somehow critically involved in His purpose. Our job is to sense that purpose as best we can, love one another, and help Him get that job done. – Richard Smalley, Nobel prize in Chemistry, 1996.
The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah’s created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart. – Abdus Salam, Nobel prize in Physics, 1979
While admitting to the full extent the agency of the same great laws of organic development in the origin of the human race as in the origin of all organized beings, there yet seems to be evidence of a Power which has guided the action of those laws in definite directions and for special ends … Such, we believe, is the direction in which we shall find the true reconciliation of Science with Theology on this most momentous problem. Let us fearlessly admit that the mind of man (itself the living proof of a supreme mind) is able to trace, and to a considerable extent has traced, the laws by means of which the organic no less than the inorganic world has been developed. But let us not shut our eyes to the evidence that an Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those laws, so directing variations and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organization sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to aid in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature. – John Eccles, Nobel prize in Physiology, 1963.
I could go on with the quotes. But, suffice it to say that a reasonable interpretation of Romans 1:20 is that God would not so construct an universe so as to apparently mislead so many over the centuries. That hypothesis would contradict the assertion of Saint Paul that the things of God are clearly seen so that “they are without excuse.” In order to maintain that this is not what it means, YEC advocates must argue that the delusion of all who do not agree with them is so great as to be tantamount to a type of mob psychology. The line, “they are without excuse,” is reduced to little more than they disagreed with YEC.
Meanwhile, there were sufficient arguments about the meaning of the first chapters of Genesis among the Early Church Fathers that it is not necessary for me to “explain away” what is “clearly” written, which is the charge that YEC consistently lobs against any who disagree. Add to that the clearly indisputable fact that the Church never took a stand on a particular interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis, but rather allowed either a more “literal” or more “mystical” interpretation, and it becomes difficult to argue that all Christians must be YEC. At best, YEC could only argue that their viewpoint must continue to be allowed. They can not succeed in the argument that theirs is the only possible Christian viewpoint.
But, using Romans 1:20, appealing to the “analogy of faith,” and looking at the results of scientific inquiry does allow me to say that, at best, YEC should only be a permissible viewpoint. At worst, we may need to caution our children against being cowed by such a viewpoint and such a style of Scriptural interpretation, lest they go wrong with other doctrines by using that method.
In speaking of the interpretation of end-times writings in Scripture, Bernard Ramm gives a warning that I think equally applies to YEC:
… Their favorite target is the literalistic eschatology of the Fundamentalists who take all the predictions of the events of the end-times in a strict, literal way. The most absurd thing they usually point out is that future battles of the end-times are fought with the weapons of the ancient world which means that regardless of modern development of guns, tanks, airplanes, rockets, etc., mankind will revert back to bows, arrows, and spears. It is the lack of any real appreciation of literary genre that forces Fundamentalists to make such absurd assertions about future events.
It must be made clear that the mainline Reformation scholarship – Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran – has no part with that kind of Biblical interpretation that runs roughshod over literary genre and interprets Scripture with a grinding literalism. Rather, in the best of philological tradition, it recognizes that no book can be intelligently assessed and interpreted without first noting its literary genre.
Modern fundamentalists have realized that error and now talk about modern weapons in the end-times. But, the comment about the “lack of any real appreciation of literary genre” still plagues both end-times enthusiasts and YEC supporters. And the warning is clear, either mainline Protestant or Orthodox scholarship, “has no part with that kind of Biblical interpretation that runs roughshod over literary genre and interprets Scripture with a grinding literalism.”
Much grass.
Romans 1:20 wasn’t necessarily written to battle between young earth and old earth. You may be a little wrong about some things.
No, but there are many things that Scriptures do not directly address. So, one has to look at the principles espoused in particular verses and use inductive reasoning to see how best to apply it to current situations. Also, one looks at how those verses were applied historically, what insights have been gained, etc. I am not a Biblicist in the sense of one who insists that there must be an exact text for every situation.
No. But Paul understood very well the thirteen rules of rabbinnic logic about learning from scripture, especially the first five books, The Torah/Law. I don’t know those rules by heart, as I wish I did, but I have certain faith that Paul, and Jesus, would accept the details of how one may use that verse together with the often incompletely quoted verse 4 of Psalm 90 about the age of the earth. The meanings of the part left out had changed from Moses’ time to his. “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” When read strictly, the first part of that verse was used by Bishop Usher to discover the supposed age of the earth. He failed to understand the second half and its use as an additional metaphor for time, not a strict defining of it. In Moses’ time “a watch in the night” was 4 hours. Under Rome, it was three: Jesus came walking on the water during the last watch of the night, between 3 and 6 AM. Nor did Bishop Usher, or any other strict time counter, consider the several uses of “to a thousand generations”: Deut. 7:9, 1 Chron. 16:15, Psalm 105:8. With the definition of “generation” varying even then of between 25 and 40 years, there was thus a Torah/Law source for giving the age of man as totalling from 25,000 to 40,000. Yes, that was one of many metaphors for “forever”, but then that is really no different than Psalm 90:4. With the giving of the Gospels, or New Torah/Law, and the Epistles, or new haftorah, we have been given the opportunity to better understand the Bible, and God and his Word. So, the use of Romans 1:20 together with the whole Bible, and what we are able to learn about God’s Universe with every means the invention of which He has made possible, we can further understand how big He is, and small we are. And continue marvel that he so cares about us and our salvation.
here is a fun hitch for old earth,
John Graham, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington
“Stars live different lengths of time, depending on how big they are. A star like our sun lives for about 10 billion years, while a star which weighs 20 times as much lives only 10 million years, about a thousandth as long.”
Many of the stars scientists say are 13 billion years old are in the mass range to live only 10 million years. If not already shining on earth by creation, they would go out long before the light reached earth.
God had to create them already shining on earth. There purpose according to Genesis was to give light on earth.
No hitch at all. The stars whose light left them 13 billion years ago lived and died before our sun was born. Of those stars whose light we see now that live short lives will no longer be seen on earth after they die or their supernova remnants become undetectable, say for example in 9 million years for the million-year old star as in the example of BD+66 1673 mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_7822. And as reviewed in Psalm 136, the stars only rule at night, never enough to supply the light the sun has for 4.5 billion years, does now, and will for another 4.5 billion. I thank God he sent Jesus at what may have been the actual half-way moment.
What Leon said.
Let me tell you about “what is CLEARLY written”, i.e. “The Plain Reading of SCRIPTURE” from my time in-country with The Gospel According to Hal Lindsay.
When “Plain Reading of What Is CLEARLY Written” was the demon locusts of Revelation were “plainly and clearly” helicopter gunships armed with chemical weapons and piloted by long-haired bearded hippies.
After such Plain Meanings of SCRIPTURE(TM), you get a very different reaction whenever you hear “Plain Reading of What Is CLEARLY Written”.
P.S. Like Gun Control and Pro-Abortion, you almost Always find YEC and Rapture Eschatology together. Like bookends on either end of a 6021-year-old, Earth-and-some-lights-in-the-sky Punyverse.
We do need to pray for many among our faith-mates who act like enemies, and who also find it too difficult to let go of anger and wrath at us.
I thoroughly agree. We are classified as enemies of the faith for disagreeing on the beginnings of the Earth and the Universe.
Thanks, brother Ernesto. More importantly, we all need prayer to remember that it is not our job now, nor will it be on judgment day, to sort the tares from the wheat. That is angels’ work.