I always thought the word 'apologist' in the theological sense was rather arrogant, and while the definition may be encased in jargon and jaundice, the notion that one must make an argument to defend God's word or doctrine has always seemed to me superfluous. Faith does not depend on human reason, although that appears to be the prevailing position of the 20th and 21st centuries. Kierkegaard and others well exercized in 'apologetics' reached the point of divine reasoning that most intellectuals and theologians reach who come to believe in God and His Word: they reach a point where reason fails, and one must make what Kierkegaard called a "Leap of Faith". Faith, as we are taught, is the substance of things not see....and there are many things on a natural level we invest faith in: things that have not yet occurred, or things that cannot be sensed, touched, smelled, seen or heard. We have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow morning, even though we have not seen tomorrow's sunrise. We have seen many sunrises that occur though. We have faith that the world exists outside the wall that surrounds my desk: though I do not see it, it has always been there. Science tells us there is air, and our lungs confirm it with every breath, but we can not touch or see air, and can experience only changes in the way it rests. {e.g. wind}
One of the closer ideas though to faith in God, is our faith in history and historical events. It takes faith to believe in George Washington: we have evidences such as letters and artifacts, we have reports and documents, and we believe them, but there are no longer eyewitness accounts, and the man has been dead for about two centuries. We see traces and read reports and listen to others, but we cannot encounter the reality of the person in the past. Few though, have any doubt that George Washington existed and assumed the office of President first, but our BELIEF is based upon evidence and remnants and accounts.
The very clear evidence that BELIEF in Jesus Christ is a divine battle, is that with far more eyewitness accounts and documents, we have scholars and even theologians today who argue that he did not even exist: they know about the Synoptic Gospels, the 'eyewitness' accounts reported over and over, they know about
number of significant people throughout history who have attested to his reality, they know about the historical accounts in secular history which verified his presence in the first century, but they do not accept it as credible. However, they accept far less as evidence for such events as the creation of the Septuagint, the death of Julius Caesar, or Hadrian crossing the Alps. The question always gets down to BELIEF.
Such is the case with origins: the news is currently replete with interviews of Stephen Hawking and others promoting the godless 'Big Bang' or 'spontaneous creation' theory, considering it sort of 'cosmic physics' or in the truest sense 'Meta-Physics', regarding where we come from or for what reason. They posit God is not necessary as 'First Cause'. They do not even attend to what they consider the 'myth' of Adam and Eve, post initial creation by God, and they without thought point to the 'countless creation myths in all cultures, nations and religions' which have existed since the beginning of time. They cannot come to terms with 'kinds' being created at once (it does note them coming out of the sea) Gen 1:20,
or a first man and woman from whom all descend. They ascribe to its comparison to the earth balancing on the back of a turtle, or minerva crawling out of the forehead of Mars.
Adam and Eve though, are not a fable according to Scripture, but are centrally counted in the genealogy of Israel and all others. So the issue becomes whether it is the history of mankind, or whether it is not. For the believer, it is true, because God has said so. That is an issue of trust and not IQ level. For the unbeliever, it will seem ever a metaphor or fable. That also is an issue of choice and faith: faith in an unreasoned and unobserved creation as opposed to an ancient account, with at least a later observable genealogy and history.
Adam and Eve:
After years of unbelief, I have to admit, that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was a difficult point of belief. I believed, because I found everything else in God's Word true. Years though of public school and university training, colored my thinking, especially coming out of a discipline [psychology] that is wholly based upon Evolutionary thought and theory. When I came to Christ though, I understood trust, and surrender, and I very clearly understood, that what the Word of God taught was true, even if it was not with ease understood by the natural mind. I was able readily to understand the idea of laying on of hands and healing, of the Sermon on the Mount, of faith, forgiveness, the atonement, mercy and so many other aspects of belief. The many years though of rigorous training in unbelief, had left their indelible marks, and some points of doctrine were very difficult for me, though I held to them in faith, saying that while I did not understand, I trusted God that they were true.
Perhaps the most imminent was that of the history of Adam and Eve. It is difficult to comprehend the number of Christians today who believe that one can accept and walk in Christ, and yet hold Adam and Eve as allegorical. Raised in the Roman Catholic church, we were read stories of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, with pictures and apples and serpents, but later, we heard other 'versions' such as that Adam and Eve 'represented' mankind and God, or that it was a myth or allegory used to tell a truth. The problem with that line of thinking is that Adam and Eve, if mythology, would lead to the Fall of Man being mythology, and if the fall of man were mythological, then there would be no need for Christ to have gone to the Cross to redeem mankind, in short either the entire account is true, or false, but there is no mix and match as so many try today.
Long Days of Unbelief
My solution then with lapses in faith was what my solution now is: prayer for more faith and belief. I have never prayed that prayer without a remarkable answer, and most christians would have far fewer battles with belief, if when they ran up against certain stone walls of doubt, instead of morosely musing about whether there is a God or whether they have been wrong, would take the entire matter to the Lord in prayer: never fails. One of the first things that happened after I prayed, was that the church we were attending offered an unusual bible study based upon materials from ICR, Institute for Creation Research, and the one I chose was on the after events of the mount St. Helen' s volcanic eruption. The film or films we saw showed the resulting landscape and ecosystem changes in the few weeks following the explosion. The particular issue I struggled with back then was a six day creation: I was ready to sort of compromise and settle on a 'long day' theory, or a 'gap theory' which I had heard, wherein one day in the creation account represented a thousand or thousands of years. That argument though is merely an attempt to assimilate the creation account into a 'politically (in)correct' mode of thinking so that we do not stand so far away from worldly scientific thinking. Aside from scripture though, 'long day' theories are rather ridiculous, since it would have intimated that in order to be correct, only one part of the earth's ecosystem would have to exist for thousands of years before the next came about, e.g. grass and herb yielding seed would have to have existed for thousands of years before birds and fish and foul, which often carry the seed, and or in the case of insects pollinate the flowers and fruit trees: ecosystems work in unison to produce and provide for all in a continuous, divine loop. The idea of 'long days' is great if you never think at the next level, a common malady in the American mind today, but the logical inconsistency declares it false.
Creation and Mythology
This leaves only two real options: either evolution or some other version of secular thought is true, or the account int the bible is true. The biggest lie that Satan has promoted since 'Hath God said' in the Garden, is the notion that there is no such thing as sin, followed by the notion that the Edenic story is a fable. One may have a hard time convincing people that Christ is not real when they experience his presence, love and power, but faith is more easily taken apart at the end of a long train on the garment of belief: at something that is supposed to have happened thousands of years ago. This particular blog is not an attempt to debate intelligent design vs. the big bang theory, but to look at the very real plausibility of a literal creation, with a literal Adam and Eve.
Today as I was driving in my car listening to public radio, an interview came on of a Paleontology professor discussing dinosaurs, Oh, way back 65 million years ago. Wow. Imagine bones that do not decay after that amount of time, even fossilized! Even fossilization is suspect, since a hat thrown in a well was found fossilized fifty years later, and if we believe Creation accounts of a young earth of around 6 or seven thousand years, fossils lasting that long are even remarkable: what we do know is that they exist. What we don't know is how old they are: ICR has materials showing the fallacious reasoning of carbon dating which holds whether or not one believes in Creation accounts. In any event, six days of creation, is entirely possible depending on what mode God used for Creation. One thing which was very convincing, was the environmental changes mentioned above in the aftermath of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens: the physical features of the landscape and ecosystems changed so dramatically in three weeks that one would think they were looking at some prehistoric scene: a fossilized forest appears, though it was not a forest in one sense at all: it was trees which fossilized immediately, driven into hard soil by the enormous blast, of which many were upside down! We know this because we were able to document the events as they occurred, and we knew the pre-existing condition: it was weird odd, fascinating and surreal, but it was not a mystery because we could watch the process. Many more formations speak to the same question.
Given however that the world was created, a perfectly possible event, [congressmen do not believe in six day creation because they know they could never do anything in six days] the question turns to whether the human race could indeed trace back to two original ancestors. Oddly, in the interview I mentioned on PBS today, the professor began to talk about that quite remarkable reality as though he had said nothing worth noting! Now if a Creationist speaks of Adam and Eve, Adam named for the red clay he was formed from, and Eve called the mother of all living, they are accused of dealing with fable, but the Paleontologist is merely referring to scientific theory.
to be continued
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