Six-Day War in Creationism (eBook)

Preface

When an intelligent person expresses a view that seems absurd…
we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true.

—Bertrand Russell

The Ken Ham/Bill Nye debate was my first encounter with the Young Earth Reform Movement. To my surprise, a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years helped promote the event. We met because he expressed interest in attending my apologetics class with his wife. So he asked, “Are you going to watch the debate?” I had no interest in it because neither participant was credible on the advertised proposition—Creationism vs. Evolution. Ken Ham is a layman in science and theology, and I always thought of Bill Nye as the “Soupy Sales of Science.”

“Are you a Young Earther or an Old Earther?” my friend asked. I was unfamiliar with those labels, not being plugged into the movement at the time. So I hesitated but then said, “Old Earther.” I assumed both labels were simply about the age of the earth. That was a mistake.1

A colleague advised me to watch the debate to field questions from the class, should there be any. The course attracted several people with advanced degrees in theology, engineering, and science. My friend has an MBA and his wife a Ph.D. in English, though they could not attend. There were no questions or interest in the Ham-Nye debate the morning after, but it was a sensation elsewhere.

In my wife Susan’s office, there was a sharp reaction. One person snapped, “I don’t see how you can be a Christian and reject six literal days in Genesis.” I think most Young Earthers (YErs) would say that overstates it. Most YErs call other Christians “compromisers,” not infidels. Still, we never heard anyone say anything like that, and “compromisers” is not much better.

I did not know Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky were hotbeds for Young Earth Creationism (YEC) due to Ken Ham’s Creation Museum and the later addition of the Ark Encounter in Northern Kentucky. I had entered a Young Earth flashpoint in an aggressive movement within Christianity without realizing it. That was February 2014 in West Chester, Ohio.

This book is about the conflict in Christianity over six days in Genesis, thus the title: The Six-Day War in Creationism. Battlelines are drawn primarily between Protestant fundamentalists and Evangelicals but can also spill onto traditional Vatican 1 Catholics that have become sectarian.2 The fight is intense, abusive, and often absurd. Unfortunately, the fighting occurs before the public, while neglecting more serious Christian thought, which reflects poorly on Christianity.

YErs call this fight spiritual warfare. But when YE reformists claim as many do that if the earth is old, God is a liar; that a young earth is a key to all biblical doctrine; or that an older earth threatens to destroy the message of the Cross and Atonement and that YEC is the key to reforming the Church and the culture, it is hard to find any clarity in those claims let alone spirituality.

Meanwhile, well-funded Young Earth organizations have persecuted widely respected scholars and Evangelical leaders who think the earth is old and others who accept Progressive or Evolutionary Creationism.3 The surrounding controversy and bad publicity have led some to resign for thinking the “wrong way.” Loss of livelihood is the fallout from a campaign of personal destruction in, of all places, Christianity. That is cancel culture, which participates in the culture instead of reforming it as YEC promises. The war is on, and it is over six days.

Why me and this book?

Who am I? And why should I write this book?

I grew up Catholic with eight years of Catholic school. I accepted evolution at an early age but knew very little of scripture. As a young teenager, the changes with Vatican II led me to look elsewhere. Not knowing the Bible, I was vulnerable to being persuaded by a church that focused on biblical teachings, in this case, The Worldwide Church of God. They accepted the deep age of the universe but not evolution. They produced lavish biblical material free of charge. With little money and little guidance, I converted passionately. There were some beneficial and surprising trade-offs for that decision.

The Six-Day War in Creationism, as I am calling it, reminds me of a rare event in recent Church history that I experienced firsthand. Eventually, I became a pastor in the Worldwide Church of God, which had a Jewish Christian tradition and a fierce orientation to the Hebrew Scriptures. Strangely, almost none of us were Jewish. I am Middle Eastern and Greek by blood. What was I doing in a Jewish Christian Church?

Most people thought we were a cult. Why live like Jews if you are Gentile Christians?

The Ten Commandments (particularly the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath.”) were central to life in our community—“six days the Lord created the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested.” That created a strong orientation toward the Old Testament. Wasn’t the Old Testament the Bible of the early Church? The early Church was also a Jewish Christian Church, not just ethnically but doctrinally. Wasn’t that Church full of the Spirit? Maybe there was something to all that, we thought.

Several presuppositions and claims informed our distinctive. For example, most Christians believe the earliest Church was the most authentic; it was Jewish Christianity. Keeping the seventh day holy is one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus and Paul customarily attended the synagogue on the Sabbath. We simply followed their example (see Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2), except we attended Church, not the synagogue, and required our members to do the same. Jesus and Paul also made a point to keep the biblical feast days (Matthew 26:17–18; Acts 20:16). So we followed their example.

Furthermore, Christ is our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), so we kept a “Christian Passover.” The Holy Spirit arrived on the day of Pentecost—a Feast of the Jews, now Christian. We saw a precedent in all that. Christ typology in the Day of Atonement is obvious, so we celebrated the day and fasted. We believed the Feast of Trumpets typifies Christ’s Second Coming at the last trumpet (Corinthians 15:51–54), and the Feast of Tabernacles pictures the millennial reign of Christ. Israel’s festivals have striking Christian implications for God’s plan (far more than the six literal days in Genesis). So we kept them.

Even Paul said the Old Testament was “God-breathed” and profitable for doctrine and instruction in righteousness (1 Timothy 3:16). We used the Old Testament for those purposes, especially doctrine. All this may seem reasonable on the surface, but we adopted this Old Testament orientation as a way of life and made it obligatory for our members and new converts. The New Testament reveals those days—biblical days—as shadows of Christ (Colossians 2:16). Shadows are not a bad thing; they just aren’t the real thing. They become irrelevant when what casts them appears.

Shadows (types) lack substance. Jesus supplies it.

The doctrinal beliefs of the former Worldwide Church of God are not relevant here, but the similarities in doctrinal development are. All the presuppositions of the old Worldwide Church of God seemed to add up to something. We thought the Old Testament was “equal” to the New Testament because they are both God’s Word, right? And God’s Word is eternal and infallible, period. We unknowingly sublimated the Incarnate Christ’s impact and authority over Old Testament interpretation.

We had our explanations, some clever, most not so clever. We did not understand that while the Old Testament was under equal inspiration, it was not an equal revelation with the New Testament. We thought others were deceived or worse; they compromised the Word of God out of prejudice or enmity against God’s word. But we were different from YECs in one significant way— we knew we could be wrong. We were willing to change if convinced. We had some history of doing so.

We boldly proclaimed what amounted to a “Jewish Christian Gospel” (though we were Gentiles) based on the law (or at least some of it) and a literal interpretation of the Old Testament Messianic Kingdom. The “Jewish Christian Gospel” is like the “Creation Gospel” in that there is no such thing. The Gospel is about a new creative act in the Incarnation and its implications for the world. It has nothing to do with...