Edward F. Lundwall, Jr.
A Latent Stumbling Block– Part III
Being “secular” by definition means it is non-religious. The difficulty is that all institution of secular learning must include the study of the natural world. Any complete academic must include knowledge of the origins of what is studied. The complexity and vastness of the world and universe demands explanations which secularists try to find answers which do not include God, for then they would not be secular, but religious. In their embarrassment of not having God as the answer for the beginnings and designs of life, they lean toward self- defense by either ignoring or denying God as the Creator, and, yes, even His existence. Evolution has been put forth as the origin of the species of life. However, this was no explanation, for even Darwin admitted he had no idea of how original life came into existence, his speculations were about what happened afterwards, speculations which have since become suspect by actual scientists, not professors. Secular academia has therefore in effect said to the religious community, “If we don’t know, neither can you, so we will attack your professed answers!” Increasingly they have done this at every opportunity.
One of the more renown of their attacks is to lampoon the Bible in regard to Creation. They would take the teaching that Earth was created in six successive twenty-four hour days and compare this to scientific evidences of extremely longer time periods. Then they would say to the effect: “If the Bible is so wrong in the matter of creation, then how can it be trusted in other matters. It is just a not-so-clever collection of myths.” Some would even dare to call it a means of suppressing free thought - a denial of human rights in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Yet, when they prohibit examining the precepts of biblical creation, they deny the Constitution themselves. The First Amendment not only guarantees free speech, but unhindered religious expression.
Many interpretations of how the universe was created, and particularly of the world, have been proposed by both nonbelievers and believers of the Genesis account. Too often the authors begin with an overarching conclusive and idealistic bias from their own culture. This destroys the objectivity of the study. Therefore, the right expositional interpretation of Scripture must be followed in order to “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thess. 5:21)
Modern scientific studied originated with the struggle of skeptical Modernism Movement in the late 1800s. German rationalism eroded the strength of the Reformation. They used speculation concerning the writing of the Old Testament in the documentary hypothesis and the form criticism of the New Testament. They infiltrated even Christian schools and in the name of intellectualism brought doubt on anything biblical. They bought the supremacy of human wisdom (Paradise’s Tree of Knowledge) and became fools (1 Cor. 1:20). This brought such despair, that Neo-Orthodoxy (also known as "Crisis Theology") was born to give hope in the Bible, but even most of it was confused by liberal theological accommodation.
In order to try to establish a basis for orthodox interdenominational fellowship and to maintain standards for purifying denominational structure, especially in schools, the Fundamentals of The Faith were written in the early 1900s. These were the criteria for fellowship among strong Bible believers. At first, only four were adopted. Then, striving against Darwin’s teaching of evolution of the species, a fifth was adopted embracing the 6/24 hour day creation of the earth. Many extended this to the universe also. The idea was to limit the time of earth’s creation to show evolution to be false. Logically, there would not be enough time for evolution to have occurred. However, what they did not consider was that this actually showed that they believed that evolution could have happened according to Darwin’s theory. Few will admit this. Many insist: “If it’s ideal, it’s true!”
A good number of Bible believers considered, not only the world, but the universe, as being much older before the fifth fundamental was adopted and still do today. I received this concept in an orthodox seminary which proposed Schofield’s interpretation of Genesis 1:1, 2, which was and is dismissed by the young universe proponents either as though it never existed, or as something so ridiculous that it needs no consideration.
As expounded in the footnotes of The New Schofield Bible, and retained by a committee of seven foremost scholars in their original form found in his extremely popular study Bible, C. I. Schofield believed the cosmos was of an indeterminable age before (Gen. 1;1, 2) the first day of God‘s making the earth inhabitable (Gen. 1:3-25; Ps. 104:5; Isa. 45:18). He taught that the universe was old enough for Lucifer to have led a rebellion against God and become Satan (Isa. 14:12-14; Ez. 28:14-19) because Genesis 3 showed that Satan was fallen when he appeared to Eve.
Related reading: A Latent Stumbling Block (Part 1); A Latent Stumbling Block (Part II)
One of the more renown of their attacks is to lampoon the Bible in regard to Creation. They would take the teaching that Earth was created in six successive twenty-four hour days and compare this to scientific evidences of extremely longer time periods. Then they would say to the effect: “If the Bible is so wrong in the matter of creation, then how can it be trusted in other matters. It is just a not-so-clever collection of myths.” Some would even dare to call it a means of suppressing free thought - a denial of human rights in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Yet, when they prohibit examining the precepts of biblical creation, they deny the Constitution themselves. The First Amendment not only guarantees free speech, but unhindered religious expression.
Many interpretations of how the universe was created, and particularly of the world, have been proposed by both nonbelievers and believers of the Genesis account. Too often the authors begin with an overarching conclusive and idealistic bias from their own culture. This destroys the objectivity of the study. Therefore, the right expositional interpretation of Scripture must be followed in order to “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thess. 5:21)
Modern scientific studied originated with the struggle of skeptical Modernism Movement in the late 1800s. German rationalism eroded the strength of the Reformation. They used speculation concerning the writing of the Old Testament in the documentary hypothesis and the form criticism of the New Testament. They infiltrated even Christian schools and in the name of intellectualism brought doubt on anything biblical. They bought the supremacy of human wisdom (Paradise’s Tree of Knowledge) and became fools (1 Cor. 1:20). This brought such despair, that Neo-Orthodoxy (also known as "Crisis Theology") was born to give hope in the Bible, but even most of it was confused by liberal theological accommodation.
In order to try to establish a basis for orthodox interdenominational fellowship and to maintain standards for purifying denominational structure, especially in schools, the Fundamentals of The Faith were written in the early 1900s. These were the criteria for fellowship among strong Bible believers. At first, only four were adopted. Then, striving against Darwin’s teaching of evolution of the species, a fifth was adopted embracing the 6/24 hour day creation of the earth. Many extended this to the universe also. The idea was to limit the time of earth’s creation to show evolution to be false. Logically, there would not be enough time for evolution to have occurred. However, what they did not consider was that this actually showed that they believed that evolution could have happened according to Darwin’s theory. Few will admit this. Many insist: “If it’s ideal, it’s true!”
A good number of Bible believers considered, not only the world, but the universe, as being much older before the fifth fundamental was adopted and still do today. I received this concept in an orthodox seminary which proposed Schofield’s interpretation of Genesis 1:1, 2, which was and is dismissed by the young universe proponents either as though it never existed, or as something so ridiculous that it needs no consideration.
As expounded in the footnotes of The New Schofield Bible, and retained by a committee of seven foremost scholars in their original form found in his extremely popular study Bible, C. I. Schofield believed the cosmos was of an indeterminable age before (Gen. 1;1, 2) the first day of God‘s making the earth inhabitable (Gen. 1:3-25; Ps. 104:5; Isa. 45:18). He taught that the universe was old enough for Lucifer to have led a rebellion against God and become Satan (Isa. 14:12-14; Ez. 28:14-19) because Genesis 3 showed that Satan was fallen when he appeared to Eve.
Related reading: A Latent Stumbling Block (Part 1); A Latent Stumbling Block (Part II)
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