CAT: Introduction - Brief Summary of Dr. Ross's Book

I just love the opening salvo from this section.

Based on its content, Creation and Time could have been titled, "Creation in a Great Deal of Time: Young-Earth Creationist are Wrong and the Bible and Science Prove It." (CAT-12)

That's pretty funny, but in all honesty its true. That is the thesis of the book. However, lets remember the door swings both ways. The VanBebber/Taylor book could have just as well been titled: Creation and Time: Old Earth / Progressive Creationism is Heresy and We Can Prove It.

The chapter then goes on to list some of the basic concepts of Progressive Creationism.

• the earth and universe are billions of years old
• the Genesis days of creation are overlapping periods of millions and billions of years
• death and bloodshed have existed from the beginning...
• Noah's flood was local, not global, although it killed all humans outside the ark

To persuade of these, Creation and Time (Ross) uses the following strategies.

• claim the moral high ground in the controversy
• attempt to show that YEC are misguided fanatics, using bad science, and over blowing the importance of a small issue
• attempt to show that the Bible allows for long Creation days
• attempt to show that historic Christianity is in agreement with non-literal days and an old earth
• attempt to show that YEC is dangerous ... making it nearly impossible for many people to accept the Bible and Christ
• reassure readers that PC is in opposition to evolution and atheism
• attempt to show evidences prove beyond doubt the age of the universe
• attempt to show there is no credible evidence for a young earth
• attempt to show that YEC are out of touch with reality
• attempt to show that the Big Bang is a wonderful breakthrough for Christianity affirming God's existence from the very beginning
• attempt to show that long ages interpretation of Genesis days is the simplest reading
• attempt to show that PC interpretation of days fits beautifully with science discoveries
• attempt to show there was death before the fall and that this doesn't impact Christ's atonement,
  faith, or morality
• attempt to show that PC is an evangelical position...

This blog, and the chapters that follow in CAT discuss these issues in depth, so we wont respond here at this point. The authors of this blog are in general agreement with these points and we will be attempting to prove to you that the Bible supports this interpretation.

Why this book

Question: Why are we reviewing this particular book? Are there not lots of other young earth materials that need a response?

Answer: This is just a starting point. In researching this topic, I only found a cursory review of this book on the web - but nothing that would be a concise point by point rebuttal. Yes this book is old, and it is reviewing a book that is older too. Much research has been done since the writing of both of these books.

Yet we find this book remaining to be recommended and since there does not appear to be a point by point rebuttal, this is why we picked this book. For a general review, we recommend the following article:

http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/rossrev.html

Yet as time allows, it is the author's hope to review other materials as well. As other blog partners join me, we may perhaps broaden the scope.

CAT: Introduction - Who is Hugh Ross

In the introduction, Hugh Ross is introduced as founder of Reasons to Believe, having a Ph.D. in astronomy, and being a former pastor serving at Sierra Madre Congregational Church. Later it claims that Ross is:

the most visible spokesman for Progressive Creationism, a belief which opposes both atheistic evolutionism and historic Christianity's understanding of biblical creationism. (CAT-10)

We appreciate that the authors agree that progressive creationism rejects atheistic evolution. However let's go a step further to also say that we reject theistic evolution. But what about that last part - opposing historic Christianity's understanding... The implication here is that historic church fathers and early Christians can all be characterized by the distincives of the modern young earth position? I dont think so. We will address this in future entries, but lets continue on with the introduction.

The book then gives a definition of progresive creation from an audiotape message from Dr. Ross called "Dinosaurs and Hominids," 1990. Progressive creation from this definition is "the hypothesis that God has increased the complexity of life on earth by successive creations of new life forms over billions of years while miraculously changing the earth to accomidate the new life. (CAT-10)"

This is not a bad definition, but we can probably do better. We could hypothesize that Dr. Ross in this cassette recording was not trying to cover every angle possible so we'll give him some slack at this point.

Wikipedia has a pretty good definition for Progressive Creationism
Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts scientific geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth, but posits that the new "kinds" of plants and animals that have appeared successively over the planet's history represent instances of God directly intervening to create those new types by means outside the realm of science. In contrast, theistic evolution holds that natural, evolutionary mechanisms were guided by God. Progressive creationists generally reject macroevolution as biologically untenable and not supported by the fossil record, and they generally reject the concept of universal descendence from a last universal ancestor.

The GodAndScience web site has a good introductory summary of PC here.

Back to the book under review:

While urging Christians to reject evolutionary theories for the origin of life, he teaches a billions-of-years history beginning with the Big Bang. (CAT-10)

First, we need to note that evolution doesn't (and can not) even attempt to answer the origin of life - it begins with a primitive life and then acts by random chance and natural selection from that point. So this point on rejecting evolutionary theories for the origin of life is spurious even in its formulation. But, there is another problem with this statement. It equivicates evolutionary theories with billions of years and the big bang. Yet, there is no required tie which binds one to the other.

According to Ross and other Progressive Creationists Adam and Eve were created from dust after the majority of earth's history had already taken place, including eons of death among the animals. His timeline includes millions of years of major disasters befalling the animals before Adam, including supernovas, asteroid impacts, etc. As a result, animals frequently became extinct, never to be seen by man. Progressive Creationists claims that God stepped in many times to create replacements or improved models -- sometimes completely abandoning entire groups of animals, changing the previous course of life on earth. Ross also teaches that the flood of Noah was local, not global. (CAT 10-11)

Admitedly these are progressive creationist distinctives. And we will admit that to someone who has only been exposed to the young earth interpretation, some of these ideas may seem instantly foreign to you.

It is the authors hope that if we will dig into the scriptures, that we may find that the Bible allows for a different perspective than what you may have previously learned. The impact is a call for less strident dogmatism and branding of the other camp as heretical or even non-Christian. The fruit will be to concentrate on the fundamentals of the faith instead of a civil war of ideas amongst brothers and sisters in the Lord.

May God continue to bless the study of His Word. Amen

CAT: Introduction - bringing out the guns

This blog is not going to be a plagarized full copy of the subject book - but we will extensively quote enough from it to give a proper context and we will always refer to the page number as (CAT-9) for page 9. Quotes from the book will be in red.

In the Introduction we find the following:

This report examines one of the latest writings of Hugh Ross, Creation and Time: A Biblical and Scientific Perspective on the Creation-Date Controversy (CAT-9)

It should be noted that RTB has been busy in putting out books since this time and a more up to date book on the creation-date controversy has been recently released entitled "A Matter of Days." I am sure that we will see some quotes from this newer book within this blog.

CAT continues:

The purpose of this report is to document a number of important biblical, theological, language, and research errors...Having followed the author's (Ross) career for years, it is evident that significant erroneous claims are generally consistent throughout his writings, lectures, and video presentations. (CAT-9)

We believe that Dr. Ross is saved, and that his expressed desire to live for Christ is genuine. His desire to evangelize is laudable... We also admire his ability to remain relatively cool and self-controlled under pressure. (CAT-9)

Lets say right now - thank you to the authors for admiting that you can be a Christian and believe in an old earth. This is more than some in the young earth camp will admit. I know there is significant debate on the details - but the CAT authors have gone where some YEC authors wont go - to admit that this is not an issue of salvation - this will be a critical point in discussions to come.

From the onset, I'm struck by the somewhat congenial nature of this introductory language. We know there is a controversy coming - a conflict of interpretation. And we can expect the guns to come out shortly - but it is nice to see this type of language at the start. We can only hope that this congeniality continues in the book.

What distresses us is his (Ross) continuing use of various erroneous teachings about the Bible. We believe these teachings are leading people down a wrong and dangerous path -- a trail trod by many in the past that has repeatedly led ultimately to even more serious theological problems and loss of faith in God's Word. (CAT-9)

The guns are rolling out - but in all fairness, this is a legitimate thesis for the book and is exactly what this blog will endevour to critique.

The 2nd section of the book is entitled Who is Hugh Ross - and we will cover this in the next entry.

May God bless the study of His Word. Amen