Tag: Controversy of the Ages

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/1/2017: Ted Cabal

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Christians have never been without controversy. Many of the Pauline letters were written to deal with controversies. We can be sure that once one controversy gets answered, we will move on to a whole new one. Nowadays, a great controversy of the ages for Christians is the, well, controversy of the ages.

How old is the Earth? How did God create? To be sure, this is an issue that we should debate and we should debate heartily, but we should not divide over it. When we do, we have a whole lot more heat than light. Sadly, this sort of division has often occurred.

My guest this week is the co-author of the book Controversy of the Ages. He has written not to settle the debate, but to encourage us in how we frame the debate. How is it that a Christian approaches questions of faith and science? If we believe that the two can never contradict, what happens when it looks like they do? How can each side learn to listen to the other to have better dialogues than we are often having right now?

So who is this co-author? He’s Dr. Ted Cabal. Who is he?

According to his bio:

Theodore James Cabal has taught philosophy and apologetics at Dallas Baptist University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and for the last 20 years at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he is the general editor of The Apologetics Study Bible (2nd ed. summer 2017) and co-author with Peter Rasor of The Controversy of the Ages: Why Christians Should not Divide over the Age of the Earth (2017).

We’ll be looking at the relationship between Christianity and science in the past. What was going on when the Galileo affair took place? Was it really a tension between faith and science or was something else going on there? How does it parallel to today? Are we in danger of the same mistake today?

We’ll be discussing the three main camps when it comes to the age of the Earth. You have the young-earth creationists who think the Earth is 6-10,000 years old. You have Old-earth creationists who have an Earth about 4.5 billion years old yet don’t accept evolution, and you have the theistic evolutionists who have an old Earth and think that God did use evolution to create.

What divides these camps in such a heated way so often? How do each of these camps view science? What can each of these camps learn from one another? We’ll be looking at this question and hopefully this interview will shed more light than heat on this important topic.

I hope you’ll be listening for this next episode and I hope regardless of which stance you take, you’ll learn something about your side and something about how you can learn to view your opponents in a better light. Please also leave a positive review of the Deeper Waters Podcast. It’s always a joy to hear that you like the show!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Controversy of the Ages

What do I think about Theodore Cabal and Peter Rasor II’s book published by Weaver Book Company? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When it comes to the views on the age of the Earth, by and large, you have three views. You have the YEC (Young-earth creationism) view which places Earth to be at about 6-10,000 years old. You have the OEC (Old-earth creationism) view which says Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but that macroevolution didn’t take place. Then you have the TE (Theistic evolution) view that agrees that the Earth is old but says that God used evolution to bring about His purposes.

The authors start off this book with a look at another case that supposedly presented an opposition between science and Christianity, which was the debate about heliocentrism and geocentrism. They argue that Galileo did have the right idea with the approach to the problem in that he was fine with upholding inerrancy, but said we must not hold to the inerrancy of interpretation. Meanwhile, his opponents while skeptical of the new science were also justified in their hesitancy. Why should they suddenly abandon a position they had held for well over a thousand years in a position that had not been verified yet?

From here, we get to the conservatism principle. If you hold to inerrancy, hold to it, but be open to the possibility that you could be wrong and when sufficient evidence is presented, then be willing to change your mind. This is a principle that it would be great if we followed instead of assuming that inerrancy means you must hold certain interpretations to be true.

From there, the writers go on to look at the history of the controversy over Darwinism and how evangelicals responded. This led to a rather staunch position in some circles for young-earth creationism. Most notably was the publication of The Genesis Flood and how holding a young-earth and a global flood became essential staples of the young-earth position.

All of this was done to protect a high view of Scripture and avoid compromise with science. However, as the writers point out, at certain points, even the YECs were agreeing with the science and not going with the “literal” interpretation that they praised. The example is brought forward again of geocentrism. Many times a “literal” reading of the text would lead to geocentrism, but few hold to that today, although there are a small number who do.

The writers then look at what they recommend to each of the groups. For YECs, the main issue is that they have often put too narrow a boundary on inerrancy and Christianity and looked at others as compromisers and claimed to know the intentions of their heart. Someone can believe the Earth is old and/or in evolution without being a God-hater or a compromiser or something of that sort. I have seen the YEC community often times hold to a dogmatism that practically includes YEC in the Gospel which is a problem.

OECs meanwhile are encouraged to not be too targeting of YECs and to be careful about the models they put forward. TEs can often say about OECs what OECs say about YECs. TEs easily claim that OECs accept science to a point and then deny what disagrees with them. OECs need to be working to make sure their models do hold fast to the evidence.

TEs meanwhile often have the problem of being seen as more theologically liberal. It can often be seen as evolution being what must be accepted, but we can get a bit iffy on Scripture. Not all TEs are like this, but there are a number who are which will only make evangelicals skeptical of the movement.

What needs to be remembered by all is that the Gospel does not include the age of the Earth. It shows up in none of the creeds and does not need to be an issue. We can talk about it and debate it, but by all means let’s remember we are in Christian fellowship with one another on the essentials of the Gospel.

In Christ,
Nick Peters