Honesty . . . it's such a lonely word . . .

This was originally posted 27 February 2009 on my personal blog. I reposted it here on Forbidden Questions on 21 July 2011.

To quote Billy Joel:

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.

I am so disappointed!

Answers in Genesis claimed their "Charles Spurgeon-Reloaded" series would "update" Spurgeon's sermons, "not to change the meaning, but to make them more easily understood by modern readers." Moreover, they said, "the original text [would] also [be] included so that [readers] can see what was changed."

How disappointing, then, to find what they have done with only the 30th sermon they have "updated."

Due to limitations of the blogging software I'm using (I can't get any table cells to align vertically to the tops of their cells), I am breaking sentences apart into separate cells within the following table . . . so the actual quotes will align as closely as possible one with the other. However--as you will see if you visit the referenced sites, I have removed no sentences from either quotation, nor altered the wording in any way. I have added italics and bolding to call attention to the obvious tampering that AiG has done with the text of Spurgeon's sermon as preached:

Original	AiG's "Modernized" Version	John's Comments
In the 2d verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we read, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."	In Ge 1:2, we read, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”	Yes. Very minor update.
We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be--certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam.		!!!! Oh! Can you say "point-of-view censorship"?!? How about honoring Spurgeon enough at least to point out the massive emendation? Spurgeon's actual views about the age of the earth--views he expressed four years before Darwin's Origin of Species came out--didn't align with AiG's. "Too bad! Down the memory hole with them!" How incredibly dishonest, don't you think?!?
Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, wherein man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator gave up the world to confusion.	Our planet has passed through various stages in creation, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, when man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator initially created the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation.	Sorry! "Pass[ing] through various stages of existence" isn't quite the same as "pass[ing] through various stages in creation. Close, but not quite the same. Worse, however, "[giving] up the world to confusion" has a very different meaning than "initially creat[ing] the world as a chaotic mass on the first day of creation." Not even close. The original leaves plenty of room for a gap of millions of years (as is rather clear Spurgeon allowed for, based on what he actually said in the sentence two up from this one--the sentence AiG's "modernizers" so carefully removed!). But AiG's rephrasing leaves no such option. Anyone who would speak as AiG has made Spurgeon to speak would have to be a literal, six-day, young-earth creationist. But based on what he actually said, Spurgeon--at least at the time he preached this sermon--obviously believed in a world that was "certainly many millions of years" old. Is AiG being honest with the historical record? I don't think so!
He allowed the inward fires to burst up from beneath, and melt all the solid matter, so that all kinds of substances were commingled in one vast mass of disorder. The only name you could give to the world, then, was that it was a chaotic mass of matter; what it should be, you could not guess or define.		Oops! Another major emendation. And AiG expects us to believe this is a faithful rendition of Spurgeon's meaning? (Remember their promise "not to change the meaning"?)
It was entirely "without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer "without form, and void;" but became round, like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly, as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation.	It was entirely without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer “without form, and void;” but became round like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation.	Ah! How nice! Back to our regular broadcast . . . having first eliminated one of those damning pieces of evidence that AiG's version of Christian theological history may not, in fact, be accurate.

A few days ago, in anticipation that AiG just might engage in this kind of dishonesty, but with sincere hopes and expectations that they wouldn't, I wrote,

If [AiG does, indeed, decide to engage in such behavior,] I go back to my original post that kind of sparked this entire discussion: Are you being treated like a child? Who controls what you get to hear?

Apparently, if you can't win your argument on the merits, AiG believes in winning through altering the historical record--as I intimated above, the old "memory hole" trick.

Oh. And in case, for some reason, you are unaware, the memory hole was not merely a literary device dreamt up by George Orwell. No. He got his idea from a master of such historical lies. Look at how Joseph Stalin dealt with inconvenient history. . . .

--Thanks to Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn for bringing this story to my attention. (See their comments yesterday in answer to my post in which I asked, Does old-earth/old-universe creationism=Liberalism? Atheism?)

I wrote my comments above before reading Tim's post on the same subject.

Yowzie! The CHEC controversy looks like it is about to boil over . . .

This was originally posted 18 February 2009 on my personal blog. I reposted it here on Forbidden Questions on 7 June 2011.

Tim Martin forewarned me he intended to write about what happened between Sonlight and CHEC. (See the follow-up posts as well. For example, my Change of Interpretation article, CHEC, Part III, and, finally, A direct (indirect) statement from Kevin Swanson about CHEC's perspective on Sonlight.)

And, in fact, Tim forwarded me an early draft of his document for my review. But I didn't take the time to read it until he emailed me to say he had actually posted what he had written, posted it in public.

I just (in the last hour or so, ending a few minutes ago) read the document: Homeschooling, the Genesis Debate, and Hypocrisy.

I'm impressed with the quality of research, thinking, and, finally, writing Tim has done! The paper is hard-hitting and, I think, by and large, very clean-hitting. Just a couple of places I think Tim may have overstepped the bounds a bit . . . ascribing motives to behaviors that I doubt he could be absolutely sure about. (I think, particularly, of his charge, under "Learning Lessons: Failure of Leadership," that "When John and Sonlight pursued the matter [of Sonlight having been banned from the CHEC convention], CHEC decided to embark on a fishing expedition to find some new 'concern' that would vindicate the ban on Sonlight, saving face for CHEC's previous decision." I think that is a reasonable hypothesis. I just can't know for sure that it is true.)

Tim's words, clearly, are his own. They are not mine. But--as implied by my linking to it--I think the article is well worth reading and the questions it raises worth thinking about. . . .

*********

And knowing how this kind of stuff works, let me address an issue that might soon blow up in my face if I don't make note of it now.

Tim is an advocate of an eschatological system known as preterism.

I know enough to know that this perspective is wildly divisive in some circles. (Indeed, Tim's paper says as much.)

I know enough about the subject to find it mildly intriguing but also seriously troubling, all at the same time.

I have stumbled around just enough on a few preterist websites to realize that some preterists call others heretics. And at least one such preterist levels exactly that charge against Tim.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that many non-preterists are convinced that all preterists (or, at least, a goodly number of preterists) are heretics.

I will confess ignorance on these matters.

But, then, by personality and preference, I tend to gravitate more toward Jesus' statement to His disciples that "he who is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40; see also Luke 9:50) than I do to His other statement (Matthew 12:30; see also Luke 11:23) that, "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters."

ETA: Clearly, there is truth in both perspectives. Jesus Himself obviously taught both. I am simply saying my predilection is to seek, hope, and believe the best, and to pursue the former, rather than the latter . . . with respect to friends and ostensible foes.

I seek, hope for, and try to pursue the former unless and until it becomes impossible. . . .

Does old-earth/old-universe creationism=Liberalism? Atheism?

This was originally posted 18 February 2009 on my personal blog. I reposted it here on Forbidden Questions on 7 June 2011.

Last night, I followed a few links . . . and links from links . . . from Tim Martin's paper, Homeschooling, the Genesis Debate, and Hypocrisy, and comments about the paper.

Tim, for example, included a link to a brief quotation from a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached on June 17, 1855--four years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species saw the light of day. The title of Spurgeon's sermon: The Power of the Holy Ghost.

Tim preceded the quote from Spurgeon with this comment:

[O]rganizations like the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, and Creation Ministries International, [promote the concept] that any belief in an old earth or universe is compromise with Bible-denying liberals and unbelieving atheistic Darwinists. For devoted young-earth advocates the situation is as simple as this: believe our interpretation of Genesis creation and Noah's flood, or side with the liberals and godless scientists. . . .

[But] the next time you witness this tactic, perhaps you can ask a very simple question. Was Charles Haddon Spurgeon a liberal evolutionist? Here is what he taught in one of his sermons:

. . . In the 2d verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we read, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, wherein man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator gave up the world to confusion.

I found it so hard to believe that Spurgeon would say such a thing (after all, I, myself, have been listening quite carefully to the declarations of the young-earth creationists, and they really do make the kinds of claims Tim ascribes to them: that anyone who disagrees with their perspective has been, at minimum, influenced by godless liberals (if not having become one outright))--that I decided I had to look up Spurgeon's original for myself. (You can find it at www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0030.htm.)

What I found there astonished me even further, because it went beyond that which Tim quoted.

Truly.

It sounds as if Spurgeon himself was preaching a view of providential creation very similar to what I have been hearing and writing about, here, that I have now heard from the Haarsmas, Glover, and, now, Miller and friends.

Immediately preceding the passage that Tim quotes, I found this:

[T]he Spirit has manifested the omnipotence of his power in creation works; for though not very frequently in Scripture, yet sometimes creation is ascribed to the Holy Ghost, as well as to the Father and the Son.

The creation of the heavens above us, is said to be the work of God's Spirit. This you will see at once by referring to the sacred Scriptures, Job 26, 13th verse, "By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent." All the stars of heaven are said to have been placed aloft by the Spirit, and one particular constellation called the "crooked serpent," is specially pointed out as his handiwork.

He looseth the bands of Orion; he bindeth the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and binds Arcturus with his suns.

He made all those stars that shine in heaven. The heavens were garnished by his hands, and he formed the crooked serpent by his might.

So, also, in those continued acts of creation which are still performed in the world; as the bringing forth of man and animals, their birth and generation. These are ascribed also to the Holy Ghost.

If you look at the 104th Psalm, at the 29th verse you will read, "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the earth." So that the creation of every man is the work of the Spirit; and the creation of all life, and all flesh-existence in this world, is as much to be ascribed to the power of the Spirit, as the first garnishing of the heavens, or the fashioning of the crooked serpent.

--I quote this latter passage because it seems to indicate that Spurgeon himself would have found little difficulty with the idea that God may have used "natural processes"--what I referred to, yesterday, as "proximate causes" (possibly, "even," "evolution"!)--to bring about His creation.

But back to the links I found from Tim's article.

"Virgil" commented:

When the folks at FreeRepublic.com are disagreeing with Ken Ham, you know that he has gotten out of control and he is in fact falling out of favor with his followers. He has played the "heresy" card one time too many if you ask me. . . .

--And he provided a link to an article on FreeRepublic.com, posted just yesterday, but referencing something Mr. Ham wrote some ten years ago: The god of an old earth: Does the Bible teach that disease, bloodshed, violence and pain have always been 'part of life'?

Writes the Free Republic author:

By declaring “the god of an old earth cannot be the God of the Bible” and “the god of an old earth destroys the Gospel,” he is accusing old-earth creationists of heresy.

Disagreements in the body of Christ are inevitable. And history has shown debate in the church can be edifying and unifying when it is conducted properly. This requires focusing on the things that unite us and avoid passing judgment on nonessential matters (Romans 14:1). But, that is not the spirit of Ham’s paper. By claiming old-earth creationism violates orthodox Christian teachings, he seeks to denigrate and marginalize it. That only serves to divide faithful Christians and prevent them from having fellowship together.

Ouch! --Kind of what I was referring to last night when I referenced Mark 9:40 and Luke 9:50 (where Jesus says, "he who is not against us is for us") v. Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23 (where Jesus says, "He who is not with Me is against Me"). While not denying the latter in any way, I noted that "my predilection is to seek, hope, and believe the best, and to pursue the former [a general sense of cooperation], rather than the latter [a general sense of opposition]."

What disturbs me most grievously in the ongoing creation/evolution wars is this: that most partisans seem to enjoy exactly what my friend Tracy warns against in her article on the finest practices Christians should adopt when they engage in sacred-cow tipping. Sadly, too many of us take joy in tipping others' cows. We don't put pillows down for other people's cows. We don't give them time and space to realize that their cows are down. [Please read her entire (short) article to place these comments in context!]

I hope my ongoing discussion of these issues, here, will not cause my young-earth brothers and sisters to feel that I am abandoning them or taking pleasure in attempting to tip their cows! That is not my intention at all.

Rather, I am attempting simply to share what is going through my mind pretty much as it is going through my mind . . . and hoping you'll accompany me on my journey . . . provide warnings and counter-balancing perspectives, if and as you see the need, and, perhaps, point out additional vistas that I might otherwise miss.

*****
A postscript: I wrote to Tim, before I did my own search for Spurgeon's sermon, and commented, "He really said that in 1855--four years before Darwin's book came out?!?"

Tim replied: "The Spurgeon quote shocked me, too. A reader sent it in a few weeks ago. I thought it was funny because of the date. And, you probably haven't noticed, but AiG is releasing a 'modernized' version of Spurgeon's material. Jeff [Vaughn, Tim's co-author for Beyond Creation Science] investigated and found that they omitted that sermon!" Edited to Add, on 2/22/09 at 7:20 AM: At this moment, there is no evidence that AiG has omitted anything. If they are going to omit something, that should become obvious beginning on Thursday of this coming week--on February 26th--since that is the day on which, it appears, their Charles Spurgeon--Reloaded program should come to the particular sermon under question: Spurgeon's Sermon #30, The Power of the Holy Ghost.

If the charge is true, I go back to my original post that kind of sparked this entire discussion: Are you being treated like a child? Who controls what you get to hear? --Are we entering a new era of "Christian soviet thought-control" . . . in which one side attempts to control the debate by censoring what the majority of people can hear from those they view as opponents?

A wonderful book about origins

I'm out-of-country right now and have been blessed with many hours to read books I would otherwise have been hard-pressed to get around to.

Among those I've been reading, I just finished Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma and Beyond the Firmament by Gordon J. Glover.

I am so grateful for my correspondent (I can't remember his name at the moment) who told me about them. They have satisfied me in several ways that no books having to do with origins have satisfied me . . . in quite some time.

I was impressed with David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth when I read it a couple of years ago. I sensed he attempted to handle much of the biblical text with care and integrity. But when all was said and done, it seemed pretty obvious to me that he was permitting his "science" to push his "exegesis" into some rather "interesting" corners I doubted the original human authors--much less God Himself--would have intended the text to go.

But now come the Haarsmas and Glover.

I read the Haarsmas' book first. I appreciated their even-handed summary of the amazing diversity of approaches to origins taken by Christians of all different stripes. Beyond that, they provide a number of useful analogies and forced me to think new thoughts I had never considered before. One example, from the book's Introduction:

What causes the rain? Most of us were taught how water evaporates from the ground level, rises to where the air is cooler, and condenses into water droplets that form clouds. We learned how cold fronts and warm fronts and low pressure systems bring rain. When we watch meteorologists on television, we hear that scientists now use sophisticated computer models to help them understand and predict the weather a few days in advance. Their ability to understand meteorology is especially important for farmers, airline pilots, military personnel, and coastal residents. Every year, scientists develop increasingly accurate computer models of the weather.

Now imagine that debates arise about what should be taught in schools about the weather. Imagine that prominent scientists write popular books about meteorology that state, "From our scientific understanding of the causes of wind and rain, it is clear that no divine being controls the weather." Imagine that a professional organization of science teachers writes a set of guidelines that state, "Students must learn that all weather phenomena follow from natural causes; weather is unguided and no divine action is involved."

Meanwhile, other people insist that these scientific explanations of rain and wind must be wrong because the Bible clearly teaches that God governs the weather.¹ These people write books and give public speeches saying, "Atheists have invented their godless theories about evaporation and condensation. But we can prove that their so-called scientific theories are false and that the Bible is true." They go to churches and teach, "If you believe what these scientists are saying about the causes of wind and rain, then you've abandoned belief in the Bible." They petition school boards and courts to require that science classrooms also teach their "storehouses" theory of the weather as an alternative explanation to evaporation andcondensation. . . .

Fortunately, we don't have such debates about what causes the weather. The majority of Christians say that when it comes to the weather, both science and the Bible are correct. God governs the weather, usually through the scientifically understandable processes of evaporation and condensation. And the majority of atheists today would also agree that having a scientific explanation for the weather, by itself, neither proves nor disproves the existence of God. So there are no court battles about what science classrooms should teach about the weather.

Debates about creation, design, and evolution have some similarities to the above example. . . .

--pp. 8-9

Except, say the Haarsmas, the creation-evolution-design debates are more complex.

Indeed, they say the purpose of their book is "to lay out a wider variety of options [than the two options of young-earth creationism v. old-earth evolutionism] and to examine what both the Bible and the natural world can teach us about these options." They seek to "explore in depth the issues of origins and consider where [evangelical] Christians generally agree with each other and areas where [evangelical] Christians disagree.

"Our goal," they say,

is not to convince you that one particular opinion must be correct, but neither will we merely list a wide variety of opinions without doing any analysis. We will

• summarize what we believe God's Word teaches about origins when it is studied using sound principles of interpretation.
• summarize what we believe God's world can reliably reveal about origins when it is studied using sound scientific methods.
• distinguish between scientific theories that are well-established and have a great deal of data supporting them and scientific theories that are more tentative and speculative.
• look at the range of opinions that Christians hold about origins and discuss some of the pros and cons of each in light of what we can learn from God's Word and God's world.

--pp. 9-10

As I read their chapter summaries (pp. 10-11), I thought they just might be right: they would dramatically expand my horizons. I mean, when was the last time you read a popular-level book that set out to "consider God's governance in four areas: explainable natural events, unexplainable natural events, supernatural miracles, and random events" . . . much less "four concordist interpretations of Genesis 1 . . . [and] five non-concordist interpretations of Genesis 1 and then [discuss] all of these interpretations in light of [fundamental conservative] principles of biblical interpretation"?

I was blown away. Not merely by the summary (frankly, I didn't know what "concordist" and "non-concordist" even mean--so the fact that they could suggest there are nine clearly distinguishable interpretations of Genesis 1 . . . let alone that four are concordist and five are non-concordist: well, that impressed me!). But, far more, I was impressed by the Haarsmas' actual performance.

By the end of the book, I think you can tell, pretty clearly, "where they are coming from." But I don't know if I have ever read such an even-handed presentation of such a wide variety of perspectives on any subject.

I look forward to pushing Sonlight Curriculum to carry this book!

---

¹ The Haarsmas note: "Many Bible passages proclaim that God causes rain and drought (see Deut. 11:14-17; 1 Kings 8:35-36; Job 5:10; 37:6; Jer. 14:22). Writers of Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Jeremiah refer specifically to storehouses of rain and snow (see Deut. 28:12, 24; Ps. 135:7; Jer. 10:13)."