A New Faith Paradigm -- Part IV

Fourth in a series inspired by Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture. 

First post here.

*****

After telling us, more or less, where he intends to go, Sparks encourages us to realize that it is not actually such a radical position to suggest or say or admit that the Scriptures are “broken,” or are in error at different points.

Oh, yes, it is radical in extremely conservative or fundamentalist circles in the United States to say such things. But if you look historically even at various bastions of the faith to whom conservatives and fundamentalists turn for confirmation that they are walking in the truth: if we are coming from such a hyper-conservative or fundamentalist perspective, we will find some truly remarkable statements.

Sparks refers to statements like Luther's judgment concerning the Book of James as an "epistle of straw." If you are at all familiar with Protestant history, that particular judgment on Luther’s part should be an old one. Sparks references, too, however, something I didn't happen to find out about until a few years ago as I was reading up on old- v. young-earth creationist arguments. John Calvin plainly states that the cosmology (view of the created order) presented in the first chapters of Genesis is not according to reality, but is “accommodated,” as it were, to the limitations of understanding of the human beings who were to receive God’s word back when it was written. (Sparks doesn't quote passages from Calvin, but you can find them easily enough. Here, for example, is a whole list of references.) One minor example from the Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.1: “God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children.”

But Sparks references other church leaders or church fathers whose names I know but whose statements I was not familiar with: Gregory the Great, John Wesley, Gregory of Nazianzus, Justin in his Dialogue with Trypho . . .

I don't want to get into the specific things Sparks quotes from these men. I found the quotes fascinating. And, strangely, reassuring.

But "[i]f these 'giants' of church history were willing to admit that errant and even sinful viewpoints were included in Scripture," Sparks asks (and he notes that Justin in fact openly refers to Ezekiel 20:25 to affirm that God gave the Jews “laws that were not good”; can we say “sinful,” maybe even “evil”?), 

how did they avoid the conclusion that God had erred in Scripture? In every case, they argued that the errors were not God's errors but rather his wise "accommodations" or "condescensions" to the spiritual and/or intellectual limitations of human beings. . . . Paradoxically, these Christian scholars were able to admit the human error in Scripture and, at the same time, to affirm that God does not err in Scripture. In their theological hands, biblical error became God's wise accommodation to the intellectual and spiritual limitations of the human audience. [Emphasis mine—JAH] (pp. 52-53)

Except, Sparks suggests, such a “solution” is a little too clever by half.

First, as understood by these earlier Christians, the human authors of Scripture were colluding partners in the act of accommodation. [Again, my emphasis—JAH] In Calvin's account, for instance, we find that not only God, but also Moses, knew but kept secret the proper scientific cosmology. So God and Moses accommodated their discourse to the confused Israelites. In contrast to this view, I would argue that accommodation did not occur between Scripture's human author and audience but rather between God and the human author himself. God adopted the author of Genesis as his author and, in doing so, adopted that human author's ancient view of the cosmos; God knew the right cosmology, but neither "Moses" nor the Israelites did.

My second amendment regarding accommodation would be its extent. Earlier Christians appealed to accommodation only at certain points. . . . I would argue instead that all Scripture is accommodated discourse for the very reason that, on every page of Scripture, God has adopted the words and viewpoints of finite, fallen human authors as the words and viewpoints of his holy book. (pp. 53-54)

And one final point.

Sparks actually wants to avoid the word accommodation altogether and replace it with the phrase providential adoption. Why? Because if we suggest God "accommodated" his speech to our human level, we come mighty close to suggesting that God took an “active role in communicating errant human viewpoints."

I suspect that a more nuanced account should honor the human will by making this more passive. That is, . . . God allowed his human authors the freedom to be precisely who they were when they wrote Scripture. (p. 54)

Thus, says Sparks, when we read passages like Deuteronomy 20:16-18 where the Israelites are commanded by God to annihilate the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites without mercy, in fact what we ought to understand is that God—the God we read about in Matthew 5:43-45, the God who commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us that we might be his children; this God has canonically adopted the authors of these passages as his speakers and, “in doing so, he has permitted these authors—fallen as they were—to write the sorts of things that ancient, fallen people would write about their enemies.” (p. 54)

Put another way (my summary, here!), when God’s word (the Bible) tells us that God said something to Moses . . . which Moses then passed on to the people of Israel and attributed to God: we are supposed to “understand” that God never said what Moses attributes to Him.

[And yet, somehow, this (what else can we call it but) lie—this untrue testimony about what God supposedly said, this perjury . . . —We are supposed to understand that this is, somehow, really and truly “God’s word”?!?

Once more, I find my breath being taken away. And I need to give you—and me—a few moments to get our breath back.

But once it is back, . . . I would like to encourage you to plow forward with me just a few more sentences.]

Sparks continues:

It is one of the great mysteries of faith that God's redemptive activity is carried out successfully and beautifully through the agency of fallen men and women. . . .

I would add that a good theology of adoption depends to some extent on the venerable doctrine of providence, a belief that God is active in ordering creaturely realities to their proper ends. . . . As this applies to our theology of Scripture, [this means] that God, in adopting human texts as his own, was involved both in the production of the texts and in their canonical adoption as sacred Scripture. Precisely how God did this . . . is not something we can explicate. But . . . [i]n my opinion, it is a better explication of the “dark side” of Scripture than an approach that seeks to harmonize Gospel love and genocide as theologically compatible ideas. There is no such thing as Martin Luther’s “severe mercy,” which combined the violence of Deuteronomy and love of Jesus to justify the persecution of Jews “for their own good.” (pp. 54-55) 

Sparks doesn't go on at this point to develop his theme of God’s use of fallen men and women to carry out His redemptive activity, but I want to make the point here that I believe Sparks makes quite clear almost 40 pages later.

As I continued to read Sparks, what I heard him saying was that, in the same way that we can learn from (and many of us do learn from)—or, put another way, in the same way that God can use (and, many times He does use)—elder brothers and sisters in the faith, pastors, teachers, martyrs, missionaries and kingdom heroes, and even parents who claim no faith at all—so, too, we can learn from and God can use (but, no, in fact, God has especially chosen to use) this collection of ancient writings called the Bible to teach us today: even if and even as it is broken.

Sparks says we ought not to do what so many of us evangelicals have done through the years: "[set t]he human authors of Scripture . . . to one side (more or less) so the greater emphasis can be laid on hearing the words of the Bible's divine author” (p. 90). Rather, we should recognize that "[t]he Bible is a collection of texts written using ancient literary models by authors steeped in the pragmatic concerns of everyday life in an ancient world. [And w]e should read it as such” (p. 92). "[A] healthy approach to Scripture takes seriously the significant historical and cultural gap that separates the original discourse from its later readers" (p. 91).

In essence, then: YES. These ancient authors made mistakes. They spoke sinfully. They spoke wickedly. Maybe they claimed that God said things that God, in fact, didn't say! And these false, sinful, wicked statements are to be found in the pages of Scripture. And yet, in the same way God has used wicked, sinful, fallen pastors and teachers and church leaders of the modern world to lead Christians today into truth—into the Truth: so He can and has and will use wicked, sinful, fallen authors of ancient literature to lead His people into the Truth. Despite themselves. Despite their errors. Despite their lies. Despite their distortions or misspeaking or truly vile and wicked statements. God, in His good providence, has adopted these fallen, inadequate, broken writings—writings by fallen, inadequate, broken human beings—as His Scriptures. He has permitted His name to be placed upon them—even as He has permitted His name to be placed upon us. He has permitted these words to be identified as His words (and/or His “word”; though note—and this is a very important point that Sparks emphasizes heavily, and I intend to emphasize it appropriately when we get there!: these words, and/or this “word” is not the Word, “the Word made flesh” that dwelt among us!) . . . –Even as God has permitted us to be identified as His people, so He has permitted these words to be identified as His words, His word. And He has used these words (this “word”)—even as He has used us—and He will use them (even as we ought to expect Him to use us) for His good purposes.

Strange? Terrifying? Unbelievable? Yes. All of these things. At least for this conservative evangelical. What kind of authority can such a fallen, broken, messed-up literature hold? And how can one ever say the kinds of things Sparks says about a word that, we are told, was—at least in part—written by men who were "carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21)? And what about 2 Timothy 3:16 where we are told all Scripture is "God-breathed" and "profitable"?

Doesn't Sparks' proposed doctrine make a hash of these passages?

As I wrote last time, at this point in reading Sparks’ book, I was very much not ready to embrace Sparks' proposal(s).

But despite all the problems such a view might create for the theological systems I have been taught, I was still left with the conviction that I could not dismiss his proposal out of hand. It seemed to me it might yet turn out to be a potentially viable hypothesis. I needed to permit him to present whatever additional evidence he might be able to show me for why and how such a view might actually be workable.

But we have covered enough for one more post. And so I will stop here.

A new faith paradigm -- Part I

I want to quote, with very slight emendation, an email I sent to my family yesterday. I may regret being quite so open about this, but I figure I should plunge ahead anyway. I am hoping my "testimony" will be helpful to someone who might not otherwise find any way to hold onto the faith they once received and laid hold of with joy. . . .

I am praising God right now. I have just finished reading one of the most liberating (for me) books I have ever read. Twelve or thirteen years of miserable “wandering in the darkness” with respect to Scripture (especially), but with respect to an awful large portion of the rest of my faith as well: I sense it may be coming to an end.

About a month and a half ago [no; I just looked it up: I bought the book on July 23!]—I don't know how I found it, but, somehow, I came across Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture. I read it after having read (not necessarily in this order; I do not remember in what order I read these books, but I read them all in the last year to year and a half): Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns, God's Word in Human Words by Kenton L. Sparks, and The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Christian Smith. These books, themselves, came on the tail end of two or three others that I read several years ago: Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma (read back in late 2008 . . . which actually gave me hope), Evolutionary Creation by Denis Lamoureux (finished in mid-2009), and, finally, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden (finished reading in May of 2011).

All of the other books certainly contributed, in some fashion, to my willingness or ability to read Sparks’ latest book (Sacred Word, Broken Word), but it is this book, in particular, that, in my opinion, completely shattered an intellectual logjam or ice wall that has held a huge reservoir of deep anxiety for me.

Before I get into the details of the book itself, let me note that the logjam or ice wall was my growing conviction (that I absolutely did not want to embrace) that the doctrine of Scripture with which I was raised and that I was taught at seminary was untenable. Put most starkly: I was losing hope—even as I attempted manfully to hang onto hope—that the kinds of doctrines of Scripture promoted by the churches in which I grew up—the doctrine of Scriptural inerrancy and the doctrine of Sola scriptura, the doctrines taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith, promoted by Harold Lindsell in his 1976 bombshell The Battle for the Bible, and carried forward by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and its 1978 document called The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy . . . –I was losing hope that these doctrines were really tenable. (If you want to see the details of the doctrines I am talking about, I urge you to read my lengthy post titled Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden? –Part 1 and Part 2.) Basic ideas:

• The Bible “in its entirety is inerrant, being free from falsehood, fraud, or deceit.”
   
• Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are not limited to “spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes.” Rather, they also apply to “assertions in the fields of history and science.” Therefore, for example and preeminently, scientific hypotheses about earth history may not “properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.”
   
• The Bible “speaks truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else.”
   
• While “in some cases extrabiblical data have value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for prompting correction of faulty interpretations,” such data can never “disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it.”

If you spend a few minutes thinking about some of these statements, you might understand some of my angst. The problem comes down to defining “what the Scripture teaches” and/or, actually, what the Bible even “touches on.”

In my “Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden” posts, mentioned above, I go into detail on the kinds of conservative statements of faith I believe I was raised on . . . and the problems they engender. But here are just three minor illustrations of how these statements of faith can cause problems (taken directly from the second “Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden” post):

• When the Bible speaks of us being "knit together" by God in our mother's wombs (Psalm 139:13), is it not touching on a matter pertaining to nature? Is it, then, not speaking truth? So, then, on what grounds--what biblical grounds--can we be sure that it is acceptable for medical personnel to teach us of sperm and eggs, mitosis and meiosis, and all the other details of what they call the "birthing process"? If we listen to them, how can we be sure we are not permitting their scientism or their extrabiblical views to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it"?
   
• Or in the case of meteorology: When the Bible speaks of the storehouses for rain and snow and wind and the windows of heaven and so forth (Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Job 38:22; etc.) . . . and when it tells us how God controls these storehouses and windows (Job 38:22; Jeremiah 10:13; and so forth), is it not touching on matters pertaining to nature (as well as, on occasion, history)? And assuming this is the case, then when meteorologists speak of high- and low-pressure systems and evaporation and transpiration and sublimation and precipitation, are they not attempting to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or or (to have their extrabiblical views) hold priority over" Scripture? If someone wants to say that this is surely not the case, then I would like that person to explain, on Scriptural grounds alone, how and why he or she is right and I am wrong!

Finally (for the sake of this post),

• When the Bible speaks of a tree reaching up into heaven so it can be seen "to the end of the whole earth" (Daniel 4:10-11), and when it tells us that Satan took Jesus to a high mountain so that he could show Him "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" (Matthew 4:8), is it not "touching on" something ("matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else")? And, to use the language of the Westminster Confession, must we not, "by good and necessary consequence," conclude that it is teaching that the earth is flat? For how else might a tall tree be seen reaching into heaven? It matters not how tall a tree might be on one side of a globe: people on the other side will never be able to see it; its height makes no difference. And, similarly, it matters not how high the mountain might be: if the earth is globular, no one could possibly see "all the kingdoms of the world." So, therefore, must we not oppose those who, on extrabiblical grounds, insist that the earth is anything but flat? If not, why not? On what grounds can we be sure we are not permitting extrabiblical views to hold priority over Scripture?

By raising questions such as these, am I making mountains out of molehills?

I think not. Not when I have—personally—been caught in the ripsaw of Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (who is convinced—and seems to have convinced the majority of Christian homeschoolers—that any interpretation of Genesis 1-11 that doesn't accord with his own view is the result of an unbiblical practice of permitting man’s wisdom to hold priority over Scripture). Nor when I and the company of which I am a part owner have been thrown out of the Christian Home Educators of Colorado convention because that organization’s faith statement about the Bible (“The Bible, in its original autograph, is without error in whole or in part; including theological concepts as well as geographical, historical and scientific details.”) leads it to reject any company from its convention hall that includes any materials in its curriculum that fails to deride evolution as a foolish, ungodly, man-inspired idea. If you don't teach with conviction that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old at the most, then you're letting man’s ideas hold sway over the Bible.

[Of course, as I have argued elsewhere, to use their logic, they haven't gone far enough. But for some reason, as far as I have been able to discern, they permit “man’s wisdom” to overcome the “obvious” biblical teaching against Copernicus. (Do a search on the word Copernicus when you visit my Young- and Old-Earth Creationists: Can We Even Talk Together? Article to see what I am talking about.)]

But all of what I have said so far is mere background to what I wanted to say about Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word. Sparks has shattered the logjam in my mind about how to honor the Bible as being truly God’s Word and authoritative in life and faith and practice (“Sacred”) even while it is full of contradictions, errors, foolishness and worse (“Broken”).

Let me stop here for a moment so you can catch your breath.

In some ways, I "can't believe" I just said what I did! How dare I? Coming from where I am coming, what I've just said is tantamount to blasphemy. You can't have a truth-speaking God inspiring a Bible that has one contradiction, error, or foolish teaching (let alone "worse" teaching!) in it. Can't be done. If God is God, then his word must be perfect, without error, without contradiction. . . .

But.

Anyone who has read the Scriptures seriously for any length of time is familiar with the “problems” of the Bible. There are books that seek to explain these difficulties away so that conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists can hold onto the kinds of doctrinal statements I have mentioned above. But, frankly, there comes a point where one has to exert some serious effort to “suspend one’s disbelief” in order to continue holding. And though I have exerted those efforts for all of these years, I must say that I found the efforts rather exhausting and enervating and joyless–not exactly the kind of words one would want to use to describe one’s Christian life!

But I have “held on,” nonetheless. What other option do I have if I am to remain a Christian? It’s the only way, isn't it? If you want to be a true Christian, you have to “stand alone on the Word of God,” the “inerrant, infallible, perspicuous, perfect-in-every-regard-down-to-the-very-jot-and-tittle” Bible. Yes?

I hated the intellectual position. But I wanted my God. And so I have been holding on. Waiting. Wondering. Hoping. And, every now and then, looking to see if I might find some way out of my quandary.

Was there—is there—no way out?

It was one chapter in Sparks’ book that shattered the logjam or ice wall—the blockage—for me: Chapter 3: “The Contribution of Christology.” There was a lot of cleanup that had to take place after the initial breakage, but just to see the glimmer of a way out gave me unbelievable hope.

So what did this amazing chapter do? It teased out, in the space of 6 1/2 pages, the key contours of the primary issue that faces us, I believe, in the doctrine of Scripture: What is the relationship between the human and the divine in the Bible?

Sparks begins the chapter by talking about the doctrine of Christ.

He notes that early on in the church's history, the church rejected two—what it viewed as—extreme and too-narrow positions and adopted a third view that embraced both of the extremes at one and the same time. The two extreme doctrines are known as Docetism and Adoptionism.

• Docetism, in essence (“close enough for government work”): Jesus was God and not human; he was God pretending to be human.
   
• Adoptionism, in essence: Jesus was human and not God; God adopted him as his [God’s] only begotten son.
   
• And the orthodox teaching? Jesus is fully God and fully human. There is a “hypostatic union”—a joining together—of the divine and human natures, and Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, . . . incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and . . . made man.”

So what does this have to do with Scripture? Sparks makes two points.

1. We should probably recognize that Jesus himself lived and taught in some limited manner as a human being.

Sparks comments:

Jesus was a finite person who grew up in Palestine, learned Hebrew and Aramaic, and was not only born Jewish but, culturally speaking, became Jewish. . . . [B]eing a man, [Jesus] lived out his life within a finite human horizon. . . .

Okay. That seems unremarkable. What about this:

Though Jesus was undoubtedly sinless (see Heb 4:15), did he nonetheless embrace not only our finiteness but also our fallen condition? Did Jesus Christ have a fallen human nature? . . .

As a rule, the [church] fathers were not very comfortable with the idea that Jesus had a fallen nature, but I find it more reasonable—and more scriptural—to affirm that Jesus was both finite and fallen, in all respects like us, "sin excepted" (Heb 4:15). This is possible because the sinful nature and sinful deeds are two different things (infants may have a sinful nature, for instance, but they are not yet "sinners"). . . . In fact, many theologians would describe [the belief that Jesus had a fallen nature] as “good news.” After all, what victory did Christ win for us if fallen flesh itself were not redeemed and resurrected? [pp. 24-26]

In sum, then, Sparks says:

Jesus lived within the limits of his humanity and, it would seem, shared in our fallen nature. To what extent did this human horizon influence his teachings? . . . [I]t seems to me that [to borrow a phrase from Colin Gunton (Christ and Creation [Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1992]), p. 41] “no Christology is adequate which tries either to evade the material determinateness of Jesus or his Jewish particularity.” In principle, the theology of Jesus was largely the theology of a first-century Jew. And where that first-century theology was limited in its vision, so too was the theological vision of Jesus. Orthodoxy only demands that Jesus was sinless, not that his teachings were wholly insulated from the human condition.

Oh, boy!

If there are difficulties in [this] thesis, these involve the long-standing Christian debate about the communicatio idiomatum (“sharing of attributes”) between Jesus' divine and human natures. To what extent were divine qualities of Jesus Christ "communicated" to his humanity? Did the insights of divine omniscience in some way inform his human perspective? And if so, did this insight prevent Jesus from using theological images from his own day that are now, by our standards, problematic? . . . [I]f we attend to the general theological, biblical, and anthropological evidence available to us, my sense is that the evidence sides strongly with [the idea that] Jesus did not depend on unusual divine resources to live a holy life. Rather, he lived in holiness by the same resource that animates every Christian: by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. . . .

God did not redeem us in Christ by coming "alongside" the fallen cosmos as a human-looking phantom. His redemptive work came in and through that fallen order itself, by full human participation in a world that needed healing. Docetists judged that this gospel would be too "messy," entailing as it does God's close contact with a soiled world. But orthodoxy holds that, in God's wisdom, this is precisely the point: fallen creation is redeemed only when God participates in the fallen creation. So far as we know, there was no other way to save us or our world.

You just “know” where this is going, don't you? Sparks is angling to insert error into Jesus' teaching. “He was sinless, but he didn't teach without error.” –Or something like that.

But/and/so—assuming that this is where Sparks is going—why don't we think about that for a moment?

Is it a sin to teach something that “isn't true”? I mean, for example, should we charge Jesus with sin for claiming that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds? Just for example.

• Suppose, somehow, he had supernatural knowledge—beyond his historical and cultural context. And, therefore, suppose he knew there were smaller seeds than the mustard seed. Would it matter that he claimed it was the smallest seed? Supposing it did, then to whom would it matter? To his hearers—who, apparently, didn't know? . . .
   
• Suppose he didn't know there were (or are) smaller seeds? Would that matter? Why?

Back to Sparks. The second point Sparks makes with respect to Christology and the Bible is this:

2. While Christians understand Jesus is a hypostatic union,

whatever Scripture is, it is not a hypostatic union in which divinity and humanity are mysteriously joined in one person. . . . Neither Paul, nor Luke, nor any of the other biblical authors were both divine and human. They were human beings only—good men, perhaps, but also fallible sinners in need of redemption, who wrote texts that the church has nevertheless embraced as God's word.

A direct analogy that moves from Christology to bibliology does not work. Rather, if we wish to draw a theological analogy from the old Christological debates that explains Scripture's character, I would suggest that the adoptionist metaphor is closer to the mark. Understood in this way, Scripture is God's word because God providentially adopted ancient human beings, like Paul, as his spokespersons. In doing so God "set apart" or "sanctified" their words for use in his redemptive activity.

Hence, we can affirm with a straight face that Scripture, all written by sinful human beings, is rightly referred to as Sacred or Holy Scripture. . . .

But . . . To repeat the main and important point, the Christological analogy does not really apply directly to a doctrine of Scripture and, even if it did, it would not support but would more likely weaken arguments in support of [the inerrantists’] view of Scripture. . . . We may assume, for theological and practical reasons, that the human beings who wrote Scripture erred [even in their writing of Scripture—JAH] as all humans do. [pp. 28-29; bolding mine--JAH]

Now. Where Sparks goes with this, how he is going to handle the doctrine of inspiration (“all Scripture is inspired by God [‘God-breathed’]”—2 Timothy 3:16), and how he can possibly help anyone avoid falling over the precipice into complete skepticism that the Bible has any divine import at all: well . . . that will have to wait for another time. I'm sure this post has taxed your patience as it is. And I need to get on to other matters. But I wanted to at least "announce" what I have been thinking about and where I sense my mind and heart are at the moment . . . and where I am sensing I am heading.

Why are certain questions forbidden? --Part 2--The authority of Scripture, Part II

This post is exceptionally way too long and convoluted. But I want to post it anyway. I have spent too much time on this relatively small portion of my larger project.

So, recognizing my verbosity, please let me summarize, here, up front, what I attempt to cover and attempt to say. Then dig in!

1. I believe that young-earth creationists "have it right" when they fear that old-earth creationist viewpoints tend to wreak havoc with many traditional statements of faith concerning the authority of Scripture. An old-earth view does not permit followers to look at Scripture in quite the same way they did if they read (or when they read) the Scriptures from a young-earth perspective.
    
2. Young-earth creationists are nothing if they are not passionate to uphold the authority of Scripture!
    
3. Evangelical old-earth creationists, too, are passionate to uphold the authority of Scripture. But they find faults in the old formulas. They are convinced that the formulas need some adjustment. Or (depending on the specific statement of faith under discussion) they sense that certain interpretations of the confessional standards may need to change. (Not in all cases. But some.)
    
4. While young-earthers "man the heights" with their staunch defense of even the narrowest confessional standards when it comes to the authority of Scripture, they fail to realize--or, perhaps, they realize but are unwilling to acknowledge--that they apply their vaunted standards unevenly or inconsistently. So, ultimately, the standards become no standards at all. Not really.