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| Do Bible professors need to apologize for Bible tracts? |
Timothy Yoder, professor at Philadelphia Biblical University, talks about the value of Christian Apologetics to defend the existence of God and the truth of the Bible. Then he highly recommends William Lane Craig and Dinesh D'Souza as teachers of the Apologetic method. Dr. Yoder, don't you know that William Lane Craig believes the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and that Dinesh D'Souza believes in the big bang?
This competition and debate regarding the existence of God, the Bible as God’s Word, the historicity of Jesus and the gospels, the creation of the world, and a host of other controversies means that one of our most important duties as Christians is to be an apologist for the faith.... Apologetics magnifies God, because it contends for the veracity of the divine revelation and message.... Apologetics is not a discipline in its own right, but rather it employs all the disciplines – theology, of course, but also philosophy, history, science, archaeology, etc. – to the project of safeguarding and championing the Christian faith.So what does Yoder offer "on the other hand," particularly with regard to the truth of God's creation account?
[The apostle] Peter’s apologetic command includes the injunction to do so with gentleness and respect.... The other hand, acceptance of everything in the name of tolerance is not genuine love.
The well-meaning tract lady is not doing effective apologetics if all she can do is tell the Bible story. Apologetics requires a well-rounded education.... Many think that a belief in creationism means that Christianity is at war with science.I'm sure that Dr. Yoder has much more to say if you pay for the privilege (or the privilege of your son or daughter) to attend his classes. But if you do not wish to pay $1800 for a course, you can look at his Recommended Reading list. He has 13 books listed under the category of General Apologetics and Apologetic Method. But at least five of them are by professors who definitely oppose the truth that God created the world in six literal days, or that He created Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth.
Christian professor William Lane Craig - who teaches at an "evangelical" college and claims to support the inerrancy of the Bible - was caught in an admission of culpable passivity regarding the Bible and science on Canad'as Michael Coren Show. Mr. Coren's guest was a prominent evangelical Christian professor from a California school of theology who appeared to defend the existence of God and the need for a personal relationship with God. However, when asked "How old is the world" this brilliant Christian scholar confidently stated, "The best estimates today are around 13.7 billion years." Mr. Coren was thrilled, he said "this is a position I can embrace because there are people who will sit here and say that it's six and a half thousand years old." Craig seemed amused, but concluded that such a position is not plausible.(No doubt they were both thinking of the well-meaning tract ladies whose education was not well-rounded enough to recognize the foolishness of thinking that God could actually create the world in six days).
Craig continued, "the arguments that I give are right in line with mainstream science. I'm not buckling up against mainstream science.... I'm going with the flow with what contemporary cosmology and astrophysics support." Coren then asked, what about dinosaurs and man co-existing? "There are some 'creationists' - they typically style themselves 'young earth creationists' - who believe that," Craig stated, obviously disagreeing. The Bible, he said, gives no evidence for dinosaurs and men living together or for the young-age of the earth.If Dr. Craig had carefully read Genesis 1-12, with attention to the quantitative data provided by God, he would have *plenty* of data from which to learn that the age of the earth is thousands of years old, not billions.
D’Souza then takes a disappointing turn and argues that the big bang is a ‘stunning confirmation of the book of Genesis’ (p. 116), arguing that it proves a beginning around 15 billion years ago. He seems unaware of the huge problems with this theory. And what happens if secularists reject the big bang? He will have to re-interpret his re-interpretation of Genesis!It is sad that Dr. Yoder does not come out and tell us what his recommended professors are teaching. It would be even better if he took a different approach, and actually defended Scripture to the hilt! It would also be suitable for an apologetics professor to analyze how the term "science" has been hijacked and replaced by speculation and just-so story telling, with the scientific method left to die by the side of the road.
D’Souza goes on to defend not just the evolutionary timeline, but evolution itself. He even repeats the disproved assertion that man shares 98% of his DNA with apes. He argues that this is perfectly reconcilable with Scripture; since God’s image that man is made in is not physical, but spiritual, there is no problem with the physical body being derived from an ape.
However, he completely ignores the biblical account that asserts that humankind was derived not from other animals, but as a special creation distinct from animals (Genesis 1:26–28, 2:7, 21–24). He also ignores the genealogy of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, which traces Him back to a real Adam, then directly to God, not via a line of apes (Luke 3:38). And the apostle Paul treats Adam as a real first man and ancestor of all other humans (Romans 5:12–19,9 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45); evolution teaches that a population of ape-like creatures evolved into a population of humans.
It appears that Bible colleges, not just seminaries, are slipping into worldly compromise with historical Biblical truth. Please pray for a new generation of Apologetics professors who will defend God's honor, and also defend all the well-meaning tract ladies, too!
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