Recently, Ken Ham was eliminated as a speaker at a couple homeschooling conferences. You'll want to check out his blog and then follow links to his other articles for more information.
The gist of the controversy is that Ken believes that another speaker, Dr. Peter Enns, is a promoter of liberal theology who undermines the authority of the Word of God. For example, viewing Adam symbolically, his acceptance of evolution, and not having a biblical view of inspiration.
After reading about this, what do you think? Should he have been kicked out? Where do you stand?
Dave,
ReplyDeleteI spent most of this afternoon reading articles about this situation. There is not enough room in this blog to go into this discussion to the degree that it warrants. Let me say just a few things:
1. I hate seeing Christians openly attacking each other...takes us away from our true mission to be Christ in the world.
2. The real issue here is how one defines the key terms being discussed...particularly what we mean by biblical inerrancy. Enns is defining it differently than Ham. The possible definitions are endless but it basically comes down to how literal the Bible should be taken. You'll get into this discussion in the next class when you talk about how to interpret different parts of Scripture.
3. I believe that AiG should be commended for their tone...they are not mean-spirited. However, they are very intolerant of any view that doesn't agree with theirs and that concerns me greatly when it comes to topics where good Christians differ on biblical grounds. I believe that there are four ways to approach the Creation narrative and that three of them take the bible seriously...the only one that doesn't is the one that sees the Creation story as a myth. Dr. Enns does not and shouldn't be treated as one who does.
4. Another who agrees with AiG but does so more graciously is Albert Mohler, president of Southern Theological Seminary. He writes this in a long article on the subject, "The first issue we note is the issue of the integrity of scripture. And we must concede that those who hold to a Day-Age view or its equivalent, who argue for an old earth, in so far as they are our colleagues in the evangelical movement affirming the inerrancy of scripture, are seeking to do so in a way that does not do violence to the inerrancy of scripture." Did you catch that? He disagrees with people like Enns but does not question that they are seeking to honestly deal with Scripture. Ham, unfortunately, is so tied to his view that he simply can't accept any other one as valid and therefore anathematizes all of them.
5. This all fits is well with our Church History seminar last Saturday. The Fundamentalist-Modernity controversy is the root of Ham's attitude - it is a sincere desire to protect the Bible in our day of skepticism. However, in so doing, I fear that he has made his brethren in Christ the target of his arrows and is wounding the body. That is unfortunate at best and a terrible witness to the world at worst.
Feel free to disagree my friends...those are my thoughts.