This letter wasn't really sent to Zaphod Beeblebrox, but to a tutor in a Christian school. Nor did I write it. It was composed by a pal.
Dear Zaphod,
Having been a Christian for many years - this being
against all odds given my family lineage – and now well into my maturity, it never
ceases to amaze me that Christians are often oblivious to the Evil One’s machinations.
Sometimes his intrigues are subtle, on other occasions far less so. (In my
extensive travels and working life overseas I have on several occasions witnessed
first-hand his unambiguous malevolence.) One thing I can tell you is that
whenever a man thinks he has steeled himself sufficiently against his wiles or,
arguably worse still, ignores his influence, that is when the man is most vulnerable
to his influence. For us Christians it often doesn’t begin or end with any
overt signalling that he is present or even operating; it is his secretive, secondary
layer of attack which charms a man to a parlous falsehood. Falsehoods are always dangerous; it’s just a
matter of degree. (Don’t forget Paul recognised him as “the god of this
age” and the “unseen ruler of this world”!) Let me illustrate my point through
analogy.
A man borrows a car from a friend and within a few
metres of moving off he realises the brakes are deficient. He returns the
vehicle to his friend as he understands that continuing his journey will be hazardous,
if not fatal. However, let’s imagine that the car has solid braking and so the
man drives on. After some time it begins to rain and on approaching a bend in
the road, he eases up on the throttle to compensate for the turn and poor
weather conditions. What he doesn’t realise is that his tyres are perilously
bald and no matter whether he brakes (which would be entirely inappropriate
once in the arc of a corner and given the wet road) or not, he is destined to
accident.
My point is obvious: A man can believe he has compassed
the entire terrain but has submerged something of clear importance, relegating
it to a stumbling block status.
Let me be bold. Contrary to the oft-repeated
misconception, creation is a salvation issue. Get the Creator even a little
wrong here, and everything comes asunder, including all that our unique
soteriological arguments’ purpose.
It is oddly naïve to believe that error, even if
conceived in ignorance, attracts no further casualty against truth. Error,
particularly one so integral to God’s primary office of Creator, can affect
nothing and be contained to itself. Error, like disease, grows and spreads and
ignoring it by, well, turning one’s back to it, makes the Evil One extremely satisfied
as his work is already near completion. C.S. Lewis, somewhere in his Screwtape
Letters I believe, alludes to this zero-sum outcome.
You claimed in your mail that you “have no problem with a young-earth
interpretation of Genesis [or an old-earth]”, as though truth somehow depends
on your particular state of mind and hermeneutical preference and not on what
actually happened. Well before I completed my Philosophy degree I
was aware of the ubiquity of post-modernal epistemology in our media and
political environment. What I was not prepared for was its controlling
influence in the Church and, more parochially, its effect on university
Christian groups’ thinking when I was an undergraduate. Far more than an
occasional meme is the eisegetical defence “I have no problem with God’s
creating in 6 days [but I prefer to believe that God did it over eons].”
Textual considerations are set aside and, though it is not recognised, a priority
is given to feelings or personal indulgence as the controlling “epistemic”, rather
than God’s Word, revealed to us by His Spirit, undergirded by His written word.
Your belief – and it is merely a belief, not knowledge
according to His revelation – that both a young world and an ancient world can
be accommodated is an egregious error. First, it falls foul of the Law of
non-Contradiction. That is to say, one thing cannot be another mutually
exclusive thing. Second, it is claiming that God’s revelation about what and
how he created is nugatory. That is, the Holy Spirit, despite textual statements
to the contrary, has not only failed to impart unambiguous and accurate
information about God’s creative works, but he has serially misled men like
myself who read the Bible and conclude that it is unequivocal God created
quickly and the world, for both textual and scientific reasons, screams young,
young, young. (Again, the Law of non-Contradiction applies: either I am wrong
and you’re right or its contrary is true.)
The yardstick must be independent from the things
being measured. The only yardstick we have concerning the beginning is God’s
Word, not our relativistic measuring tools. Zaphod, you are not at liberty to take
Exodus 31:17 any way your feelings dictate (after all, what verses can you
point to that unambiguously tell us that the world is old?). It’s neither
biblical nor according to a Christian epistemology to do so. I fear, and know,
that teaching young people that the creation toledoth is not a toledoth
(Genesis 2:3) is a serious dereliction of your duty to instruct the young.
I can recognise when a man does engage with an
argument. I don’t think you really have with mine. That’s disappointing as I
don’t converse with people on such important matters in order to hear myself
talk. You’ve relegated Creation to a bin of the unimportant; I on the other
hand have argued that the issue cannot be separated from salvation. The
substance, the nuts and bolts, of the topic form a whole.
The issue you’ve brushed aside is that you, without
any explanation, hold God could have taken eons to bring the whole creation to
its completion. What you didn’t address is the purpose for God’s taking such an
enormous amount of time when he could have done it far more quickly, as
intelligent beings tend to aim toward. There is a point at which God’s taking
eons becomes God’s not being there and time obfuscates or even erases God’s
actions and footprint. God and Time become indistinguishable to the extent that
God’s presence is invisible. Do you really think that young people don’t go on
to reason to this conclusion given the vagueness and two-bob-each-way stand you’ve
claimed is a logical possibility?
Over my working life I’ve worked in factories, picked
fruit, taught in seriously prestigious schools, taught in underground schools
where the pupils belong to violent street gangs, worked with murderers and
other psychopathic patients…but I think working in cocoon environments, like
Chatterhouse, insulate you from what people really are about, what they go on to
become and, far more importantly, what they believe about the world.
Screwtape instructed his nephew with the following
advice: “[R]emember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you
separate the man from the Enemy. [It’s the] cumulative effect to edge the man
away from the Light and out into the Nothing…Indeed the safest road to Hell is
the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings,
without milestones, without signposts.” Encourage a man (or, in your case, a Chatterhouse lad) that
he is at liberty to impose meaning upon a biblical text which already has its
meaning well and truly contained within it, and you’ve begun to redirect his
attention from the Light back to himself.
Bernard Williams, writing in his book on Descartes,
stated “one false belief can be the condition of my acquiring or retaining many
other false beliefs, through its logical relations to them [and one way this
may occur is] in some holistic adjustment of my beliefs to produce a coherent
whole, misguidedly adjust my beliefs to some false assumption, and thus make
everything worse.” I suggest this is exactly what you’ve done by saying that a
young earth and an old one have equal epistemic value. Claiming God took ages
to bring the Creation to this present state comes with much unwanted baggage
and some terribly uncomfortable conclusions directly related to soteriological
concerns.
Here’s a neat historical summary of what the Church
did believe, contrary to people like Hugh Ross, John Dickson and a plethora of
other heterodox have claimed.
https://www.robibradshaw.com/chapter3.htm
