Pauluc, it is not an either or. We make …

Comment on Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation by David Read.

Pauluc, it is not an either or. We make our own laws through our own elected representatives (or in states like CA that often use plebiscites or ballot initiatives, by directly voting on them). But once the law is passed and becomes law, we are not free to break the law. In other words, the fact that we made the law does not put us above the law. To the contrary, the fact that the law reflects a democratic consensus gives it greater authority and dignity.

That the church selected the canon doesn’t give the church license to ignore the plain teaching of Scripture. The fact that the books that comprise the Bible were widely acknowledged by early Christians to be inspired by God, and clearly of a different quality than many pretenders deemed uninspired, gives greater authority to he Word.

David Read Also Commented

Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation
“No one prior to Galileo even knew that the Earth was round.”

Kip, the ancient Greeks knew the earth was round and came very close to correctly calculating it’s circumference. This knowledge was never lost during the middle ages. Columbus wasn’t surprising anyone by holding that he would eventually reach the far east by sailing west; his critics knew he was grossly underestimating the earth’s circumference, and they were right: had he not run unto the Americas, he would have starved long before reaching China.


Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation
Some of these students haven’t mastered English, so it is not surprising that their opinion pieces betray that they do not understand how the Seventh-day Adventist faith fits together to form a harmonious system of truth.

It isn’t the students from whom I expect spiritual maturity and understanding, however, but their teachers. I wonder the extent to which the students’ apparent ignorance of theAdventist faith reflects their teachers attitudes.


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“The only real debate is when did evolution start? 6000 years ago when Cain was born, or millions of years ago.”

Exactly so, Ron. The difference between Bible history and mainstream science (Cambrian explosion) is five orders of magnitude. That’s an enormous difference. It cannot be papered over, or compromised. We all must choose whom we will believe.


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Ron, if Darwin was right, talk of salvation is sheer idiocy, utterly deracinated and pointless. There was no Adam, no fall, no need of redemption or salvation, no point in Jesus’ death, no hope of a supernatural future free of death and disease and predation (because there was no perfect creation free of death, disease and predation). Darwinism makes utter, contemptible nonsense of Christianity.

I think Bill is profoundly misguided and unbiblical in his views about justification, but he’s much closer to sound religion than you are if you embrace mainstream science’s origins narrative.


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“We keep the law to be saved. And faith in Christ is part of obedience to the law and keeping the moral law by doing God’s will is also part of keeping the law.”

Bill, here’s how you should consider saying it: “We are saved by faith in Christ. And keeping the moral law by doing God’s will is also part of having faith in Christ.”

The teaching is essentially the same, but the first formulation sounds profoundly heretical to a biblically literate person, whereas the second wording sounds biblically sound. This is what I mean about modes of expression.


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Bill, the word you are searching for is not censor but censure. You were threatened with censure.

And that should have been an opportunity for reflection and self-examination, for you to think about whether your views, and especially your modes of expression, are balanced and biblically sound. There’s a reason why your ceaseless use of language like “salvation by works” makes your fellow church members uncomfortable–so uncomfortable that they’ve threatened you with censure– and it isn’t because they want to dance around the golden calf.


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No one is justified by obedience to the law. Whoever does not break the law doesn’t need justification, but so far no one but Christ ever has perfectly obeyed the law. So if I am not justified through faith in Christ, I’m not going to be justified, I’m going to be lost eternally. Even if I keep the law perfectly from here on out, it will not save me. I will always need the atonement of Christ. The goal of he Christisn life is to rely less and less on imputed righteousness, and more and more on imparted righteousness. But no one is justified by works, or by obedience to the law.