First off let me say that I am absolutely not saying that Young Earth Creation Science is heresy. Although some people I respect are convinced that the Earth is millions of years old and that this proposition is compatible with a literal scripture I am not one of them and never was able to be.
But time and time again I have seen creation scientists, in arguing for a young earth, slip into rank heresy
For example, one scientist here is speaking of his atheistic youth
But time and time again I have seen creation scientists, in arguing for a young earth, slip into rank heresy
For example, one scientist here is speaking of his atheistic youth
"I did not need a creator so I did not need to obey his laws," he said
I was aghast, for with this opening statement he shows that though his science may be brilliant his theology is not. This is so for NO ONE OBEYS the Law of God. And why is this? In the letter of James in the New Testament it says that he who breaks one commandment breaks all, so only the sinlessly perfect obeys the Law. So he is claiming to be sinless and perfect? Clearly not. Scripture denies this also. It says that if any claim to be without sin he is a liar and the truth is not in him. The letter to the Romans says in plain language that no one is justified by works of law. I submit that the letter to the Galatians, by St Paul the Apostle, the same author as that to the Romans says that by works of Law no flesh is sanctified either, but not in exactly the same form of words.
The Law shows we are dead. It does not impart life. So a creationist scientist tells is he needs to obey God's laws?
If this man needs to obey God's Laws to be saved, or even to only live the Christian life he risks being irretrievably damned for no one does or can obey the Law. And to attempt to do so is to deny Christ, forsaking Him for for the Law - an error so egregious that Paul rebuked the Galatians as fools where he actually praised the Corinthians for their gifts when members of that assembly were given to drunkenness at communion dinners and even worse, there was one case incest with his step mother.
Another example of this kind of heresy was when a man lecturing in creationism was speaking of driving down a coastal road in my own home country. The sea was on one side, snow capped mountains on the other. He spoke of the glorious beauty of a clear and wonderful summer's day. But did he thank God for this sheer delight? He did not. He had to stop himself, he had to tell himself that the creation is fallen. What is this if it is not ingratitude for the gift of God? There is evidence of fallenness all around. To ignore the testimony of the love of the Father in the beauty of Creation is to downgrade matter and the Creation which I hold is part and parcel of the mind set that formed the gnostic heresy.
Another example is when a creationist, at the end of a brilliant lecture about how genetic entropy demolishes the very posssibility of evolution, gave his own account of the cursedness of creation because of Adam's sin. He said that as Adam had sinned he had lost his dominion over the earth which passed (note the passive language) to Satan, and so Satan it was who cursed the earth. But the psalms make it perfectly clear that the Earth is the Lord's and every thing in it, and not only that but that it always has been so. It was God who cursed the earth because of our sin.
When a creationist berates theist evolutionists for not taking the words of Genesis literally as to the age and sequence of creation it is rather rich when he denies that it was God who cursed the earth when that is plainly and literally said
To deny this is to show that they cannot believe in a God who is both love and the author of calamity or judgement. And I have seen this time and time again. We carnal minds hold one or the other, were we to be honest about what we really believe, something else we disincline to. So such a faith in God's love, love as indulgence logically sidstepping the wrath and the cursing God does is a straw man, for Isiaah 45 makes it clear that God is the author of both good and evil, though in this instance evil means calamity and judgement, not the moral evil we now call sin. Such a view, which is common in pentecostal circles for i saw it there with my very eyes many times, is also gnostic in that it gives too much power to Satan, over playing the fact that he is the god of this earth. This kind of thinking tends to dualist heresy.
The final example I would cite is a website and ministry I no longer support for though I agree with it science I find its tending to the errors aforementioned troubling but even worse its arrogance. They show by this that thy are puffed up by their knowledge. Creationism is not a stick to beat evolutionists with. It is even worse when they claim that what is in fact quarrelling over words, something At Paul rebuked and forbade, is a godly means of responding to challenge. They can call it challenge/riposte model all they like. To respond with ridicule and sarcasm is always sin except one is led prophetically to do it, but to be in a position to claim such a leading is to have repented of an immense amount of sin, so much so as to be able to claim to be dead and buried with Christ. No one I know has such fruit as to rightly dare to claim this, and I certainly would not dare to. Moreover such is what common sense says it is, minus a leading by the spirit they cannot claim: tt is ego competition from boys of all ages who refuse to back down from a fight. Thus it is pride, idolatry and sin
Let us not be too excited by creation science. At best it returns us to the level of the Pharisees who were, it must be remembered, the closest to Christ in terms of doctrine at that time. But they earned the greatest rebuke. Although I agree with creationists that Genesis is the logical core of what follows, and that without it the gospel is compromised, what is built on genesis is not the same things as a literal genesis itself. We are saved b y our faith in a real and living person, not by our doctrine of origins
It troubles me that Creation Scientists pay so much attention to proving evolution false that they show an ignorance of what the Bible actually says about other matters. I have seen this quite often - heresy from creationist scientists - and hope to have demonstrated it by example here,
But it does prove to me that even creationism can and has become an idol. For what good is the most solid creation science if as a legalist one has fallen into the heresy of the Galatians or if in over emphasizing the fall one falls into a gnostic like attitude to creation?
There is more to Christianity than creationism. They forget this at their peril
