Closing Statements
What would cause me to revise my position?
Despite the initial framing of this debate, the real question has never been whether Scripture or science has greater authority. The real question has been: Which hermeneutic is most faithful to the text of Scripture itself?
JD and I share the same theological commitments. We affirm the same doctrines, the same gospel, and the same authority of Scripture. We simply arrive at those shared conclusions by different interpretive roads.
For most of my life, I was actually a committed Young Earth Creationist—deeply shaped by the Answers in Genesis tradition. In my younger years, I would have interpreted many of the points JD has raised as evidence of compromise, spiritual failure, or capitulation to “the word of fallible men.” By every conceivable standard, I would have judged JD as a “Young Earth Evolutionist,” someone whose compromise placed him only a step above atheism in my mind. (1) I was, in many ways, a Ken Ham clone. That is how deeply invested I was.
What changed my mind was not science. It was Scripture.
Through studying apologetics and the New Testament, I began to see inconsistencies in my own method. When I applied a consistent hermeneutic across the whole of Scripture, I realized that my YEC conclusions rested on assumptions and inferences—assumptions about chronology, assumptions about pre‑fall perfection, assumptions about the nature of animal death, and assumptions about the necessity of a global flood to explain away the scientific evidence for deep-time. These were not things the text itself taught. They were things I was bringing to the text. Moreover, I also soon came to see just how heavily my YEC interpretation relied on science to make its case.
I eventually realized that what I had been calling “apologetics” was not apologetics at all—it was a reactionary, anti‑science polemic built on reading scientific categories into passages that were never addressing scientific questions in the first place.
Because it was Scripture that convinced me to abandon my YEC assumptions, only Scripture could convince me to return to them.
For that to happen, it would need to be demonstrated from the text—not from systematic theology, not from canonical inference, not from scientific necessity—that the YEC reading is not merely one interpretation among many historically held by Christians, but an essential pillar of the faith. It would need to be shown that Scripture explicitly teaches the claims YEC treats as non‑negotiable as a theological necessity. As of now, I see no such evidence.
That said, JD’s strongest contributions in this debate have been his theological clarity. He is firmly grounded in systematic theology, and that is a genuine strength. But in this debate, I believe it also reveals the central weakness of his position. We agree on the theology. We also agree that Genesis 1–11 contains historical touchpoints, but its literary style and ancient context mean it cannot be used to reconstruct a scientific or chronological timeline of natural history. Where we differ, therefore, is hermeneutics. JD has framed the debate as a question of which view relies more on science and whether science or Scripture is the ultimate authority when it comes to reconstructing the unobserved past. But I have not appealed to science in any of my arguments. Every interpretive point I have made has come directly from the text of Scripture—its grammar, its structure, its genre, its ancient context.
JD, by contrast, has relied on theological conclusions without demonstrating from the text why his hermeneutical framework is necessary for those conclusions to hold or why his hermeneutical approach is preferable over mine. Showing that work, I believe, would significantly strengthen his approach.
Of all the points he raised, I think his strongest is the observation that Genesis 2 seems to present Adam and Eve as adults. As I said in Round 4, I think we should nevertheless be cautious before treating that as a proven, scientific or historical fact, given the atypical vocabulary of the passage. But it is, in my view, his most compelling textual point.
With that said, I want to thank JD again for arranging this debate, and for his honesty, charity, and respectful engagement throughout. I hope the audience has found this exchange edifying and thought‑provoking. And I hope it serves as an example of how two brothers in Christ can disagree on secondary interpretive matters while remaining fully united in the faith and in our commitment to Christ.
Grace and peace to you all as you continue to seek truth in service to our Lord.
JD’s Closing Statement can be read here.
No comments:
Post a Comment