The Creationist Debate The Encounter Between the Bible and the Historical Mind |
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| Author:
| McCalla, Arthur |
| ISBN: | 978-0-8264-8002-6 |
| Publication Date: | Aug 2006 |
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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| Imprint: | Continuum |
| Book Format: | Paperback |
| List Price: | AUD $65.00 |
Book Description:
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The phrase 'deep time' was coined by John McPhee for the immense duration of geological time. This book places the present Creationist opposition to the theory of evolution in historical context by setting out the ways in which, from the seventeenth century onwards, investigations of the history of the earth and of humanity have challenged the biblical views of chronology and human destiny, and the Christian responses to these challenges. What is at issue in the history...
More DescriptionThe phrase 'deep time' was coined by John McPhee for the immense duration of geological time. This book places the present Creationist opposition to the theory of evolution in historical context by setting out the ways in which, from the seventeenth century onwards, investigations of the history of the earth and of humanity have challenged the biblical views of chronology and human destiny, and the Christian responses to these challenges.
What is at issue in the history traced by McCalla is not simply the fact of the age of the earth or the length of human history. The concept and implications of deep time raise fundamental questions about the biblical account of God and creation, the relationship between God and humanity, divine guidance, and the status of the Bible. We shall see that as long as the concepts of design and providence were retained, Christians could and did accept an ancient earth. Twentieth-century creationism's return to a literal interpretation of Genesis is a response to the Darwinism destruction of design and providence.
This book is a study of history and religion, rather than science and religion. The author's interest is not primarily directed to questions such as the epistemological status of scientific versus religious knowledge or the possibility of a Darwinian ethics, but rather to the problems, and various responses to the problems, raised in a particular historical period in the West for the Bible by the massive extension of the duration of geological time and human history.