Archives For Ken Ham

Ken Ham is Wasting his Time: Adam was Not the First Human

Jason Micheli —  August 25, 2014 — 2 Comments

Untitled10111I’ve become convinced that its important for the Church to inoculate our young people with a healthy dose of catechesis before we ship them off to college, just enough so that when they first hear about Nietzsche or really study Darwin they won’t freak out and presume that what the Church taught them in 6th grade confirmation is the only wisdom the Church has to offer.

I’ve been working on writing a catechism, a distillation of the faith into concise questions and answers with brief supporting scriptures that could be the starting point for a conversation.

You can find the previous posts (questions 1-32 of section I) here.

II. The Witness

1. What is the Bible?

The Bible is the witness of Israel, the prophets and the Church to the Logos, the One Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.

Like John the Baptist pointing to Christ, the Bible is testimony which points to the One Word God speaks to us in Jesus.

Therefore, we do not believe in the Bible; we believe in the One to whom the Bible bears witness.

We do not have faith in the Bible; we trust that the Bible’s words are reliable- not inerrant- testimony about the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in whom we have faith.

“He Scripture came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him scripture. He scripture himself itself was not the light, but he it came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” 

– John 1.7-9

2. What does the Bible say about the First Human?

The Bible says that Jesus is the first human.

By calling Jesus the ‘2nd Adam’ scripture makes the audacious claim that Jesus, not Adam, is the 1st genuine human.

Jesus is the first one to live a fully human life by always trusting that he was beloved by God, which set Jesus free to love fully and to live faithfully as though the whole world was a new and different creation.

That Jesus’ life met with the Cross reveals not that he wasn’t really human but that we are not human. His faithfulness all the way to the Cross is proof of Jesus’ full humanity and proof of our inhumanity.

Thus, Jesus is the first human in that the word ‘human’ has no content apart from the character of his life.

“God has recapitulated all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus Christ.” 

– Ephesians 1.9-10

 

 

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If Only David Bentley Hart Had Debated Bill Nye and Ken Ham

Jason Micheli —  February 5, 2014 — 1 Comment

bill-nye-the-science-guyApparently Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) spent more time in the lab than he did on the debate team. Squaring off on TV against Ken Ham, the Founder of the Creation ‘Museum’ in Kentucky, Nye performed like chum for the sharks. It’s ironic that Ken Ham doesn’t believe in evolution when his terrible beard makes him look like the primordial man in the Natural History Museum.

You can read about the debate here.

I didn’t watch the debate- don’t get cable- but I wish just once journalists would point out how creationist fundamentalists operate from the very same presuppositions as their pure materialist opponents in the sciences.

david_bentley_hartAs David Bentley Hart puts it in The Experience of God:

“Many [19th century Christians who opposed Darwinism] genuinely believed that there was some sort of logical conflict between the idea that God had created the world and the idea that terrestrial life had evolved over time. This was and is a view held, of course, by any number of atheists as well.”

“One assumes that fundamentalist Christians and atheists alike are well aware that Christians believe God is the creator of every person; but presumably none of them would be so foolish as to imagine that this means each person is not also the product of spermatozoon and ovum.

Surely they grasp that here God’s act of creation is understood as the whole event of nature and existence, not as a distinct causal agency that in some way rivals the natural process of conception.”

Creationists are right. When it comes to Genesis, it’s all about dates.

One misfortune of reading the Genesis literally, I believe, is that it misses out on the even more powerful proclamation that’s made when you consider that the Genesis 1 poem was conceived during Israel’s experience of exile and hopelessness.

Here’s an old sermon on the idea that both Bill Nye and Ken Ham could stand to hear.

 

      1. A God More Interesting than Creationism
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