It seems a common argument creationists use is: "the Bible is crystal clear that God made the world in six 24-hour days, 6000 years ago, and then destroyed it with a global flood. He could not have made himself clearer. All this disagreement is not over interpretation, it is because some wilfully choose to reject God's clear teaching."
The Scriptures are clear, not just in the Old Testament but in the New Testament as well. Creation was the sole work of God and happened exactly as described in the opening chapters of Genesis.
Is there a difference between creationists and TEists in terms of how we regard the clarity of the Scriptures?
There is certainly a difference in clarity, they meander around so much nothing ever actually gets said. Even if you can get them to admit a miracle in the NT they never seem interested in talking about it. There is a major difference in clarity here, TEs are notoriously ambiquise.
Creation-evolution is only one of many areas in which Bible-believing Christians disagree. Here are some other classics:
There is no disagreement about creation, God created the heavens and the earth, things seen and unseen.
This has to be something like the Catholic/Orthodox conflict over how has the eccesestical authority or right to rule. The Protetant Reformation decided that neither of them did and chose instead Solo Scripture for the Canon. Pontificating clerics are wrong as much as they are right and in this day and age they are completly irrelevant to a life of faith.
As if the bread became something magical. The Jews celebrate the Passover to remember their exodus from Eqypt, each of the twelve tribes took twelve giant stones from the Jordon to remember the entrance into the promised land. The eucharist is a prayer, not a magic waifer that turns into Jesus. Jesus is present with us when we come together in His name.
3. Paedo vs credo baptism
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean but the image of baptism is that of a funeral. Jewish girls in Helenistic New Testament times would be baptised in their wedding dresses. It was the end of their old lives as children and daughters and a start of their new life as wives and mothers. Baptism is the same idea as being born again, it's the idea of the death of the old life and birth of the new one. Jesus was baptised at the start of His earthly ministry, his life as a capenter submitting to the authoritiy of His earthly parents was over.
We think of it as some rite of passage and maybe it is but it's the death of the old man and walking in newness of life.
4. How the gifts of the Spirit are manifested today (eg. tongues and prophecy)
The Scriptures are clear on tongues, they are the miraculaous ability to speak a previously unlearned language. The church has always taught this and there are occasions when manifestations of tongues have been documented. Prophecy on the other hand is suspect much of the time. Anyone coming along and making extrabiblical revelations should be compared to the testimony of Scripture.
5. The role of women in ministry
Mary Magdalene was never a preacher, her ministry involved serving Jesus. When he was crucified she was the first to see him alive because she got up early Sunday morning to minister to him postumolously, dispite the fact she considered Him dead and gone. The role of women is not diminished because they don't stand in a pulpit and preach. Women exercise their gifts in relationships, not in apologetics or sermonizing. This does not diminish their ministries, it amplifies them. The Scriptures make it clear that submission is mutual, both in our horizontal relationships and the verticle ones. Did you know that the Father Son and Spirit submit to one another?
6. End time events/interpretation of Revelation
For one thing the cross was an end time event but I think you are talking about predictive prophecy. Revelations is highly predictive and oversees a section of history that has yet to occur. The church has allways understood this but when it comes to an actual scenerio speculation abounds. I've often wondered about the speculation that surronded Christ's first appearing, I imagine it was hit and miss.
How anyone can take this as anything other then a literal 1,000 years is a mystery to me.
My question is, if you think the Scriptures are crystal clear about creationism, do you also think they are crystal clear about all these other issues? Is it wrong for Christians to have different points of view about these things?
It can be informative, if they take Genesis figuratively it's a chain reaction throughout. After a while it's hard to nail down anything literal from one end to the other. That's one of the reasons that Catholic interprutations of Genesis, Job and Song of Songs are vauge and nebulous. Unfortunatly people who take them literally tend to oversimplify the texts.
On the other hand, if the Scriptures are NOT crystal clear about many of these issues (hence the common disagreements between denominations and individuals), why should we expect them to be crystal clear about origins? Isn't it obvious that the Bible is NOT 100% clear in its origins teachings, as evidenced by the many varying points of view?
It's clear, it's our worldly wisdom that clouds the clear testimony of Scripture. For me it's historicity and Genesis 1 has never read like a mythical poem, it's an historical view related to Moses from the only eye wittness on record, God Himself. I don't like the ambiquity of figurative interprutations, they simply distort and tangle the clear and distinct meaning.
