Gene Nouhan's book will be featured at an upcoming literary event in Chicago that draws over 100,000 people.
ReadersMagnet, a renowned publishing and marketing company, will display Gene Nouhan’s The Six-Day War in Creationism: A New Critique of the Young Earth Reform Movement at the 2024 Printers Row Lit Fest (PRLF). This prestigious literary event, to be hosted by the Chicago Tribune, is scheduled for September 7-8, 2024, at Printers Row Park, 620 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL, USA. The PRLF is expected to attract a crowd of 100,000.
During the historic reforms in the Worldwide Church of God, Gene played a significant role in moving a fringe group towards Orthodoxy. This experience prepared him to critique the Young Earth Reform Movement’s overreach following the Ken Ham/Bill Nye debates. His troubling encounters with zealots in the movement led him to write a comprehensive critique provided in his book, The Six-Day War in Creationism.
The book focuses on where the Young Earth ReformMovement departs from historic Christianity. While Gene reassesses the literalism of Young Earth Creationism, he goes out of his way to show that the Reformist mentality in the movement is more serious.The Six-Day War in Creationism unpacks many new insights on Genesis related to God’s nature, the Bible’s purposes, and the Church’s Mission. The book surprises readers with its credible template for resolving theological controversies, forever changing their perspectives on Creationism.
Amazon Books has a similar statement:
During the historic reform in the Worldwide Church of God, Gene wrote peer-reviewed studies, spoke at conferences, served as a Senior Pastor, and with many colleagues, helped move that fringe group to Orthodoxy.
It turned out that untangling a denomination's self-styled theology was preparation for sorting out the Young Earth Reform Movement's striking overreach. Following the Ken Ham/Bill Nye debates, Gene was awakened to a "war" in Christianity over six days in Genesis. After troubling encounters with zealots in the movement, he saw the need for a comprehensive and definitive critique.
While Gene reassesses the literalism of Young Earth Creationism, he goes out of his way to show it is the Reformist mentality in the movement that is more serious. The Six-Day War in Creationism focuses on where the Young Earth Reform Movement departs from historic Christianity.
This book unpacks an impressive number of new insights on Genesis related to the nature of God, the purposes of the Bible, and the Mission of the Church. The surprising reward of this book is it serves as a credible template for resolving other controversies in theology. After reading the Six-Day War in Creationism, you will never look at the issues in Creationism the same way.
18 comments:
I remember watching Rebbe Menachen Mendel Schneerson of the Chabad Lubavitcher movement speaking and commenting, ‘I believe in 6 days God created the world and universe; I believe He created man on the 6th day and rested on the seventh. I believe mankind has according to the Bible been here approximately 6000 years, but I can’t ignore the evidence that tells me otherwise’.
I wouldn't mind knowing the core conclusions or at least some of the conclusions of the book which the review made no mention of.
Btw, historically verifiable dates only go back about 5000 years.
As everyone who watched that debate knows, Bill Nye destroyed Ken Ham's pseudoscience. The scientific evidence is simply overwhelming and irrefutable (geologic, fossil record, human and animal DNA, physics, astronomical, etc.) that the earth is billions of years old, and that the universe is even older. Moreover, science has conclusively demonstrated that the various lifeforms on this planet have evolved over vast expanses of time.
Hence, while I continue to believe that God created the universe and earth, the stories in Genesis were intended to be symbolic of spiritual truths. In short, I do NOT believe that they were intended to provide detailed or scientific information about the process of creation. HUMANS have calculated and proposed the 6,000-year thingy - You will search in vain for any passage of Scripture (or collection of Scriptures) which state or suggest such a conclusion! As for the human genealogical method which some folks have employed to arrive at an approximation of earth's age, we should note that ancient folks often skipped many generations in the accounts which they created of their ancestry. For example, I am the son/descendant of Henry Plantagenet of England, but there are a whole lot of generations and hundreds of years between me and my forefather!
2Peter 3:8. 6 days/6000 years. 7th day sabbath/7th 1000 years.
who?
Peter refers to Psalm 90:4: "For a thousand years in [God's] sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night."
It is merely saying God has His own time and is not bound by perceptions of humankind. It is not some endorsement of a 1 day equals exactly 1000 years.
Gene is a regular guest on Prove All Things.
https://www.proveallthings.net/replays?sapurl=LytxNWdtL21lZGlhL21pLytid2M2emprP2VtYmVkPXRydWUmcmVjZW50Um91dGU9YXBwLndlYi1hcHAubGlicmFyeS5tZWRpYS1zZXJpZXMmcmVjZW50Um91dGVTbHVnPSUyQmgzdDZ2Mnk=
The old WCG was moving away from "young earth" reasoning years before the "reforms" of 30 years ago. Herman Hoeh (as best I recall) was a main advocate for putting a "time gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, based on the fossil record.
if any COG is on the "young earth" side now, I don't know which one is.
A phrase struck me as I read the post. It is this, “… the literalism of Young Earth Creationism...” I have not read much about YEC but I know if it pivots on literalism, it is internally inconsistent because the source document, the Book of Genesis, is inconsistent if it is considered an historical or scientific statement. I believe when we read Genesis, we are reading narrative theology and not history or a scientific research paper.
First, there are two creation pericopes in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. The first creation pericope can be labelled Genesis 1 and corresponds to the first chapter of Genesis. The second creation pericope can be labelled Genesis 2 and is contained in the second chapter of Genesis beginning at verse 4. And Genesis 1 and 2 are inconsistent. And this strikes a blow against literalism ever becoming a credentialing concept for the “correct” interpretation of the book of Genesis.
In Genesis 1, we have plant life being created before Adam on the Third Day of Creation. In Genesis 2, we have plant life being created after Adam. Literalism just died as a hermeneutic for the interpretation of Genesis. It just does not work. (But, perhaps, YEC does not make this claim and draws instead upon other linguistic acrobatics. I am not a reader of their literature.) When the post-Exilic scribes, men like Ezra, edited the traditional texts making what we call the Old Testament, they left this discrepancy in place. They weren’t stupid. They were just as smart as us if not more so. They did not make a mistake. The implicit discrepancy is just as much a part of the intended meaning of scripture as any explicit writing. It is a signal. It says that what we are reading is not purely historical or scientific. The scribes thought we should be smart enough to understand this. Only atheists, fundamentalists and other literalists do not get the punchline.
Scout
I dont think they want to give it all away in an official review, 4:10, then no one would want to buy the book! :)
I've mentioned it before, but I've never sweated much over the creation story as its obvious to me that whoever wrote it (be it Moses or anyone else) was obviously not an eyewitness. So if the details dont quite match with current findings, so what? Unless you're treating the book as a sacred all-knowing bit of directly divine writing that simply cant get even the tiniest detail wrong under any circumstances, I dont see the issue, or the need to try to discern too much from it.
The King & I's famous exchange comes to mind...
Concerning R.L.'s "time gap", Wikipedia has an excellent post on " Gap Creationism" (the Gap theory), with content headings according to History, Interpretation, Bible Support, and Religious Proponents, which are many, including the Armstrongs.
Bullinger's Companion Bible has a good explanatory note at Genesis 1:2. Makes sense to me.
We were taught "Gap Theory Creationism" at Embarrassing College back in the mid '60s. We laughed at the flat earthers as well as the young earthers.
When we consider relativity and improved knowledge of the nuances of ancient Hebrew, theistic evolution makes the most sense. Since we can observe evolution on a faster scale with the viruses of today, it is obvious that evolution is one of the processes or tools of God, just like gravity or the laws of thermodynamics.
God invented Science. Religious folk can often be afraid to apply it.
It is interesting to read the Jewish Study Bible (JSB) annotations on Genesis 1 and 2. The scholars believe that the two passages came from two different documents. Referring to source criticism, they identify the first passage as coming from a Priestly source. And the second passage (Genesis 2:4 through v. 25) as coming from a Jahwist source. The Jewish textual tradition places a major break between v. 3 and v. 4 of chapter 2. And both passages were added to the Torah at a later date (post-Sinai apparently). And the JSB states further,
"The classical Jewish tradition tends to harmonize the descrepancies by intertwining the stories, using the details of one to fill in the details of the other. "
I realize that source criticism is not a big hit with conservative Bible readers. But one must recognize that the idea that Moses sat down and wrote this account is very unliikely. The uneveness of the text caused by an amalgam of pericopes is obvious even after the gentle editing of post-Exilic scribes.
Trying to find in this account the ideas of modern physics and cosmology is of limited value. It is a theological account. It identifies Elohim as the creator of the universe. This stands in stark contrast to the other Near Eastern creation stories of that time that are truly outrageous. The account serves its theological purpose quite well. But it does not even reflect the creatio ex nihilo account that we know from the New Testament.
Scout
Another steal from the JW's.
Someone should have told Joseph Smith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob
You're jumping to conclusions
I agree. This whole 6000-year plan rubbish is easy to disprove.
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