Sells wrote, inter alia, "After all, the stocks of the Church are so low ... we need all the help we can get".
Later, "It fills the census with believers while the church withers"..."When we look at the current malaise of the church we need to look no further than this".
I think Sells is looking in all the wrong places to explain the Christian Church's maliasse why their stocks are so low and why the church is withering.
Oceans of blood were spilt over disagreements concerning questions like: was Jesus’ divine and his human nature ‘separate’ or ‘blended’; was Jesus equal with the ‘father’ or inferior to him; was the Holy Spirit equal to the ‘father’ and the ‘son’ or merely a created force? And similar absurdities whose origin is the vivid imagination of the early church fathers.
Creedal Christianity, considered against the positive and constant testimony of the earliest Gospel tradition, its natural background of a developing first century Galilean charismatic religion, leads not to a Jesus as recognisable within the framework of Judaism and by the standard of his own verifiable words and intentions, but to another figure –“Jesus Christ”-: who has no relationship to the Jesus of the Bible.
Mythological Christianity is in the final analysis responsible for its own failures and inability to reach the vast majority of people today, because of its failure to embrace Jesus of Nazareth without the accumulated nonsense of the early church councils from which the creeds emanated. The alternative? “Thus says God, stand in the way and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls”.
I agree with Sells that "we should leave science with the scientists ..." I will add a corollary 'leave theolgy to the theologians. However, "If we want our children to learn about God let them be taught from the Bible not a pseudo theology that has conformed itself to the world" (of paganism and that conformity being reinforced by majority decisions of 4th to 8th century CE ecumenical councils).

"But there is pressure from some sections of the church who look at the theory of evolution with dismay because it lacks any kind of theleology, any goal towards which it seeks to progress... Creationism is derived from a literal reading of the first two creation narratives and would have it that the universe was created in seven days a few thousands years ago - and that God placed dinosaur bones is the fossil record to amuse palaeobiologists. In the face of the discoveries of modern science this is just too silly for words."

Saying something like this makes it obvious you have ABSOLUTELY no idea what Creationism is about.

Here is what it is NOT about (Scroll down):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp

Here is what it IS about:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/qa.asp

Have fun

So you actually are a proper creationist then, Yngnl..t? Do you believe the world is actually 6000 years old? Did God put the dinosaur bones there to test our faith? Does the lack of dust on the lunar surface prove creationists right? What about that shrinking sun?

I find creationism really interesting, because its a fantastic example of how much human will can triumph over human reason. If you want to believe something, you can, despite all logic and sense.

Fascinating :)

<<<<<<<"But there is pressure from some sections of the church who look at the theory of evolution with dismay because it lacks any kind of theleology, any goal towards which it seeks to progress... Creationism is derived from a literal reading of the first two creation narratives and would have it that the universe was created in seven days a few thousands years ago - and that God placed dinosaur bones is the fossil record to amuse palaeobiologists. In the face of the discoveries of modern science this is just too silly for words."

Saying something like this makes it obvious you have ABSOLUTELY no idea what Creationism is about. >>>>>>>
____________________________________________________
He said, that one said, once again he said and other one more said-how boring and lacking of any particular data but references to something in Koran, which is a 6th c.AD translation into Arabic of the Old Testament-Torah, and speculations on J. Christ’s eventual opinion and possible blessing of historical issue which is Jewish Palestine. Need history occurred any blessings if even by the most prominent of her Sons?

What is certainly, an avoidance of any answer to a particular practical question, of mine surely.

Pericles,
I guess I've found a great place to waste some valuable time in my few free evenings. So, is it only believers that find in Scripture what they want to hear? What about non-believers? And how could you substantiate the claim that only "scripture folk" find there what they desire to find? (for there are plenty of things to terrify the believer as well as console her) If one finds in Scripture only what one wants then you yourself find what you want: reasons to disbelieve it.
But this is all beside my point, which Dr. Sellick encouraged me to post on this forum: simply that Scripture itself testifies that nature tells of the existence and of the Creator and even some of his attributes. That's all I was airing. What Scripture says. Obviously whether it is true or not is up to debate. But Dr. Sellick accepts the authority of Scripture and so it was relevant for me to challenge his thesis about natural theology.
Charles

Hi all,

This is my first post on Online Opinion – no idea how the protocol works but here goes &#61514; I am a 39 year old Anabaptist Christian guy who lives in Melbourne. I suppose that is enough for now.

I offer the following observations:

I doubt that Peter Sellick (or Barth to whom he appeals) are unaware of the various biblical texts that speak of nature witnessing to God. The problem with reading this as an independent source for a natural theology is that this claim arises specifically within the witness of a particular tradition viz. the particular witness of Israel and the Church. The heavens declare not the glory of Deity per se but specifically Yahweh, the God of Israel and the Church – but this recognition comes about only for those who have been previously schooled in the narrative of Scripture.

All natural theology can do apart from some specific narrative (whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan, Humanist etc) is posit that there may be a Deity, many Deities or even no Deity in accordance with their narratives.

Theistic and non-theistic accounts are rationally compatible (to what degree is another question which I will not address here) with what Peter Sellick terms the ambivalence of nature. That is to say, Nature does not compel any of us to conclude that “Yes, this is Yahweh’s creation” (Jews & Christians) or “Yes, this is Brahma’s dream” (Hinduism) or “Yes, this is the Goddess manifest” (Paganism) or “No, the cosmos is all that is, all that ever shall be, and all that ever will be” (Humanism quoting Sagan).

Some Christians contest this via appeal to Romans 1 where Paul speaks of the divinity being clearly seen. However, Paul is here taking on board a general assumption common to Jew and Gentile alike in his day - that nature indeed does display deity (atheism is not a live cultural option for Paul in his setting). What was contested is “which deity?”, which he goes on to elaborate precisely by appealing to the narrative of Scripture in Romans.