Christian Nationalism and the age of the earth: A few errors to avoid.
Christian Nationalism and the age of the earth: A few errors to avoid.
That there is much disagreement about the age of the earth is of no dispute. The debate is primality between Christians and non-Christians. It is ultimately a matter of starting points. Where does one get his or her data from? What are the nonnegotiables that the remaining data must be interpreted in light of?
When I taught through the early chapters of Genesis recently, I made a point that if you were put into a time machine, and brought to the third day of creation, and asked to date the age of the earth, you would never get the right answer.
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them’; and it was so.
And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.”
On the evening of the third day you could pick a fruit with seeds in it, from a fruit tree, that was created just a few hours earlier.
The same can be said of day six. If you were transported to the sixth day, and asked to guess Adam’s age, you would never, ever get the right answer. You would never guess that he was only hours old.
What’s the point?
In the debates surrounding Christian Nationalism, you will often hear comments like, “That would only work in the Millennium,” or, “That will only work after Christ returns,” or “That would only work in the post-mil system.”
All of those comments are ultimately pragmatic statements, built partly upon what “works,” (and all depending upon how one defines “works”). They are statements of objection. They are saying that the interpretation of the Bible just presented is wrong.
But that’s not how theology and Bible interpretation are argued. Arguing points of theology on pragmatic grounds is a horrible idea.
Not only that, note that they are also arguments tied to eschatology. The underlying but unstated assumption being expressed is that eschatology determines what obedience looks like today. That’s simply not true. Obedience today is not tied to what God has promised to do at some time in the future…
Those are the first and second errors to avoid. We do not argue about what God commands today by speculating on whether or not it will “work.” Said another way, obedience is never measured by what “works,” and especially without defining what one means by “works.” Nor do we define obedience today by our eschatology.
But there is another error to be avoided. That error is the error of the wrong starting point.
In my illustration about the age of the earth, the people who erroneously posit that the earth is millions or billions of years old, instead of the right answer which is closer to 6,000 years, do so because they don’t start with God’s Word. They start somewhere else.
In the Christian Nationalism discussions, opposition to Christian Nationalism is often stated by injecting the current state of political affairs. Rather than first asking, is this what the Bible teaches, opponents will ask, so what would this look like in our society? Or they ask other questions (which are really just objections) such as: What does this do the First Amendment? How about the US Constitution?
And those are all great questions, no doubt. But those questions and objections are absolutely the wrong starting points, and they are the wrong tools for critiquing supposed biblical doctrines. These again are pragmatic questions, not doctrinal/theological questions. They are not the questions that one uses to test whether or not a particular interpretation of the Bible is accurate. These are application type questions.
Again, these are not bad questions, they are simply misplaced, and improperly used.
Think about the person who believes that the earth is a billion years old. They’ve come to certain conclusions, not because of what Scripture teaches. If you try to convince them that the earth is 6000 years old, they will reject your conclusion because it does not fit with their existing system. They will ask, how can that be when we’ve already established from X that the earth is YY years old.
Something similar happens with the discussions on Christian Nationalism.
Note Carefully: Those that oppose Christian Nationalism are very much unlike the one who thinks the earth is millions or billions of years old.
The folks who oppose Christian Nationalism, by and large, are a people who take the Bible seriously, and in most cases are people I’d go out and proclaim the Gospel with on the street corner. So these are brothers who exalt the Word of God, no doubt.
But what they’re doing, by appealing to the 1A, or the Constitution, to critique arguments for Christian Nationalism, is inadvertently acting/arguing like the person who believes the earth is a billion years old - they are using the wrong standard of evaluation. This is similar to the pragmatic “how would this work” objection.
The issue is not, How does it fit in our political system? What would this do to the 1A? What changes would have to be made to our system to implement this?
None of those questions/objections will aid in determining if the things being asserted under the name of Christian Nationalism are biblical.
The question is not, how does it fit in our current system, the question is - is this an accurate reflection of the teaching of Scripture? Why or why not?
The temptation to jump to application must be avoided if progress is to be made.
The ease or inability of application is not a valid criteria for determining whether or not the proposals are actually biblical.
If the question to be answered is, is this an accurate reflection of the totality of the biblical revelation, then one must have an understanding of the totality of biblical revelation, and all the individual parts that inform this particular area of dispute.
So, a few applications.
If you see someone making these comments/arguments/objections, know that you’re hearing from someone presently in error. I am not saying to totally disregard these brothers, but when/if they start arguing this way, they should lose credibility on the issue in your eyes.
Truth be told, this might require recognizing that you are the one in error.
If you feel that you are presently not well versed enough in the totality of God’s revelation to really analyze the arguments being made, then focus on bringing yourself up to speed. Find people that are teaching at this level of depth. Bring yourself to the place where you are able to analyze the arguments, biblically. Bring yourself to the place where you can recognize the bad and faulty arguments.
Get to where you can love and respect faithful brothers who do and teach great things, while also being able to recognize that sometimes they get into matters in which they show themselves to be totally unprepared to handle. And when you see that a brother or ministry has gone out of their area of expertise, and are using all kinds of faulty and erroneous arguments, be very careful. Ensure that you are not going to be misled by their error, before taking in their arguments.