A KISSed History of Beliefs

[GWH]

I'm not sure anymore if God created everything 14 billion years B.C. ago. Young Earth creationists are questioning the traditional science - especially since secular scientists won't consider God's involvement at all when they are studying stuff. So it's quite possible that God created everything in a shorter period of time.

Young-Earth Creationist View Summarized And Defended (accessed May 19, 2025). PDF Available

My Opinion: I think to God it is enough for us to know that He did create everything, and that there was a certain order to what was being made and that there was a definite time period He considers "day" and that He did all that in 6 days and rested on the seventh. So I won't even venture a guess as to how long ago this all started. God's point is that He started it.


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I agree that a kerygmatic part of the Alpha point is that God is Creator,
but another part is that God is able to be Savior, which is the first point of the elaborated kerygma I propose:

1. There is a/one all-loving and just Lord or God (DT 6:4, JN 3:16, 2THS 1:6), who is both able (2TM 1:12) and willing (1TM 2:3-4, EZK 33:11) to provide all morally accountable human beings salvation or heaven—a wonderful life full of love, joy and peace forever.

This statement includes a third kerygmatic part of the Alpha creation: that God's command created MFW as the aspect of humanness that is in God's image.

I also agree that how long ago creation occurred is not a kerygmatic consideration,
because the purpose of GW is to explain who created the cosmos and why or the POS
rather than how it was created or physically operates. Even evolution is not anathema
with the belief that God directed the process and the purpose of the story of Adam and Eve
is to reveal spiritual truths including the beginning of sin and God's POS rather than
how God's physical laws produced the various species.

 

[GWH]

6. Christianity – Founded by Jesus and his disciples, especially the apostle Paul (c. 30-68 A.D.), who taught that God’s love & POS includes everyone and that the NT superseded the OT. However, knowledge of the NT was limited by hand-copying, so most church leaders deferred to the bishop in Rome regarding doctrine and biblical Christianity morphed into Roman Catholicism after Constantine made it legal and authorized the Nicene Council/Creed (in 325). Even as areas in Europe became Christendom nominally, the majority of humanity remained ignorant of GW and dependent on GR for knowledge of God, so there was a Dark Age as Germanic migrations ended the Roman Empire (in 476) and Buddhism spread eastward to Japan.

7. Islam - Founded by Mohammed in 622 in Medina, where he dictated the Qu'ran teaching that only one God (Allah) exists. Although Surahs such as 2:62, 2:87 & 2:136 claim to affirm the teachings of Moses and Jesus as prophets, no mention is made of Messiah's gospel or of Paul's epistles. In 634 caliph Omar I began a campaign of Muslim conquest across North Africa to Spain and eastward to India by 715. In Persia Islam suppressed Zoroastrianism, which taught that humans should exercise volition to participate with the god Ahura Mazda in a cosmic struggle against chaos and falsehood. Meanwhile Christendom “fiddled” with whether Christ Jesus had one (human) or two (also divine) wills, and Charles Martel began the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) in Europe (in 732).

8. Medievalism - The Germanic tribes that migrated into Europe formed various kingdoms protected by lords living in castles, where in 771 Charlemagne inherited the Frankish kingdom, annexed Saxony, Lombardy and Bavaria and was crowned HRE in 800, when Pope Leo III separated RC from the Byzantine Empire (BE). In 826, the king of Denmark converted to RC, opening the door for its spread to Scandinavia. In 843 the Treaty of Verdun divided the Frankish Empire into French, German and Italian dynasties. Meanwhile, Muslims sacked Rome in 846 as Vikings or Norsemen attacked Britain, Ireland and Germany, then took Kiev in 850, discovered Iceland in 861 attacked Constantinople via the Black Sea in 865, 904 and 941 and discovered Greenland. In 907 the Magyars in Hungary defeated the Moravians and raided Germany and Italy. In 951, Otto I of Germany became king of the Franks and Lombards and was crowned HRE in 962. The Poles converted to RC in 966. Eastern Catholicism was accepted by Kiev (Russia) in 988. By 1000 RC had reached Greenland, and Judaism was strongest in Spain. The Danes deposed the English king in 1013, and they conquered Norway in 1028. The Caliphate in Cordoba was abolished in 1031, and the Seljuk Turks gained strength in Turkestan in 1042. In 1054, the schism between RC and what became Eastern Orthodoxy (EO), due mainly to its rejection of the primacy of the Pope, became permanent (“Great”).

9. Crusades - Numerous political events influenced the HOB in Europe: The Danes in England were defeated by William of Normandy in 1066, Poland took Kiev in 1067, the Normans conquered Italy in 1071, the Seljuks conquered Armenia in 1064 and Syria-Palestine in 1075, and El Cid took Valencia from the Muslim Moors in 1094. In 1095 Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade, which took Jerusalem from the Seljuks in 1099, in 1113 the order of Knights Hospitallers was organized in order to protect a hospital for pilgrims, in 1182 Jews were banished from France and in 1185 the order of Knights Templars was formed for the purpose of protecting pilgrims on the route from Jaffa to the Temple Mount. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, and in 1209 Pope Innocent III authorized the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heresy in France, which effectively began the period of the Inquisition (that continued with the prohibition of Bible reading in Toulouse in 1229).

During this era, RC was influenced by the ideas of various philosophers: 1. Anselm of Canterbury's tracts (c. 1060) reconciled divine foreknowledge with human free will and argued logically for the existence of God as the first cause and greatest conceivable being; 2. Berenger of Tours opposed the RC doctrine of transubstantiation for being irrational; 3. Peter Abelard was condemned by a council (in 1141) for utilizing the dialectical method of stating pros and cons; 4. about 1175 Peter Waldo began preaching poverty as the way to perfection, founding a movement that presaged the reform of Luther, 5. in Spain Avicebron published the neo-Platonist idea that God can be apprehended only by intuition or mystical experience rather than by reason, and 6. Moses Maimonides attempted to align Jewish theology with Aristotelianism, saying that if statements in the OT contradict reason, then they should be interpreted allegorically, and identifying God as first Mover and necessary Being.

10. Renaissance – Even as RC dominated Europe and the Mongol Empire controlled Asia in the mid-13th century, the seeds of renewal of biblical beliefs were being sown by various people and events, which makes paring them down difficult. In England Roger Bacon advocated for the study of theology to focus on the Bible in the original languages rather on scholastic debates. In 1273, Thomas Aquinas published Summa theological, which supplanted Augustinianism as the dominant RC theology, including natural revelation, analogical language, and the cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence. In 1283 the RC Teutonic Order subjugated Prussia, and in 1295 Marco Polo returned to Italy from China bringing knowledge of its more advanced civilization. In 1323 William of Occam published his Summa logicae, in which he espoused his “razor” principle: the simplest explanation or interpretation should be used. Francesco Petrarch, considered to be the father of the Renaissance for his humanism (faith that God gives all knowledge) died in 1374, and John Wyclif opposed RC's dogma of transubstantiation and translated the Bible into English in 1382. In 1415, Jan Hus was burned at the stake for trying to reform RC in Bohemia, but his disciples (the Bohemian Brethren and Moravians) included Martin Luther. In Spain Joseph Albo sought to eliminate the doctrine of Messiah as essential to Judaism, even as Thomas a Kempis published The Imitation of Christ. In 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by her English captors, ostensibly for heresy.

Meanwhile Portugal renewed the slave trade with Africa and the Incas subdued Peru. In 1453, the Hundred Years War concluded, and the Turks captured Constantinople (ending the Byzantine Empire), then took Athens and invaded the Balkans by 1467. The exodus of Byzantine scholars to Italy and Gutenberg’s printing press (1450) combined to promote a Renaissance centered in Florence, where Leonardo da Vinci worked as an inventor and painter. In 1479 Ferdinand and Isabella unified Spain and cooperated with the RC Inquisition, in 1480 Ivan III became Czar of Russia and in 1492 Spain expelled the Jews while Columbus sailed to America and the Portuguese explored ever further along the west coast of Africa, finding a sea route to India in 1498 and reaching China in 1514. In 1501, a papal bull ordered the burning of books that undermined RC authority, and Erasmus published The Handbook of the Christian Soldier, calling for reformation by reading the Scriptures. Michelangelo sculpted David’s statue in 1504, Copernicus discovered the heliocentric solar system in 1512, Thomas More authored Utopia in 1516, and in 1517 Machiavelli wrote Il Principe.