On The Creation and Western Civ.

For those of you who don't know I am now a student of Dordt College. Before coming here I had heard some odd things were coming out of the social sciences and theology departments but thinking that I would mostly be taking engineering classes, I figured I wouldn't have to put up with much of it. However, I did have to take a Western Civ. class. My professor, Dr. Hubert R. Krygsman, started saying some funny things and kept talking about a framework in Genesis 1. Wondering where he was coming from, I walked up after class and asked him how he believed the creation happened and if he believed in some kind of framework hypothesis. After much hemming and hawing he finally said, "I believe that Moses wrote in ways that his audience could understand." That was what I was looking for.
The next class period he wrapped up class by drawing a time line on which he allowed an open end for evolution before the Paleolithic era which was labeled at 10,000 B.C. Again after class I walked up to him and said I don't agree with that. I then asked him why he believed in a variation on evolution to which he replied by saying something to the effect of, "We need to look at scripture through the wonder of God's creation." My reply was, "So what you're saying is that you believe in evolution because of the scientific evidence which has been found?" At this point he nodded his head so I continued, "If "scientists" claimed to have found evidence that Christ had not risen from the dead, would you believe that too?" Here he started to turn red, but he kept his calm. Again I continued, "Instead of interpreting scripture through science or nature, we need to interpret science through scripture." He nodded his head and said we could talk more about it on Wednesday and with that he left so as to make room for the next class.
After doing a lot of studying on the hermeneutics of Genesis 1 and sending Dr. Krygsman an e-mail with a selection from the "253rd Synod of the RCUS - Defend the Doctrine of Creation Report" I went to class. This class was different. He began by asking the difference between Creation and Evolution to which I responded that the Creationist view is God centered where as the Evolutionist is earth or nature centered. He said, "Ah yes, Luke has it. On one side you have what is called Evolutionary Naturalism and then you have the Christian/ Biblical view." He then went on about the Christian/ Biblical view and completely surprised me by saying that the Bible is the spectacles through which we must se science and the world. Going back to the subject of the Christian/ Biblical view he said that there are several different ones. There is the oldest view, which he said is "don't worry or think about it"; the second oldest view which is what Augustine and many of the early church fathers thought, the Old Earth view; the next oldest, Theistic evolution; and the newest, which he said was founded by people like James Ussher in the near past, was the Young Earth view. When asked which he believed, he again to my surprise responded differently than he had two days before and said that he didn’t know because he wasn’t there in the beginning.
After all this I asked my professor where Augustine had said that he believed in an old earth because I had just read on Tuesday that he believed that the days of creation were all twenty-four hour days. Professor Krygsman nodded his head and said that he Augustine had. Upon closer study I found that many of the members of the early church believed in a young earth and from what I have seen the ones who didn't were those who sought to make scripture agree with the Greek philosophers or with paganism. Those from the early church who didn't believe in six literal days did so, not because of the text, but because it fit their's or someone else’s pagan notions. That is the way it was and that is the way it still is. The words have just changed.