The dean of Olivet Theological College and Seminary, Donald Tinder is to be co-presenter of a paper at the annual Far West regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.

The meeting is held this year at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles. The primary presenter will be Kenneth Wolgemuth, a graduate of Wheaton College with a PhD in geology and a long career in that field. The title of their presentation is "Challenge for Today's Church -- Theologians Need to Engage in the Age-of-the-Earth Controversy."

Advocates of a young earth interpretation of the biblical data and the natural phenomena have been aggressively and widely promoting their views in recent years among Evangelicals. Dr. Tinder will be briefly arguing that Bible-believers risk the same embarrassment as when they used to oppose Galileo's assertion that the earth circled the sun.

"Even among scientists, Galileo held a minority view, while theologians argued that a fixed earth was the only way the Bible could be interpreted. Wolgemuth will be trying to show that various quite independent ways of measuring the earth's age point to it being much much more than a few thousand years," said Dr. Tinder.

"Moreover, advocates of a young earth too often misrepresent or overlook the natural data and the arguments of old earth proponents. Since the conference host institution is known to advocate the young earth hypothesis, it will be interesting to see the reaction. The Evangelical Theological Society itself, like Olivet and the wider Evangelical community, hold a diversity of views on the subject," he added.

The Far West regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society commences on April 20th.