“For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water…”
Peter now answers the objections of the scoffers. First, he turns to the principle of catastrophism, the principle that God changed the earth’s geology by a sudden and scientifically unpredictable event.
For this they willfully forget:
The phrase “this they willfully forget” is literally this escapes them. These people do not want to know the truth because they purposely shut down their volition toward God’s truth. They shut their eyes to the facts. Their presupposition blinds them to another alternative. From the biblical worldview, the world is not eternally stable. Things are not permanently and forever the same. Cataclysms have and can come.
Scoffers want to forget that God created the world deliberately. They chose to conveniently ignore the actions of God. They cannot bear the idea of holding the reality of who God is and what He has done in their mind. God’s truth passes unnoticed by them.
God’s truth is hidden from them due to their presuppositions and will. Peter’s condemnation of the evolutionary and uniformitarian cosmology of “latter-day” intellectualism centers on the principle of catastrophism. The evidence of this is so clear to him that to deny it is “willful ignorance” on the part of those who reject it.
Many scoffers shut their eyes to the facts. They cannot face the realities of God’s Word. Their ignorance is culpable. Any other idea other than uniformitarianism is strange to them. That is why catastrophism escapes their thinking.
PRINCIPLE:
Negative volition continues to plague people today.
APPLICATION:
People hostile toward God are not open to the truth about creation. They are willingly ignorant. They do not know because they do not want to know. This is willful negative volition and ignorance.
Some people do not want to believe the Bible. They study everything that they can find that assaults the validity of Christianity. These people are negative in their volition toward God and His Word. It is one thing to be ignorant of the Bible but another to be “willingly” ignorant of it.
