We had a pretty good debate going over the age of the Earth. I think it’s fun and educational to kick around ideas (and occasionally a friend, sorry Dan 🙂 ). It also helps us to sharpen our arguments, like players on the practice field. One side takes offense and the other side takes defense, and we play each other. The stakes are low and the competition is friendly. For us, the real game is engaging the world and the stakes are high. When we step into the game, old and young earthers are on the same team, making the case for special creation. Back in the days when I was a professing atheist, the first pillar of my naturalistic worldview to fall was when I lost confidence in the theory of evolution. For an atheist, this is a devastating blow. Once I lost the ability to explain the origin of life without an intelligent creator of some kind, it was just a matter time before the rest of the system came tumbling down. It was from the rubble of my naturalistic worldview that the Christian worldview emerged as the only system that could adequately answer all of the major questions (about origins and everything else as well). Now, don’t get me wrong—I see the process of moving a God-doubter into the Kingdom as a wholly supernatural event, and it is only possible through the enlightenment of God’s Spirit. But God uses means, and making a good argument for understanding the world as God created it may just be a means that God uses with a skeptic in your realm of influence. We aren’t all called to Astrophysicists or Molecular Biologists for Christ, but for many of us, if we put as much effort into understanding the basics of the arguments for special creation as we do into perfecting our golf swing, beating our high score on the latest video game, or mastering latest programming language, we just might learn enough to make an impact with someone.
If this topic has captured your interest, I’d like to recommend a few resources…
If you have any others please post them.
For the YEC side, I’ll post you this resource as well:
It’s “Refuting Compromise” by Jonathan Sarfati, whose position is pretty much that anything other than literal 6-day creation less than 10,000 years ago is a Biblical compromise. Some may find this harsh–but for now I tend toward his position.
Either way, I would encourage all with this: do not compromise on sound exegesis of Scripture. If you bring millions of years to the table, you’ll see it in everything. The point is not to avoid bias, but to choose the right bias. With the right (Biblical) “bias” everything in the natural world should make sense. If it doesn’t, something is flawed with either our worldview (“bias”) or what science perceives as fact. I come down consistently on the side of the Bible (not implying the opposite of any of you).
Welcome to the discussion young padowin! Well done in offering resources on your first visit! You have progressed well from your earlier learning…. Be careful though, the waters are treacherous and the arguments rigorous, especially that Hugh fella.
*bows*
To quote Shakespeare, “I shall study deserving.”
Here is a link to Jeffrey’s article. Enjoy!
Jeffrey, while I am a huge proponent of the authority of Scripture, I have a question about your claim that our understanding of the Scriptures should always trump our observation of the natural order (I hope I have characterized it fairly). Could it not be the case that we have mistakenly read a passage to be scientifically literal that was to some extent figurative? Didn’t we have this very same question when the scientific evidence began to pile up that the Earth was not flat, but a sphere and that instead of the sun revolving around the Earth, it was the other way around? The argument was that we could not ‘compromise’ the Bible to accommodate science. I’m not suggesting that science trumps the Bible, but just that any time there appears to be a discrepancy, it seems like it is our duty to honestly examine our understanding of both to find the flaw (the flaw being in our understanding, not the Scriptures or the universe themselves, as they each stand as true, but we understand them imperfectly).
Of interest to the flat-earth versus round-earth ideas is a recent book by Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion. He essentially goes from a secular, evolutionary standpoint and ends up concluding that God inspired science and all human creativity. See a review of the book here). The excerpt from the book contains this:
There never was any conflict between science and the Bible…and we all agree that there never will be any conflict between true science and God’s revealed truth. What compromise was necessary to accommodate the Bible to a round earth? Expressions such as “the four corners of the world” were then and still are quite common, but no one actually believes the person using these terms adhere to a flat earth. That the writings of Cosmas Indicopleustes and Lactantius somehow were taken to be Biblical, and that is the basis of the claim that the Bible supports a flat earth. (Check out Isaiah 40:22, Prov 8:27b, and Job 26:7 & 10). But this is somewhat of a tangent…Stark’s book is available on Amazon.com.
Our understanding of Scripture is, indeed, flawed outside of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we cannot understand perfectly all parts of the Bible. However, this knife cuts both ways: our perception is flawed by sin, whether we’re perceiving the Bible or the natural world.
I do not view the natural world as a “67th book” as does the Reasons ministry, for it is tainted by the Curse. Still, we can glean spiritual truth from the natural order–Paul is clear about this at the beginning of Romans. But nature, or our perception of nature, can never take precedence over clear Biblical teaching. God claims His word is “God-breathed” and “truth,” not the fallen world. While our understanding of both is flawed, one (nature) is cursed and one (Scripture) is the very word of God.
I also submit that true science will never contradict the Bible. Therefore, I am hesitant to change my perception of a straightforward passage in Genesis just because science seems to contradict. Science, performed by fallen man, will change and err; God’s word hasn’t changed. Reading the Genesis creation account to be anything but literal is bringing too much to the table already. My money stays on the most probable reading of the Bible: in context and without bringing preconceived ideas about origins to it. It is, indeed, our duty to honestly examine our understanding of everything. But tap-dancing to remove a “flaw” in Scripture is not preferable to assuming a flaw in man’s science.
Well, we both agree that Scripture trumps all, being God’s word (and He cannot contradict Himself). But God’s not playing hide-and-seek with His intent in Genesis–why should it require an understanding of modern science in order to correctly interpret? If we only now have the “true meaning” because of our understanding of modern “science,” how wrong was everyone before this view became prevalent? If the Bible fits all those positions, then it is so hopelessly vague that any interpretation is possible. I maintain that the simple text communicates an historically and scientifically accurate account of creation, in six days and around 6,000 years ago.
Isn’t this fun? One question…your post says 00:20 AM. Is the web server’s clock an hour ahead?
Like Dan said in this post, we have to remember that while Scripture was written for us, it was not written to us.
If it’s accurate that Moses wrote Genesis around 1500 BC, we should look at it through the best lens we can come up with to approximate the understanding of a newly-freed Hebrew slave who just saw a bunch of really weird stuff happen in Egypt.
A couple of things strike me. First, the repeated phrase, “there was evening, and there was morning, the [Xth] day.” A Hebrew slave in the 15th century BC would probably receive this in the context of God’s work day, considering that the Hebrew days cycle at sundown, not sunrise as we reckon. So perhaps this is an anthropomorphic picture of God’s work in creation?
Second, I can’t put my finger on it, but Hebrew scholars seem to indicate that there’s no definite article in “the [first, second, etc.] day;” it might better be rendered “there was evening, and there was morning: day one.”
Third, the sun isn’t introduce as the standard by which days are measured until day, what, three or four? And yet the first day of creation is referred to as a day. So the Scripture seems to support a decoupling of our concept of “days” from our heliocentric proxy.
That brings me back to my initial point: who received this revelation? God didn’t choose to reveal the creation story to a pyramids-era Hebrew society in terms of General Relativity. If you want a good laugh to illustrate that, imagine me going into the 2-4-year-old Sunday school class I teach and beginning: “In the beginning… well, ‘beginning’ as observed by a hypothetical person who could witness the creation… actually, kids, let’s talk about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. That will really shed some light on our understanding of the creation story…”
My point is that you can’t get three (English) words into the Bible before you start tripping over the fact that the construction of a message has to be tailored for its audience.
With that said, we must not read content into the Scriptures that just isn’t there – we must practice exegesis, not eisegesis.
I humbly propose that any disposition that attempts to conclude with a fixed number of days, a formal definition of what a “day” is, and a timeline by which these events can be place on an historical calendar must rely on eisegesis, because those facts just aren’t there.
What is there is simple: God did it, everything is contingent on him, he did it perfectly, and the whole thing culminated in his creation of us in his image, and it was very good. Claiming to know a date certain for the whole thing doesn’t enhance the exegesis, and might actually detract from it if we’re not careful.
I do apologize for the atrocious grammatical and structural errors in my previous post…I’ll make the excuse that the hour was late.
Far be it from me to contradict Dan (invoking something he’s said carries more weight with me than perhaps you know), but some parts of the Bible may be interpreted correctly free of any outside details–some things are just that clear. E.g., while historical context brings light to a study of Paul’s letters, it is not necessary to an understanding of much of what he says (“all have sinned,” “it is by grace you have been saved,” etc.). The date of 1450 B.C. was the figure given by my Ryrie Study Bible (1450 B.C. – 1410 B.C.). (An interesting article on the chronology of the Exodus is found here.) Doesn’t an account of ancient creation have the same bearing to someone only 4,500 years later as it does to us, 6,000 years later? It’s an event so hopelessly in the past that no one can or did observe it, so the way in which God revealed it to Moses is the same He would do so today. The creation account in Genesis is timeless in this regard–it means the same with or without context. God’s Holy Spirit would not allow His Word to be tainted by a man’s experiencing “weird” things in Egypt. And, though Moses was a Hebrew slave, we can’t attempt to lessen his intellectual capabilities. He was able to write large works in Hebrew, using the ancient documents and oral accounts available to him. There’s a short article on the validity of the accounts passed down to him here.
I still believe, as in my comment on this post, that the Genesis account was fully intended to be literal history. A few more points in support of this:
First, Jesus thought the account was literal. He says “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6). In His teaching about marriage, Jesus invokes the Genesis account. It doesn’t make sense that He meant “from the latter part of millions and millions of years” when He said “from the beginning.” It’s much more probable that He was speaking of all creation, including man, being created within a week–at “the beginning.” Jesus also cites a literal, seven-day week to illustrate a literal, seven-day workweek (Luke 13). He could not have been saying, “Six [periods of millions of years] do your work and rest on the Sabbath [another period of millions of years].”
In this quote from Jesus, it is clear here that Abel’s blood (the first shed by man) was shed very close to the “foundation of the world.”
Other of Moses’s writings underscore a literal creation week. For example,
Exodus 20:11:
This language is absolutely unequivocal.
The phrase “and there was morning and there was evening” is also strong evidence that the days were literal, unless you do take them symbolically. Still, would Moses have needed God to say that in order for him to understand? Moses could have understood “and there was an age (or eon) and the first creation period was over.” But, if there were “mornings” and “evenings,” these terms present problems for Day-Age theorists. What is the morning of a million years? What’s the evening of six million years?
I am not a Hebrew scholar, but I’m an amateur linguist, so everyone feel free to correct me on this. Hugh, you say that there’s no definite article “the” in the Hebrew of the phrase “the first day.” While, with or without the article, this presents no different of a meaning for either OECs or YECs, I believe it is a moot point. Hebrew is not Germanic like our English, and does not require articles to modify words. “A,” “an,” and “the” do not have counterparts in Hebrew, except when used to strongly emphasize the word to which they refer. So the absence of an article in Genesis 1:5 and similar verses in that chapter is meaningless. I will fall back on what I know: the Vulgate (not advocating this translation–it’s off base a lot) translates the end of Genesis 1:5 thusly:
Literally, “There [at that point] had been made evening and morning, day one.” The phrase “dies unus” is, literally, “day first,” or “day one,” or “the first day.” They are all equivalent, and since Latin (and I believe Hebrew, to some extent) is an inflected language, use of an article is unnecessary and does not change the meaning. The fact that there was a morning and an evening, characteristics of an Earth-rotation day, still stands.
Evening and morning simply require a light source. The sun is, indeed, created on day four. If you are to propose that having “evening and morning” before the sun presents a problem, you run into two problems: (1) how, then, was light created on day one, if the sun is the only light by which we’re reckoning an Earth-day? and (2) how would life on Earth survive for the period of millions of years between the creation of the plants (day three) and the creation of the sun (day four)? It is simple to assert that the Earth must have been rotating already (how else would life exist here?) and that the light God created on day one would have caused evenings and mornings for a rotating Earth. To say that the sun must have been around before God says it was created is certainly eisegesis.
You bring up a good point–“pyramids-era.” We still don’t know how the Egyptians managed to build the pyramids in the time they did and with the resources they did. Moses would have learned the science of the day as he was brought up in the palace. Why, then, should the Genesis account not be historically and scientifically accurate, as well? “Ancient” men weren’t children, and they weren’t behind in their scientific knowledge. There are many words God could have used to communicate something other than six-day creation, but He didn’t choose any of them. I, once again, submit that the most straightforward reading of Genesis, according to sound exegesis, is that God said what He meant–to Moses and to us. Creation is so universal, it really transcends the typical boundaries of context. Creation is creation–and God said it how He did it.
But the facts are there! A “day” is an “evening and morning,” there’s no other definition for it anywhere. The fixed number of days is, in fact, stated–six. (See Scriptures referenced above.) And we can reasonably place the date of these events using the genealogies in Scripture.
An interesting point of view on the age of the earth is found in this article by Carl Wieland.
Hugh, I agree with your summary, and those are the important points. I don’t claim to know a date for certain, nor do you, but we can reasonably say whether it was millions or thousands of years ago. The view that enhances the scientific caliber of the Bible is the view I will consistently hold. To God be the glory!
On that note, did anyone see the Clay Aikens Christmas special?
(Actually I was just testing the blog time, all fixed!)
Ah, very well! *applauds* Now the post time reveals that I stay up one hour too late less than before.
No, I missed the special b/c I was watching “My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss.”
No really I was.
Okay not really.
I saw it! Whew that Clay Aiken can croon like Perry Como.
Anyone remember old Perry?
Very interesting reading – in all these posts. Webmaster – is there anyway to have these posts emailed to me, or to receive notification. If I kept up with them as they went, I could read them all.
As it is, I just read what I can…….
Night.
Email would potentially fill up your box pretty quick but do a Google for “blog aggregator” and there are lots of applications that can keep you up to date on all your favorite blogs.
Thank you, David, for the editing on my first post. I didn’t catch the “a” in the list of allowed tags when I wrote it.
I don’t know about anyone else, but it seems that everyone takes a long time to post here. (Perhaps I just have too much time on my hands in which to post and wait around for a response.)
Sometimes it takes a while… especially with a 40+ hour/week job, commuting, three kids, a house, and whatever else life throws at me. But I’m fine with taking a while. I’d rather do a few things well than many things (at best) adequately.
In this case, I have also deliberately spent a couple days stepping back from the debate to make sure I’m not getting emotionally invested in the position I’m taking. I have no interest in being wrong; I find that if I get too solidly “dug in” behind my side of the argument, I end up trying to save face rather than pursue the truth as it unfolds.
Besides, Jeffrey, your post shows a degree of passion and thoughtfulness that commands a worthy response. Thanks for jumping into the fray so strenuously.
Right now I need to get to work, so I’ll only take on a little slice here.
You wrote:
Vine’s Expository Dictionary has this to say about Yom, the Hebrew word for “day:”
It goes on to discuss the opening of chapter 2, that talks about the creation of Adam and Eve in the “day” that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Moreover, regarding the forbidden fruit, “in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”
Right here we have three uses in Genesis that use the word “day” in a way that was never tied to a 24-hour duration, cycling through light and darkness, a terrestrial rotation, or any other definitive period of time.
That’s part of why I think it’s eisegesis to say creation happened in one literal week as we know it.
Again, I have no interest in being wrong… but I have no emotional investment in being right either. Put another way, I don’t feel the need to slam-dunk every issue or point of debate. I find that the older I get, the fewer things I get dogmatic about… but I’m ever more entrenched on those critical few points.
But here’s the rub: we serve a great God, and we reflect his glory – spread his fame – poorly when we claim to know things that we don’t. He is sufficient to draw out all truth. Our job is to get ourselves out of the way so he can shine through.
I asked this in the other post but … if you are going to take Genesis at literal face value, which chapter holds the “true” sequence of events – one or two?
And, David, I responded to your comment at some length…if there’s still some question about it, I’ll be glad to elaborate upon it.
My post is toward the end of the comments in the Age of the Earth post.
Ahhh thx, I forgot to look there again lately.
That’s what I’m here for, to frighten you. 😉 I just ask the questions I have – even the scary ones. Let me soak in your response, read your paper and see where it leads me. Ltr!
I agree that truth is what we should be focusing on, because, in this debate, it doesn’t matter who wins or loses—or even if a winner is declared. Props to you, Eric, for your excellent take on the debate when you started this post.
It is, indeed, easier to take the issues one at a time, so I’ll respond to your comments while keeping in mind that you have more to say.
Perhaps a better phrasing of my intent is this: a “day,” as delimited by “evening” and “morning,” has only one meaning–a 24-hour (approximately) period. Otherwise, you run into issues with the interpretation of the Hebrew in the chapter. First, I quote Russell Grigg (article here:
The key here is the phrase “used in this way.” It is the consensus of Hebrew scholarship, secular and Christian, that when yom is combined with a number and the phrase “evening and morning,” it means nothing more and nothing less than a single Earth-rotation day.
I contend that, in Genesis 2:2-3 (quoted below), the word “day” (yom again) is truly used in a literal sense.
Even if this day is not a literal day, it presents no problem for the interpretation of previous instances of yom because it lacks the definitive description of duration: “evening and morning.”
Andrew S. Kulikovsky says of God’s resting in Genesis, “the Hebrew wayyishbot, a waw-consecutive imperfect … has [the] meaning: ‘cease, desist, rest’ or ‘cease, stop…stop working.’ Indeed, the exact same form of this verb is translated as ‘stopped’ in Joshua 5:12 and Job 32:1.” I disagree with Vine’s claim that the seventh day of creation is still going on for a few reasons. If that is true, then Exodus 20:11 is quite nonsensical:
God clearly based His institution of the work-week on the amount of time He spent in creation. He cannot have been telling the Hebrews to rest indefinitely on the Sabbath–otherwise, there would be no need for this structure after the very first Saturday. Obviously, Israel did not interpret it this way; and the history of interpretation of Scripture is also very important to understanding it. To say that the first two chapters of Genesis are allegorical, or allow for millions of years, is to deny the validity of hundreds of years of scholarly commentary and interpretation. No one thought God took any longer than six literal days until modern science came along and intimidated those who would sooner believe man’s fallible ideas than trust in God’s Word.
Another problem with the idea of an indefinite seventh day of creation is that God’s day of rest is always spoken of in the past tense (past perfect sometimes, but always as having been already completed). Vine’s quotation of Genesis 2:3 says that “in it He had rested from all His work,” not that God began resting, or that He simply rested–but that He finished creating, rested, and was done resting at some point in the past. Even so, if one must interpret the passage thusly, it presents no different interpretation for the rest of the creation days: the seventh day is the only use of yom in reference to a creation day that does not use the definitive terms, a number and “evening and morning.” Therefore, it cannot be asserted that this particular use of yom warrants a redefinition of its other uses in this passage, where it is clearly defined as one evening/morning cycle. Finally, just because God rested on the seventh day and continues to rest from creation, it is by no means implied that the seventh day continues as well! I once read this analogy: if someone tells you that he rested on Saturday and continued resting until Monday, he is not trying to tell you that Saturday lasted until Monday. The action of resting continued, but the day on which it commenced did not.
When Moses writes of the forbidden fruit, he uses (run to your Hebrew dictionaries, everyone) an ingressive sense of the verb “to die.” Literally, he says “in the day you eat of it, dying you shall die.” This verb sense emphasizes the beginning of the dying process and the inevitability of its outcome, not the time delineations of death. Besides, this occurrence of yom is not accompanied by the Earth-day definitions of a number and “evening and morning.”
I think it is jumping to conclusions to say that, since Genesis uses the word yom much like we do today (back in my day, in the day of the Lord, yesterday, that’ll be the day, this is the day), that any specific definition of it cannot be held dogmatically under any circumstances.
For example, it is easy to say without a doubt that “in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4) does not refer to a single, 24-hour day. The Bible claims nowhere else that creation only took one day, so it’s ludicrous to say that, because of the ambiguities presented by other uses of yom in Genesis, we cannot say dogmatically that Genesis 2:4 speaks of a period of more than one Earth-rotation day. Because of the context, we know for sure that this use of yom is figurative. (Any other interpretation, or claiming that the usage is there vague, is eisegesis.)
By the same line of reasoning, I conclude that the days in Genesis 1 are 24-hour periods of time. Moses takes pains to define yom the first time he uses it, and each time it is repeated in reference to a creation day, it is accompanied by a number and the phrase “evening and morning.” Therefore, because of its immediate context, and because of its usage in reference to the creation week in the rest of Scripture, yom here means a single Earth-rotation day. I respectfully submit that, rather than my claims being eisegesis, that it is eisegesis to claim the presence of ambiguity in Genesis, where all points of Scripture indicate a literal creation week. Just as we must avoid adding to God’s Word, we must not take away; and to detract from the literalness of Genesis 1 certainly does that.
Well, I’m done for now…I’ve had little time to devote to this post during finals week, but it’s finally coming down to it. Hope everyone enjoys the read.