I Have Changed My Mind Concerning Creation

[Reformed Covenanter]

I have given up the internal struggle and have submitted to a literal, 6-Day creation.

That is interesting because I have started to move in the opposite direction from you

Give me a good exegetical reason why the six-days in Genesis 1 are not days of ordinary length? I wavered on this about 4 years ago, but I could not see any Biblical reason to doubt the 6 day creation viewpoint.

 

[MrMerlin777]

:thumbsup:

Doug Kelly's Creation and Change did it for me.

Same here.

 

[AV1611]

Mods, feel free to relocate this if deemed necessary

Give me a good exegetical reason why the six-days in Genesis 1 are not days of ordinary length? I wavered on this about 4 years ago, but I could not see any Biblical reason to doubt the 6 day creation viewpoint.

I am not doubting that "day" means "day" as such but rather I think that the message was an interraction with canaanite baalism. It's late and I am off to bed:

1. http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted...s/Text/Articles-Books/Futato_RainGen2_WTJ.pdf
2. Essay Reviews: Douglas Kelly on the Framework Interpretation of Genesis One

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

I also highly recommend Did God Create in Six Days? ed. by Joey Pipa and David Hall...

 

[Me Died Blue]

To be fair, at least among the disagreements different Reformed theologians and churches hold and/or allow, that's not the issue (in the question of how to interpret the creation passages).

To be equally fair...if the *way* in which the Creation account is to be taken authoritatively is to take a different sense than a natural reading...that throws the sense in which the rest of scripture is to be taken as authoritative out of whack...I realize that isn't how it always plays out for Reformed believers...but that's the slip'n slide.

I'm not trying to debate this...this isn't the sort of thread where I should quibble.

I think Backwoods Presbyterian has an idea of what I'm getting at...as do others...and I want to simply rejoice with him.

Without wanting to defend any one position at this point, and indeed without trying to creating a debate, I think the very point that most non-6/24 theologians would challenge is the assumption that the literal 6/24 view is in fact the "natural reading" of the text, possibly mentioning how Reformed churches see a non-literal reading of many of the "all" and "world" atonement passages to actually be the "natural" one.

And indeed, I certainly always rejoice at seeing fellow believers like Benjamin eagerly, diligently and joyfully working through issues like this.

 

[kvanlaan]

Me, too. After having Dr. Kelly for Systematic I, I now routinely pass out copies of that book!

Great! I'll PM you my address (but you have to promise to send it in a plain brown envelope...)

 

[Blueridge Believer]

I also highly recommend Did God Create in Six Days? ed. by Joey Pipa and David Hall...

I just bought this book. I am looking forward to reading it.

 

[Blueridge Believer]

SermonAudio.com - Six Days & Eisegesis Problem

This message by Ken Ham is worth the time in my opinion.

 

[ChristianTrader]

To be fair, at least among the disagreements different Reformed theologians and churches hold and/or allow, that's not the issue (in the question of how to interpret the creation passages).

To be equally fair...if the *way* in which the Creation account is to be taken authoritatively is to take a different sense than a natural reading...that throws the sense in which the rest of scripture is to be taken as authoritative out of whack...I realize that isn't how it always plays out for Reformed believers...but that's the slip'n slide.

I'm not trying to debate this...this isn't the sort of thread where I should quibble.

I think Backwoods Presbyterian has an idea of what I'm getting at...as do others...and I want to simply rejoice with him.

Without wanting to defend any one position at this point, and indeed without trying to creating a debate, I think the very point that most non-6/24 theologians would challenge is the assumption that the literal 6/24 view is in fact the "natural reading" of the text, possibly mentioning how Reformed churches see a non-literal reading of many of the "all" and "world" atonement passages to actually be the "natural" one.

And indeed, I certainly always rejoice at seeing fellow believers like Benjamin eagerly, diligently and joyfully working through issues like this.

So the question is how does one determine what the natural reading is? That the overwhelming majority of people in church history and (regular history) held to 6/24 creationism is a huge barrier to those who wish to argue for a different "natural" reading.

As an aside, if one finds such reasoning appealing, the argument for a geocentristic reading of scripture is even tougher to overcome.

CT

 

[DavidCPorter]

I have always found the fourth commandment to be convincing scripture on this. "For in six days the Lord created...." Written by the finger of God to a people who would have understood it as refering to literal days. Exodus 20 is not a creation myth it is the declaration of God directly to his people.

 

[S. Spence]

I have always found the fourth commandment to be convincing scripture on this. "For in six days the Lord created...." Written by the finger of God to a people who would have understood it as refering to literal days. Exodus 20 is not a creation myth it is the declaration of God directly to his people.

That's a good point -I hadn't thought of that before.

 

[mark]

I've held to a YEC for quite some time, and hashed through the issues as well. I have found that Answers in Genesis tends to be very flippant however when dealing with the issue. If we want to redeem the academy (and I think we do) we've got serious work to do in the scientific fields. Mark Noll in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind blasts YEC out of the water, saying how awful it has been for Christian scholarship. There simply are too few scientists doing research in this field. And, to further the dilemma, I don't intend to get a PhD in the natural sciences!

 

[AV1611]

That's a good point -I hadn't thought of that before.

PSCF March 1996 Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony by Meredith G. Kline

 

[fredtgreco]

I have always found the fourth commandment to be convincing scripture on this. "For in six days the Lord created...." Written by the finger of God to a people who would have understood it as refering to literal days. Exodus 20 is not a creation myth it is the declaration of God directly to his people.

That's a good point -I hadn't thought of that before.

It is more than that. There is a direct correlation between the Sabbath being a day and not a principle, and the days of Genesis (referenced in Exodus 20:11) being ordinary and being typological.

It should be no surprise that Lee Irons, whose review paper was quoted above, denied the abiding validity of the 4th commandment, and was basically defrocked for that.

 

[cih1355]

I read the book, Thousands Not Billions, which is edited by Don DeYoung. It provides a summary of the RATE project which was a project performed by young earth creationists who did research regarding the age of the earth. A Hebrew scholar by the name of Stephen Boyd was a part of the RATE project. Boyd studied Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 in order to see if that biblical passage should be interpreted as a literal historical narrative or as poetry. Boyd analyzed the relative distribution of finite verbs in that passage. In biblical Hebrew, there are four finite verb forms: preterite, imperfect, perfect, and waw-perfect (p. 160). Historical narratives in Hebrew uses more preterite verbs while poetic texts use more perfect and imperfect verbs (p. 161). Boyd's conclusion was that Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 is statistically classified as narrative with a probability of 0.9999 (pp. 167-168). A probability of 1 would be the highest value.

 

[RamistThomist]

I've held to a YEC for quite some time, and hashed through the issues as well. I have found that Answers in Genesis tends to be very flippant however when dealing with the issue. If we want to redeem the academy (and I think we do) we've got serious work to do in the scientific fields. Mark Noll in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind blasts YEC out of the water, saying how awful it has been for Christian scholarship. There simply are too few scientists doing research in this field. And, to further the dilemma, I don't intend to get a PhD in the natural sciences!

Noll fails to critique YEC on biblical/theological grounds. He just whines that such people look like fundamentalists and it makes it hard for Christians to be seen as academically and culturally relevant.

The book was okay in some respects but I have a hard time taking Noll's whining (and that's what it is) seriously.

 

[DavidGGraves]

I always find it ironic that arch-Historical-Critic James Barr identifies Genesis 1 as 24 hour days because of the syntax, yet evangelicals and reformed folk want to do gymnastics to get out of:

"and there was evening and there was morning one day" The Hebrew reads the cardinal not the ordinal in an etiological manner so as to define what a day is, odd that.