POLL: Which of these elements of the creation story do you believe?

[lesliedellow]

Nowadays many conservative Reformed Christians say that the Bible only teaches #5, but back in the 16th century, there was common agreement that if you went by the plain meaning of the Bible, it taught at least 1,3-5. I suppose that they dated the world only several thousand years old

Nobody in the sixteenth century thought the Earth was flat. The idea which was gradually losing ground was that of the Sun orbiting a spherical Earth.

 

[rakovsky]

Nobody in the sixteenth century thought the Earth was flat. The idea which was gradually losing ground was that of the Sun orbiting a spherical Earth.

Yes they did think the earth was flat based on their reading of the Old Testament and their limited knowledge of the earth's geography. In a 16th c. passage Calvin said that even Plato, the smartest of the scholars in Calvin's opinion, "lost himself in his round globe." I think he wrote this in his Institutes. Plato had taught that the earth was a sphere formed by the Creator as such, in Plato's book Timmaeus.

Notice the flatness of the earth compared to the round dome sky in this 16th c. Lutheran engraving:

 

[mark kennedy]

Nobody in the sixteenth century thought the Earth was flat. The idea which was gradually losing ground was that of the Sun orbiting a spherical Earth.

I think rakovsky is putting you on, he was arguing that a flat earth is a creationist doctrine.

It kind of interesting, Eramus a librarian at Alexadria calculated the circomfrance in the fifth century BC.

 

[BobRyan]

Yes they did think the earth was flat based on their reading of the Old Testament and their limited knowledge of the earth's geography. In a 16th c. passage Calvin said that even Plato, the smartest of the scholars in Calvin's opinion, "lost himself in his round globe." I think he wrote this in his Institutes. Plato had taught that the earth was a sphere formed by the Creator as such, in Plato's book Timmaeus.

Notice the flatness of the earth compared to the round dome sky in this 16th c. Lutheran engraving:

or is it ...

The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to around the 6th century BC, when it was mentioned in ancient Greek philosophy,[1][2] but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC, when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the Earth as a physical given. The paradigm was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.[3][4][5][6] A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's expedition's circumnavigation (1519−1522).[7]

 

[lesliedellow]

double post

 

[lesliedellow]

Yes they did think the earth was flat based on their reading of the Old Testament and their limited knowledge of the earth's geography. In a 16th c. passage Calvin said that even Plato, the smartest of the scholars in Calvin's opinion, "lost himself in his round globe." I think he wrote this in his Institutes. Plato had taught that the earth was a sphere formed by the Creator as such, in Plato's book Timmaeus.

Plato goes into a long rambling exposition about how God had created the Earth as a sphere, and his reasons for doing so. It is that which Calvin is criticising; not the concept of a spherical Earth as such. The latter had become generally accepted by 200 BC at the latest. In Calvin's eyes, Plato's speculations were at best pointless, because everything that could be known about creation was to be found in the Bible.

 

[mark kennedy]

Plato goes into a long rambling exposition about how God had created the Earth as a sphere, and his reasons for doing so. It is that which Calvin is criticising; not the concept of a spherical Earth as such. The latter had become generally accepted by 200 BC at the latest. In Calvin's eyes, Plato's speculations were at best pointless, because everything that could be known about creation was to be found in the Bible.

Even astronomers were not convinced of the Copernican inversion. Even in the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth the subject was being debated. Tycho Brahe who employed Johannes Kepler, never got on board with it:

Kepler had great respect for Tycho's methods and the accuracy of his observations and considered him to be the new Hipparchus who would provide the foundation for a restoration of the science of astronomy. Wikipedia
​

Clearly Calvin thought a spherical earth was foolish but the ancient Greeks simply knew more about astronomy then anyone else. When Christopher Columbus sailed the Atlantic looking for India it was because all master mariners knew the earth was round. Astronomy isn't a theological issue and Calvin was a contemporary with many of the people who were in the process of rebuilding astronomy and physics.

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[mark kennedy]

Yes they did think the earth was flat based on their reading of the Old Testament and their limited knowledge of the earth's geography.

Nonsense, it had nothing to do with the Old Testament and Calvin doesn't base his statement on anything from the Old Testament. He just thinks Plato was very wrong which tells me that he probably didn't read astronomy because they had known the earth was round for almost a millennia:

Theological doubt informed by the flat Earth model implied in the Hebrew Bible inspired some early Christian scholars such as Lactantius, John Chrysostom and Athanasius of Alexandria, but this remained an eccentric current. Learned Christian authors such as Basil of Caesarea, Ambrose and Augustine of Hippo were clearly aware of the sphericity of the Earth. "Flat Earthism" lingered longest in Syriac Christianity, which tradition laid greater importance on a literalist interpretation of the Old Testament. Authors from that tradition, such as Cosmas Indicopleustes, presented the Earth as flat as late as in the 6th century. This last remnant of the ancient model of the cosmos disappeared during the 7th century. From the 8th century and the beginning medieval period, "no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth." (Wikipedia)
​

Are you still trying to equivocate this with the doctrine of Creation? The Old Testament cosmology would reflect the way a person without any real training or interest in astronomy would normally see the world. The ancient Levites weren't astronomers, neither was Calvin, so what?

 

[lesliedellow]

Even astronomers were not convinced of the Copernican inversion. Even in the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth the subject was being debated.

Whether or not somebody was a geocentrist or a heliocentrist is irrelevant. Both theories postulated a spherical Earth.

​

Clearly Calvin thought a spherical earth was foolish but the ancient Greeks simply knew more about astronomy then anyone else.

From the Timaeus:
"Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he finished off, making the surface smooth all round for many reasons; in the first place, because the living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed......."

That is what Calvin was protesting against when he spoke about Plato losing himself in his round globe. Not the shape, but all the other speculation which accompanied it.

 

[rakovsky]

Interesting:

The widely circulated woodcut is of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to see the machines working the spheres. It was made in 16th century style but cannot be traced to an earlier time than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163). The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a missionary in the middle Ages claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met". That story may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known source in the Middle ages. The original woodcut had a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claimed that the woodcut dated from the 16th century and the border was removed. According to an unproved story Flammarion ordered the woodcut himself; certainly no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

Robert J. Schadewald wrote an interesting article on trends among Creationists regarding flat earth and geocentric models:
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/crea-fe.htm

Evolution is a scientific fairy-tale just as the “flat-earth theory” was in the 12th century.
-- Edward Blick, scientific creationist1

Though flat-earthism is as well supported scripturally and scientifically as creationism, the creationists plainly do not want to be associated with flat-earthers.
...
The Catholic Church’s reaction to Galileo is well known. It’s less well known that most of the “reformers” -- Luther, Calvin, Wesley -- also rejected the Copernican system on Scriptural grounds.27 A few Protestant Bible-Scientists have been fighting a rearguard action against heliocentricity ever since.

Unlike the flat-earthers, the geocentrists were seldom able to agree on a system. Some, like James Gillespie of Dumfries, Scotland, stuck to the Ptolemaic system.28 The Muggletonians developed their own system.29 Others contented themselves with sniping at Copernicanism. Geocentrist J.R.L. Lange, author of The Copernican System, the Greatest Absurdity in the History of Human Thought,30 pillaged flat-earth sources for arguments and actually quoted them in his text.

...

Other Bible-Scientists have proved to be effective debaters. George Bernard Shaw described a public forum in which a flat-earther laid waste to the spherical opposition.34 Rowbotham was widely known as a tiger on the platform, and he was seldom bested.... In Brockport, N.Y., in March 1887, two scientific gentlemen defended the sphericity of the earth against flat-earther M.C. Flanders on three consecutive nights. When the great debate was over, five townsmen chosen to judge the matter issued a unanimous verdict... that the balance of the evidence pointed to a flat-earth.36

Cash offers are another way Bible-Scientists taunt opponents. In the 1920s and 1930s, Wilbur Glenn Voliva of Zion, Illinois, offered $5,000 to anyone who could prove to him that the earth isn’t flat. No one ever collected. At this writing, creationist engineer R. G. Elmendorf has a standing offer of ... $1000 to anyone who can prove that the earth moves.

Perhaps some day the scientific creationists will make peace with the flat-earthers. While they disagree on details, they claim to be fighting the same enemy.
“I believe the real source of Modern Astronomy to have been SATAN,” wrote flat-earther David Wardlaw Scott. “From his first temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden until now, his great object has been to throw discredit on the Truth of God...”38 John Hampden agreed, calling the spherical theory “that Satanic device of a round and revolving globe, which sets Scripture, reason, and facts at defiance.”39

 

[Philip_B]

Perhaps it is our task (in part) to talk about who is behind the Creation, and the task of science (in part) is to tell us how it was accomplished.

 

[mark kennedy]

Whether or not somebody was a geocentrist or a heliocentrist is irrelevant. Both theories postulated a spherical Earth.

It seems the question about the shape of the earth had been settled for hundreds of years before Calvin. I have to wonder why he would ever care if he thought about it at all.

From the Timaeus:
"Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he finished off, making the surface smooth all round for many reasons; in the first place, because the living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed......."

It does seem to ramble aimlessly.

That is what Calvin was protesting against when he spoke about Plato losing himself in his round globe. Not the shape, but all the other speculation which accompanied it.

That makes sense.

 

[rakovsky]

Calvin not only complained about Plato's round globe, in his Bible commentaries on verses, he taught that the earth was held up by pillars, that the moon produced its own light and only reflected some from the sun, and IIRC that there are actual gates or openings in the sky that the Great Flood's waters came through. The waters above the heavenly "firmament" that contained the sun in Gen 1 he took to be the clouds, even though Gen 1 is talking about the waters over the heavens and stars. And Calvin's proof of geocentricity was that it's obvious from watching the sun that the sun goes around the earth. "It's plain to all", he said.

I posted these quotes before on the forum directly from him. It's not like we are only talking about one random phrase in the Institutes.

 

[Job8]

Ancient peoples like the Babylonians and Sumerians actually believed #s 1, 3-4. Abraham was from Ur in Sumer.

We don't turn to the Babylonians and the Sumerians for the truth. We don't even turn to Moses for the truth. We turn to the LORD God Almighty -- the Creator -- for the truth.

 

[lesliedellow]

Calvin not only complained about Plato's round globe, in his Bible commentaries on verses, he taught that the earth was held up by pillars, that the moon produced its own light and only reflected some from the sun, and IIRC that there are actual gates or openings in the sky that the Great Flood's waters came through. The waters above the heavenly "firmament" that contained the sun in Gen 1 he took to be the clouds, even though Gen 1 is talking about the waters over the heavens and stars. And Calvin's proof of geocentricity was that it's obvious from watching the sun that the sun goes around the earth. "It's plain to all", he said.

I posted these quotes before on the forum directly from him. It's not like we are only talking about one random phrase in the Institutes.

Come back and tell me that you have actually read those passages in context, and, if he is quoting another source, that you have that in context as well.

It wouldn't be even remotely surprising if he was a geocentrist. That is a debate which went on well into the seventeenth century, until Newton settled it by showing that his theory of gravitation accurately predicted the motion of the planets on the heliocentric model.

 

[Revealing Times]

1. A firm layer divided the waters so that a massive body of liquid water was above the stars.

6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. ... 14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;

A firmament means our atmosphere. God divided the waters from the waters with an atmosphere that held water then rereleased it (rain) and with earth having water on it of course.

fir·ma·ment
ˈfərməmənt/
noun
literary

1. the heavens or the sky, especially when regarded as a tangible thing.

Wouldn't you say there are waters in the atmosphere and on the earth ? That's really simple.

 

[Philip_B]

<Staff Edit>
In this country (Australia) the sad truth is that Evolution is taught as a fact rather than as a theory. To my mind this is academically lazy, and resolves in a whole range of people thinking that what they know is based on something solid, not something based on a proposition. Christian Theology bases it beginnings in what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin refers to as the Alpha Point of existence which is also the Omega Point of Existence, Namely God. Contemporary Evolutionary Science presents us with a primeval atom, and has little to say about how it came to be.

Interestingly I feel that Evolution as a theory has a great deal to recommend it, and I don't see that it needs to be seen as the opposition to the creative narratives of Genesis, Job, Proverbs, and 4G.

Anselm in his work Cur Deus Homo argued that faith and science followed completely with integrity would arrive at the same conclusions.

<Staff Edit> I suspect that there may be more to the story that you have dismissed than you have ascertained so far. I would encourage you to look a little deeper, not assuming that it is a contemporaneous news article but rather the literature and the traditions of origins from of old, and no doubt having borrowed in part from the people of Ur of the Chaldees from whence Abraham came.

Thankfully we are not required to stop learning.

 

[Speedwell]

You have not understood what I am saying. I am most certainly not a creationist in the sense that you imply. I most certainly have not said that I do not accept evolution, indeed quite to the contrary I do accept it. That does not mean that the creation narratives in Holy Writ have nothing for me, or that I need to declare them untrue, even if I do not accept them as science (as you mean it) or as contemporaneous historic records.

I just think we need a little more grace.

That is generally the position of the non-YECs on this board.

 

[Philip_B]

That is generally the position of the non-YECs on this board.

What is a YEC or a non-YEC

Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from labels. Amen.

 

[Speedwell]

What is a YEC or a non-YEC

Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from labels. Amen.

Just shorthand. We're all supposed to be Christians here, so presumably we all believe that God created the universe. But some of us believe that the universe was created in 4004 BC, Adam was created from dust and Eve from his rib, and that the entire terrestrial globe was covered with water in 2400 BC. In other words, that the stories in Genesis 1-11 are 100% accurate literal history. These people call themselves "Young-Earth Creationists" or YECs for short.