I feel like the only Christian who believes in evolution.

Jackson Cooper

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The only conspiracy I alluded to was that of the devil. Do you not believe in Satan?
I'd have to wonder why the petroleum and natural gas industries are making so much money with their flawed geology. Money is the root of all evil, right?
 
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ArmyMatt

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YEC creates atheists because it makes people think Christianity can be scientifically disproven. Want to disprove Christianity? Prove the Earth is old or that evolution happened.

except you can't prove either. so it doesn't make atheists.
 
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Erik Nelson

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That really doesn't force a particular interpretation upon Genesis. And at any rate, the effect was indeed immediate. Man's communion with God was immediately disrupted and he was immediately subjected to the process of death as a result.
thought the rule of scriptural interpretation. Was that what scripture means in one place, It means it in another place -- the same words always mean the same thing.

if so, the words are a threat of active execution, not natural demise

The Biblical writers apparently implied that Solomon's court was like eden. Solomons court was Edenic. And Shimei was expelled from Eden. For a similar sort of Sin, much is Adam and Eve had been expelled in the days of Eden

Indeed, the next appearance of the Hebrew word Muwth in narrative occurs in Genesis 7:22, Genesis 18:25 and Genesis 19:19. In all cases, death derives from God's active wrath.

Most straightforwardly, Genesis 2:17. Was God's active threat of execution against Adam if he ate. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.

Only God's Mercy stayed the execution. But since the Fall of man, humankind has existed under a divine sentence of wrath and judgment. God's divine sentence of wrath, and judgment had to be carried out and was carried out on the cross.

Hence, through Christ believers can once again re enter communion with the divine in good standing. And no longer under a sentence of Doom and wrathful judgment.
 
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~Anastasia~

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thought the rule of scriptural interpretation. Was that what scripture means in one place, It means it in another place -- the same words always mean the same thing.

if so, the words are a threat of active execution, not natural demise

The Biblical writers apparently implied that Solomon's court was like eden. Solomons court was Edenic. And Shimei was expelled from Eden. For a similar sort of Sin, much is Adam and Eve had been expelled in the days of Eden

Indeed, the next appearance of the Hebrew word Muwth in narrative occurs in Genesis 7:22, Genesis 18:25 and Genesis 19:19. In all cases, death derives from God's active wrath.

Most straightforwardly, Genesis 2:17. Was God's active threat of execution against Adam if he ate. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.

Only God's Mercy stayed the execution. But since the Fall of man, humankind has existed under a divine sentence of wrath and judgment. God's divine sentence of wrath, and judgment had to be carried out and was carried out on the cross.

Hence, through Christ believers can once again re enter communion with the divine in good standing. And no longer under a sentence of Doom and wrathful judgment.

This is not how we view the statement from God at all. And it's not what the text says.

Death was a natural consequence of the fall, not a punishment borne out of the wrath of God. In the day you eat if it you will die - not in the day you eat of it I will kill you.

If God was such that He would have killed Adam for such a simple act of disobedience (then He didn't keep His word according to His threat) ... but not only that, where was this side of God when Satan fell and despoiled 1/3 of the angels, set himself against God, set in motion all the suffering/torment/illness/death/evil that humans would ever suffer - not to mention Christ's own suffering - where was that penalty for Satan when God could prevented all of that by carrying out a just sentence? And how is God good and loving in such a narrative? It doesn't make sense. It is born from a late century view of God that is more pagan than Christian in its nature.

And we don't have a simple book where we are restricted to comparing word order which forces parallel interpretation. It isn't foreign to us ... indeed there are far more parallels in our theology which are amazing to contemplate ... but we do not have only that but the understanding and voice of the Holy Spirit through many, just as the Holy Spirit spoke to give us the Scripture of the New Testament.

Someone else is better qualified to explain our point of view. But I know it is not so limited in either interpretation or in how we view the nature of God Himself.
 
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Jackson Cooper

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except you can't prove either. so it doesn't make atheists.
I giant rush of water wouldn't make U-turns.
It does make atheists because many people feel pressured to believe in an Old Earth and evolution instead of believing it's all a conspiracy.
 

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rusmeister

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I'd have to wonder why the petroleum and natural gas industries are making so much money with their flawed geology. Money is the root of all evil, right?
It doesn’t strike me that you are wondering very hard, nor that you have considered that being wrong on macro-conclusions does not exclude the possibility of having some things right. It seems pretty clear that you have chosen what to believe, and neither the fathers of the Church nor the Councils have any influence over a person who rejects their teachings.
I don’t see any faith that sets one’s own views above the fathers and the Councils in unison as Orthodox, though. I prefer to be a fool in the eyes of the world, much as I want to convince the world that my views are reasonable, than that I should hold a faith that is my own, but not that of the historical Church.
 
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ArmyMatt

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I giant rush of water wouldn't make U-turns.
It does make atheists because many people feel pressured to believe in an Old Earth and evolution instead of believing it's all a conspiracy.

no it doesn't. that's like saying Christ made atheists in John 6, because folks left after His teaching on the Eucharist.
 
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Erik Nelson

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This is not how we view the statement from God at all. And it's not what the text says.

Death was a natural consequence of the fall, not a punishment borne out of the wrath of God. In the day you eat if it you will die - not in the day you eat of it I will kill you.

If God was such that He would have killed Adam for such a simple act of disobedience (then He didn't keep His word according to His threat) ... but not only that, where was this side of God when Satan fell and despoiled 1/3 of the angels, set himself against God, set in motion all the suffering/torment/illness/death/evil that humans would ever suffer - not to mention Christ's own suffering - where was that penalty for Satan when God could prevented all of that by carrying out a just sentence? And how is God good and loving in such a narrative? It doesn't make sense. It is born from a late century view of God that is more pagan than Christian in its nature.

And we don't have a simple book where we are restricted to comparing word order which forces parallel interpretation. It isn't foreign to us ... indeed there are far more parallels in our theology which are amazing to contemplate ... but we do not have only that but the understanding and voice of the Holy Spirit through many, just as the Holy Spirit spoke to give us the Scripture of the New Testament.

Someone else is better qualified to explain our point of view. But I know it is not so limited in either interpretation or in how we view the nature of God Himself.
Genesis 18:25

the Hebrew word Muwth is, in fact, usually translated as "kill", even though it's the same word. Throughout the early narratives, all the way up until Solomon executes Shimei in 1 Kings 2:37-42, the same word always means the same thing, an act of execution causing death.

From the disobedience & fall of man in Eden, mankind was under sentence of capital punishment from God. God's mercy evidently stayed the sentence, until the Cross, whereon the sentence was carried out, such that all believers in the Cross can reenter God's Presence in good legal standing.

That would be the most straightforward & self-consistent interpretation of the text.

Even if you wanted to juggle word meaning, so as to bend Genesis 3 to mean the result of the fall was human mortality... then you still have to wait until Genesis 6:3 for God to explicitly limit humans' lifespans to 120 years.
 
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Rather than the reconstructed Hebrew I would look at the Septaugint.

It is translated most accurately that I can find something be like

16And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying, “You may eat food from every tree in the garden; 17but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat; for in whatever day you eat from it, you shall die by death.”

Or "to death you shall die"
 
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Erik Nelson

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I giant rush of water wouldn't make U-turns.
It does make atheists because many people feel pressured to believe in an Old Earth and evolution instead of believing it's all a conspiracy.
Well, didn't Saint Paul make quite a stand early on, to the effect of "not putting barriers to entry in the way of those [gentiles] who would otherwise Believe" ?

The focus is Christ on the Cross paying the penalty for collective human sin since Eden, so satisfying God's Justice whilst working God's Mercy into the equation also. Yes?

Doesn't Saint Paul say somewhere that people should avoid arguing over minutia, over genealogies & numbers and so on?

I don't see any value in driving away Believers in Christ, on the Cross, in ~30AD... because of quantitative details of exactly how long was the primordial period of Genesis 1, prior to Adam & Eve in Eden in Genesis 2-3.

The Bible acknowledges a Biblically significant epoch of "gradually unfolding & developing Creation" (Gen 1) prior to Eden. However long it was, is just some quantitative number. Some people say it was a big number X, others a smaller number x. But all agree, qualitatively, x > 0, and x = Bibically significant, yes ? I mean, it is Gen 1, right??

I don't see the value of trying to drive people out of the Church, on such details, in the name of "only true Scotsmen" so to speak.

Of course, it would be dangerous to impugn the Moral Authority of Scripture. Whether Genesis 1 was X or x, 5-7 billion years or 5-7 days of shorter duration, is a quantitative difference of degree, not kind. It's not central to the crucial qualitative core concept of God bringing about mankind (one way or another), =Gen 1, mankind's disobedience incurring God's Wrath and a divine sentence of capital punishment according to God's Justice, =Gen 2-3.. which was carried out on the Cross so as to satisfy God's Justice whilst miraculously also working in God's Mercy unto Salvation, =NT.

So long as the qualitative steps are acknowledged, as well as Scripture's Moral Authority, I don't see why "X vs x" needs to cause yet another schism in the Church. Why not emphasize (qualitative) unity instead?

Where "rubber meets road", where doctrine impacts dally life, what is the noticeable difference in teaching, between those who say "X vs x" ? If just about zero, why argue more than that?
 
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Erik Nelson

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i understand that some orthodox scholars are comparing the LXX to M to figure out how to"invert the LXX" back to the original Hebrew text that the 70/72 Hebrew scholars used in the 3rd century BC in Ptolemaic Egypt

that would be a reconstructed Hebrew text almost 1500 years older than the M
 
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My point was that especially if you're going to focus on a particular word - the LXX is more reliable than Hebrew contained in the much later Masoretic text, especially if no ancient fragment exists for that passage.

The Hebrew language itself hasn't had the kind of continuity we might like - especially for one that seems so many words can mean so many disparate things. Greek has changed but has a strong line of active transmission.

I've heard so much debate over Hebrew "yom" from Gen 1.
 
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gzt

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My point was that especially if you're going to focus on a particular word - the LXX is more reliable than Hebrew contained in the much later Masoretic text, especially if no ancient fragment exists for that passage.
"Much later" is a very misleading phrase to use to describe the LXX - the rubric by which we call it that would give a later date to the LXX than you want to claim, and the proto-MT text fragments we have show that it the MT tradition was quite conservative. This still doesn't explain the "reconstructed" part.
 
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"Much later" is a very misleading phrase to use to describe the LXX - the rubric by which we call it that would give a later date to the LXX than you want to claim, and the proto-MT text fragments we have show that it the MT tradition was quite conservative. This still doesn't explain the "reconstructed" part.

The Masoretic text is of much later date than the LXX.

From what I've seen there are both parts that are very faithful, and parts that vary, when comparing the Masoretic to ancient fragments we do have. And unless I've missed it, we don't have the fragment in question for this one word that it is suggested we base theology from.

Why should suppositions 2000 years after the fact based on a back-translated word we can't verify trump what the Church has said? Especially for Orthodox?
 
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gzt

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Let me put it this way: putting a 10th century date on the MT is misleading and putting a 2nd century BCE date on the LXX is also misleading (by the way, we don't use the LXX for the whole OT, we use a different text for Daniel...). I'm still not getting what you mean to say by calling the Hebrew "reconstructed".
 
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Let me put it this way: putting a 10th century date on the MT is misleading and putting a 2nd century BCE date on the LXX is also misleading (by the way, we don't use the LXX for the whole OT, we use a different text for Daniel...). I'm still not getting what you mean to say by calling the Hebrew "reconstructed".

I think it is only “misleading” in a sense of pedantic exactitude. The large fact is that the Masoretic texts really were compiled in the 9th and tenth centuries, and earlier attempts, as well as referring to the name, rather than the fact of the texts we call “the Septuagint”, are small facts, of vastly less importance than the huge fact that the Greek text was accepted by the Jewish diaspora for CENTURIES, and that the MT essentially did not exist.
 
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