Thanks for that information. I don't know, by this post, but it seems like you no longer support the 6 day creation event.
I have a theory...
If taking the six days of creation, literally, were as important to their salvation as taking the events of Jesus life literally.... then they would all defend the six day creation view with their life.
Also, if taking the gospel message and all the miracles, death burial and resurrection of Christ, literally, were not necessary for salvation... everyone would consider it an allegory, parable or simple fabrication by the apostles.
You see, men of this earth, over time, have developed a disconnect with the awesome power of our creator. They have also diminished the power of the writen word and it's established foundation as solid truth.
These men, then, have observed things and devised alternate scenarios as to why things are the way they are. Many of these men have no belief in God or are solid atheists.
What then happens is Christians are exposed to these parallel explanations for certain events and occurrences and then doubt the living word of God.
They do this with creation and all the events that surround Genesis 6 and it's role in the history and future of the human race.
There is not one thing in the word of God, OT or NT that is not possible for God.
If the word of God is truth.. then it is all truth. If you want to cherry pick what you take as truth and what you cannot accept due to the "wisdom" of mere men... then I would be careful.
As for me.... Let God be true and every man a liar.
All it takes in scientific cases, is one simple little unseen, unknown or undiscovered fact and whole concepts can fall like a house of cards.....
I'll stick with what God said:
Luke 8:17 King James Version (KJV)
17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.
If I was a betting man... I'd wager that the "science" of the atheistic driven culture of this world..... is wrong.....
What say you?
I'm not against believing that God created the world in six literal days. If someone believes that, I don't have problem with it and I don't feel any need to try and convince them otherwise.
I'm also not really opposed to people who don't believe that it was literally six days.
I can honestly say that I personally don't really have an opinion on whether it should be seen as literal in that sense or not. The reason I don't have an opinion on that is because, from my point of view, it is largely unimportant. If you believe it was 6 days, that changes nothing for the rest of biblical doctrine and theology. If you believe the 6 days are meant to be representative only, that really also doesn't necessarily change anything in the rest of biblical doctrine and theology.
I definitely do disagree with those who dismiss the text as "mere mythology". Even if the text is not meant to be literally factual, it is there for a reason and it says what it says for a reason.
I wasn't necessarily convinced one way or the other, I just stopped spending time thinking about it because it didn't change or impact anything else I believed from the bible.
I agree with you that modern minded people, including the vast majority of Christians tend to disregard the supernatural aspects of scripture unless they are absolutely forced to believe them, like Jesus' resurrection. Christian's can't deny that, but they will deny or ignore almost everything supernatural that they can.
That isn't the case for me. I don't have any problem with believing that God could create the world in 6 days. In fact, God could create the entire universe in the blink of an eye and to me that raises the question... if God could create the universe in the blink of an eye (which he can) then why do it in a process over six days?
My point with this question is not at all that this should cast doubt on the creation account... but it should be questions like this that guide our inquiry and understanding when we try to interpret the text. Whether the text is a literal historical description or not, God chose to tell the story this way. Why? The fact that God told the story this way conveys meaning. It is important. So why? Why did God create by process rather than simply doing everything at once? Why 7 days? What does that mean?
I reached a point in my own life where I was listening to a teacher talk about the meaning of some of these things and I suddenly realized that in all my study and debating defending the literal position, I had never once stopped to think about what the story actually meant. I suspect that may be true for a lot of people who have similar backgrounds to me.
If you had asked me why is the story this way, my only answer would have been "because that's the way it happened." But I came to realize that the factual details of how creation took place are unimportant in and of themselves. The real importance lies in what meaning those details convey to us about who the creator is, what does this tell us about God? Why did he create? What does it tell us about his purpose for the world and for us? What is the nature of the creation itself? How should we view and understand the world? What is our place in creation and what is our purpose? etc.
I also do have some disagreements with the common understandings that many "literalists" have regarding how scripture should be understood. I put literalist in quotes not to disrespect, but because in my experience I've never met anyone who actually takes everything in scripture literally, it's all a question of which parts you take literally and which parts you don't.
One of these deals with inspiration. Again I'll use myself as an example. I always believed that Moses wrote the Pentateuch under inspiration from God. To suggest that Moses didn't write it, or to suggest that maybe some sections of it weren't written by Moses or to suggest that what Moses wrote may have been edited later, or revised, or added to, all were synonymous with denying the inspiration of scripture.
I eventually came to understand that this really isn't the case and isn't a necessary view point. I absolutely believe that God inspired scripture. However, inspiration doesn't rest on whether God used Moses to do the writing, or whether Moses wrote some of it and then God used someone else latter to add to it, or to revise sections of it etc. Who wrote it, and whether it went through process of revision and addition does not change that God inspired it and everyone who contributed to it.
Similarly many Christians view Inspiration as almost like a kind of automatic writing, in which God dictated word for word what the human author should write. I don't think that is accurate. I don't think inspiration works that way. I think God chose Moses and gave him the truths, and the ideas, and the wisdom, and Moses wrote them down using his own mind, his own words, and his own historical context.
That is why in scripture we see that different writers had different writing styles, different cultural contexts, and they wrote in different genres of literature, like poetry, history, parable, etc.
Some people see those things as a threat to inspiration, but I don't think they are at all.
Another point, pertinent to Genesis is that modern people in particular have the idea that in order for a story to be true and valid, it must be factual. I don't think that is true. They think that if the events didn't literally happen exactly as described, then the whole story is a lie and worthless. I don't see that at all. Jesus himself spoke frequently in parables where he used fictional stories to relay spiritual truths. The preoccupation with fact is a distinctly modern scruple that ancient and medieval people really did not share. If you were to go to many of the ancient Christians and tell them "did you know Genesis 1 isn't factual, it didn't really happen that way." their response would likely have been "so what?" Even back then, before there was ever a debate about science, there were scripture scholars who discussed whether passages in the bible were meant to be literal or were meant to be non-literal stories that conveyed truths.
