Can we agree on this?

Philis said:

I'm wondering if literalists agree on the following point:

When God breathed life into Adam he didn't literally breathe. Since God doesn't actually breathe, whatever it was that he did was accomodated to our level of understanding by using something symbolic to us (breathing is symbolic to being alive).

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I am not a literalist but I agree

mark kennedy said:

You might want to think about it because Theistic Evolutionists have real issues coming to terms with the clear testimony of Scripture.

10 dangers of theistic evolution

Grace and peace,
Mark

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I like that article as a defense against deistic evolution and not much else, I have written a response to it before elsewhere on the internet but will reproduce it here, with modifications since it's been a while since I edited it to incorporate my current views:

Danger no. 1: Misrepresentation of the Nature of God
Death is Evil

Death cannot be evil, it is a part of what God has called good. We have in God's providence as explained in the Bible the image of him taking delight in feeding his creatures whether they be herbivores or carnivores (see Job 38-40) to tie the commandment of man to only eat plants in the creation story to all creatures that God has created is to read something into the Bible what isn't there.

Danger no. 2: God becomes a God of the Gaps
Theistic evolution is Deism, right?

This so called danger confuses Theistic Evolution, with Deistic Evolution. The difference with the two is the continuous presence of the deity in upholding and nurturing the universe. Deism holds the watch idea of the universe, the Universe is a watch that a God created and set running, this is in no way Christian or Theistic, which in contrast has the God taking an active interest in his creation.

Danger no. 3: Denial of Central Biblical Teachings
The Majority of this is Prose Narrative, that means it's not metaphorical

The first thing is that Genesis 1 is in Poetic Narrative. This is not in and of itself a way to say it's metaphorical (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are poetry) it is probably enough to show that the way something is written doesn't mean anything in regards to it's need to be read literally. More on this latter on in this "danger".

Law of the Sabbath is based on the timeline

So we need seven days of creation for it to be a valid law? I'd hope that no Judeo-Christian would actually believe this, if God says something is a Sin then it is a Sin, regardless of the reasoning behind it. There are two texts of the 10 commandments in the Bible, they are at Exodus 20:2-17, Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Concerning the Sabbath we have Ex 20:8-10 which is basically the same as Deut 5:12-14 there is also no mention of the creation in any of these six verses. We have a discrepency between Ex 20:11 and Deut 5:15 so we've got two reasons for the commandment of the Sabbath, according to the Document Hypothesis (oo really showing my liberality here) we believe that the list in Exodus came from the Elohist source and the list in Deuteronomy came from the Deuteronomist source, Exodus 20:11 is therefore probably a redactor addition to tie the Elohist source to the Priestly source (Where Genesis 1 comes from) So we have this command to obey the Sabbath, does it really matter whether it ties into the Creation account, God gave it as a command, we should follow it.

Jesus quotes Genesis, must be literal

This is like saying that if I quote Mein Kampf I must be a Nazi. Let's look at the passage in question.


This is a teaching on divorce, why do you need to quote something literal? You don't, now I'm not saying whether Jesus or his contemporaries believed that Genesis was literal or not, is it necessary though? No I don't think so.

There's no indication anywhere

The idea that there is no indication that Genesis should be read as non-literal, therefore read it literally is rather painful. Think of any well written novel, there's no indication that it isn't literal it's only because we know that the motivation of the writer was to write a novel that we go oh yes it's a novel everyone knows that. However let's think about what the idea behind Genesis is, as a whole it is the back story to the great unfolding plan of God, we need to set up a few factual things:

• God is good
• God created everything
• Humanity is not good
• All other Gods are not real
• God has a pact with Abraham
• Creation is the product

This is what we base our theology on these facts. Let's think about what Pantheon based religions (Most popular type of religion before the rise of Abrahamaic Monotheism) in general believe.

• Gods are like us
• The Gods created specific things
• Lots of Gods exist
• Creation was a by-product

We look at Genesis 1 and see that yes we are made in the image of God, but God created purposefully and intentionally each of the places that different Gods created, we see throughout Genesis that humanity is not good. Does it need to be literally factual for these premises to be true? No!

Danger no. 4: Loss of the Way for Finding God
Evolution has no morality therefore Theistic Evolution has no morality

God created the morality in creationism. So God creates morality. Evolution doesn't make any morality claims nor does any of science. If we believe that God created in a way that we could discern how the universe works through the use of the scientific method, does this morality that God has created go away? No really think about it, I'll leave it with you.

Not to mention that as Christian theistic evolutionists we believe that the universe serves to point people back to God even our sinfulness does this (cf Rom 2.1)

Danger no. 5: The Doctrine of God's Incarnation is Undermined
Theistic evolution is Deism, right?

Again the whole idea here is that God set the universe up like a wind-up car and let it go, which is in contradiction to the theistic belief that God is in constant interaction with his creation, so the idea that the theistic God who is so in love with his creation and that his planned method of salvation which he has said will be through his own incarnation will not do this is silly.

Danger no. 6: The Biblical Basis of Jesus' Work of Redemption Is Mythologized
Original Sin and our own Sinfulness

The emphasis in my mind in Rom 5:12 is not on the Adam sinning but on the all men sinning, so the basis of Jesus' work of redemption can be viewed on an individualistic level but that's not really what Paul is doing in Rom 5:12-21 in any case. Paul is very much arguing that once we were sinful and dead in our sin, but now we are alive, now we are in the spirit, once we were in Adam, but now we are in Christ, we are a new creation, we are no longer of the old, or that which was from the beginning because of what Christ as done.

Danger no. 7: Loss of Biblical Chronology

This one has two problems that it puts forth, they are

• Not all statements of the Bible are to be taken seriously.
• Vigilance concerning the second coming of Jesus may be lost.

The premise of both of these is that all biblically given measures of time, are not considered factual by Theistic Evolutionists, I'm not sure how the second on ties in with this but let's go anyway.

Not all statements of the Bible are to be taken seriously

This is an understandable one however it relies heavily on both the slippery slope fallacy and on the common creationist fallacy that it's either all or nothing. This conclusion also presupposes that Theistic Evolutionists don't agree that the geneologies represent actual people, the belief in TE camps differs, some believe that there was a historical Adam and Eve, others that pre-exile Israel didn't exist. I am of the first persuasion.

Vigilance concerning the second coming of Jesus may be lost

This seems like an odd jump, but let's think about it Jesus told us these parables, that basically say that we should be ready and waiting because he didn't know when it would happen, so why does us changing how we understand time and its relation to the Bible change the fact that we've been commanded to wait and be ready? We've been given a command from God, the default option and there really isn't any option other than this is to obey the command.

Danger no. 8: Loss of Creation Concepts
God created matter without any available material.

Well, this still holds under Theistic Evolution. We believe that he created the singularity that he then expanded into the universe out of nothing.

God created the earth first, and on the fourth day he added the moon, the solar system, our local galaxy, and all other star systems.

When the writer of this article says that this is in contradiction to the 'big bang' cosmology, it's true, but in what sense is the order in any way affective upon the salvation God provides us through his Son? Well I can't think of any way. One of the biggest problems I have with professional creationist apologists is they twist the gospel to suit their predefined ideology that creation happened exactly as recorded in Genesis and you have to accept this or be a heretic. This does little to help further the true Gospel and hinders the grounding of Christians in proper theology.

Danger no. 9: Misrepresentation of reality
The Creation Accounts are Scientific

This is a big one, the Bible is authoritative on theological matters. It is a theological matter that God created the universe, how God created the universe is a scientific matter, you cannot escape this fact. Creationism doesn't provide us any testable hypotheses, it just presents us with this untestable* and immutable object and says, there you happy? This comes down to a misunderstanding of what science is. Science will never, no matter what atheists attest, disprove God. As I just said God is this immutable and untestable thing, there isn't a way to prove or disprove him, that is scientifically viable. So what does this mean? Well personally I hold both that God did it and evolution happened, even to the point that you cannot have a proper understanding of the Universe without a God.

* If God is in all things and in constant providence over creation then we can not set up a "control" experiment in which to test this.

Danger no. 10: Missing the Purpose
Purposelessness only leads to more purposelessness

Obviously someone hasn't read Ecclesiastes recently, here's what the second verse says:

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."

For those who haven't read one of the most brilliant books in the Bible, here's the moral of it; everything has no solid purpose, no way of actually advancing the human condition, but with God, there hopefully is, so trust in God. Our purpose as Christians is so deeply rooted in God that when you theologically come to the conclusion that you can combine evolution with theology, you open the doors to see purpose upon purpose and come to know the Father's heart more.

Death cannot be evil, it is a part of what God has called good.

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This is heresy. No ifs buts or maybes.

The first thing is that Genesis 1 is in Poetic Narrative

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It is narrative history. Heresy again.

Progmonk why are you so intent of squaring up with the atheistic God hating world?

"And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. "

Do you just chuck out this verse too Progmonk y/n?

I don't think God has to breathe, but he can when He wants to convey an action on human terms since His greatest creation is man.

Do I think God literally breathed life into Adam? Absolutely.

jinx25 said:

This is heresy. No ifs buts or maybes.

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Those are some rather strong words, can you point me to verse and chapter? or even a credal statement?
Here's mine:
For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.

It is narrative history. Heresy again.

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Sigh, I'm defending the far more liberal view from TE, also just because something is not prose does not make it non-history case in point:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Progmonk why are you so intent of squaring up with the atheistic God hating world?

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I'm not, I have as much of a difference between the "atheistic God hating world" as you do, we have just decided to agree with them on different points, in denying that belief in the God of the Bible is incompatible with what science tells us about reality I accept what science tells us about the reality, in denying what science says about reality you have to accept that belief in the God of the Bible is incompatible with what science tells us about reality. I prefer the former because to me it is much more of a sting to the "atheistic God hating world"

To paraphrase Paul:
Or is God the God of the Bible only? Isn’t he the God of reality also? Yes, of reality also, since indeed there is one God

"And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. "

Do you just chuck out this verse too Progmonk y/n?

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No, in fact you've yet to prove that I chuck out any verses. However I'll gladly admit to chucking out Tobit, Judith, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, and Baruch if you'd like.

When i read your written words on a page i understand the message you intend to convey. Without outside pressure coercing me to interpret them otherwise i read them for what they are-your words, you wrote down, as YOU intended.

"And God saw the light, that it was good"

"And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good"

"And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."

"And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good."

"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."

"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."


7 times "It was good" and "it was very good" says God. Is death good? Is disease good? Is suffering good? Is "evolution" via natural selection good (mutations killing off the undesirable, the fittest go on, struggle for life)?

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."

Herbivores originally.

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

"Shalt though surely die". Man would have lived forever had he not disobeyed God.

If the bible is reality then mankind using his senses to find things out (science) will align with it. Does science align with it? Its inherent it does because it is what the bible claims to be, reality. Does PERCEIVED science line up with it (big bang, evolution) No.

jinx25 said:

When i read your written words on a page i understand the message you intend to convey. Without outside pressure coercing me to interpret them otherwise i read them for what they are-your words, you wrote down, as YOU intended.

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You may still be bringing preconceived notions to the text.
You may assume that the text is best read from your own cultural background - one basically from heavy roots in modernism and postmodernism and miss the fact that it is rooted in its Ancient Near East thought
You may assume that the text is there to answer the questions that you want answered specifically cosmogony and in doing so you skip over how the text describes the world; its cosmology
You may assume that there is no reason other than "that's how God did it" to the order of creation in the text, when in reality the temple allusions are so strong that they are part of the reason why I discarded a YEC interpretation 5 years ago.

7 times "It was good" and "it was very good" says God. Is death good? Is disease good? Is suffering good? Is "evolution" via natural selection good (mutations killing off the undesirable, the fittest go on, struggle for life)?

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Well I do believe that God works all things together for good, do you not? Also you seem to be operating under the notion that mutations are only ever negative. To me one of the biggest comforts when I look at ToE is the fact that God has always had Christ intended, going back to my passage or maybe let's look further on from my passage:


All things, all sufferings, the entire flow of creation points effortlessly to the point where finally it breathed it's sigh of relief when futility was done away with and Christ was come, glorified again in his resurrection body, we are therefore called not for anything which we have done but by what Christ has done in revealing God's marvellous Grace such that we might be adopted and be sons in the Image of the Son.

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."

Herbivores originally.

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Actually looking it up you want this verse, I take back my stance on that

Genesis 1:30. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so.

I probably should have kept with my current argument of pre-fall theodicy from Job 38-40

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

"Shalt though surely die". Man would have lived forever had he not disobeyed God.

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Not actually apparent from the text, in fact for the most part in the Old Testament death is seen as the ultimate separation of God, I really from my vantage point here in God's Grace (yes Adam and Eve were in God's Grace) out there is death and it is only by Christ that I can be in Grace.

If the bible is reality then mankind using his senses to find things out (science) will align with it. Does science align with it? Its inherent it does because it is what the bible claims to be, reality. Does PERCEIVED science line up with it (big bang, evolution) No.

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There is some of reality contained within the Bible, are there cars in the Bible? No. Does the idea that God is in sovereign control over creation line up with the Bible? Yes.

Have you EVER considered it is literal 7 day creation y/n?

jinx25 said:

Have you EVER considered it is literal 7 day creation y/n?

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I've answered this already:

You may assume that there is no reason other than "that's how God did it" to the order of creation in the text, when in reality the temple allusions are so strong that they are part of the reason why I discarded a YEC interpretation 5 years ago.

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I also want to make clear that atm I only use the moniker Theistic evolutionist in part as an angel's advocate and in part because it is the closest group that I have found to have similar theological beliefs as my own in regards to how to read Genesis (Philis being a noted and quite welcomed exception ). I may have already told you in another thread that probably the closest thing to YEC that I'd go back to is an instant creation in 4004 BC with a 7 day temple inauguration, now seeing as that in my mind is just begging the omphalos hypothesis (blegh) I'm much happier with my God was in his creating period from 14bya to 4004 BC had a 7 day temple inauguration and bestowed his image upon Adam who in some sense perverted it by going against the will of God and that this was rectified through Christ.

Some of your statements sound familiar to what i heard John Polkinghorne say in a debate vs John Mackay. I am interested in the SOURCE of this. What happened 5 years ago? Had you any exposure to the teaching of theistic evolution before 5 years ago? What is it that you PERCEIVED as science SPECIFICALLY?

jinx25 said:

Some of your statements sound familiar to what i heard John Polkinghorne say in a debate vs John Mackay. I am interested in the SOURCE of this. What happened 5 years ago? Had you any exposure to the teaching of theistic evolution before 5 years ago? What is it that you PERCEIVED as science SPECIFICALLY?

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John Polkinghorne is amazing, just saying.

But no 5 years ago was very much the start of my journey, I could see Christ in quite a lot of scripture, but part of it was niggling me as to how the Kingdom of Heaven where worship happens in all places was going back to first principles, because the first I really started seeing the temple imagery that I was seeing in Rev 21-22 was in the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the disconnect was that it should be at least in Gen 1 where I find it because Rev 21-22 mirrored Gen 1, so from that I discarded a YEC view of Gen 1 and tried looking at finding the temple imagery there, at that time I was also having debates very much from your perspective against evolution and then I realised that I didn't actually have any reason to think of the two as in conflict and so it was then that I started looking at both OEC and then eventually TE, mainly because I didn't like the way that OEC quite often tried to fit the science into the Bible where it wasn't or couldn't be. TE I think was also appealing in being a sting of science and the Bible being inline and talking of the same God to atheists, which as I said before is far more likely to be what atheists were arguing against among other things (the Cross is a folly to Atheists...) but it was also something that I wanted to be able to scream from the rooftops and something that I think I can see in you when you say:

If the bible is reality then mankind using his senses to find things out (science) will align with it. Does science align with it? Its inherent it does because it is what the bible claims to be, reality. Does PERCEIVED science line up with it (big bang, evolution) No.

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Another thing that was probably driving this change was the adamant ideas that the only way that God could have made it appear that creation was older than it was was either by changing it at some point or by what has been come to be known in origins theology as the omphalos hypothesis. Now the changing at some point to me was discarded because I was at a point in my belief where if the Bible didn't explicitly say it then it didn't happen, there's no point where I felt I could adequately argue for that. Now the Omphalos hypothesis seemed rather deceptive from the side of God (at this point I was also in an interim point where I was willing to accept day-age) and so that was another reason. So now I was at this stage where I had rejected the last two things that were holding me to YEC as fancies to try and reconcile the Bible to science by twisting science and I wasn't too happy with my day-agism as I was feeling it was doing the same thing to the Bible, so I discarded that as well finding that the only people who were in the same sort of place I was were the TEs that I had been arguing against, I have been a TE proper for probably the past three years and earlier this year I read The Lost World of Genesis One which finally answered and confirmed why I had originally left the YEC interpretation and it was well with my soul.

Philis said:

I'm wondering if literalists agree on the following point:

When God breathed life into Adam he didn't literally breathe. Since God doesn't actually breathe, whatever it was that he did was accomodated to our level of understanding by using something symbolic to us (breathing is symbolic to being alive).

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Of course He did, He is more alive than we are. And Genesis 2:7 tells us a whole lot more than you have heard or seen.

Papias said:

So, miamited - you are saying that God literally breathes, so he has lungs and needs oxygen? So if God walked on the moon, he would pass out and die for lack of oxygen? And you think that when "God speaks", He is literally forcing air out of his literal lungs over his vocal cords? Are all those things made of flesh - down to cells, with nuclei? If so, then do those nuclei contain DNA? If so, what is God's genome probably like? Does it include the gene for, say, sneezing when you see a bright light, as my genome does? Etc?

That's basically what the OP asked. (right, Philis)?

Papias

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Are you made in His image (צלם , tselem ) and likeness ( דּמוּת , demûth) ?

Tom asked:

Are you made in His image (צלם , tselem ) and likeness ( דּמוּת , demûth) ?

First - Tom, welcome to our forum! I hope you enjoy your time here.

To answer - yes, I am. Now, please answer my question:

Which of these people are made in His image and likeness?

A) David Bowie
B) Condolezza Rice
C) A child born with no arms or legs
D) You
E) A child born with no vocal chords
F) Billy Graham

Papias

Papias said:

Tom asked:

Are you made in His image (צלם , tselem ) and likeness ( דּמוּת , demûth) ?

First - Tom, welcome to our forum! I hope you enjoy your time here.

To answer - yes, I am. Now, please answer my question:

Which of these people are made in His image and likeness?

A) David Bowie
B) Condolezza Rice
C) A child born with no arms or legs
D) You
E) A child born with no vocal chords
F) Billy Graham

Papias

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If you read the text correctly, all of them, you do need to separate the sixth day from the eighth day. That discussion will go way beyond the op and over most members of this forum's head.

ptomwebster said:

Of course He did, He is more alive than we are. And Genesis 2:7 tells us a whole lot more than you have heard or seen.

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So God breathes just like we do? What did He do before He made air?

Philis said:

So God breathes just like we do? What did He do before He made air?

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We will never be able to comprehend all that is God.

mark kennedy said:

I'm not disagreeing with anything you said but I'm rather curious. Do you think we are being told that after forming Adam's body God started him breathing or do you think there is a larger meaning? I always thought Adam was just kind of laying there and then took in a big breath of air filling his lungs for the first time. I'm not all that concerned, just curious, what do you think happened there?

Grace and peace,
Mark

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My guess is it was kind of like a CPR thing. When people stop breathing a rescue breath from another can kick start things. My guess is God simply forced some air in through Adam's mouth or nose supernaturally and that got the ball rolling.

My only concern is people drawing the conclusion that if God doesn't physically breath the way we do that we can then spiritualize the entire passage.

ptomwebster said:

We will never be able to comprehend all that is God.

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So you don't know? That's a fair honest answer. You don't actually know if the word "breathe" means that he literally breathes.

Calminian said:

My only concern is people drawing the conclusion that if God doesn't physically breath the way we do that we can then spiritualize the entire passage.

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Why is that a concern?