Bob Ryan: "Are you a literal "virgin-birth-ist"?"
Your question and attitude ignores the many problems honest seekers have with the virgin birth traditions.
(1) Paul wrote decades before our earliest Gospel and Mark is our first Gospel. Neither mention the virgin birth. In fact, Paul calls Jesus a "sperma" of David (Romans 1:3-4) in a liturgical fragment, which would surely instead mention the virgin birth if Paul was aware of or believed in this doctrine. But is it not also problematic that Paul calls the baby Jesus a "sperm?" So honest seekers understandably question whether the doctrine was invented prior to Paul and Mark's Gospel. Nor does John's Gospel, with its high Christology, mention any virgin birth. Why not?
(2) There are serious problems with the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke:
(a) Their 2 genealogies are contradictory.
(b) Both offer contradictory explanations of why Joseph and Mary are in Bethlehem. Luke says they travel there from Nazareth to enroll of the Census of Quirinius. But Quirinius's census was not conducted until over a decade after Jesus' birth. So that can't be the reason for their journey. In Matthew no such journey is even necessary.
(c) Matthew locates Joseph and Mary in a Bethlehem house, whereas Luke has Jesus born in a manger.
(d) And how are the shepherds and magi supposed to find the Christ child?
Matthew gives an implausible answer that the "star" parks over their house! Luke provides no explanation of why the shepherds would go to pay homage to the Christ child, when they are give no directions about how to find Him.
(e) Matthew says that Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt to avoid Herod's homicidal murders of Bethlehem babies, and then move to Nazareth to avoid the danger. But in Luke there is no such danger. So Joseph and Mary gladly take the Christ child to the Jerusalem Temple for a dedication. Then they return to their home in Nazareth, not Bethlehem!
Despite all this, I continue to affirm the virgin birth. But I think you need to acknowledge the serious problems raised by this doctrine that need to be recognized.
Bob Ryan: "a literal "7 day creation-ist"?"
You overlook the serious problems inherent in the story itself, quite apart from the evidence from paleontology and evolutionary research and discovery.
(1) Do you really believe that the repeated phrase "Evening came, morning followed" refer to 24 hour periods in the 3 days prior to the sun's creation on the 4th day?
(2) Do you really believe that God created earthly vegetation a day before He created the sun (1:11-16)?
(3) Do you really believe that the reason we have snakes is because Satan (the tempting Serpent) needed to be punished (3:14)? Are snakes therefore descendents of Satan?
(4) The creation stories claim that humans are created "in the image and likeness of God" (1:26) and then portray "the Lord God walking in the garden" (3:8). Those 2 details convey the impression that God has a body that resembles human bodies. Do you really believe God can be anthropomorphized in this crude manner?
Bob, how deeply have you actually investigated the evidence for an ancient earth and evolution on a massive scale? How many books have you read by secular scientists on this issue? If the anser is none, how can you consider yourself intellectually honest about such issues, if you refuse to research both sides of the question?
Bottom line? I am an evangelical Christian apologist who is sobered and humbled by the task of responding to the honest doubts of secular seekers? We bring reproach to the Gospel if we merely offer dangerously simple-minded answers to bafflingly complex questions.
Do you really believe that woman was created as an afterthought from Adam's rib (2:21-23)?
Do you believe that the sky is a dome that separates the waters of deep space from our oceans?
or do you say that since none of that is reproduced by tiny mankind - in the lab -- then none of it happened "in real history"?
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2+2 = 4 ... is NOT "a matter of interpretation".
God can say something that is accurate, correct, and understandable - and so with "literal virgin birth" and "literal bodily resurrection of Christ" and "literal bodily ascension of Christ" and "literal 7 day creation week"
In the Bible we have this "legal code" -
Ex 20:8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy -
SIX days you shall labor...
For in SIX days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
Gen 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2
By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He
rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made
No such language found in even ONE of evolutionism's 'texts' to state that particular "belief".
As for "the obvious" it is not merely Bible believing Christians that notice it.
Turns out ---
Atheists often don't mind "admitting" to what the Bible says - they simply reject what it says. As in rejecting the virgin birth, the bodily ascension of Christ, the miracles of the bible and in this example they freely admit to what the Bible says - while rejecting it as 'truth'.
Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:
‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of
Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a)
creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood,
are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’
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Romans 1 says that our infinite God has made what we see around us - and that
HIS "invisible attributes are CLEARLY SEEN in the things that have been MADE" -
Obviously atheists would not agree with that statement. Rejecting Romans 1 is a "distinctively atheist" position
=========================== by contrast
blind faith evolutionism believes in a doctrine that goes something like this
"
an amoeba will sure enough turn into a rabbit over time given a talented enough amoeba and a long and talented enough length of time filled with improbable (mount improbable) stories easy enough to tell but they are not science"
So then "Choose" your religion.
