Creationism and Theology

PloverWing · Jun 28, 2019

Hammster said:
That could be valid. Do you have scripture that you could use to make this argument?

Can you clarify the request for me? Do you want me to make an argument from Scripture that our sense perceptions more-or-less reflect the world outside of ourselves as it actually is? (That might be hard -- it's a philosophical question that the ancients might not have raised.) Or do you want an argument from Scripture that God does not set out to deceive us? (That might be a little easier.)

hedrick · Jun 28, 2019

The topic proposed by the OP was what the theological implications are of creationism. I would argue that there aren't any necessary implications to Gen 1 -3 being historically true. But it at least permits traditional concepts of original sin that would be implausible with evolution. And since creationism is generally part of a whole set of traditional approaches to scripture that include those concepts, it's not reasonable to see a whole set of ideas about human nature and original sin as effectively being part of creationism.

Hammster · Jun 28, 2019

PloverWing said:
Can you clarify the request for me? Do you want me to make an argument from Scripture that our sense perceptions more-or-less reflect the world outside of ourselves as it actually is? (That might be hard -- it's a philosophical question that the ancients might not have raised.) Or do you want an argument from Scripture that God does not set out to deceive us? (That might be a little easier.)

Honesty, I’m not sure.

Let’s start with the second.

SavedByGrace3 · Jun 28, 2019

As a TE, I think many want to fit us into the Darwinian model as if we accept it all. Not here. the are issues with both YEC and TE. I just find TE the more likely.

Hammster · Jun 28, 2019

Didaskalos said:
As a TE, I think many want to fit us into the Darwinian model as if we accept it all. Not here. the are issues with both YEC and TE. I just find TE the more likely.

What theological issues do you have with the six day creation view?

Jamsie · Jun 28, 2019

Hammster said:
But that’s not the topic.

You've confused me as I thought any discussion of TE involved both creation and age of the earth? My simple points were that as for age of the earth the appearance of age renders Ro. 1:20 somewhat pointless, so too Psalm 19. (the understanding and knowledge would be deceptively false) Would we not agree that the knowledge we have of nature is predominately derived by science? (So that as noted above understanding and knowledge involve science)

As for Genesis 1 as it relates to evolution it is simply the suggestion that verse 9,11,20,and 24 imply a process. In the same way by various thoughts when can attempt to dismiss science so one can present reasoned thoughts on the interpretation of Genesis. Further a comparison of Gen. 1 to Gen. 2 must involve some sorting through to attempt to bring them into agreement.

If this is off topic, I apologize ...

Johan_1988 · Jun 28, 2019

Firstly the very cornerstone of Evolution was to exclude God from creation and only explain in terms of natrual occurring and naturally explainable phenomena. Basically bunch of things happened by chance to form life on earth and I think we all as Christians can agree that this is not true.The problem I have with TE is that it doesn't take God by his word and tries to sidestep the issue of a 6 day creation. Now there is another explanation of an old earth that can be reconciled with the bible and not leave the 6 day creation look to like foolishness. There is a gap in the book of Genesis:

"Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
GAP
"Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

The thing is ,what caused the earth to be without form and void? If we presume that God created it perfect.One clue is that the earth was covered with water and dry land and water were separated:

"Gen 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so."

An earth covered with water suggests a flood like the flood in Genesis chapter 6. Another scripture comes to mind:

Jer 4:23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
Jer 4:24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
Jer 4:25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
Jer 4:26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger.

Obviously the earth was in a state of judgement in Genesis chapter 2. So all ancient fossil records including the dinosaurs can be accredited to this unknown history of the earth. A world that was and not known to us and God then recreated it in the 6 day creation.

Pavel Mosko · Jun 28, 2019

Resha Caner said:
I don't buy that argument. Ancient people weren't naive children. In some ways they understood the natural world better than a city-dwelling 21st century person. Evolution is a very ancient concept, which, like many ancient concepts, didn't get a scientific footing until recently.

Had God wanted to express evolution to Moses, he could have simply said something like, "And on the 6th day the fish crawled out of the water and God made it a beast of the land." Not too hard.

I'm not talking about that, but if God created the universe via some kind of Big Bang singularity he might need to simplify things for the folks back then.

Resha Caner said:
While the Bible has a fascinating array of such things, it's risky to take that line of thought too far - to make the existence of cultural symbols the sole explanation for their presence in the Bible. For example, each plague of Egypt attacked a specific Egyptian god, showing God's power was greater than the supposed Egyptian deities. That doesn't serve as proof the plagues never happened.

I think that its important it actually illuminates things. Back around 93-94 I knew this guy, a friend of a friend. He hung around my group of friends a lot because he was a room mate of one guy. He was quite a bit older than we were. Back when I was in my twenties. He was some kind of theosophical occultist when I was a nondenominational Protestant Charismatic (former Lutheran by the way). He really took umbrage at my best friend who influenced me to join that movement. My friend really taunted him on things because they both mutually disrespected each other. This guy was very condescending and patronizing but book wise back then on Christian subjects he had more formal schooling than we did. My best friend got his goat one day on something. So this guy was plotting his revenge. We use to meet twice a week to watch our favorite TV shows back in the day namely X files and Babylon 5.

On this one occasion the guy was trying to bait my best friend. "In the Pentateuch God appears as fire, why is that?"

He eventually answered his own question. (Because he claimed Abraham back then was a polytheist and the head god of Ur was a fire God). Now I don't believe his conclusions, but he was the first person to put me on the rabbit trail of this sort of thing. I decided to view hostile people like him with the saying of Benjamin Franklin (concerning the press). When he stated "our critics are our friends because they show us our faults".

Basically the insight I realized was that God was speaking in ancient idioms and symbols. The mind set of the ancient Hebrews was different than that of our own. God appeared as fire because those people automatically associated that with the divine because of their cultural heritage etc.

Pavel Mosko · Jun 28, 2019

Tree of Life said:
I don't deny that Genesis 1-2 is polemical against Egyptian mythology. But as far as I've studied this, I've never seen how these polemics would lead us away from a YEC understanding of creation.

Well Genesis has been looked at as a microcosm in different ways. Near Eastern religions have their creation account tied to the founding of their religion. In this case it is handy liturgically speaking having the pattern of your worship started at the literal beginning of time.

Tree of Life said:
I know biblical Hebrew and I use it fairly frequently in sermon preparation. What limitations do you think exist in Hebrew that would lead us to interpret Genesis 1 in a non-literal way?

Well how many words in ancient Hebrew exist that measure time? Is it only Yom? I know modern Hebrew added a second one, possibly for year.

SavedByGrace3 · Jun 28, 2019

Hammster said:
What theological issues do you have with the six day creation view?

Faith is the evidence of things not seen.
Not the denial of things that are.

Bible Highlighter · Jun 28, 2019

I was fortunate to never have believed in Theistic Evolution. Once I became a Christian, Young Earth Creationism is what always made the most sense both biblically and scientifically. I really cannot see any weakness in Young Earth Creationism except for the fact that many Young Earth ministries make their ministries more about Young Earth Creationism than about Jesus. In my opinion, every article they write should point back to Jesus Christ and in following Him. But it doesn't. It always Young Earth Creationism that is being preached (as if it was the gospel).

PaulCyp1 · Jun 28, 2019

Biological evolution causes all kinds of problems for unauthoritative manmade theologies. Jesus Christ founded one Church, said it was to remain one, and promised that one Church "The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth", and "Whatsoever you bind upon Earth is bound in Heaven", and "He who hears you hears Me". In other words, God Himself promised His one Church that its teaching would always be true, accurate, and authoritative. Therefore, as you would expect, the teaching of that one Church never conflicts with natural truths revealed by science, including biological evolution. Truth cannot conflict with truth. True scientific facts can however conflict with misinterpretations of the Bible, which are prevalent in all Protestant denominations (which is why the teaching of each denomination contradicts the teaching of the others).

Hammster · Jun 28, 2019

Didaskalos said:
Faith is the evidence of things not seen.
Not the denial of things that are.

Okay. And?

Monk Brendan · Jun 28, 2019

Resha Caner said:
As I understand evolution, the answer would be: kinda, sorta, maybe.

And just how could there be "kinda, sorta, maybe" to a first mann and first woman with evolution?

SavedByGrace3 · Jun 28, 2019

Hammster said:
Okay. And?

Since the op is looking for theological issues..I hesitate to move into the scientific issues. I just do not think God expects us to deny some self evident facts we can see all around us. If the earths' age should measured in the thousands of years, then God appears to have gone to great lengths to fool us into thinking it is much older than that.

FireDragon76 · Jun 28, 2019

2PhiloVoid said:
Great question, Resha! I know that from my own experience as an evolutionist, it has been difficult (to put it mildly) to attempt to reconcile the physical fact of a long evolutionary history with the much shorter, genealogically laden, Hebrew representation of human history we find in the Bible. So, for me, the main issue has been dealing with the main bug-a-boo of "if Adam didn't exist, then what was Jesus needed for?" and related kinds of questions.

Other than that, I'm busting my chops to try to think of some other major theological hurdle I had to jump over in order to accept Christianity and the Bible as God's Work. I guess there was also the question of whether and how we have something like a soul ... and all that.

Of course, liberal and Neo-Orthodox Protestants have never understood original sin in an historical sense. And it is possible to understand Jesus death in other ways, other than satisfaction for human sins to an angry God.

FireDragon76 · Jun 28, 2019

Tree of Life said:
I think the biggest problem that YECs have with other positions is that it seems like they don't take Scripture seriously. This is not universally the case, but I think we'll see on this thread many people dismiss the early chapters of Genesis as uninformed Sumerian mythology. And the problem with this is that there is no good method of determining what parts of the Bible we decide to take seriously and what other parts we might dismiss as myth. We ourselves become the ultimate arbiter. We accept what is acceptable to us and reject what appears to us to be absurd. That's a dangerous place to be.

Only if you assume that humanistic biblical scholarship has to give absolute, certain answers to everything.

Hammster · Jun 28, 2019

Didaskalos said:
Since the op is looking for theological issues..I hesitate to move into the scientific issues. I just do not think God expects us to deny some self evident facts we can see all around us. If the earths' age should measured in the thousands of years, then God appears to have gone to great lengths to fool us into thinking it is much older than that.

Why would say that He’s fooling?

Tree of Life · Jun 28, 2019

Pavel Mosko said:
Well Genesis has been looked at as a microcosm in different ways. Near Eastern religions have their creation account tied to the founding of their religion. In this case it is handy liturgically speaking having the pattern of your worship started at the literal beginning of time.

So because other ANE religions have creation myths, we may dismiss Genesis 1 just as easily as we dismiss those?

Well how many words in ancient Hebrew exist that measure time? Is it only Yom? I know modern Hebrew added a second one, possibly for year.

There are lots of words used to measure time. They have words for "age", "year", "day", "week", and even phrases used to measure 3-hour spans. It would not be hard at all to say that God created the world over a long period of time if that's what the author wanted to convey.

Tree of Life · Jun 28, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
Only if you assume that humanistic biblical scholarship has to give absolute, certain answers to everything.

I don't believe we can give absolute, certain answers to everything. But I do believe that we can know some things because God has made them known. Because of the information that we have in Genesis 1, we can know a good deal about the beginning. We can know enough to say that God created everything within a space of six days by his word and all was good.

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