WAB said:I confess to not being the smartest guy around, and so would you please explain to me how something can be true but not factual?
Or... how can something (anything) be factual but not true? After all, for the one postulation to be true (or factual?) the reverse must be as well.
Fact is a sub-set of truth. All facts are true. But all truth is not necessarily fact. A poem or a story can express a deep truth that may be impossible to present as an observed and measured fact.
When we come to the first chapter of Genesis, the question is not how long the days were. It is what kind of account the Genesis account is.
Is this story intended to be a reportorial documentary of the history of creation in a chronological sense? Or is it intended to be a theological account presented in a mythical and symbolic framework?
In the first case the days must be a form of measurement of time analogous to the days on a calendar, although calendars had not been invented yet. They must be part of the earth's history.
In the second they are not part of the earth's history any more than the days in Bridget Jones' Diary. They are days in the story and have a theological function in the story.
Both ways of looking at the story assert that it is true. The first also asserts it is a fact. But this assertion runs counter to what we know to be fact from the study of the earth itself.
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