Question For LCMS

Tigger45 · Aug 1, 2021

Two quick points.

As already mentioned belief in YEC is not a requirement of LCMS lay members.

And second of all the LCMS sermons I’ve heard, which is many, the subject has never come up. If it did once in a while it wouldn’t be a problem for me anyhow but if it was constantly pushed I’d grow tired of it.

AnneFaye · Aug 1, 2021

Hope1960 said:
One thing as a relatively new Lutheran (LCMS) I’ve been struggling with is the distant starlight problem. For a Catholic, which I used to be, this isn’t a problem at all because Catholicism is open to an old earth, billions of years old.
How do you, from the LCMS, explain starlight that is billions of light years away, can be seen on earth; an earth that is supposedly 6000 years old?

Daniel9v9 and I have discussed this before, I started a thread here about it too, but I’d like to discuss it again.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to just return to the Catholic Church.

My approach might sound rather simple-minded, but basically I just don't even try to comprehend these earthly matters, my human brain is just not powerful enough to force everything make sense. I let it go and consider it just one of those things (of many) that maybe in afterlife I'll understand, maybe not. And I'm just at peace with that. Sometimes (or maybe oftentimes would be more apt) there just won't be pat answers. (IOW, you won't find me in any heated debates about it, I'm just...chill about it lol).

Might help you to know that my son struggled mightily with this very topic when he was new in his faith. He's a born scientist, born natural skeptic. Sky high IQ (that's not a brag, I think it's highly relevant to what I'm about to say...) And now? He's a handful of months away from getting his Master's Degree in biology, is stronger than ever in his faith (LCMS Lutheran) and is at total peace with there being so many unanswered questions such as these.

How did he get there? I don't know but I imagine it involved lots of time in prayer. (FTR he also says people outside of and unfamiliar with the insular and cutthroat world of the scientific community put way way too much faith in science, and believe me, he's in a place to know why lol).

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

FaithT · Aug 1, 2021

AnneFaye said:
My approach might sound rather simple-minded, but basically I just don't even try to comprehend these earthly matters, my human brain is just not powerful enough to force everything make sense. I let it go and consider it just one of those things (of many) that maybe in afterlife I'll understand, maybe not. And I'm just at peace with that. Sometimes (or maybe oftentimes would be more apt) there just won't be pat answers. (IOW, you won't find me in any heated debates about it, I'm just...chill about it lol).

Might help you to know that my son struggled mightily with this very topic when he was new in his faith. He's a born scientist, born natural skeptic. Sky high IQ (that's not a brag, I think it's highly relevant to what I'm about to say...) And now? He's a handful of months away from getting his Master's Degree in biology, is stronger than ever in his faith (LCMS Lutheran) and is at total peace with there being so many unanswered questions such as these.

How did he get there? I don't know but I imagine it involved lots of time in prayer. (FTR he also says people outside of and unfamiliar with the insular and cutthroat world of the scientific community put way way too much faith in science, and believe me, he's in a place to know why lol).

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Thanks! Food for thought.

FaithT · Aug 1, 2021

AnneFaye said:
My approach might sound rather simple-minded, but basically I just don't even try to comprehend these earthly matters, my human brain is just not powerful enough to force everything make sense. I let it go and consider it just one of those things (of many) that maybe in afterlife I'll understand, maybe not. And I'm just at peace with that. Sometimes (or maybe oftentimes would be more apt) there just won't be pat answers. (IOW, you won't find me in any heated debates about it, I'm just...chill about it lol).

Might help you to know that my son struggled mightily with this very topic when he was new in his faith. He's a born scientist, born natural skeptic. Sky high IQ (that's not a brag, I think it's highly relevant to what I'm about to say...) And now? He's a handful of months away from getting his Master's Degree in biology, is stronger than ever in his faith (LCMS Lutheran) and is at total peace with there being so many unanswered questions such as these.

How did he get there? I don't know but I imagine it involved lots of time in prayer. (FTR he also says people outside of and unfamiliar with the insular and cutthroat world of the scientific community put way way too much faith in science, and believe me, he's in a place to know why lol).

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Well, science is always changing their theories and people put faith in each theory that comes ups, so there’s that

FaithT · Aug 1, 2021

Tigger45 said:
Two quick points.

As already mentioned belief in YEC is not a requirement of LCMS lay members.

And second of all the LCMS sermons I’ve heard, which is many, the subject has never come up. If it did once in a while it wouldn’t be a problem for me anyhow but if it was constantly pushed I’d grow tired of it.

It’s never come up in any sermon I’ve heard, either.

LizaMarie · Aug 3, 2021

I personally am an Old Earth Creationist (I'm WELS) although I keep quiet about it.
(I'm a layperson.)

FaithT · Aug 3, 2021

LizaMarie said:
I personally am an Old Earth Creationist (I'm WELS) although I keep quiet about it.
(I'm a layperson.)

I read something on AIG today that’s put me back on the fence, called “Magnetic Field: Confirmation of a Young Earth”. More food for thought.

Roymond · Feb 1, 2022

Hope1960 said:
One thing as a relatively new Lutheran (LCMS) I’ve been struggling with is the distant starlight problem. For a Catholic, which I used to be, this isn’t a problem at all because Catholicism is open to an old earth, billions of years old.
How do you, from the LCMS, explain starlight that is billions of light years away, can be seen on earth; an earth that is supposedly 6000 years old?

Daniel9v9 and I have discussed this before, I started a thread here about it too, but I’d like to discuss it again.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to just return to the Catholic Church.

The LCMS has ceased to be Lutheran on this point! How we look at Genesis is not a Confessional issue, it is an adiaphoron. The truth is that theologians down through church history have looked at Genesis as various things, sometimes history, sometimes allegory, sometimes another type of writing, and they weren't considered unorthodox -- and that includes Lutheran theologians.
The Synod's official statement on this subject cannot bind your conscience because it has no Confessional backing. If you want to believe what some ancient rabbis did, that the first Genesis Creation account tells us of a universe ancient beyond comprehension and an Earth old beyond counting, that's your choice, not just because the Synod shouldn't have ever stated a position (and by so doing imported radical reformation theology!) but because the scriptures don't tell us! Remember that the first three days have no sun, which those ancient rabbis noted and called them "divine days" because the only measure of time then was God Himself -- and God's days are as long as He wants them to be.
And if anyone presses you on this, ask them where in the Confessions the LCMS is given the authority to bind the beliefs of Christians to a single interpretation that the church never taught.

Roymond · Feb 1, 2022

Hope1960 said:
I just feel like I’m grasping at straws to make the LCMS teaching fit with science. My pastor knows I believe in an old earth and the other day I said I was on the fence about it but I’m back to the old earth belief.

If I were in your place I would mention to the pastor that ancient scholars, back before Galileo ever heard of a telescope, examined the Hebrew of Genesis and concluded that the universe began as something smaller than a grain of mustard (i.e. inconceivably small) and grew rapidly, that the universe was ancient beyond comprehension, and that the Earth was old beyond human imagining. They weren't trying to make Genesis fit science, because science as we know it hadn't started yet; they were trying to grasp what the inspired Hebrew text meant. But then I've devoted many hundreds of hours of study to just that topic -- what the first Creation story meant to the original audience -- so I would be confident about it.
Just remember what Martin Luther told the Holy Roman Emperor and his bishops: "unless you convince me by plain scripture" -- and the scriptures don't claim to tell the age of the Earth! (And even though Luther believed the Earth was only around 6,000 years old, he noted that other Christians disagreed, and he didn't judge them for it!)

Roymond · Feb 1, 2022

Hope1960 said:
I keep trying to c&p things to show you, but my I-pad won’t let me.
But I read an article from Dan Kreft who said that the distant starlight problem also goes for old earthers, too, due to cosmological inflation.

Kreft is wrong -- distant starlight is only a problem to those who don't understand physics. Yes, due to cosmological inflation it isn't nice and straightforward, but you have to remember that it's because of the starlight we in fact see that scientists formulated the idea of cosmological inflation!

Roymond · Feb 1, 2022

Hope1960 said:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=icc_proceedings

Creative, but so is the idea that the Spirit hovered/meditated over the face of the Earth for billions of years.

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