Creation 6 day literal? Or Not

[Jedidiah]

You mean the guys who argue for creationism and then leave after they've succeeded in winding the evolutionists up?

Love your post, but I was referring to Deism. Belief in a god who created them went on to new pastures.

[Jedidiah]

some people think that....
...even if you don't take EVERYTHING literally,
....in other words, if you can tell some things are metaphor (Jesus isn't a literal chicken with feathers and wings, and He is not a literal door with a doorknob)

...anyway, some people think that if there is some point that they don't take literally, and you do, then, you must take EVERYTHING literal.

It is quite reasonable to take the Bible literally recognizing that all sorts of language is used and interpret that language in accordance with its intended meaning. Interpreting metaphor, etc., is still literal interpretation.

[oxmixmudd]

some people think that....
...even if you don't take EVERYTHING literally,
....in other words, if you can tell some things are metaphor (Jesus isn't a literal chicken with feathers and wings, and He is not a literal door with a doorknob)

...anyway, some people think that if there is some point that they don't take literally, and you do, then, you must take EVERYTHING literal.

You make a good point. The real distinction comes with texts that on the surface could be taken either way, and traditionally were taken literally. This is the issue with Genesis.

But there is a certain hypocrisy that exists. Because there are a lot of OT references that we just assume are NOT literal that fit just as well into the category Genesis does when looked at as literature apart from modern knowledge. And, in fact, these passages were NOT always assumed to be metaphor, but only came to be taken as non-literal over a great deal of time (centuries) and which during the conflict represented just as difficult a struggle as the billions of years and evolutionary development of life do today. Or perhaps not really as difficult, but similar. And of course I refer to some of the elements of the Galileo affair. We, in the 21st century simply can't comprehend how the opposers of Galileo could possibly be taken seriously. We have spacecraft and pictures take from space. We have massive telescopes. And it is so obvious to us that one can't take the passages 'literally' that these people DID take literally. But in their day, there was no reason not to take them literally, and so they read them in a straight forward way and came to the conclusions the Bible was teaching something it wasn't. They also thought that IF the Bible could not be read straightforwardly, if statements about the sun rising, or the earth being immovable, do not mean what they mean simply and straightforwardly, then that would cast a poor light on the inspiration of scripture, on the divine element in its construction.

And over time we came to deal with these issues. Partly of necessity, and partly because new generations were born with a different view of the world and with no stake in the old readings. THEY could see there was no implicit requirement that we interpret Joshua's long day as implying the Earth does not rotate. THEY were fine with the idea this was phenomenal writing and God was not teaching us about nature with those words.

And there is very little different today. We have to deal with science which challenges our interpretation. And some can't see God as inspiring scripture if the universe is more than 10,000 years old. And eventually those voices will die away. There is no real theological NEED as it relates to the Gospel for Genesis 1 to be science.

Likewise, there have always been and always will be the voices that take this sort of hyper-literalism as justification for unbelief. They adopt the same assumptions about inspiration as the YEC side, but instead of acting from faith and insisting this means all of science is wrong, they think this proves the Bible is uninspired and there is no reason to put faith in God or Jesus or anything taught by scriptures about God.

To remain a follower of Christ one must have faith. YEC's apply their faith, I think, erroneously and sometimes destructively. But they are still living by faith. Non- YEC's also have faith. But that faith does not introduce a stumbling block related to ancillary issues outside the Cross and the Resurrection, and so I think that is a better approach. But the cross will always be difficult for the unbeliever, and no one ever comes to God without faith. There is no scientifically objective proof the Bible is God's word or that Jesus rose from the dead. Especially proof that can satisfy the mind of a skeptic apart from the application of faith. And I don't expect there ever will be.


Jim

[JimL]

You make a good point. The real distinction comes with texts that on the surface could be taken either way, and traditionally were taken literally. This is the issue with Genesis.

But there is a certain hypocrisy that exists. Because there are a lot of OT references that we just assume are NOT literal that fit just as well into the category Genesis does when looked at as literature apart from modern knowledge. And, in fact, these passages were NOT always assumed to be metaphor, but only came to be taken as non-literal over a great deal of time (centuries) and which during the conflict represented just as difficult a struggle as the billions of years and evolutionary development of life do today. Or perhaps not really as difficult, but similar. And of course I refer to some of the elements of the Galileo affair. We, in the 21st century simply can't comprehend how the opposers of Galileo could possibly be taken seriously. We have spacecraft and pictures take from space. We have massive telescopes. And it is so obvious to us that one can't take the passages 'literally' that these people DID take literally. But in their day, there was no reason not to take them literally, and so they read them in a straight forward way and came to the conclusions the Bible was teaching something it wasn't. They also thought that IF the Bible could not be read straightforwardly, if statements about the sun rising, or the earth being immovable, do not mean what they mean simply and straightforwardly, then that would cast a poor light on the inspiration of scripture, on the divine element in its construction.

And over time we came to deal with these issues. Partly of necessity, and partly because new generations were born with a different view of the world and with no stake in the old readings. THEY could see there was no implicit requirement that we interpret Joshua's long day as implying the Earth does not rotate. THEY were fine with the idea this was phenomenal writing and God was not teaching us about nature with those words.

And there is very little different today. We have to deal with science which challenges our interpretation. And some can't see God as inspiring scripture if the universe is more than 10,000 years old. And eventually those voices will die away. There is no real theological NEED as it relates to the Gospel for Genesis 1 to be science.

Likewise, there have always been and always will be the voices that take this sort of hyper-literalism as justification for unbelief. They adopt the same assumptions about inspiration as the YEC side, but instead of acting from faith and insisting this means all of science is wrong, they think this proves the Bible is uninspired and there is no reason to put faith in God or Jesus or anything taught by scriptures about God.

To remain a follower of Christ one must have faith. YEC's apply their faith, I think, erroneously and sometimes destructively. But they are still living by faith. Non- YEC's also have faith. But that faith does not introduce a stumbling block related to ancillary issues outside the Cross and the Resurrection, and so I think that is a better approach. But the cross will always be difficult for the unbeliever, and no one ever comes to God without faith. There is no scientifically objective proof the Bible is God's word or that Jesus rose from the dead. Especially proof that can satisfy the mind of a skeptic apart from the application of faith. And I don't expect there ever will be.


Jim

What was genesis 1 attempting to explain, that the world was created by God, or the way in which the world was created by God? If the explanation as to the way in which the world was created is a fable, then in what sense can that be said to be inspired by God. It could be argued that the fable was inspired by the authors belief in God and creation, but not, i think, that it was inspired by God. So sure, the authors meant to relate their belief in God, and their belief in God inspired the genesis fable, but how from that you come to the conclusion that the fable, inspired by their belief, is itself the word of God, i don't know.

[JimL]

Meaning that even a Christian metaphoralist may agree with the literalist that the words put to page were inspired by God.

Oh, so you mean to say that the metaphoralist believe that the authors made the story up, but God inspired them to do so? So it could just as well have been their belief in God, and not God himself, that inspired them to concoct a fable expressing their belief.

[sfs1]

What was genesis 1 attempting to explain, that the world was created by God, or the way in which the world was created by God? If the explanation as to the way in which the world was created is a fable, then in what sense can that be said to be inspired by God.

Not seeing the connection between the premise and the conclusion. If Genesis 1 is a fable (or something along those lines) inspired by God, then it was inspired by God in the sense that it was, you know, inspired by God. In the same way that Tom Sawyer is a novel written by Mark Twain, in the sense that it was written by Mark Twain.

It could be argued that the fable was inspired by the authors belief in God and creation, but not, i think, that it was inspired by God. So sure, the authors meant to relate their belief in God, and their belief in God inspired the genesis fable, but how from that you come to the conclusion that the fable, inspired by their belief, is itself the word of God, i don't know.

What does the fable aspect have to do with your question? If Genesis was intended to be a strictly literal, scientific account of how the world was created, then it could still be argued that it was inspired by the authors' belief in God, not by God himself. Ditto for the case that Genesis was intended to be a fable, or a work of theology, or a cookbook. The two questions (genre or intent on the one hand, inspiration on the other) seem to have nothing to do with one another. Unless that is you start with some notion that God is only capable on inspiring literal descriptions of mechanical processes, which strikes me as simply bizarre.

[Adrift]

Oh, so you mean to say that the metaphoralist believe that the authors made the story up, but God inspired them to do so? So it could just as well have been their belief in God, and not God himself, that inspired them to concoct a fable expressing their belief.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

[oxmixmudd]

What was genesis 1 attempting to explain, that the world was created by God, or the way in which the world was created by God? If the explanation as to the way in which the world was created is a fable, then in what sense can that be said to be inspired by God. It could be argued that the fable was inspired by the authors belief in God and creation, but not, i think, that it was inspired by God. So sure, the authors meant to relate their belief in God, and their belief in God inspired the genesis fable, but how from that you come to the conclusion that the fable, inspired by their belief, is itself the word of God, i don't know.

sfs1 answered this quite well I think.

When we speak of Handel's Messiah as being inspired, many take that to mean God had a hand in the writing of it. That is what Handel himself thought of his work. But we can sit back and analyze the music and concoct all sorts of reasons it was only the work of men. We can draw comparisons to other melodies common at the time. Certainly the text already existed.

And yet, it is a work unequaled in history as a mechanism for communicating the raw scriptural telling of the story of the Christian Gospel. It has an element that seems beyond what mere mortals can produce, and is often attributed such. When heard by the King of England, he rose to his feat so moved was he, prompting the world to rise to its feat on virtually every performance of the "Hallelujah" from that day to today.

But to an atheist it can't be inspired by God. And so it's just another great work by another great artist.

But it's inspiration, perceived out of faith, or doubted out of skepticism, is - as sfs1 points out - independent of its characteristics as a piece of music. We can't discern why it moved the King, and virtually ever listener since. We can't discern why it is performed countless times every Christmas and every Easter when there are so many other works which treat the same subject. There are so many works that are objectively just as good, maybe better. Yet, somehow, it rose above them all.

Objective, mechanistic evaluations will never accurately assess what it is and why it is 'inspired'.


Jim

[Kbertsche]

But there is a certain hypocrisy that exists. Because there are a lot of OT references that we just assume are NOT literal that fit just as well into the category Genesis does when looked at as literature apart from modern knowledge. And, in fact, these passages were NOT always assumed to be metaphor, but only came to be taken as non-literal over a great deal of time (centuries) and which during the conflict represented just as difficult a struggle as the billions of years and evolutionary development of life do today. Or perhaps not really as difficult, but similar. And of course I refer to some of the elements of the Galileo affair. We, in the 21st century simply can't comprehend how the opposers of Galileo could possibly be taken seriously. We have spacecraft and pictures take from space. We have massive telescopes. And it is so obvious to us that one can't take the passages 'literally' that these people DID take literally. But in their day, there was no reason not to take them literally, and so they read them in a straight forward way and came to the conclusions the Bible was teaching something it wasn't. They also thought that IF the Bible could not be read straightforwardly, if statements about the sun rising, or the earth being immovable, do not mean what they mean simply and straightforwardly, then that would cast a poor light on the inspiration of scripture, on the divine element in its construction.

Exactly. This is why John Lennox starts his book "Seven Days that Divide the World" with a retelling of the Galileo affair. It illustrates the major interpretive issues of the present-day age-of-the-earth controversy, but without the emotional attachments.

We all tend to unconsciously read the biblical text through our own cultural and historical lenses. We must make a conscious effort not to do this, but to try to read the text in the cultural-historical context of the original author and audience. The Galileo affair shows us what happens when we ignore the original cultural-historical context. This error is being repeated today in many YEC claims.

[rogue06]

You make a good point. The real distinction comes with texts that on the surface could be taken either way, and traditionally were taken literally. This is the issue with Genesis.

But there is a certain hypocrisy that exists. Because there are a lot of OT references that we just assume are NOT literal that fit just as well into the category Genesis does when looked at as literature apart from modern knowledge. And, in fact, these passages were NOT always assumed to be metaphor, but only came to be taken as non-literal over a great deal of time (centuries) and which during the conflict represented just as difficult a struggle as the billions of years and evolutionary development of life do today. Or perhaps not really as difficult, but similar. And of course I refer to some of the elements of the Galileo affair. We, in the 21st century simply can't comprehend how the opposers of Galileo could possibly be taken seriously. We have spacecraft and pictures take from space. We have massive telescopes. And it is so obvious to us that one can't take the passages 'literally' that these people DID take literally. But in their day, there was no reason not to take them literally, and so they read them in a straight forward way and came to the conclusions the Bible was teaching something it wasn't. They also thought that IF the Bible could not be read straightforwardly, if statements about the sun rising, or the earth being immovable, do not mean what they mean simply and straightforwardly, then that would cast a poor light on the inspiration of scripture, on the divine element in its construction.

There are numerous examples of various portions of the Bible being taken in an overly simplistic and woodenly literal manner that history has clearly shown was the improper way to read the text.

For instance, because Paul had declared that the entire world was hearing the gospel (Rom. 1:8; 10:18; 16:25-26; Col. 1:6, 23; cf. I Tim. 3:16)^[1] later theologians used these statements as "proof" that it was impossible for humans to be living on the other side of the earth (the antipodes). They reasoned that since Paul had clearly stated that the gospel was preached "unto the ends of the world^[2]" and in that nobody had ever gone to the other side of the earth this meant that there could be no humans over there.

Lactantius, the noted African Christian apologist against Stoic thought at the beginning of the 4th century and one of the most reprinted of the Latin Fathers, was content to mock believers in the possibility of people living on the opposite side of the planet writing:

"How is it with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to our footsteps? Do they say anything to the purpose? Or is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? or that the things which with us are in a recumbent position, with them hang in an inverted direction? that the crops and trees grow downwards? that the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth? And does any one wonder that hanging gardens are mentioned among the seven wonders of the world, when philosophers make hanging fields, and seas, and cities, and mountains? The origin of this error must also be set forth by us. For they are always deceived in the same manner."

He called them people who have "erred" and "consistently persevere in their folly and defend one vain thing by another."

St. Augustine was considerably less amused. In his De Civitate Dei ("City of God") he declared that

"Therefore we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers did not go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist; hence that the supporters of this geographical doctrine give the lie directly to King David and to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost."

A few centuries later Isodore of Seville declared that "We cannot believe in the existence of a populace called 'Antipodae'." And not too long after we see that St. Boniface sought papal censure against another missionary in Germany for teaching that people lived at the antipodes among other things.

On a lesser scale the Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius (considered the founder of modern human anatomy) touched off a firestorm of controversy in 1524 over the "Adam's Rib Controversy" when he contested Church doctrine by demonstrating that the human males and the females have an equal number of ribs in his De humani corporis fabrica ("On the fabric of the human body in seven books") in supposed contradiction of Genesis 2:21.

While he was never persecuted for this, or like Galileo forced to face the Inquisition (despite claims of some later historians), it still appears that Vesalius, under pressure from the Catholic Church (where some there called him the "Luther of physicians" and appear to claim he was an atheist), felt compelled to leave Italy to become medical advisor to the kings of Spain, Charles V and Philip II.

Today such notions and the arguments backing them seem quaint and more than a bit silly but nevertheless there was serious opposition based upon them.











1. And to a lesser extent Psalm 19 especially verse 4

2 Irenaeus continued in this vein writing that, "Now the Church, spread throughout all the world even to the ends of the earth... even though she has been spread over the entire world," and "Anyone who wishes to see the truth can observe the apostle’s traditions made manifest in every church throughout the whole world" (Against Heresies, 1.10.1, 1.10.2, 3.3.1-2).

[Carrikature]

Seems awful redundant. Aren't all creationists theistic?

They might all be, but they don't all have to be.

[Omniskeptical]

Exactly. This is why John Lennox starts his book "Seven Days that Divide the World" with a retelling of the Galileo affair. It illustrates the major interpretive issues of the present-day age-of-the-earth controversy, but without the emotional attachments.

We all tend to unconsciously read the biblical text through our own cultural and historical lenses. We must make a conscious effort not to do this, but to try to read the text in the cultural-historical context of the original author and audience. The Galileo affair shows us what happens when we ignore the original cultural-historical context. This error is being repeated today in many YEC claims.

You mean the claim that the text is geocentric, because that's how you make Calendars at first.

[Omniskeptical]

You mean the guys who argue for creationism and then leave after they've succeeded in winding the evolutionists up?

They get wound up, because of me. I'm flattered.

[Omniskeptical]

For instance, because Paul had declared that the entire world was hearing the gospel

Just one problem, kosmos doesn't mean universe or even universe as in earth in Greek. περιφορά or perifora, seems to be the word translated universe in 1st Clement, but actually means the globe, though the shape was morelike cylinder. And as you may or may not have guessed, there is no greek word for Earth in the New Testament, and it would be reasonable to conclude that no known greek-word for spherical world object.