Evidence for God from Science

Jac wrote:
Other than that, I do, of course, think you are right about yom. Ross et al are simply wrong about the history of its interpretation. The word was NEVER interpreted to mean "age" until after the arrival of modern science. OEC is, to put it bluntly, a recent attempt to read current scientific theory back into the original text. There's never been a more obvious example of eisogesis.

Was the age of the earth considered vital to Christian orthodoxy in the early church?
While the days of creation, the age of the earth, and the extent of Noah’s flood were subjects of popular speculation in the early church, they were never treated as critical issues. First of all, not one of these topics was included in any of the early church creeds. In fact, no prominent church doctrinal statement or confessions of faith discussed any of these controversial issues prior to the twentieth century.1

Second, not one of these three issues was ever listed as part of the “rule of faith” (Latin regula fidei), which was a statement of key doctrine. Third, most of the discussion about the age of the earth and the flood occurred as secondary points or illustrations rather than primary topics. The age question was concerned mainly with apologetics, not a literal reading of Scripture. (To be fair, some important works regarding Genesis have been lost, so my statement only applies to the works that still exist.) Fourth, the church was clearly divided on the nature of the creation days, but those rejecting a calendar-day interpretation were never condemned as heretical.

Were the church fathers young-earth creationists?
There is evidence that at least 12 fathers believed the earth to be less than 6,000 years old in their own time and so, in that limited sense, can be considered young-earth creationists.3 The real question, however, is whether or not this meaningfully supports the claims of Mook and other modern young-earth creationists. The answer to that is a strong “no” for two reasons. The first is that the patristics’ understanding of the age of the earth and the days of creation was driven by a variety of concerns other than Scripture, as I described under the previous question. The second is that modern young-earth creationism is a package that contains a lot more than the simple claims made by the early church fathers. In other words, simply finding a popular belief in a young world among early Christian writers is insufficient to support modern young-earth creationist claims.

To clarify this latter point, it is important to delineate modern young-earth creationism from its ancient counterpart. The most important difference is that the modern variety generally elevates the age of the earth and related issues to the level of Christian orthodoxy—not merely a private interpretation. That is a very marked contrast to the early church. The second distinction is that modern young-earth creationism generally teaches that creature mortality began at the Fall and so was not present in the original creation. In other words, there was no animal death prior to sin being introduced by Adam and Eve.4 Moreover, this issue is usually treated as essential doctrine. Scripture, however, is silent on this point. So it is not surprising that the early church fathers wrote almost nothing on pre-Fall animal death. They certainly didn’t see it as vital doctrine.

While the church fathers wrote little about animal mortality, they were notably divided on the closely related question of whether Adam and Eve were created mortal or immortal (prior to the Fall). Bradshaw, for example, notes that at least four fathers (namely Theophilus of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Augustine) taught that the first humans were created mortal.5 So, while some components of modern young-earth creationism can indeed be traced back to the earliest days of the church, the most critical ones cannot. In fact, modern young-earth creationism really began in the twentieth century and so is, ironically, newer than old-earth creationism, which appeared near the end of the seventeenth century.

In fact, modern young-earth creationism really began in the twentieth century and so is, ironically, newer than old-earth creationism, which appeared near the end of the seventeenth century.

The real problem that we're not talking about is that neo has already admitted that he thinks that some parts of the Bible as we have it now are not inspired. The problem, though, is, by what means do you determine which parts are inspired and which are not? He thinks Genesis 1 is not inspired because it is incorrect. So, what . . . if we think a portion is wrong, we just toss it out as not inspired? We may as well say, "I don't like that part, so I reject it as being from God." Liberals who don't believe in miracles could just as well say that all the miraculous parts, then, ought to be tossed out as not really being inspired. And gay activists could just argue that the parts that declare homosexuality a sin are just not inspired, and so on. In fact, then, we have no Bible at all. We just have the parts that we like illustrating what we already believe, in which case, we aren't getting our theology from the Bible so much as we are getting the Bible from our theology.

Beyond that, neo, you are just incorrect and misinformed about how we got our modern Bibles. It has not been re-translated and reedited a million times. The Bible as we have it is substantively the same as the one that Jesus read. The letters of Paul, the gospels, etc., we all have those as they were written (within 99.8% accuracy, if you want the actual number).

You are also mistaken about the genealogies not having any purpose. I highly recommend you read a good critical commentary such as Word Biblical, the ICC, Baker Exegetical, or any other such collections to see what I mean. In any such work you will find that the genealogies perform essential functions in the book as a whole and how the author was conveying his message.

Jac, I know you don't come to conclusions without putting a lot of time into studying something. Have you written anything in detail about how you came to your decision to believe the YEC interpretation of scripture? I'd love to read it. You've certainly helped me see some things I've overlooked before.

RickD wrote:Jac, I know you don't come to conclusions without putting a lot of time into studying something. Have you written anything in detail about how you came to your decision to believe the YEC interpretation of scripture? I'd love to read it. You've certainly helped me see some things I've overlooked before.

PaulSacramento wrote:I have to be honest, that "Yom" ONLY means a 24 hour period is not something I have ever heard or read about before.
That it can mean more is basically agreed upon by virtually every OT scholar.
It can mean a period of time, even a generation.
Now, in the context of Genesis, IF we read the whole text as literal, it seems to imply that it means a 24 hour period since it makes mention of a "there was evening and there was morning".
Of course the issue with that is that, at least in for the first "three days" there was no sun or moon to "gauge" the "evening and the morning".

On a side note, Jac, to you believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch and if so, some or all of it?

• And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

• ” 2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground.

yomim[/], and a more literal translation might be, "at the end of days." This usage of yom in the plural is not at all unique. Yomim is often used to indicate a passing of time. In fact, if OEC were correct, I would expect to see Moses have said yomim ("the first days") and not yom. In any case, it's worth noting that this usage presupposes and is built on the normal use of yom--the passing of time is a passage of days. That is, yom does NOT have a different semantic identity that "day" as in your previous example. This is just another use of the primary usage.

So much for semantic ranges and pragmatic effect. The point, after all the jargon, is that yom may be used to refer to ages, but it never means an age, and if it refers to an unspecific period of time, it does so pragmatically rather than semantically. In short, the word does not mean an "age," and "age" is only an appropriate translation when the nature of the unfolding event is such that the English word "age" is the only way to catch the pragmatic effect of the underlying Hebrew.

Bottom line: the question for us is, "Is yom being used to set the temporal context in Gensis 1, or is it being used to refer to a day?" I think it's rather evident that yom is being used in a normal way. There are absolutely no linguistic markers to indicate otherwise, and later biblical writers took it exactly that way as well. So do did ALL interpreters throughout history until the 17th century. Even those interpreters that OEC advocates point to as not believing the days were literal days read yom to mean a normal, 24 hour day. They simply took those "days" to be symbolic of something else (since they followed a non-literal hermeneutic).

As I said, there's just no evidence for OEC in the text. It's just forced on the text. It's not the biblical view.

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neo, I'll respond to your post later on. Maybe tonight. I'm at work, so if things stay calm--no emergency calls--I might have some time to get to it. But if not, in the next day or so.

Jac3510 wrote:

RickD wrote:Jac, I know you don't come to conclusions without putting a lot of time into studying something. Have you written anything in detail about how you came to your decision to believe the YEC interpretation of scripture? I'd love to read it. You've certainly helped me see some things I've overlooked before.

Not on this particular subject. I have written quite a bit on these boards about my view of Rom 5:12 and Gen 1:29-31. I also recently wrote a full length grammatical study of Rom 5:12 that I'm talking to some journals about publishing.

Beyond that, though, I actually haven't written anything. As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of hours doing an exhaustive analysis of the use of yom. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to redo it from scratch as I don't know that I can get the file back.

Sorry I can't be of more help. I don't consider the YEC/OEC debate all that important so I don't spent a lot of time defending my views here. All I can really point you to are the conclusions I've drawn, such as:

1. Gen 1:29-31 teaches that mankind was originally a vegetarian;
2. Rom 5:12 teaches that death came into the entire creation (not just mankind) when Adam sinned;
3. Both the OT and the NT present the millennial reign of Christ as a restoration of the conditions of Eden and the removal of the curse of death and decay from the world;
4. The use of the word yom in Genesis 1, by any analysis of the linguistice evidence, shows that Moses believed the world was created in six normal days;
5. The word yom was never interpreted as a literal age (in the sense of appealing to the semantic range of the word) prior to the widespread scientific acceptance of a very old historical timeline for this earth and the universe as a whole.

Obviously, OECs disagree with me on every count. I appreciate that. I just think that the evidence is firmly against them. I think that if we are going to start with the belief that the universe really is billions of years old, then we need to accept that the biblical picture is one of a few thousand years created over a 144 hour period and ask what that means about our hermeneutics and what that does to inspiration. What we don't need to do is take a preexisting cosmology to Scripture and reading the Bible in light of that. It just doesn't work, no matter how hard we try. And from an apologetic perspective, I find it just as useless, because no atheist or skeptic is suddenly impressed if you give up YEC anymore than they are if you give up OEC in favor of theistic evolution or miracles in favor of a naturalistic reading of the text. The real issue is strictly and totally what you (and they) do with Jesus. Nothing else matters.

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PaulSacramento wrote:I have to be honest, that "Yom" ONLY means a 24 hour period is not something I have ever heard or read about before.
That it can mean more is basically agreed upon by virtually every OT scholar.
It can mean a period of time, even a generation.
Now, in the context of Genesis, IF we read the whole text as literal, it seems to imply that it means a 24 hour period since it makes mention of a "there was evening and there was morning".
Of course the issue with that is that, at least in for the first "three days" there was no sun or moon to "gauge" the "evening and the morning".

On a side note, Jac, to you believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch and if so, some or all of it?

You misread me. I didn't say yom ONLY means a 24 hour period. I said that when it is used without linguistic qualifications (e.g., absolutely, in the singular, not in a prepositional phrase, no demonstrative pronouns, etc.) it always refers to a 24 hour period. Moreover, I argued that, strictly speaking, even in those other phrases, it does not mean a "long period of time." We're going to get too technical here, but there is a difference in semantic meaning and pragmatic effect . Even if I concede for the sake of argument that "age" is part of yom's semantic range my points above on this regard were related to its pragmatic effect on discourse. Let me give you an easy English example. Take the phrase, "your children." There is little doubt about the semantic range of either of these words, and taken together, it's meaning is very obvious. Now, suppose you said to me,

"You children were a little on the wild side today, Jac." That sentence is rather clear and we all know what it means. Now, suppose I say to my wife (who is the mother of my children),

"Your children were a little on the wild side today, dear." Suddenly, that sentence takes on a new meaning. The "your" in "your children" has a distancing effect. It is surprising to the hearer (my wife) and says a lot more than the words themselves.

Now, all languages have features like that--features that have certain pragmatic impacts. One of the things we do with language is set contexts, and one of the contexts we have to set is the temporal context of any given event. I could simply tell you when something happen, "In 1492, Columbus set sail for America." Or, I could do it another way, perhaps, "In the days of Queen Isabel, Columbus set sail for America." If my hearer knows something about Spanish history, the pragmatic effect of this phrasing is to draw my attention to the personage and rule of Isabel. I'm no longer thinking about an abstract time (1492), but rather about a specific personality. The effect is to tie Isabel's reign to Columbus' discovery.

Now, it so happens that "in the day of" is a rather common way across languages to set temporal contexts. I haven't done a serious study of any languages to see if any don't use that particular mechanism--perhaps it is so widely used because the Hebrews used it and passed it on to us through the Scriptures! What I do know, after all of this, is that yom ("day") does not mean an age. It is used in some cases to set the temporal context of this or that event, and it is the event itself that is the focus of the discussion. That event may be immediate, happening in an instant. That event may be long unfolding, happening over generations. But the duration of the event is determined by the nature of the event itself, not by yom.

Before I leave off this, let me look your own two examples to show what I mean, as these well illustrate my point.

• And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

So here we have a difference in usage of the word based on its semantic range. Yom can refer to the actual period of sunlight; it can also refer the day/night cycle that we traditionally call "day." There is no particular pragmatic effect in either of these. These sentences are much like my first example of "your children." The context makes it very clear which usage of yom Moses has in mind. He defines the first use as the light (so there is no doubt of his meaning; and if that were not enough, he contrasts it to night); the second is used in a perfectly typical sense of a normal day. There is no implication of pragmatic effect here.

• ” 2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground.

The phrase using yom here is "course of time." Important here is that yom is plural: yomim[/], and a more literal translation might be, "at the end of days." This usage of yom in the plural is not at all unique. Yomim is often used to indicate a passing of time. In fact, if OEC were correct, I would expect to see Moses have said yomim ("the first days") and not yom. In any case, it's worth noting that this usage presupposes and is built on the normal use of yom--the passing of time is a passage of days. That is, yom does NOT have a different semantic identity that "day" as in your previous example. This is just another use of the primary usage.

So much for semantic ranges and pragmatic effect. The point, after all the jargon, is that yom may be used to refer to ages, but it never means an age, and if it refers to an unspecific period of time, it does so pragmatically rather than semantically. In short, the word does not mean an "age," and "age" is only an appropriate translation when the nature of the unfolding event is such that the English word "age" is the only way to catch the pragmatic effect of the underlying Hebrew.

Bottom line: the question for us is, "Is yom being used to set the temporal context in Gensis 1, or is it being used to refer to a day?" I think it's rather evident that yom is being used in a normal way. There are absolutely no linguistic markers to indicate otherwise, and later biblical writers took it exactly that way as well. So do did ALL interpreters throughout history until the 17th century. Even those interpreters that OEC advocates point to as not believing the days were literal days read yom to mean a normal, 24 hour day. They simply took those "days" to be symbolic of something else (since they followed a non-literal hermeneutic).

As I said, there's just no evidence for OEC in the text. It's just forced on the text. It's not the biblical view.

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neo, I'll respond to your post later on. Maybe tonight. I'm at work, so if things stay calm--no emergency calls--I might have some time to get to it. But if not, in the next day or so.