I spend a lot of time thinking about this and thought I would throw this out for your thoughts.
Posted on 09/20/2016 7:25:39 AM PDT by Gamecock
BFL
I spend a lot of time thinking about this and thought I would throw this out for your thoughts.
“BFL”
==
Yup. Too early for me to be waxin’ theological.
I take the same position Sproul does. Especially since Einstein’s theory of relativity says time is relative and we are reading Gen 1& 2 from God’s perspective.
Thanks for posting.
I personally, have no trouble at all in unifying both accounts.
“If the universe turns out to be 6,000 years old, that fact will not ultimately conflict with what Scripture actually teaches. If the universe turns out to be billions of years old, that fact will not ultimately conflict with what Scripture actually teaches. We do not need to renounce Christianity in either case.”
This.
When Scripture was first written down, the scribes really had no objective idea what they were seeing in the sky. They could not sensibly write about objects which, thousands of years later, scientists deduce are light-years away and billions of times larger/longer/older than anything a mere ancient goat-herder had means to comprehend. They could only depict in words what they could make sense of, and wrote precious few pages thereabout.
Reality is.
Scripture is.
The two do not conflict.
The core of our faith is that they _cannot_ conflict.
_WHY_ they do not conflict may not be yet within our ability to comprehend.
Do not destroy one’s faith here-and-now by condemning one’s knowledge of pre-historical events.
What is astounding to me is how the science of astronomy has demonstrated, beyond all reasonable doubt that the universe had a beginning, it is expanding at a rate that allowed for the formation of stars and galaxies, and it expanded at a rate that allows for life to exist on earth (which is a whole other subject - the absolute fine tuning of the universe and our solar system that allows for life on earth to exist).
The design of the universe, the design of all life from the molecular level to fully developed creatures screams out to a designer. The existence of an ordered universe from which we discover the laws of physics - the speaks to a design.
As the Scripture says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” It is evidence staring us in the face, in fact, one must really work at not seeing it.
**What is astounding to me is how the science of astronomy has demonstrated, beyond all reasonable doubt that the universe had a beginning, it is expanding at a rate that allowed for the formation of stars and galaxies, and it expanded at a rate that allows for life to exist on earth (which is a whole other subject - the absolute fine tuning of the universe and our solar system that allows for life on earth to exist).**
Sproul used to carry on a spirited dialogue with Carl Sagan on creation. Sproul kept pushing the question “What happened one millisecond before the Big Bang that caused all of creation to occur?” Sagan never answered the question.
Recommended reading ... “Darwin’s Ghost ... The Origin of Species Updated” by Steve Jones. Cover page addition by New York Times reads ... ‘There are few better or more entertaining accounts of the evolutionary process in print today than Darwin’s Ghost.”
As the article said,
"If the universe turns out to be 6,000 years old, that fact will not ultimately conflict with what Scripture actually teaches. If the universe turns out to be billions of years old, that fact will not ultimately conflict with what Scripture actually teaches." Graphically, the relativistic time concept can be illustrated like this:
Both views are perfectly acceptable to me. In fact, I believe both views are correct -- just as both Genesis and the observations we are allowed to make are both correct.
(FWIW, my personal expectation is that when we finally observe Creation from the viewpoint of Heaven -- we, too, will see Creation's timespanpan as a matter of days...)
The Protestant view was if the Bible is silent on it, so should we. Dr. Sproul position is correct. We just don’t know how old the earth is and when creation happened.
I like to quote Job where God basically asks Job, “Where were you when I created the universe?” So I don’t want to be too dogmatic about it because... I wasn’t there.
Great comment, P-M.
The ancient Hebrew word for day is yom. Yom is also used for age, as in era, epoch etc...
The hebrew word “was” in gen 1:2 can also translate to “became” which explains geologic and environmental (etcetera) happenings such as fossils, mountain ranges. Tectonic movement, erosion, ice ages and all that other empirical evidence that we (the humankind) have deduced, uncovered, postulated, thought about and discussed throughout millennia.
And that’s the simplest way that I can put it.
The debate over the age of the universe and the days of Genesis has also played out as numerous books have been written in the last century and a half by Reformed theologians presenting evidence for one view or another.....In short, Reformed Christians are still sorting through the issues.
One thing I have noticed in discussions about creation, is how often folks, especially folks arguing for 6X24 hour day creationism, seem unable to describe the opponents position accurately.
FWIW, I tend to favor the framework interpretation.
re: “Sproul used to carry on a spirited dialogue with Carl Sagan on creation. Sproul kept pushing the question “What happened one millisecond before the Big Bang that caused all of creation to occur?” Sagan never answered the question.”
I think Sagan is one who believed the universe was eternal, that it never had a beginning. Some atheists do NOT want to contemplate that the universe had a beginning. If there is a big bang, then there must be a Big Banger! Nothing cannot create something from nothing.
I recommend two excellent books, “Stealing from God” by Frank Turek, and “I Don’t have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.
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