Just a quick comment about the term “Old Earth” without chasing down its source. As I understood it when posted it was a question about reconciling the geological information about the age of earth with the Biblical description of creation. It was a scientists asking a theologian.
According to the Biblical description man was the last to be added and the previous creations were sequenced in days. I don’t know what the latest scientific estimation of the earth’s age is but I think it is in the 100s of millions or even billions of years. Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance.
To me, that is just another scientific non-starter in the dispute about the presence of God in the creation. Others say not to take Genesis literally, and I don’t, but I think this is just as good an explanation.
With man being created after the table was prepared for him, how is that process any different from the previous miracles of creation? Do we ask how God made light, water, earth, time, space,etc.? The scientific difficulty is in unraveling the system that God created so that we might understand and utilize more of it.
Well it's those pesky "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." words in Genesis that is the problem.
"Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance."
'Old Earth' adherents would like the problem to 'disappear into irrelevance' so that man's word could be reconciled to God's Word; but it is easy to recognize a poor argument. And comparing man's claim of billions of years vs the Biblical claim of ~ 6,000 years with eternity is just a poor argument.
"To me, that is just another scientific non-starter in the dispute about the presence of God in the creation. Others say not to take Genesis literally, and I don’t, but I think this is just as good an explanation."
The real argument is Biblical accuracy vs the accuracy of the word of men and, as the Word says, "Let God be true and every man a liar."
Well it's those pesky "...and there was evening and morning, Day X..." words in Genesis that is the problem.
"Regardless, with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance."
'Old Earth' adherents would like the problem to 'disappear into irrelevance' so that man's word could be reconciled to God's Word; but it is easy to recognize a poor argument. And comparing man's claim of billions of years vs the Biblical claim of ~ 6,000 years with eternity is just a poor argument.
"To me, that is just another scientific non-starter in the dispute about the presence of God in the creation. Others say not to take Genesis literally, and I don’t, but I think this is just as good an explanation."
The real argument is Biblical accuracy vs the accuracy of the word of men and, as the Word says, "Let God be true and every man a liar."
I'm not sure I'm following you here, dear MNR. Maybe we could begin with the estimated ages of the universe and the Earth according to best science.
"Best science" gives the age of the universe as ~13.7 billion years; of the Earth, ~4.6 billion years.
Evidently Bishop Usher's estimate of 6,000 years for age of the Creation does not correspond to these figures. And this would be so, even if we take the scriptural insight that "a day is as a thousand years to the Lord" to heart. On that basis, the Creation would be 2.2 billion years old....
But I do not believe that the biblical observation that "a day is as a thousand years to the Lord" is to be taken literally. It is no magical conversion formula that we humans can use to gain an understanding of "divine time," as it were. Indeed, it seems to me the statement is intended to show only that a timeless God's "experience" of Time (the measure here being how we humans experience time) is perfectly inaccessible to human reason, for the simple fact that humans are finite, contingent creatures, and God is eternally Creator and ground and sustainer of Being, Who, as such, absolutely stands outside of all imaginable categories of time that human beings can conceive of.
I am of the mind that God's revelation to us by Holy Scripture bears a deep correspondence to the Creation He made — the "Book of Nature." I believe that the two cannot contradict each other.
Which is why I think Bishop Usher fans need to get back to the drawing board....
To your observation, "with the concept of eternity in mind, going both backward and forward, how is a billion years any different from a day, even in the horizontal realm? Each would just be specs on a horizontal timeline and even those would eventually disappear into irrelevance," I would simply say that there is not a single thing that God ever made that is "irrelevant."
Don't get caught in the "time trap" — especially the one that proceeds along the "horizontal" exclusively. [Interesting that you conceive of this line or extension as "time reversible."]
It seems to me God ever works along the vertical extension, not the horizontal one....
Just some stray thoughts, FWIW.
Thank you so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!