He makes use of the creation tale to make the point that a once-weekly rest is part of God's design. You read into this what you want to see.
How do you know that a "once-weekly rest is part of God's design"? Does it really say that, or are you reading into it what you want to see? Maybe God didn't mean a literal week.
I'm certainly no expert, but I always thought context was important. I am simply amazed that you are accusing someone else of reading into scripture something that isn't there when you are the one suggesting that the Bible doesn't really mean what it says.
Don't be ridiculous. Does it really destroy God if He put forth a plan to make the earth what it is by having all of existence explode out of nothingness in a Big Bang? It's actually more complex and majestic how order comes from this giant seemingly-random cosmos and results in human beings who are then invited to commune with God.
You can't get "more complex and majestic" than the creation of an entire universe ex nihilo. Any "evolutionary" change beyond that would pale by comparison.
Theistic evolution makes God out to be a fool who didn't have a distinct plan or purpose for His creation. He just guided things along as they naturally changed. That, of course, isn't the case. He knew what He was doing long before time began.
By the way, we aren't too worried. Theistic evolution doesn't destroy God; it merely reveals the profundity of human ignorance.
How do you know that a "once-weekly rest is part of God's design"? Does it really say that, or are you reading into it what you want to see? Maybe God didn't mean a literal week. Good question. We have quite a tradition, even older than Christianity which establishes the Sabbath rest as good for us humans. And of course, Jesus says it was made for man, not for God.
But you do point out, I think unintentionally, that understanding a text is often guided by the tradition we are familiar with. There is no such thing as the text outside of tradition.
You can't get "more complex and majestic" than the creation of an entire universe ex nihilo. Any "evolutionary" change beyond that would pale by comparison.
By that measure, the entire creation of existence, the Fall of Adam, the lessons learned in the various Jewish exiles, the coming of Christ and the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the subsequent spreading of the Gospel of Salvation to the entire world is kind of a lot of trouble for God as well.
He seems to like having this entire history played out in our lives. He could have simply willed from the beginning that we all live with Him in Eternal Bliss forever. Those of us who believe believe that that is our destination, right? So why did He bother with these intermediate steps? Isn't He ultimately the cause of our Salvation?
Why this whole complex and majestic storyline? Does it diminish Him that we are not now in Heaven?
Theistic evolution makes God out to be a fool who didn't have a distinct plan or purpose for His creation. He just guided things along as they naturally changed.
LOL. The fact that a plan takes time to unfold is not evidence that God did not plan it and is instead reacting to events in "realtime." LOL.
Before Jesus came to earth to redeem us, was God just sitting around twiddling His Thumbs and wondering what to do next?
SD
Soothing is a bit off....The rest is not just plain rest, but rest IN CHRIST, and not just on the Lord's Day, but every single day.