I look at things this way. What we are trying to do is reconcile the findings of modern science and Genesis. There are many ways to do this:
The Gap theory, like you suggested.
The God and Science article position
The Morning and Evening as an Idiom
Etc.
If someone can put forth a reasonable and arguable position, to bridge modern science and Genesis (other then to fit them into a 24 hour times 7 framework) - I’m all for it.
I do have great respect for folks like Paidion, Jason and Davo. They are very good at putting forth positions and defending them. And to understand my mannerism, you need to be familiar with the historical Eastern Orthodox, Holy Fools tradition.
For what we are discussing now, just give me some reasonable theories and ideas, to reconcile the findings of modern science and Genesis (other then to fit them into a 24 hour times 7 framework) .
Build me an escalator to Mt. Everest and I’m happy.
I see only one contradiction between mainstream science and a literal reading of Genesis 1-3. There is nothing in the text literally read to contradict the Big Bang, billions of years, the evolution of life, and all the rest. The one exception is the biological evolution of mankind from animals. The text literally says that God created Adam from the dust of the ground and Eve from Adam’s side. One would have to understand the three verses of Genesis 2:7, 21-22 in a non-literal manner to believe in the biological evolution of man. The other 77 verses of Genesis 1-3 literally and plainly read do not contradict mainstream science.
It is not widely known that early 20th-century American Christian fundamentalism did not have any religious problems with billions of years, a local Flood, and even biological evolution. Its one beef was with the biological evolution of man. Read The Great Monkey Trial by L. Sprague de Camp (1968) for a thorough history of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Also consult the 90 essays (published from 1910 to 1915) collectively entitled The Fundamentals (from which we get the term “fundamentalism”). They, too, oppose only the biological evolution of mankind. In other words, Fundamentalism originally had things figured out. It recognized the plain truth that the only pronouncement of modern science at variance with the plain words of Scripture is the biological evolution of mankind.
The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (1961) muddied the waters by positing readings of the Scripture that are anything but plain and literal. They were in part inspired by the Seventh-Day Adventist George McCready Price, who tried to give scientific foundations to some of the purported visions of his prophetess, Ellen G. White (who died in 1915). Modern young earth creationism is an unusual outgrowth of Mrs. White’s trances.
Just to be clear on a point. I think you will find that the modern day Seventh Day Adventist Church (and its members), tend to distance themselves, from the visions and prophesies of Ellen G. White.
Anyway, as an aside, the Protestant site Patheos, had some interesting articles today:
While it is indeed true that many contemporary Seventh-Day Adventists distance themselves from Mrs. White’s visions, George McCready Price (1870-1963) did not. Here is a major writing of Mrs. White’s about the Flood: whiteestate.org/books/pp/pp8.html
I’m not a big fan of Mrs. White. It’s unfortunate that someone as late as 1963 - still paid her homage. If we look at Seventh Day Adventists, they used to be considered on the fringes by mainstream Protestant, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox groups. In fact, I have read that a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, can’t marry someone from the Seventh Day Adventist church - in the Seventh Day Adventist Church (is this correct, Geoffrey?). It’s all to do the prophetic revelations of Ellen G. White. There’s even a Wiki article entitled Criticism of Ellen G. White. What I found particularly interesting in the second article, is the mental illness section (which would also encompass organic illness). The modern Seventh Day Adventists have distanced themselves from her and are more accepted by mainstream Christian groups these days.
Suppose we were coming to join the Seventh Day Adventists. How would we determine if Ellen G. White was a real prophet? It’s an interesting thing to ponder. I think you will find a real prophet, is always 100% right (can anyone name me a case, where a true Old or New Testament prophet - prophesied anything incorrectly?). Take my Protestant Christian mom - now deceased at 92.5 - having the lifelong gift of prophesy. She never “advertised”, “charged money”, nor “sold tickets”, but she was always right. And she told me as a Boy Scout teenager, to take an umbrella to a parade. None of the weather TV or radio services forecast rain. And I got ribbed by fellow scouts. Until there was a downpour, in the middle of the parade. And I was the only one - with an umbrella.
P.S. Here’s an interesting prayer article I found today.
It is of course best for a member of the Orthodox Church to marry a fellow member of the Orthodox Church.
A member of the Orthodox Church is reluctantly allowed through economia (but certainly not encouraged) to marry a non-Orthodox Christian who A) has received trinitarian baptism, B) agrees to be married in the Orthodox Church, and C) agrees to have all their children baptized, chrismated, and raised in the Orthodox Church.
Obviously, probably only someone not too serious about his own denomination would agree to marry an Orthodox on those terms.
I think Seventh-Day Adventists receive trinitarian baptism, don’t they? If so, an Orthodox could conceivably marry a Seventh-Day Adventist.
What is “Trinitarian Baptism”? Does it refer merely to the baptizer pronouncing the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”?
Peter’s word to the Jews (who were responsible for the death of Christ) cut them to the heart. When they asked, “Men, brothers, what should we do?”, Peter replied as follows:
Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forsaking of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Much later, Peter again instructed those who had received the Holy Spirit to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
Acts 10:48 And he [Peter] commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ…
If it is absolutely necessary to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, then Peter must have gotten it wrong. Is that your position?
How do you reconcile your statement, with the responses of the** Got Questions** and **God and Science **sites? Why are you right and why are they wrong? I would add that God and Science would go for an old earth and more than a 24 hour times 7 creation framework. **Got Questions **would look at a literal 24 hour times 7 framework.
Or should I just chalk this up, to the problems of Sola Scriptura and everyone’s individual spin on Biblical exegesis? A universe where things like a Full Pretetist position and everything is Divine Mind, from Mary Baker Eddy - can have equal credence and Biblical exegesis:?:
To be fair, both Davo and MBE, do a great job (of presenting and defending) - their respective Biblical viewpoints.
Sorry… BUT you don’t know that at all. It’s fine to believe that BUT you cannot provide that as “scientific fact”. Zombie’s cartoon below shows your position on this perfectly…
The FACT that you can claim geological anomalies to bolster one position BUT THEN will not acknowledge or afford same in terms of the possibility for a geological anomaly for the other makes all your claims highly questionable.
For those who don’t mind having their thinking nudged… these short video clips below shed a broader light on Genesis-Creation account.
The Orthodox faith is nothing if not the faith of Peter.
The problem is those pesky heretics. For two thousand years they have incessantly distorted the faith. Perhaps a good name for heresy in general would be Legion, since it seems they have countless ways of distorting things. They take good old terms, empty them of Orthodoxy, and fill them up with heresy and proclaim, “Hey, we believe in _______ too!”
Consequently, the Orthodox Church has had to ever more rigorously define its terms. This was the main task of the Nine Ecumenical Councils (the first held in A. D. 325 and the ninth in A. D. 1341-51).
Let me give a hypothetical example. Suppose someone in the circle of assemblies you attend, Paidion, legally changed his name to “Jesus” and started claiming that he was Jesus of Nazareth returned to planet Earth from outer space. Further suppose that he taught that all of the miracles recounted in the Bible were accomplished by highly advanced nanotechnology beamed down from the starship that was orbiting the earth, commanded by the astronaut named Yahweh. Said astronaut came down to earth in a small space ship, met a fetching young Jewish girl named Mary, impregnated her the typical way, then returned to his starship. Jesus, of course, was resuscitated by Yahweh’s nanotechnology and beamed up to the mother ship accompanied by some of its crew. Let us further suppose that this Jesus started getting a lot of followers in your circle of assemblies and baptized them “in the name of Jesus Christ”. Of course, when he says Jesus Christ, he means himself: Jesus Christ Spaceman, biological son of Captain Yahweh of the Federation Starship Celestial 3.
I would imagine your circle of assemblies would have to address this issue. They’d have to make sure that those baptized were NOT being baptized in the name of our spaceman Jesus, but in the name of the biblical Jesus. Perhaps, “You are baptized in the name of the biblical Jesus Christ.” Then some of the spaceman’s followers would say, “Peter said to baptize in the name of Jesus Christ. Full stop. Are you saying that Peter was wrong?”
In short, like the heretics before him, Spaceman Jesus would take good old terminology and fill it full of his nonsense. (And if you think Spaceman Jesus would be stranger than any historical heretics, then I would recommend reading about the 2nd-century Gnostics. Those guys were supremely weird. Ol’ Spaceman Jesus would be kind of tame compared to some of them. Or consider the numbskull(s) implied in I Corinthians 12:3 who thought that the Holy Spirit inspired them to curse Jesus. My goodness.)
I don’t doubt that sexual sins also contributed. I further suspect that these sexual sins resulted in no or far fewer births, which would also lead mankind towards extinction: Hyper-violence and non-procreative sexuality would drive mankind towards the brink of non-existence. The Flood, then, was God’s means of saving mankind from itself.
Possible, but without more Biblical data that may conclude more than is possible with the evidence given. Seems like you are wrestling to vindicate God’s motives in the flood by your conclusion. However, I am convinced that God is still both righteous and loving in the flood even if humanity was not on an explicit course for extinction.
What actually led me to the conclusion that pre-Flood mankind was on a path to extinction (which, I admit, is only a theory of mine that is quite possibly incorrect) was the following line of thought: “Wow. Look at some of the unspeakable wickedness in history. Consider the intricate and systematized tortures and massacres of people in the 20th century, yet God did not wipe us all out for that. Pre-Flood mankind, to merit getting wiped-out, must have been even worse than any of the monsters that we read about in history. Think of the worst, most grotesque crimes of the Soviets, or of the Nazis, or of serial killers, or etc. These crimes must pale compared to those committed by pre-Flood mankind. Pre-Flood mankind must have been so unrelentingly and thoroughly wicked that we literally can’t even conceive of the depths of sin and depravity that they reached.”
And, of course, if people are bad enough, more people will be murdered than are born, resulting in eventual human extinction. It’s more a math/probability thing than anything else.
That statement is not necessarily true. Could be, but not necessarily.
God promised to never flood the world again, but mankind could not keep a promise to never be as bad again. The history of redemption and grace shows a progression and stages. God purposefully employed methods to demonstrate their failure when compared with the cross. For example the flood and the Old Covenant did not change one heart, but the New Covenant did. So now we have a more thorough understanding of the depth of our sin problem and better yet a better understanding of the God’s grace at the cross.
I think it is the most natural reading of the Flood account, but it is not the only possible one. Perhaps God sent the Flood against people who were less wicked than others, and if so He clearly had His reasons. I think this is unlikely, though. When I first read the book of Genesis at age 10, it seemed to me that the text was presenting a pre-Flood mankind far more wicked than at any other time or place in history.
I find it interesting that only once in the 40,000+ year history of mankind has God virtually destroyed all of mankind. That makes me think that era was unique. I suspect that if any man with even a modicum of decency were to travel back in time and walk unseen amongst mankind in the years immediately before the Flood, he would wish nothing more than for them to be eradicated–for goodness’ and mercy’s sake. While it is conceivable to imagine loving mothers trying vainly to hold their crying babies up above the rising waters of the Flood, I think the natural reading of the story would be one of vile, drowning females who aborted half of their offspring and sacrificed the other half on pagan altars.
