Hello And thank you for your answers Christy!
If we’re told 7 days in Genesis, with no indicator of it not being a literal 7 days and God seemingly defining his terms as such, and God uses the Genesis 1 account as his basis for Sabbath rest after 6 days of work in the 10 Commandments, what grounds is there for interpreting it, or believing God took longer than that?
My understanding is that the Hebrew word (‘yom’) interpreted in English as ‘day’ is really a word for an indeterminate period of time, that period being solely by its context. Since we are talking about the very creation of the universe, and the first time in all of scripture that it is used, there is no other future context that applies. The ‘days’ in Exodus 20 (and Deuteronomy 5) are analogous days.
Hello Roger!
I would love to see where you get the idea of a daily renewed creation from. I know that he sustains his creation (Heb. 1), showing grace and mercy upon the righteous and the unrighteous alike by maintaining the breathe within their lungs and providing for their needs (I believe Job 39(?)-41 explains this clearly). The quote from the Psalms you made says nothing about renewal, but in context seems to be referring to a day of salvation.
Jesus does the work (will) of His Father (John 4:34ff), that is making him known and bringing salvation to the lost. This is not continued creation (creating) work other than the creating of new hearts (Ps 51:10; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eze. 36:26).
“Are you really seriously ready to give up on the Bible, because the length of time for Creation does not agree with human knowledge?”
I’m not sure where this thought came from… I am in no way going to give up on the Bible. Rather, I believe that this “human knowledge” that you are referring to is wrong because it is in contradiction to what the Bible says. I believe that science, when not done from the foundation of what Scripture says (broad as it may be), is exactly that… human and not of God. I let my understanding of “Special revelation” (God’s word, living and written) dictate my understanding of general revelation. Scripture and what I believe to be God’s word must come first over human understanding.
So, you could say that I am ready to give up on human knowledge because the length of time it holds to does not agree with the Bible.
Forgive me if I am mistaken, but your last response didn’t seem to actually answer my question.
I don’t know what you mean by “no indicator of it not being a literal 7 days” or “God defining his terms.”
The indication that the passage is not a literal description is not found in the semantics of the word day. That was my point. It’s found in the structure of the whole passage, where the 6 day week frames the establishment of three realms in the first three days, and then puts governors in those three realms on days 4-6. Then on the seventh day, the day of rest (which I believe was already part of the Jewish culture when the Genesis account we have was finalized, making it a useful allusion to something already understood, not establishing something new) we have this significant comparison of the rest after a week of work to the rest of a deity in the temple of the cosmos signifying his rule over the order he has established. We have to consider the clearly intentional literary structure of the passage, the intentional repetition of numbers that were considered sacred and symbolic (3s and 7s). The first sentence has seven (7x1) Hebrew words. The second, has fourteen (7x2) words, the end of the account at the beginning of chapter 2 had thirty-five words (7x5). “God” is mentioned thirty-five (7x5) times, “earth” occurs twenty-one (7x3) times, and “heaven/firmament” also twenty-one (7x3) times. There are multiple chiasmic arrangements. That all indicates to me this is not a journal entry. It’s something else. It’s literarily pretty complex, full of intentional, artistic decisions about structure, word choice and sentence length. A good commentary will bring out some of the features that are obscured by translation.
There is intertextuality between the Law and Genesis and I don’t think that it’s necessarily true that the Israelites learned to have Sabbath by reading Genesis. I think the form of Genesis that we have was finalized during the exile and was reinforcing the Law. I don’t believe Moses sat down at a desk with some papyrus and composed the Pentateuch in the form we have. There have clearly been multiple contributors, redactors, and compilers working on it throughout Israelite history, so we might have a disconnect there.
Except it’s not. Take that debunked assertion elsewhere, Dale. 
That’s what the RTB people want you to believe, but it’s been soundly spanked by Hebrew scholars.
But it’s a bad grammatical argument, not a matter of “what I see in the words.” They were saying that because yom can be used in an idiomatic expression that loosely translates “back in the day,” then the word day has a secondary sense that means ‘era.’ That’s terrible linguistics. Just because bucket can be used in an idiomatic expression that means die, doesn’t mean the word bucket means death sometimes and we should include death as one of the available senses of bucket. That isn’t at all how idioms work. Idioms by definition are not calculable by the sum total of the meaning of the words in them, they have a composite meaning as a whole phrase. The word yom in Genesis does not appear in the idiomatic expression that can mean era. There is nothing about the available senses of the word by itself that leads to the interpretation “indefinite period.”
What do you mean by “good”? The Hebrew words describes what is beneficial and pleasing. Not Platonic perfection. Is what is “good” by definition unable to change?
EDIT: Wow, I didn’t realize the question was so old. My answer is probably useless now, and so not very “good.”
It demonstrates the consensus. 
Although they would have been much closer than us, especially if you agree with many who feel the final editing was done in the exile or shortly afterwards.
I don’t think Walton thinks we cannot understand the text, it is just that if we approach it with a 21st Century viewpoint, we are not going to understand it properly. While you can rightly say the same holds for the 1st century readers, it then brings to focus that God is communicating timeless truths in the story, and those truths are not scientific ones, or historical ones, but are theologic truths telling us about God, who he is and what our relationship is to him. It also tells of our relationship to the rest of creation.
Good discussion above, and I think most of your points were addressed in ways I would agree with. I can sympathize with your position, as I can remember having a similar concern but with a different answer.
To me, I came to realize that the world was truly ancient, that we are in a heliocentric solar system, the earth is not flat with 4 corners, and a host of other scientific facts that conflict with a literalistic interpretation of Genesis and the Bible. If both the Bible and observed reality were true, then there must be a way to integrate them, and the literalistic interpretation is wrong as it does not do that. While I cannot claim to have all the blanks filled in, the approach by BioLogos with evolutionary creationism is the best fit I’ve seen.
Blessings to you and on your journey along life’s path.
My first recipe for chili was good. It is even better now.
Why would “good” imply “unchanging?”
Isn’t “day” something else in Genesis 2.4b, the beginning of the second creation story?
Paul was not perfect. He presented a view, but he was not infallible.
Sin exists. It does not matter how it came to be. It only matters that it separates us from God and Jesus is the one who reconciles.
There is an indicator that it is not literal.
The second creation story has creation all occurring in one day, and creation has a different order and method in the second creation story.
This is a good 4 minute Bible Project video that traces the themes of temple, rest, and rule from Gen 1-2, through Israelite history, to Jesus, the Church, and the New Creation. There are lots of the same images and numbers repeated and this looks to me like an intentional literary device. It’s another way we know the creation week is not a literal timeframe, just like we know Langston Hughes’ poem is not about a literal stair climb.
Science and Scripture class at Houghton College, Dr. Ransom Poythress presented various approaches to creation among Christians, including the Young Earth view, the Old Earth view, and the Theistic Evolution view.
Grace and Peace,
Hugh Wessel
Marseille, France
@Luke.R, certainly you are saying that our salvation is based on the truth of a particular explanation by Paul of how Jesus saves?
Jesus died for the sins of humankind. Why does that require an original Man named Adam which means in Hebrew “humankind?” God did create humans and God revealed to us that humans sinned against God. God also reveals to us how everyone sins against God, and in particular how we sin against Jesus.
It is not false, but it is not absolutely true. Let us assume for argument that God created the universe some 13.8 billion years ago. UowwouldhaveGodcommunicate4dthis to the Hebrews, who did not even have numbers, only letters of their alphabet to represent a,b,c,d, etc. They did not have a number for a thousand, let alone million or billion.
So God did communicate that the universe was created out of nothing, an idea that is very important, but foreign to our experience. But God did not have the language to tell the Hebrews that is was13.8 years ago, nor is that exactly accurate if that is what you are looking for.
The Bible is not a book of science and yet you criticize it even though it foresaw the Big Bang thousands of years before science came up with this. The Bible is a book of ethics and theology, but you do not criticize it because the NT corrects the OT.
You said that the Creation was complete. Jesus said the Father Creator has not completed His work. I chose to follow Jesus. The Father is still working to complete God’s work. You said that Jesus does not do the work of creating, but John 1:1-3. “Through Him/Logos/Jesus all thing were made.”
God does not do for God’s people what they can do for themselves. That is why God gave us both science and Jesus Christ. Do not refuse either of God’s gifts.
This is the day that the Lord has made…
The “second creation narrative” is not explicit that it all occurred in one day. You’re reading that into it.
The text of the second creation story is quite clear that man was created in the day that God created the earth and the heavens.
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6 but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So, the second creation story puts the creation of man in the same day as creation of the earth and the heavens. But the first creation story puts the creation of man on day 6.
And the second creation story says man was created before plants had sprung up and before animals were created.
These differences are certainly evidence, right from the Bible, that we are not to take the early chapters of Genesis as literal history.
Ah, yes. You are correct.
That’s the kind of “day” that I don’t think I would ever take to mean a literal day.
[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:2, topic:44495”]
Romans 5 makes it clear that each of us owns our own sin. “…because all have sinned…”. We are not punished because of one person’s choice thousands of years ago."
Luke R., Merv is promoting Pelagianism. Pelagius taught that human beings were born innocent, without the stain of original or inherited sin. Pelagius believed that Adam’s sin did not affect future generations of humanity. Pelagianism contradicts many Scriptures and scriptural principles.
According to Pelagianism, only our own sins are imputed to us (rather than both our sins and Adam’s). Spiritual and eternal death can only be activated by one’s personal sins. Even our physical death is not the result of Adam’s sin, as his sin was not transmitted to us
Yet, the Bible tells us that we are sinful from the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5). Further, the Bible teaches that all human beings die as a result of sin (Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 6:23).
While Pelagianism says that human beings are not born with a natural inclination towards sin, the Bible says the opposite (Romans 3:10–18). Romans 5:12 clearly states that Adam’s sin is the reason sin infects the rest of humanity.
Pelagianism, therefore, is clearly unscriptural and should be rejected.
While most Christians have a doctrine of original sin, not all agree on the extent to which that sin affects man like Merv who says it doesn’t at all.
The conflict comes in understanding what is meant by free will. Many have asked the question, “Why would God command us to conform to His law if we do not have the ability to obey?” How you answer this determines your view of how extensive sin has affected fallen man.
Liberal theologians began with a rejection of the doctrine of original sin and its resulting depravity. This led them to reject the doctrine of Christ’s substitutionary atonement.
On the basis of “reason,” they then concluded that if it is unjust to be condemned on the basis of the work of another, then it is equally unjust to be saved on the basis of the work of another.
Their rationalism eventually led them to deny the blood atonement of Christ.
This is why the doctrine of original sin is absolutely essential to Christian theology and why the Christian Church has always condemned as heretical all Pelagian and semi-Pelagian views of man which in some way deny or weaken the doctrine of original sin and its resulting depravity.
The validity of substitutionary atonement and forensic justification is based on the validity of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us.
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“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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