While I’ll contend that not everyone has the time to watch an hour long lecture video, I just wanted to share this, because I find Joshua Moritz a very easy-going person to listen too, and that his arguments causes one to do some deep thinking.
What do you think of his arguments?
This lectures touches on the following subjects:
That the use of Hebrew words like “asah” and “yatsar”, when read holistically through their uses of the creation of “babies in the womb”, “lightning”, “snow”, “stars”, “plants”, and so forth, can imply “creation through a process”
That the image of God is more akin to a “status” that we have within the created order … NOT a quality that’s innate to human nature.
That the story of Cain and Abel heavily implies the existence of other people living, that were not descended from Adam and Eve.
That Eden was a real place.
Let me know what you think of the video …
P.S. And if you enjoyed this video, he’s posted up several other lectures at Voice of Light Productions.
This video reminds me of my debates with Jehovah Witness in their use of the word, “proskuneo” that proskuneo can mean worship but it also can mean obeisance, therefore Jesus is not God or the universalist and their use of the word, “aionion”. The bible says that God created (period) Dr. Moritz is injecting his own view into these verbs of whether it was instantaneous or a slow gradual process by using, not scriptural context but examples of “creation” processes (Adam and Eve excluded of course) which coincides with the specie variation and adaptation process we observe today, in order to show that the genesis creation account had to also have been a slow and gradual process. Very creative, but not good hermeneutics I’m afraid
Yes … creation words like “asah”, “yatsar”, and “bara”, don’t necessarily indicate that it’s an “instantaneous” creation, or “creation through a process”. But it also doesn’t rule out the idea either. Some seem to assume that it “must be” instantaneous … but I’m not sure why?
It comes to a deeper philosophical question for me. In Ecclesiastes 11:5 it says, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in the womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things …”
While God’s work is truly immense, and the more questions we answer, a dozen more questions pop up in their place … it does make one wonder. Suppose we DO know the “how” of a body forming in the womb … or suppose we can predict the weather to some degree … does it mean we conclude that God is no longer acting?
I don’t believe so. God controls all things … the things we can explain and the things we can’t explain. And while that concept might be hard for us to wrap our heads around, it’s the truth.
I don’t think he’s demonstrating that this “demands” that Genesis had to be slow and natural process … but rather that the “creation through process” is an option that’s on the table … and makes a certain amount of sense when we compare other things that God has created … like lightning, babies in the womb, plants, snow, etc., and so forth …
“Let the earth produce vegetation, the fruit tree, bearing fruit …”
It takes trees, at the very least, years to grow to maturity and produce fruit. There’s nothing in this passage that would seem to demand “instantaneous creation” or “super speed creation” …
By the way … have you considered my points I’ve responded to you earlier?
