It is alledgedly a new movement in response to the billions of years time frame. It has only been in the last 200 years that humans have tried to figure out how old this earth and universe are. However throughout history, no one has given that much thought to any time frame or history before the Flood, which is now relegated to a local event when clearly it did happen, and it happened around the split between known history and pre-history.
What is young is the Flood. Regardless of the genealogy in Genesis. Both sides get the Flood wrong. One side says it has to be the only explanation and the other that it did happen at all.
My point is that Adam only had age after the fall. There is no age in the Image of God. There is passage of time, but not age. The importance of genealogy is not the time stamp otherwise all would agree on the time frame. The only thing that can be true is that Adam ate the fruit in 4004 BC. There is not a single time frame between the 7th day of creation and the Fall.
This is a huge gap. Anything before that gap and the 1st day of creation does not have to contradict current observation at all. There are no unearthed civilizations or even records of millions of humans for the time frame where there are millions or even hundreds of thousands of years. There is manipulation of geology and other life forms. The few human remains does not history make. It would be proof that before the Flood humans did not die in mass. Nor do we find that many dead because of the Flood.
Maybe what @Timtofly is talking about would be Middle Earth Creationism. But then people might think Elves and Hobbits were being created.
I agree with you that “young” is clearly defined by YEC literature. I’ve never encountered anyone who believes the earth is half a million years old. So that’s a new one for me!
Because the math begs the question on what is young. The Fall is Young. It would be Christians holding to a literal plan of Salvation who hold that in relation to a science that claims they are wrong.
I’m confused… We still have the image of God, and I don’t know about you, but I am aging. Though I don’t have much in the way of gray hairs yet, still being in my youthful 40’s.
Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.
This is after the flood, and the reasoning for not killing is that man is made in the image of God. If we don’t still have that image, this verse doesn’t make sense.
I do remember a time, back in the 70’s. where young earth creationists often threw out 12,000 - 20,000 years as an age for the earth, more to fit in with history than geology. Henry Morris, and later Answers in Genesis, had a big influence in getting back to the Bishop Ussher chronology. In for a penny, in for a pound. Like many things, it seems that positions have trended to more hard edged orthodoxies.
Tim, I’m pretty sure no one else on earth holds your esoteric views on Creation and the Flood or even knows what you are talking about half the time. What is relevant to the discussion at hand are established views in the Christian community (i.e. Young Earth Creationism) and scientific consensus (no global flood, ancient earth, evidence of human settlements before 4004 B.C.).
Well the topic is evolution disproved. Not sure why reading the Bible should be construed as esoteric. I realize it has been replaced much by theology and now human philosophy as it relates to the scientific method.
The point about being created in God’s image. Unless the image is implanted with a new created image at birth, then we are in the evolved image of Adam. The Holy Spirit is the image replacement. The fruit of the Spirit is currently the physical image of God, not the human species. Adam had a son (Seth), born in the Fallen image of Adam, one without God’s Spirit directly evident in physical form.
This was pointed out in the fact that Jesus was fully God and fully human. He lived in the image of Seth and Adam, and only a few times appearing in the full image of God.
Moses reflected that Image on Mt Sinai. His face had to be covered and no human could stand the radiance. The claim is that the full image of God or God in God form would consume a normal human by overwhelming force to the point of physical death. Saying we are in God’s image now makes us equal to God. The reality of fact is we are not.
The Bible does speak of long periods of time and not in a derogatory manner. It can only be obtained through the physical image of God. That is what death is. More than a spiritual or religious sense. Spirit is indicative of existance outside of created physical reality. The hint of light and that light does exist outside of physical reality.
The point is God separated from us. Equality with God is not a bad thing. It is just not current reality. A biological image did make us on an equal level with God. That has been the consensus throughout history. No matter the interpretation, the claim is that human kind had achieved a level equal with the creator. It is stated that eating the fruit completed the process. The punishment was the removal of God from the physical body of Adam. Call it spiritual death, seperation from God, humanity via Adam lost God’s image. God did not punish Adam and humanity because they were equal with God in the image of God. Adam directly disobeyed God and punishment was handed down as promised. The story of Pandora’s box would be the story of Adam and Eve retold in human understanding, but there was no Pandora’s box. While Adam was afforded the lack of knowledge of Good and Evil that was a good thing. Nor did eating of a certain fruit impart such knowledge. The only purpose of the tree, not being a tree with fruit to eat, but a point whereby Adam by free choice would change history forever. God wants us to be equal with God in Christ. Saying we are created in God’s image is not wrong. Saying we still have God’s image is the discrepancy. Saying we are equal with God is not wrong, in as much as what we think makes us equal with God.
No matter what or how you or I or any of us may think, we are not equal with God.
Humanity is still made in the image of God. Our sin interferes with that, to be sure; but never was our status as God’s image bearers revoked. If it was, there were a whole lot of apostles and even earlier prophets / psalmists that failed to get that memo.
1This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created Adam, in the likeness of God made he him,
2 Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day that they were created.
3 Now Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a child in his own likeness after his image, and called his name Seth
Seth is not born in God’s likeness after God’s image. Adam had his own image, not God’s image. These verses clearly point out that at one time Adam was in the image of God, but that image was lost, and not retained by Seth. If Adam is the sole first human which no one seems to accept any more for various reasons the humanity in Adam were created one way and now are not. The claim is that Eve was taken from Adam and was the “mother of all living”. Technically may not have been the mother of 4 females known as the wife of Noah and his son’s wives. Nor is Eve the mother of those males and females created in God’s image, which we hardly know anything about, but we have historically lots of ideas about.
The name Adam was figurative of all those created, but Adam was not the sole being created on the 6th day. Verse 2 is not stating that all humanity comes from Adam. We have two sons of Adam, Cain and Seth. Notice that their particular offspring have the same name. Later it is said that the daughters married the sons of Seth. We are not given Cain’s female offspring names, but only the names of the males. Cain was no different than the other humans, thus still must have been in the image of God, but marked because of slaying Abel. Another point altogether. Later Cain was accused of being “of Satan” more than likely because he let sin in even after knowing the result of what happened to his father Adam.
Verse 2 clearly points out that Adam and a non-disclosed amount of humans were created on day 6. They all were given charge of the earth. They are the only beings who fit what a son of God is. Now a son may not be equal to the father at birth, but all the implications point to the fact that they were indeed God on earth and created for that purpose. They were not robots. They may not have had free will outside of their devotion as God on earth. They seemed to know the difference between good and evil, but would not experience it, until Adam as their major representative disobeyed God. It is not that improbable that Adam was created without a mate and was not given the knowledge of good and evil. God set him aside and gave him a plan and task only unique to one individual human. What God and the other humans knew is not relevant to the story. Why deny what God created as God on earth and then claim via Adam we are still that way?
5 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.
It seems pretty clear that being made in the image of God is referring to a spiritual condition. When Adam (or anyone, for that matter) sins, they become separated from God. Through Jesus Christ they are able to reconcile and once again be “born of God.” The reference to the sons of Adam being in his likeness is a continuation of the “each to his own kinds” theme. This means that they are reproducing vs. being created.
I agree that there is a spiritual component to the image of God, but does this mean that unbelievers do not have the image of God? In other words, is there also a biological element to it?
Great question… I did not articulate this very well at all… I think that the image of God would refer to the human-ness… God breathed life into man, and this distinguished man from the animals. Because of this, we were subject to sin and also to spiritual death.
I cannot articulate how that human-ness was passed along and I think that Genesis does not make it clear… but it seems that at a certain point in time, man “became” man. From that point forward, however this was so, it continued. Believer and unbeliever are human and created in the image of God, gifted with free will, and free to sin and to choose salvation.
So, I would say that man does not “lose” the image of God, but rather becomes separated from God. I hope that makes sense. : )
If I were to have an opportunity to edit my post above, I would. I was trying to differentiate between being created in the image of God and being “born” of man. I do not believe that they are mutually exclusive at all.
I understand what you’re getting at, and probably I was taking your statement out of context, but I just wanted to clarify what you meant since I have encountered the idea that the image of God is purely spiritual, but I see that’s not what you meant at all.
I share your wondering about how it is passed along though, since it is fairly mysterious. I imagine there must be some combination of physical and spiritual, but I don’t understand it. I figure if I can narrow down what it’s not, that will at least help a little.
Always a good consideration. If there is something that would really change the meaning, I usually insert it as a bracketed change so that readers can see the original content as well as what I wish to change it to. Typos, wrong words, and miscommunications, though, … be merciless.
It can be an eternal monument to your lesson learned. Honestly, I have quite often thanked God for the flood of words here that can bury my own words deep in the strata of obscurity. Google will always dig it out for you, so there is that … but still … how bored would someone twenty years from now have to be? …
