The long-term viability of Old-Earth Creationism

[David_Lee]

@JohnCarpenter

The main point is that the Bible makes no claim about the age of the earth at all because it says that the universe and earth was created at an undisclosed time prior to day one.

Indeed. Further, the term “…created the heavens and the earth” needs to be recognised as a single, indivisible unit: an all-encompassing merism: “…created the-heavens-and-the-earth” or “… HeavensAndTheEarth”.

This presents a further problem for attempted concordism. The universe came into existence about 15 billion years ago (Big Bang and all that); planet earth about 5 billion years ago. So for most (about two thirds) of the universe’s existence, planet earth did not even exist. This stands in stark contrast to the linguistic unitary “heavens-and-the-earth” of the text. (And there is the additional issue of our imposed and problematic assumptions onto the text: that its “heavens” can be understood as our “universe”, and its “earth” as our “planet earth”.)

I’m increasingly convinced that we need to jettison totally any attempted concordism. Far better to see the text as a theological stance, doing a “compare and contrast” with and against the prevailing cultures of the times (polytheism; mankind as mere playthings of the gods; etc.).

[KJTurner]

John, thanks for the article. I too was troubled by Lyons’ original argument, and you’ve pointed out some of my own concerns. I first met Lyons at ETS this year, when he came to my talk on Genesis 1. He was very gracious to me, despite us having major disagreements on the syntax of the text. He actually teaches just up the road from me, so I hope to continue conversation with him.