Someone on YT once said that Jesus would return in 2015. Guess what? I went to that video on January 1st 2016 and said “See? That’s what happens when you try to know what only God knows”
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Jesus said something to the Pharisees in the book of John.He said, “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”
What did Moses write, among other things “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
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Alas you two are correct in this observation. Apart from being often in error, part of being human is having limited knowledge and limited revelation. We should acknowledge this limitation and keep in mind Hebrews 11:1 " Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for."
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The YEC argument is not quite as you put it.
They argue that Jesus refers to the BEGINNING of all things and then states that it was THEN that God made them male and female. The beginning is the same beginning used in Genesis 1:1 and hence it would follow that male and female we both created at the beginning.
Now of course 6 days would be much closer to the “beginning” than billions of years so it would be much more appropriate to say that male and female were created then.
There is no way that one can understand the billions of evolutionary years to mean the same thing.
Of course, once again, as is usual, biologians will have to find a way to negate this since it clearly contradicts the authority of the atheistic religion. Hence the meaning of “the beginning” suddenly takes on some other dimension, not easily understood from a direct reading of the bible. But that does not bother biologians.
Just so by the way - please do take some time to explain how the male and female sex organs developed via the evolutionary pathway? How did such stupendously complex interdepence develop by chance to form the very basis of our human existence on earth?
What’s that? Sorry, I can’t quite hear a clear and scientifically defensible argument, please repeat.
You said there were “things”, plural. Please name the other thing(s) besides the one you mention…
Does that include or exclude the ability to know what others are thinking? Or to be able to speak with absolute authority on scriptural issues even never having had a teacher, heal the blind, the deaf, the mute, the paralyzed, cast out demons, order demons, turn water into wine, calm the storm, walk on water, predict the future, make fish appear where it seemed there were none, forgive sins, accept worship and finally rise from the dead?
Which part of those abilities are human and which are not?
The issue of Fully God and Fully Man has engaged the thoughts of theologians since at least the 4th century. Books have been written on the subject, enough books to fill several bookshelves in Greek, Latin and many modern languages. So any discussion of this mystery in this format will be incomplete.
Of Jesus activities which you mention
absolute authority on scriptural issues and predicting the future : In this He joins the prophets from Moses to Malachi in kind but to a greater degree
Healing 2 Kings 5 speaks of Elisha curing Naaman of leprosy Elisha also raised a boy from the dead and miraculously fed his hostess during a famine. Again healing and feeding were done but not to the scale or confidence that Jesus did it. Do not forget the disciples healings
Walk on water: the closest thing we get to this is crossing the Re(e)d Sea under Moses or the Jordan under Joshua both of which are clearly attributed to the specific will of God.
Forgive sins for which He was not the victim of the sin: unique to Jesus the priests only mediated between God and the penitent; This one is in the role of God
Rise from the dead there is the example of Eutychus, Lazarus and Elisha. Here did Jesus rise from the dead by His own power or was Jesus raised from the dead by God the Father? I think the latter.
So for much, Jesus can be considered to be in the form of the human prophets who had gone before albeit in such a quantity, in such a short time and such confidence to mark Him special.
Please consider John 5:19 and following Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son,23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
So the Godly abilities Jesus had while on Earth were done in connection with the Father. All such abilities seen in the prophets and disciples were also done only in (a more tenuous) connection with God
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Sometimes these discussions are addictive and they help me think.
Male and female are mentioned explicitly only on the sixth day. However plants, fish and animals all have sexual specialization so unless one asserts some change in plants, fish and animals later, sexual reproduction was already created. There is no scriptural warrant for a change from asexual to sexual reproduction at some other time so that idea cannot be taught.
This pushes me to the idea that an explicit mention of male and female for mankind was done to a) prevent a potential misunderstanding of Genesis 2 or b) emphasize that both men and women were created good and neither were an afterthought. It would make this the first teaching on how human to human interactions are to be conducted.
As to evolution of sexual organs. It is known that bacteria exchange genes and earthworms have both male and female organs which could be a step on the way to separate male and female organisms. Evolutionary history could be more complex than any of us may want to comprehend. That bacteria exchange genes is part of the reason that we have antibiotic resistant bacteria.
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I feel as though Jesus, as the human form of God, would naturally have human characteristics, such as a certain degree of fallibility. Jesus, admitted, as has previously been mentioned, that he did not know when the world would end, indicating a lack of omniscience.
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We have to remember that when the Word became flesh he “emptied himself,” temporarily giving up omniscience.
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It would follow that humans are created as both male and female. It would not follow that they are the first males and females, since presumably the birds and fish and other creatures from prior days of creation also existed in male and female forms.
I don’t believe you are actually interested in the answer to this question, but in case you are, here you go. This is not something that stumps the theory in anyway, just people who are very confused about how evolution actually works.
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Prode, I don’t know if you realise it, but you’re taking that verse right out of context and applying a whole lot of pedantry to it to make a point that is nothing to do with what the passage is about. In other words, you’re quote mining Jesus to make Him appear to be insisting on a position that is demonstrably wrong, when in reality He is talking about something completely different altogether.
Prode, I’ve said it several times to you before, the age of the earth does not come from “atheistic religion” but from measuring things.
- This has nothing to do with how the age of the earth was determined.
- Scientific theories are not falsified by unanswered questions, but by contradictory data. Unanswered questions are where PhDs come from.
- The fact that something evolved does NOT mean that it was all a result of random chance.
- In any case, you can get an answer to this one simply by searching Google. Anyone to whom you are witnessing will do so on their smartphone, as you speak.
Prode, I realise that you just want to see the Bible upheld and Jesus honoured. So do I. And yes, there are subjects such as the age of the earth and evolution that science throws up that we may need to get to grips with along the way. But we need to do so in an honest and informed manner. You don’t achieve anything by rushing headlong into debates about subjects that you quite clearly do not understand with all guns blazing and a sarcastic, dogmatic, judgmental attitude only to prove that you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about and that you have no desire to learn either. You seem to do that every time you appear on this forum, and it’s a very bad witness that only undermines your message rather than upholding it.
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In context, it’s fairly clear that when Jesus said, “From the beginning,” he meant, “from when humans were created.”
This much is clear because, as you admit, YEC folks don’t think that “from the beginning” means “from Day 1 of creation.”
After all, if Jesus really meant, “from the very beginning of creation,” then YEC suffers from the same problem as BioLogos… because beginning means beginning, and Day 6 is not the beginning beginning.
But if you understand it the way Jesus clearly meant it, which is, “since the creation of humanity,” then both YEC and the evolutionary creation position make sense. YEC and EC agree: Humans have never been unisex. We were created male and female from the beginning of our creation, whether that was on Day 6 or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
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First off, if we wiped the theory of evolution from everyone’s minds and burned every book ever written on evolution we would still conclude that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The age of the Earth is determined by geology and physics, and it has nothing to do with evolution.
Second, the first geologists to come to the realization that the Earth was millions, perhaps billions of years old, were Christians. Atheism had nothing to do with it. In fact, the evidence for an old Earth was so overwhelming in the mid 1800’s that a guy named Philip Henry Gosse wrote a book called “Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot” in 1857, 2 years before Darwin published “Origin of Species”. In the book, Gosse argued that God implanted a fake geologic history into the Earth. The response wasn’t that great:
“Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this—that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes Deus quidam deceptor [‘God who is sometimes a deceiver’]. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in the one single case of your newly created scars on the pandanus trunk, your newly created Adam’s navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here … I cannot … believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.” --Reverend Charles Kingsley
As others have mentioned, you can continue to pretend as if geology is an atheist conspiracy going back more than 200 years, but people you witness to will see right through it. Why should they trust what you say about the Bible and God if you so willingly misrepresent known facts about geology?
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And yet a whole new generation of Christians came to accept the truth of Geology’s findings… and made adjustments to how to interpret the Genesis account of creation - - so that there would no longer be this conflict between truth in nature, and what truths the Bible was bringing to humanity.
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If Jesus was a YEC I’d either have to become a YEC or stop being a Christian. According to our Faith, Jesus was God and had the full knowledge of God. To deny Jesus’ omniscience is basically a defeater for Christianity.
Where do you get that? So anyone who accepts the kenotic approach in theology is not a Christian? Even people who don’t accept the kenotic approach acknowledge that Jesus’ access to divine omniscience was limited. Calvin said, “For we know that in Christ the two natures were united into one person in such a manner that each retained its own properties; and more especially the divine nature was in a state of repose, and did not at all exert itself, whenever it was necessary that the human nature should act separately, according to what was peculiar to itself, in discharging the office of mediator. There would be no impropriety, therefore in saying that Christ, who knew all things (John 21:17), was ignorant of something in respect of his perception as a man; for otherwise he could not have been liable to grief and anxiety, and could not have been like us (Hebrews 2:17).”
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<<Where do you get that? So anyone who accepts the kenotic approach in theology is not a Christian? Even people who don’t accept the kenotic approach acknowledge that Jesus’ access to divine omniscience was limited.>>
The Council of Chalcedon said that Jesus had both the full nature of God and full nature of man while He was on earth. If that’s the case, I don’t know how He could be anything but omniscient. I don’t know of any Church Father who said that Jesus made mistakes or was ignorant. With all due respect, I think to deny Jesus’ omniscience would be at the very least contradicting 2,000 years of established Christian orthodoxy.
<<Calvin said, “For we know that in Christ the two natures were united into one person in such a manner that each retained its own properties; and more especially the divine nature was in a state of repose, and did not at all exert itself, whenever it was necessary that the human nature should act separately, according to what was peculiar to itself, in discharging the office of mediator. There would be no impropriety, therefore in saying that Christ, who knew all things (John 21:17), was ignorant of something in respect of his perception as a man; for otherwise he could not have been liable to grief and anxiety, and could not have been like us (Hebrews 2:17).”>>
I don’t think that Calvin would have said that Jesus made mistakes. It seems like all the Church Fathers agreed He never made mistakes. I would personally have a hard time remaining a Christian if I thought Jesus made mistakes. It would seem like such a grave concession.
But plenty of Chalcedon Christians see a difference between full access to all divine attributes (i.e. omniscience) and possessing a divine nature.
Ominiscience isn’t about making mistakes, it’s about knowledge.
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It seems though that if somebody is fully God and God is omniscient, Jesus couldn’t make mistakes though. With all due respect, I don’t know how it would work. I’m not too educated on Christology, but it seems hard to see.