I take Genesis 1 as a seven day week. However, I know that this doesn’t necessarily result in a young universe or a universe which is only a few thousand years old. I also know that there’s no evidence that anyone from Genesis 12 to the end of 2 Kings knew anything about the sabbath being a memorial of creation; instead they know it as a memorial of the Exodus.
I’m one of a few people who has pointed out that the days in Genesis 1 can be read as literal days without requiring the entire universe to have been created in seven days, or without requiring the universe to be only a few thousand years old.
Well actually you’ve made the point that the only passage on which you rely for dating the earth is the genealogies of Genesis 4-5, because they’re the only passages in which you can find anything like date information. And as I’ve demonstrated, the way you are reading those genealogies is not the way the Bible reads them.
You have the interpretive tools to do this. I understand that your concern is that if the Bible isn’t speaking literally or honestly in the way you require it to, then it can’t be said to be speaking literally or honestly. But your fear is unfounded for these reasons.
You read the Bible as saying that the heart is the seat of thought and the liver is the organ of emotion, but you don’t actually believe this is so. You read those passages figuratively and you have no problem with this.
You read the Bible as saying that the earth has pillars, but you don’t actually believe this is so. You read those passages figuratively and you have no problem with this.
You read the Bible as saying that the earth doesn’t move, but you don’t actually believe this is so. You read those passages figuratively and you have no problem with this.
You read the Bible as saying that the sun moves around the earth, but you don’t actually believe this is so. You read those passages figuratively and you have no problem with this.
Examples could be multiplied. So you have no problem reading these passages as non-literal despite the fact that there’s no indication to do so. In the case of Genesis 1 and the genealogies, there are good reasons inside the Bible itself for not reading them the way you do. So let’s start there.
George, I want to elaborate on the importance of your point about the millennials.
Let me re-post here from its original thread the essence of the post to which you are referring.
I am 65. I can probably live the rest of my life in peace without resolving this issue. Same for my children, who have all been grown for many years and have made their own decisions about these things. It is my grandchildren who are my primary focus when I think about this issue. There are two things I don’t want for them:
I don’t want them thinking Grandpa believes in a young earth if God made an old one.
I don’t want them thinking Grandpa believes in an old earth if God made a young one.
Yes, my conscience is driving my participation here - but not for my own sake. Rather, it’s for their sake. If they believe in a young earth when God made an old one, they will struggle and be persecuted for no good reason. I would be pained but honored if my grandchildren suffered for the truth, but I would be pained without the comfort of honor if they suffered for a falsehood.
So, yes, I have deep emotion about the matter. And I am mindful of 2 Samuel 23:13-17. I asked you if the YEC’s gave any of you any pause. They do give me pause, and I cannot dismiss them as categorically as you do. Here’s why: If the YEC’s are wrong, I believe God will regard them as David regarded the three mighty men in this episode. I also believe if the OEC’s are wrong, that the same sentiment will apply. But in both cases, God’s sentiment will be to the degree that the position taken by an individual was taken truly in the fear of God and not the fear of man.
Let me now add to these comments for clarity and emphasis.
My motive is not to try to get my grandchildren to think well of their grandfather. Rather, I know that what I think has some influence on them. How much or how little really doesn’t matter. What matters is that whatever influence I have on them, I want to be for their good and the Lord’s glory. On this issue, they will either think Grandpa stood up for the truth, that he stood up for an error, or that he didn’t stand up for anything. As much as I am able, I want to influence them the right way on this issue. I’ve tried to be relatively silent about it for a long time, but I no longer feel comfortable with that. Therefore, I want to reach a conclusion and conviction…for their sake, not for my own.
All of us on this board - whether we are OEC, YEC, or just confused - need to be engaging on the basis of seeking each other’s good, and the good of the rising generation: the millennials…and their children. I agreed with you 100% when you challenged me to think of the younger generation. On this subject, I seldom think of anyone else.
Maybe shift the emphasis from making sure “Grandpa got it right” to a focus that simply states that there are multiple ways to interpret Genesis 1-11 and still be a sincere, Bible-believing, follower of Christ. Although I admit that I believe that my interpretation is correct, I can see (and be inspired by) your devotion to God’s word. And I rejoice that one day we will both know clearly!
It’s natural to prefer clarity to ambiguity, but sometimes we’re not granted our preference. Some of you have referred to the Bible as ambiguous on one or more of the central issues of this thread. The upside of ambiguity is that the Lord does not hold this against us, for it is only when we know the right thing to do and do not it that He calls it sin (Jas 4:17). (If your theology does not allow you to say “Amen” to this, please give me a pass.) Therefore, when a biblical matter is ambiguous to you, taking comfort in multiple interpretative options can be comforting.
For some of you, perhaps most of you, the scientific evidence for an old earth is so clear and so emphatic, that, when weighed against ambiguity in the Bible, you feel no diminution at all in your allegiance to the Bible in adopting the scientific view. I understand that, and have no argument with it.
Even for me, should I come to the point that I cannot find a biblical interpretation from any of you or from anyone else that releases me to accept an old earth, but can be loosed from my current view (see the OP) because I’ve come to the conclusion that the Bible is ambiguous on the subject, I, too, will have found a refuge.
I said all this to point out that 1) I do not think that ambiguity is always avoidable, and 2) I am seeking answers to my question not from a place of ambiguity, but rather from a place of conviction that has been shaken by the force of scientific conviction. May the truth win. Ambiguity is not always the worst place in the world. Being there in good conscience is better than being in error in good conscience.
The latter focus is one I brought to this discussion and will leave with no matter whether my position on the issue at hand changes or gets reinforced. No one has a monopoly on sincerity.
As for Ussher, I can’t say much except that I consider him a recognized expert in this field - a status I assuredly cannot claim. My assumption is that he knows how to read a Bible genealogy way better than I do.
As for me, I read biblical genealogies the way I see them read in the Bible. Thus your criticism of me for doing otherwise is incomprehensible. For example, the author of Chronicles begins with a review of the genealogy from Adam to Abraham, and then from Abraham to David. Likewise, Luke traces the genealogy from Adam all the way to Jesus. One does not even need actual lifespans for each person to estimate a total time line. And we know that Jesus was born in the 1st century while we live in the 21st. What is so esoteric about coming up with an age for the human race from this - especially when we’re not striving for the precision that Ussher sought? Even if the Bible only gave us half the people who were in the line from Adam to Jesus, you’re still going to have a total in the thousands - not billions - when you’re finished. In fact, if you assume that the Bible left out 90% of the people who lived in the line from Adam to Jesus, you’d still have a total that didn’t reach 50,000.
As I’ve been saying, you need to explain to me how adopting your view of genealogical analysis is going to get us from Ussher to billions of years for me to think it’s worth spending more time on it.
I think you frame the issue prejudicially. It’s not scientific evidence versus biblical interpretation; it’s scientific evidence versus biblical evidence.
If someone thinks the scientific evidence is strong and the biblical evidence is ambiguous, I have no objection if they go with the scientific evidence. On the other hand, if someone says science can produce evidence and the Bible cannot, then I object.
Your attempt to clarify is the definition of what modern generations are frequently repulsed by:
I can be the first to confirm Science cannot define heaven, so the Bible can trump science on heaven.
But to hear someone say the Bible trumps Science on the topic of Earth’s creation … that’s like a redux to the Middle Ages and foolish talk about creatures spontaneously coming to life out of spoiling meat.
In comparison, it makes the BioLogos story sound like Shakespeare.
But your agreement is not on what I actually discussed.
Your brittle approach to Biblical interpretation is, I think, more likely to turn off 50 youths for every 1 it saves.
You may think this is unlikely … but think of the error the Vatican made when it wouldn’t listen to the voice of Martin Luther?
And think of the Christian tragedy created by the ridiculously foolish “Monophysite Controversy” and to what it led to in the Byzantine territories!:
When the Islamic armies came, because of the raw wounds left over imperial theology, ultimately Egypt and Anatolia (vigorous heartlands of Christianity) were lost to another Faith.
This is what extremism frequently leads to …
[Edit: Ironically, the Gantt Reading of Genesis is nowhere nearly as compelling as the monophysite controversy…]
For others of us, such as me, there is no ambiguity; the Bible simply does not speak on the subject at all. Not in any way, shape, or form. There is no way to calculate the age of the earth from the Bible, and absolutely no indication that we are supposed to use anything in the Bible to do so. In light of that complete lack of ambiguity, I question the wisdom of attempting to use the Bible for something it is not intended to do.
Ussher is not a recognized expert in any field relevant to the interpretation of the genealogies. An expert in the fields relevant to the genealogies needs academic knowledge of and qualifications in the Ancient Near East. He did not have that. Even Hebrew was a barely nascent field in his day, in comparison with what we know about Hebrew today. No modern scholar would recognize him as an expert in the Ancient Near East. The very texts which relate to the Bible passages under discussion, hadn’t even been discovered (let alone translated), when he was alive.
If you are willing to take notice of those who know how to read a Bible genealogy better than you do, then you should take notice of modern scholars who actually do have knowledge and or qualifications in the relevant fields. Take Wilfred Lambert for example, the world’s leading expert in cuneiform inscriptions, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest scholars of the Ancient Near East. Or take Alan Millard for example, another well known leading scholar in the Ancient Near East. Or Kenneth Kitchen, or Anson Rainey, or James Hoffmeier. Why privilege Ussher over these scholars, who know so much more than he did, and who really are recognized as experts in their field?
No you don’t. You read the genealogies of Genesis 4-5 the way they are not read in the Bible. Literally no one else in the entire Bible reads the genealogies the way you read them. No one. They don’t try to calculate the age of the earth from them, and they don’t speak of the people in the genealogies as having lived for centuries, even when they are actually recounting the genealogies (which happens at least twice).
Correct. But that is not what you do. You take two steps the Bible never does; you interpret the ages as literal, and you calculate the age of the earth from the ages. The Bible does not do this. You did not get this from the Bible.
What’s so esoteric about it is that it’s not how the Bible shows us how to read them. You’re coming up with an idea which is completely absent from the Bible, using a method which is also completely absent from the Bible. Why not read the genealogies the way the Bible does, treating the individuals as real, literal, historical people who really lived and died, but without drawing conclusions about the age of the earth based on the ages you assume the people had?
And as I have been saying, I don’t need to do that at all because I do not believe the genealogies are showing us billions of years. That’s a completely false reading. Why would I try to make the genealogies span billions of years? That’s even worse than trying to make them span thousands of years. The whole point is that the genealogies are not intended to tell us anything about the age of the earth or anything precise about the age of the people described.
So here is the Bible’s guidance for reading the genealogies.
The people mentioned are real, literal, historical people.
Their actual ages are not important; what is important is that they all died.
We are not given any indication that we are supposed to treat the genealogies as a means of calculating the age of the earth. No passage of the Bible does this or even hints at it.
We are not given any indication that we are supposed to treat all the ages as strictly literal. No passage of the Bible does this or even hints at it; even when the genealogies are cited at length, the ages are deliberately omitted.
Why not follow the Bible’s example? That’s my simple question; why not treat the genealogies the way the Bible does? What’s wrong with what the Bible is doing?
I have started a new topic on this, giving additional detail, here.
The genealogies get you back to Adam. Why do you think that gets you back to the creation of the earth? You keep saying you have no problem with taking the six days as being a long period of time.
It is easier to come to the conclusion that the week in question was a literary trope if you read Gen 1-2 in isolation rather than in its biblical context. On your view, Ex 20:8-11 and Ex 31:12-17 would have ancient Israel bearing witness to all surrounding nations not that the Creator of heaven and earth completed His work in six days but that He completed it according to a literary trope.
Similarly, the four-season framing of your grandfather’s life was poignant, but would break down if used to instruct the grandchildren how to spend the four seasons of each year.
The purpose of the fourth commandment as given in Ex 20 may have been Israel’s well-being and the world’s instruction, but it’s justification was imitation of the one in whose image man was made.
I re-read my sentence to see what I said that you had taken as offensive. I think I can see how you thought I was being pejorative by saying “because scientists say so” - but I wasn’t. I don’t know him as well as you do and I was trying to verify that I was understanding him. In writing forum like this, you sometimes have to tell someone what you think he’s saying so he has a chance to confirm or correct it.
As for my broader view on the subject, I do not consider scientific conclusions to be hearsay, but neither do I consider them the word of God.
And exactly how do we imitate God. Did it take him 10 to 12 hours to create? Are we supposed to be working for the same length of time each day? You say God creates by speaking which should not take very long.
In the context of the question that leads this thread, the expression “age of the earth” is merely shorthand for a set of important issues. As for “the age of the earth” per se, I have no significant interest in it. When I use the term, therefore, I am referring to the issues it represents. Let me quote from something I wrote above.
The old-or-young earth argument is about whether creation took six days and was completed or has taken 4.543 billion years and is still not complete. It’s an argument about whether God created the universe by supernatural processes or is creating it by natural processes. It’s an argument about whether the Bible - and, specifically the books of Moses, and, more specifically, the book of Genesis - provide reliable ancient history, including information about origins, or whether we should rely instead on scientists to inform us, to the degree they can, about these things. It’s an argument about whether scientists have taken over for the prophets in drawing for us the background arc of human existence and destiny. And this is just the beginning of the sketch.
I do not think that the genealogies can give us the age of the earth. They can, however, give us the age of the human race. Add that to the six days during which heaven and earth were created, with Adam, having been created on the sixth day, as the linchpin that links the two, and you have an age of the earth.
If someone wants to say that the earth had some pre-creation existence, I’m fine with that…as long as we agree that the clock starts with “In the beginning” - that same Gen 1:1 demarcation that John spoke of in John 1:1 and Jesus Himself spoke of in Matt 19:8 and Mark 10:6.
I came to BioLogos asking “Who best reconciles the Bible and Evolution?” I was advised in my engagement here by more than one person to focus on the age of the earth first. I took that advice in launching this particular thread. I agree with @Swamidass that we may be losing focus on what’s important here. Thus my attempt in this post to clarify the reason for even using the phrase “age of the earth.” Ultimately, it’s not a question about the age of the earth. It’s a question about how we are to live in a world with both biblical revelation and scientific findings. And, again, it’s not reconciling the Bible and science I’m after; it’s reconciling the history given us by the Bible with the history being given us by science.
I see no conflict between science and the Bible. I do see conflict between the Bible’s history and science’s history…and I’m trying hard to reconcile it. And if you’ll notice the framing of the question, I’m putting all the pressure on myself to find the reconciliation. That is, I’m putting my interpretation of the Bible on the table and offering to divest it in light of a superior interpretation - not asking scientists to defend themselves to me. I thinking that’s walking the extra mile and I don’t think I deserve praise for it; I think it’s what the Lord expects us to do in such situations.
I guess that is why it is important what you decide the biblical context of Gen 1 is. I think the biblical context is establishing God’s reign. So, I think the focus of creation week is the domains encompassed and ordered by God’s rule, not the method or chronology of material creation. (More thoughts on “speaking” and creation to follow.) Even setting aside the Walton functional/material distinction, the idea of the creation week setting up domains of God’s rule which are then filled with inhabitants is found in the framework interpretation that sees Genesis as a historical (although poetically figurative) account of material creation.
As I understand the Sabbath, it was a sign of the covenant. (“the Sabbath is a sign of the covenant between me and you from generation to generation. It is given so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.”) The covenant was given so that God could establish the glory of his name among all the peoples of the earth. So the observance of the Sabbath seems to me to be primarily about glorifying God among the nations.
The Sabbath, although it benefits people to rest from labor, is primarily an act of worship that is supposed to point the watching world to the Lord of heaven and earth. People order their own lives and provide for their own well-being through work for six days, but on the seventh, they acknowledge that there is only one king on the throne of the world, and that king is the Creator God who has been ruling since he took up his rest on the throne of his temple on the seventh day of creation. All ordering of chaos starts with him, all provision for creation depends on him. All our work is done in our role of stewards and representatives, not as autonomous rulers who can make a name for ourselves through our labors (like they tried to do at Babel). It seems pretty clear to me that the institution of the Sabbath and the honoring of it by his covenant people is more about living humbly under God’s rule and reign than it is about imitating God by taking a break every seven days.
I think this idea of recognizing God’s lordship in the Sabbath fits well with the idea of Jubilee too. Jubilee was also a Sabbath designed to point to God’s ultimate lordship over his people. No one could build up a kingdom for themselves if every 50th year property was redistributed and God’s ordering of the land and society was reinstated with the freeing of slaves and cancelling of debts. A year of living off of God’s provision, not human effort sounds a lot more to me like an exercise in obedience and submission than just a vacation for people. It was a chance for Israel to do something no surrounding nation would imagine doing in order to give God glory for his provision of their needs and sovereignty over their people. (Lev 25:10-12)
My view on “the age of the earth” as described in the OP does not hinge on the view I take of Gen 1:1-2 to which you are referring.
I agree that there are issues to be worked out between Gen 1 and 2, but I can’t imagine they would work out to the first man and woman created by God in Gen 1 being different from the first man and woman described in Gen 2. As long as it’s the same couple being created on day 6, the timer on the human race was started with them…and that brings the genealogies into the equation.
I don’t see any reason to start counting Adam’s 930 years at some point other than the point from which it’s counted for all his progeny - that is, from the point of appearance on earth.
I take my view not from how I interpret Gen 1-2 but rather from the collective witness of Gen 1-2, Ex 20:8-11, and Ex 31:12-17. Per 2 Cor 13:1, whenever I see two or three scriptures lining up to say the same thing, I don’t feel a liberty to ignore.
Please help me understand your second point here. I really want to understand, but do remember I am a layman. Assume - only for discussion’s sake - that the universe was supernaturally created in six days, that adding the genealogies give us an age of the earth in thousands of years. Other than remembering that projections of earth’s history beyond thousands of years produces unreliable results, how would anything a doctor or scientist does need to change? If - and I acknowledge that you think it’s an insurmountable “if,” so this is just, as I say, for discussion’s sake - the Bible truly is circumscribing an age of the earth (i.e. the earth is young), why can’t scientists look at findings beyond those limits in the same way a driver is warned against assuming the proximity of vehicles from the image of them he sees in the exterior passenger-side convex mirror?
I have been mulling over the idea of God speaking creation into being and what that means. I think you are right when you say that the focus is not on a specific process. But I also don’t think the focus is on a historical event so much as the focus is on God’s authority and power.
All throughout Scripture, God’s word does not merely describe reality it creates reality. God’s words are often “performatives,” which in linguistics refers to utterances in which someone with the proper authority effects a new reality by a speech act (I pronounce you man and wife, I christen this boat the Roosevelt, I sentence you to life in prison). God orders creation by the power of his word, which is testimony to his authority and lordship over the material universe which is his. How do we know that Yahweh is the one true God? Because he is the Creator God whose words all of reality obeys and is subject to. It is my impression that the authority over material reality aspect is much more in focus in the OT than the mere fact that God is the source of material reality, which was often taken as a given.
God’s supreme authority via his word is the apologetic found throughout the OT and reflected in the NT in Jesus. How does Jesus establish his divine authority? He changes reality with his words. You are healed. You are forgiven. Be still. Come out of that man. Little girl, get up. Lazarus come out. It is finished. Exerting authority over the chaos of nature, sickness and death, sin, and powers of darkness was clearly understood as Jesus claiming divine lordship over creation, lordship that was only rightfully exercised by the Creator God himself.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, those are my jumbled thoughts that maybe have something to do with this conversation and maybe (now that I have typed it out) are somewhat tangential.
We have avoided science by intention. I do not want to press science in a way that causes others to sin. However to answer this, we have to dip into it.
Let us talk about seekers and science students. For them, at least for a long time, the rearview mirror story will not work. The problem is not the logic of the story, but that seekers and science students will get into the details of the science. The details here would alter your view. You would see (1) the intricate mathematical coherence of the evidence for an ancient earth, which seem designed to fool us if the earth is young, (2) for your analogy to hold that God would create this coherent false evidence (other than deceit) to make sense of #1, and that purpose is not given for God, but it is for the auto manufacturer, and (3) there are a whole ton of YEC voices making untrustable arguments in science, and knowing science that are not even remotely convincing.
First, that there is piles and piles of evidence that seem to show a history in the Earth. Moreover, we cannot even mathematically conceive how it is possible to see stars in the sky if the whole universe was created just 6,000 years ago. If you care to understand, this blog is very helpful for someone from your background ( https://thenaturalhistorian.com/ ). This book too is excellent, full of pictures where you can see for yourself the complex stories told in the grand canyon ( https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Canyon-Monument-Ancient-Earth/dp/0825444217 ). The sum effect of this is that we see with our eyes something everywhere in science, that YEC asks us to ignore and stand against everyone else who sees it too. All this confidence is based on ambiguous passages in Scripture. Perhaps some can do that, but it comes off like this version of God is not coherent with the world itself (not just science).
You have the luxury of ignoring studying that evidence. I respect that you trust us that it exists. However, I make my living building mathematical models of that evidence. I do not have the luxury of ignoring it, nor does anyone in science. Even if we find a place in science that does not bring us into contact with the age of the earth, we are surrounded with people immersed in that evidence. It is really what we see. Perhaps we see things wrong, but it will take a great deal of trust to move away from something so obvious, and it takes time to build that trust.
Second, in the mirror story, the auto maker has a purpose in the distortion of the mirror, to increase the field of view of the mirror. This is a logical possibility for the age of the earth too, but we do not really see in Scripture a reason why God would create a false history in the earth. Perhaps He has a reason and purpose, and he certainly does not owe it to us to tell us. This is why I resist jumping to the “deceitful” accusation. However, it would help to at least develop some theology to make sense of this, to speculate why. Failing this, it is very hard to understand why God even hypothetically do this. Without that reasoning, we are left with a gaping hole in the account. Perhaps the earth is young, but looks ancient, but why would God do that?
Third, with #2 in view, there is a lot of “noise” on the internet of YECs promoting really absurd scientific arguments. Most cannot rest in the mystery of #2, so they advance the scientific arguments. If you are in science, you quickly find out that these arguments are very weak. They are nothing like the rigorous studies you are trained to do in science. This becomes a massive stumbling block to faith. While you @Mike_Gantt are not responsible for this, it is a reality in this world.
With those three things, it will not be viable for most seekers and science students to just ignore that evidence, insist it is wrong, based on an ambiguous passage of Scripture. That makes it consequential. For this reason, outside the Church, YEC is seen as a marker of evidence-deny madness, that proves their “god” is not trustworthy. Even if that characterization is unfair, for some YECs it has some grains of truth.
That makes this question consequential for people in the world, including most important science students and seekers.
Remember, this is not consequential to our faith. So remember 1 Corinthians 9:20-22. That is the Biblical reason to accept the scientific view.
Meditating on this a bit, perhaps some versions of God do admit a reason. In many versions of Buddhism, we reach enlightenment, escape from suffering, by recognizing that what we think is reality is really an illusion. In this theology, we might expect God to create the world discordant with His word in order to help us detach from it. This God, also, is not concerned about revealing his identity, so we might even guess lovingly He created the the Bible to guide people into YEC, and then into the contradictory evidence of nature. The purpose here is to remind us that reality is just an illusion.
Now I am not a Buddhist, nor are you, and I mean no disrespect to Buddhist that might read along. I would imagine, many versions of Buddhism would reject that possibility, but at least it gives us a way to conceive of a honest God that could make a world that looked so assuredly different from how he described it, without being deceitful either.
I wonder if you can construct a theology that make sense with the God we know from Scripture.
