Why it is important to accept that Adam was a historical person

Faith & Science Conversation
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@cwhenderson

You are quite right … that is an excellent article… It even has a “Trinitarian” (or, better, Triune) method of analysis back in the day!

Thanks for the tip !

[Analysis of those Church Fathers who opposed a literal interpretation of “Day”]
Legitimate (non-allegorical) concerns
"While we should not follow the specific interpretations of the allegorical fathers, they do provide some valuable insights into Genesis 1 that are worth considering. In particular, they identified at least three scriptural arguments that seem to rule out the idea that the creation days could be ordinary solar days."

“1.Nature of the first three creation days. If the Sun, Moon, and stars were not created until the fourth creation day (as popularly understood by the church fathers), then what was the nature of the first three creation “days”?8 How could they be ordinary solar days if the Sun did not yet exist? This question provoked more discussion and disagreement among the early church fathers than any other part of Genesis 1. Philo, Origen, and Augustine saw this as clear proof that at least the first three days could not be ordinary days.9 (A detailed discussion of the fourth creation day and its implications for the days of creation can be found in chapter 7 of A Matter of Days by Hugh Ross.)”

“2. [Verse] Genesis 2:4. This verse uses the words “in the day” (KJV) to summarize all of the preceding events described in Genesis 1. This usage seems to equate the “six days” of Genesis 1 with a single day, which caused considerable confusion in the early church. One way some fathers resolved this apparent contradiction was to view the days as being instantaneous periods.10 Today, we understand “in the day” in this verse to refer to an indeterminate period of time (covering all the events of Genesis 1) and, therefore, longer than 24 hours.”

“3.Seventh day is not closed out. Each of the first six days is closed out with the phrase, “And there was evening, and there was morning—the X-th day” (NIV). This phrase is conspicuously absent from the seventh creation day, which indicates this “day” is still ongoing and so spans a time much longer than an ordinary solar day.11 Psalm 95:11 and Hebrews 4:1–11 further support the idea that we are still in the seventh day.12 At a minimum, this contradicts a simple calendar-day view where each day is a natural day.”

“So what are we to conclude from this? First, the fathers who used allegorical interpretation did have at least three significant scriptural reasons for rejecting a calendar-day interpretation. Second, it was issues like these three that led them to read Genesis allegorically because a calendar-day view seemed impossible to them. Third, recognition that the days of creation need not—or even should not—be understood as simple solar days is a tradition going back as far as Philo in the first century.”
[End of Quotes]

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Please, people would you stop hinging arguments on non-standard senses of the word ‘day’ in Hebrew? They aren’t good arguments, linguistically speaking. The writer had no concept of solar days, obviously. But “it was evening, it was morning, the first day” shows the word used is being used with its primary sense, a normal day. So the question should be why would the author talk about days, not how can we explain away the word ‘day’ as actually referring to something else. Reasons to Believe is concordist at every turn. They have helpful information about old earth scientific evidence, but you don’t want to rely on them for exegesis, because they need the Bible to be describing scientific realities.

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One thing is obvious, theistic evolutionists certainly don’t care what Genesis says. They will find a way to “re-interpret” any Scripture in the
Bible in order to accommodate evolution … Christians bending their own creation story over backwards for the sake of an atheist creation story - bizarre.

I don’t know of any creationists who reject demonstrable scientific facts or any aspect of operational science. Creationists certainly reject the theory that all life has a common ancestor, which I suspect is of no scientific consequence, because I suspect this theory is scientifically useless.

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@Dredge

You are such the optimist! Even today, Evangelicals write serious-minded articles about how Continental Drift of a very ancient Earth is an illusion…just as I described hypothetically in my prior post.

We are to deny what our eyes tell us … because Genesis, written centuries before anyone knew any real cosmology, needs to take pre-eminence. Next thing you know, there will be laws against certain medical techniques … with the expectation that prayer is all we need to find “proper” cures.

Quoted Text
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“Early skepticism about plate tectonics has largely evaporated because the framework has such great explanatory power. The catastrophic plate tectonics model for the flood not only includes these explanatory elements, but also accounts for widespread evidences of massive flooding and catastrophic geological processes on the continents. Future refinement of the model may also help to explain the order and distribution of fossils observed in the fossil record in the context of the Genesis flood.”

“The Bible is silent about plate tectonics. Many creationists believe the concept [of Young Earth tectonics] is helpful in explaining Earth’s history. Some are still cautious. The idea is quite new, and radical, and much work has yet to be done to flesh out the details. There may even be major modifications to the theory that increase its explanatory power, or future discoveries could cause the model to be abandoned. Such is the nature of scientific progress. Scientific models come and go, “But the word of the Lord endures forever” (1 Peter 1:25).”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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I did look … I used my Exhaustive Concordance to find every instance of “evening” and “morning” in the OT and not once did I find them being used in a figurative sense.

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@Dredge

You are really missing the point. Read @Christy’s recent post explaining the core of the issue…

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[quote=“daryl, post:13, topic:35794, full:true”]A literal interpretation is that God “rested from all His work,” but do you literally believe that God needs to rest?
[/quote]
No. The Scripture doesn’t say He needed to rest.

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I don’t know much religious/philosophical history, but I do know Augustine didn’t interpret it literally.

I am impressed and I shall back off this argument (especially considering @Christy’s well-stated post)—at least until I take time to look myself!

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That is a point to ponder, but I still believe a poetic interpretation is plausible.

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[quote=“gbrooks9, post:20, topic:35794, full:true”]
- - but Evolution happening even faster than Evolutionists usually propose, because instead of millions of years available, Creationists have less than 6,000 years to produce millions more additional terrestrial species!

Ironic, yes?[/quote]
No, George, I don’t find that ironic at all. The God who created the universe and everything in it out of nothing and all life on earth in (less than) six days could easily have created the diversity of life we see today from the creatures that survived the Flood. Lest we forget, our God is a God of miracles.

For example, as I understand it, there are four “species” of giraffe in the world today. If the Lord wanted twenty “species” of giraffe to exist, twenty “species” of giraffe would exist - regardless of what sceintist think is possible in the given circumstances.

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As I see it, what Genesis is describing is a miracle - the miracle of creation. Whichever way one reads it, it is mysterious, which is hardly surprisng - how can puny human beings understand a miracle?

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While I believe that all life on earth was created in six days, about 5778 years ago, I also believe that that the earth itself and the universe could be much, much older.

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[quote=“Lynn_Munter, post:29, topic:35794, full:true”]
I don’t know much religious/philosophical history, but I do know Augustine didn’t interpret it literally. [/quote]
Augustine is oft-quoted in defense of a non-literal interptetation “six days”, but he was seriously out-numbered in his day by the literalists. If memory serves, he also espoused some weird therory about angels that was roundly ignored (and that’s being kind). I suspect some of Augustine’s ideas were more than a little influenced by the Greeks and/or Romans.

But to be fair, Augustine also made the very valid and important point that a Christian ought not be too smug about one’s personal interpretation of Bible texts, as time may prove such an interpretation to be dead wrong. He also said something along the lines of, “In the necessary things (pertaining to faith) - unity; in doubtful things, liberty.” Good idea!

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My impression was that you’d be hard-put to find an early Christian who wasn’t influenced by all those Greek and Roman guys…

The article @cwhenderson linked back in post 20 of this thread listed at least a couple other church fathers, but you are right: it doesn’t behoove anybody to get dogmatic on the issue!

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@Dredge

So, at last, some details. You are open to the Earth being 5 billion years old, but that “all life” was created on Earth less than 6000 years ago.

Exactly how do you justify separating the Genesis treatment of the Earth from the Genesis treatment of life?

Second:

Why do you think “how” God created humans (directly or indirectly) is an issue of “necessary things” ?

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@Dredge
I answered you before that I use this in my work in structural biology. I have worked in RNA structure prediction for years, I’ve also used it with problems of protein structure, and more recently in chromatin studies. The fact is, structural and sequence analysis assuming an evolutionary model works.

I get the feeling that you are not interested in listening to your Christian brothers and sisters who do science and disagree with you, and mainly you are just here to talk at them and accuse them. You don’t have to accept evolution yourself, but please be careful not to insult your brothers and sisters in Christ with this kind of dishonesty. You evidently saw the rest of that post I made – and you did not respond to that point. We do not give false witness.

I work as though I worked for the kingdom of God. Every day of my labors, I have seen his majesty in the things I have dug up in my pursuit of understanding. As Christians, we are called to work with integrity and honesty. I surely don’t understand it all, but it has not been for want of effort. If I say that I am using evolution in my work and it is useful, I am using it and it is useful.

I kind of recall that for most of the last 5000 years for which we have writings, people largely believed that the earth was at the center of the universe. On the basis of your arguments, we should also insist on geocentricism – should we not?

Also, it seems that as long as evolution happened only in the last 6000 years, everything is ok with you. Well, of course, we have to have a prototype dog, cat, horse, cow, etc. Somehow the dog has to become a wolf, a coyote, etc. Somehow the cat has to become a lion, cheetah, etc. and etc. All this, just as we say, was guided by God’s providence. So then, you (brother Dredge), in fact, are also a theistic evolutionist. Or at least, a micro theistic evolutionist – myself (and several others here) just taking it a few steps further to macro.

Will we have to repeat some of the less than honorable deeds of fellow Christians in the reformation period before we learn to let go?

by Grace we proceed

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Psalm 90 New International Version (NIV)
3
You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6
In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.

God’s day is not like our day, and it was God who did the creating not man.

Moreover, our entire lifetimes can be described as morning and evening of a single day, as the Psalmist writes right here in the blessed scriptures.

by Grace we proceed

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[quote=“gbrooks9, post:36, topic:35794, full:true”]

@Dredge

So, at last, some details. You are open to the Earth being 5 billion years old, but that “all life” was created on Earth less than 6000 years ago.

Exactly how do you justify separating the Genesis treatment of the Earth from the Genesis treatment of life?[/quote]
There is no mention of the creation of the earth on Day One, which is rather odd if indeed it was created on Day One. In Exodus 20:8, reference is made to the land, sea and atmosphere of earth being created in the “six days”, which corresponds to the Genesis account, but is not a reference to creation of the earth itself.

[quote]Second:

Why do you think “how” God created humans (directly or indirectly) is an issue of “necessary things” ?[/quote]
I don’t believe I said that it was.

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@Dredge, you missed my point entirely. Yes, of course you have biblical justifications for your position.

But how do you justify ignoring “the plain meaning of day” in the Genesis account - - in order for you to believe the Earth is billions of years old … but you insist that you have to take creation of all life as less than 6000 years ago?

The pattern of fossils supports millions of years of life forms.

The pattern of mammals vs. dinosaurs supports millions of years between the death of dinosaurs … and the emergence of large mammals.

No pattern of fossils supports the idea that horses, bears, elephants and giraffes ever co-existed with dinosaurs… and certainly not within a 6000 year period.

Your version of Old Earth seems extraordinarily non-scientific … and is in fact, just another non-rational presentation of Earth’s ancient history… because it has even more contradictions intrinsic to it than what YEC’s believe.

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Sorry that I missed your point, George (I’m just a dumb creationist, don’t forget). I have no idea how old the earth is - it could have been created one week or one year one billion years before.

I’ve never studied the fossil record for myself. Have you? Or are you simply relying on what certain paleotologists tell you? In order to have any idea about what the fossils say, I would probably have to devote fifty years of my life to actually studying real fossils and real geology, as opposed to just studying other people’s opinions.