How old is the earth?

[EarlyActs]

Of course the creation account doesn't lend itself to that interpretation—because the creation account pertains to a categorically different explanatory domain (redemptive history). Man as "image of God" belongs to a redemptive-historical category, while man as "evolved" belongs to a natural-historical category. Redemptive history on the one hand, natural history on the other. Your objection fails by flattening these categories, thereby committing a category error.

My argument recognizes and maintains those categorical distinctions, which is why I can hold both positions as true without conflict, that man is both evolved and imago Dei. Natural history, unfolded in general revelation (nature), is the stage upon which the drama of redemptive history plays out, and it is redemptive history that reveals the meaning and purpose of natural history, disclosed through special revelation (scripture). We explore natural history scientifically; we explore redemptive history theologically.




I understand terms like "theoretical physics," but what exactly is "theoretical evidence"?

There is nothing 'redemptive history' about Genesis 1 as it touches on nature. The category is specious. If you use transliteration and attempt to sketch (draw) the steps of action along the way, which forces you to account for what it is saying, you can easily see a local, placed, designed, immediate-thriving creation, that has nothing to do with the spreading out of distant places and objects. It also matches the deposited fossil explosion, the Cataclysm being even more recent than Creation Week, but neither demanding that the planet's lifeless materials underlying them was recent.

The image of God is a term about kings marking boundaries and God was saying that each living person was an evidence (an image) that the place belongs to him as King. The climax of the Kingship theme comes in Acts 2 when Christ is proclaimed as enthroned, per prophecy etc, as the King, in the resurrection. Maybe if your theology was about the King theme, it wouldn't have to work so hard to attach opposites to eachother.

So I have almost no use for the presuppositions that you repeat over and over and over, as if that makes them true.

So please take down your disrespectful video response post above.

 

[CrowCross]

Actually, Yom has many meanings; there are very few words in Hebrew. And one meaning of Yom is, from sunrise to sunset. Another is a period of time and there are others.
Why any Christian would want to force humanism into creation is beyond me.

You said...."And one meaning of Yom is, from sunrise to sunset.".....then when the days in Genesis are addressed in those terms why do you deny it with insisting the word YOM means a long period of time?

 

[EarlyActs]

Creation ex nihilo is indicated, I believe, in Genesis 1:1. True, it may be taken as introduction to the following verses or a summary of their events, but it also may be taken as a statement in itself, that precedes the events following. Thus, yes, it includes the creation of the "materials of earth".

(Whatever, I can't personally stomach the notion of a god who comes upon an already existing set of circumstances, and organizes it. That is not God, and such a being is only another resident in the universe, no matter how powerful 'he' is.)

The idea of the Hebrew verb 'spreading out' is that there is random motion and action. It is to be compared with the one for 'stretching out' which is also used of the universe, but seems to have the ancient middle eastern meaning of using a fabric on poles to block the sun, but you see the bright points of light through it--like the night sky.

If you follow along in Gen 1, you will see that the local objects are designed for communication and time-marking, but not the distant ones. They aren't even mentioned again until Gen 15 about the numerous seed of Abraham.

So God did the spreading/stretching out, too, but earlier than earth's creation week. It's form was already there--a water covered rock mass, lifeless. This does not mean there are not many other entities at work in the universe, but it is an explanation of earth and how man is a marker of God's property.

 

[XrzrX]

The idea of the Hebrew verb 'spreading out' is that there is random motion and action. It is to be compared with the one for 'stretching out' which is also used of the universe, but seems to have the ancient middle eastern meaning of using a fabric on poles to block the sun, but you see the bright points of light through it--like the night sky.

If you follow along in Gen 1, you will see that the local objects are designed for communication and time-marking, but not the distant ones. They aren't even mentioned again until Gen 15 about the numerous seed of Abraham.

So God did the spreading/stretching out, too, but earlier than earth's creation week. It's form was already there--a water covered rock mass, lifeless. This does not mean there are not many other entities at work in the universe, but it is an explanation of earth and how man is a marker of God's property.

So are you suggesting there are other "creators" in the universe?

 

[CrowCross]

This does not mean there are not many other entities at work in the universe

Just curious...what does that mean?

 

[EarlyActs]

So are you suggesting there are other "creators" in the universe?

No, it's very simple. The 'spreading out' of Job, Psalms, Isaiah, is not Gen 1. For two reasons: the verb is much more random action than 'placing' in Gen 1, 3 and 4.

2,

 

[EarlyActs]

No, it's very simple. The 'spreading out' of Job, Psalms, Isaiah, is not Gen 1. For two reasons: the verb is much more random action than 'placing' in Gen 1, 3 and 4.

2, with the simple tool of transliteration, a person can see that Gen 1 is about the local 'shama-raqia' "the sky-firmament" not about distant objects (the kavov). The kavov is just barely mentioned, and literary comparison shows it is quite in the category of a relegated after-thought, in v16. It's not even a complete phrase. They are not mentioned again until ch 15 when they have a role, not of signifying communication about Christ (Jn 8, Gal 3), but of the tally of descendants Abraham will have through Christ.

The 'shama-raqia' has the function of making signs/communication and of marking time; the 'kavov' does not. A few distant objects can be involved because the criterion is actually their apparent movement. This is central to understanding what the Nativity star did, and these people had the skill to 'dial' their understanding of moving objects forward and backward. The term 'read' in Gen 15 may actually be compute.

I further believe that the 'yowr' (illumination) of Day 1 was general light arriving from the distant stars, giving us a timestamp that should be set by how long it would take light from Sirius to reach earth (9 years), or perhaps Orion (this term was used in Greek to mean 'heaven'), about 1300 years, I recall. Notice that it is not enough to grow plant life, but could mark the evening start of the day. In the middle east latitude, Sirius has marked evening as a navigation start down through time.

We don't have to learn Hebrew, but it sure helps to learn transliteration, which shows us word choice. The worst thing about Gen 1 in English is what people assume 'heaven' is.

Regardless of the amount of travel time, that means that starlight's arrival, in real-time, was what God was telling Adam about, and that our then water-covered planet existed from the earlier 'spreading out.' There is a detail about 2 Peter 3 which confirms this distinction. It is that Peter never asserts that creation (the week of forming earth out of water and through water) was the start of earth. It and the universe are 'from old' while the earth was (more recently) formed into what ante-deluvians lived on (civilization before the Cataclysm).

 

[CrowCross]

No, it's very simple. The 'spreading out' of Job, Psalms, Isaiah, is not Gen 1. For two reasons: the verb is much more random action than 'placing' in Gen 1, 3 and 4.

2,

The spreading may have started in verse 6 (day 2)....and stopped on day 4 when the stars and such ended up in their "place"