Biblical justification for non-historical creation days

True. Which is why I have not argued that. I have stated that the Bible, in another place where it institutes an ordinance, uses the same type of symbolic language we find in Exodus 20:11.

No, I've made clear that evolution is not the issue here. You didn't address the fact that the same arguments I've made are also made by some people who reject evolution (see the link near the bottom of my last post).

And no, the people of John 6 did not start biting Christ. They said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?" "His disciples grumbled at this" and "As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore" (John 6:60-61, 66). If only they had known Jesus was just speaking symbolically! About the only clue is what Jesus said to his inner circle: "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life" (John 6:63).

Your first paragraph is confused: I said Hebrews 4 refers to the Genesis 1-2:3 creation account, not that it summarizes it. As to your second paragraph, nobody is claiming that Hebrews 4 edits Genesis 1. It helps us understand how Genesis 1 was intended. Apparently, the seventh day is ongoing.

No, I gave a summary of what the text says. "On day one, God creates light (called Day) and separates it from darkness (called Night). On day four, God creates luminaries to separate day from night. Since the same one-time event (the separation of day from night) is described on two non-consecutive days, this is a neon sign that the days are not historical or chronological."

There's no equivocation there. Your claim that it is "obvious that the moon does not divide the light from the dark" is just your own attempt to read science into the Bible. On the fourth day, God said "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night". That contradicts what you have said.

Your problem is in the third claim. I have never said that Genesis 2:4-25 does not have a chronology. I have stated in this thread explicitly and repeatedly that it does.

I have never claimed those elements were missing. What I said was based on your original statement about the evening/morning repetition in Genesis 1 being a key proof of its historicity. I pointed out that the gospels do not use a similar evening/morning repetition. At that point, you moved the goal posts and said they contained other chronological indicators -- a point that is obvious to all and that I've never denied.

However, none of those chronological statements you listed are found in Genesis 3. Does that mean you think Genesis 3 has no chronology? I think it does have a pretty clear order of events. The statements you listed are not at all necessary for a text to contain a chronology.

 

I have no idea where you are going with this. If you want to use the term "sequence", that is fine with me. Both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 have a sequence. It is not the same. Maybe such obvious differences are an indication that the author, who placed these accounts back-to-back, didn't intend for them to be merged into a single sequence.

Anyway, I'll expand on that a bit. The Bible contains descriptions of many things we can't comprehend -- things that are beyond human experience. To explain the unexplainable, Scripture tends to use many pictures, none of which are complete, but each of which explains certain things.

For instance, the Bible gives many pictures of God. Here's some of them:
</font>

• God is Spirit (John 4:24; Psalm 139:7-10).</font>
• God is invisible (Col. 1:15; 1 John 4:12).</font>
• God is not a man (Num. 23:19; Hos. 11:9).</font>
• God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24).</font>
• God is the spring of living waters (Jer. 2:13).</font>
• God is our shepherd (Psalm 23).</font>
• God is a warrior (Ex. 15:2-3).</font>
• God is a protective mother bird (Psalm 91:4).</font>

If we take any one of these too seriously while excluding others, it can warp our image of God. If we focus on the first three, we may think of God as more of a "force" or a diffused gas than a personal being. Each of the remaining pictures stress certain aspects of God's character that the more technical descriptions don't get across. We don't get the best picture of God by literally combining all the pictures -- that only leads to nonsense -- but instead by combining the characteristics that underlie each picture.

As another example, Jesus uses three parables to explain why he has come to seek and to save the lost. Luke 15 contains the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (or prodigal) son. None of the pictures is totally accurate by themselves (for instance, God can be in more than one place at a time, unlike the shepherd who needs to leave his 99 sheep to go after the lost one) but put together they paint a more complete and accurate picture.

Finally, getting to the point, Genesis 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-25 give two stories of the creation of the world. Trying to merge the two into one literal account is as ridiculous as trying to merge the parables of the lost sheep, coin and son into a single story, or of merging the descriptions of God as fire, spring, shepherd, warrior, and bird into a single figure. The two creation accounts are not contradictory, but rather they give different halves of a whole. If the two halves could neatly fit together into a single historical story, there would have been no reason to present them separately in the first place.

The first account starts with primordial waters overwhelming an earth that is "formless and void" (Gen. 1:1-2) while the second starts with primordial ground that saw no rain (Gen. 2:4-5). The first puts man's creation at the end while the second has man created first before the plants have grown or animals have been formed (unless you read it from the NIV, which tries to smooth over the difference with the animals; this is clearer in more word-for-word translations such as the NASB, KJV, NKJV or ESV). In the first God tells the humans to rule over the other creatures and subdue the earth; in the second man is placed in the garden to "work it and take care of it". The first portrays God creating mainly by speaking; the second has God forming Adam from dust and breathing life into him. Similarly, the first portrays God (Elohim, the Hebrew generic name for God) as above his creation while in the second God (Yahweh, the Hebrew personal name for God) walks in the garden with Adam and Eve.

Many people explain away these differences by taking one account or the other as less literal. Generally, the first account is taken as authoritative and the second is just used to add further detail to the sixth day. When there's an apparent contradiction (such as the plants already existing by this time in the first account but not being there in the second), the first chapter is taken literally and the second is adjusted to fit.

My approach is to take both accounts as two sides of a coin. Either account would lead to misinterpretations if the other is excluded from consideration. For instance, the first account stresses God's transcendence, while the second stresses God's immanence. The first shows God's sovereignty as creation takes place in highly ordered and structured days, while the second focuses on God's providence, with things being created in response to needs (man to till the ground, woman as a helper for man). The first stresses how humanity is created in God's image with dominion over the earth, while the second stresses that we came from dust and have an duty to take care of the world. Industrialists may prefer the first account while environmentalists prefer the second, but by taking both together we find balance.

It is not a matter of contradiction. Most of the differences are so plainly obvious that it is the height of arrogance to think we've only noticed them now. They were as evident when the accounts were compiled together as they are now. They are presented side by side, which is a pretty good clue that the writer of Genesis wasn't disturbed by their differences. Consider two proverbs in the Bible that are often given on Bible contradiction web sites: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself" and "Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes". What the contradiction web sites try to minimize is where the proverbs are found: Proverbs 26:4-5 -- in other words, they are back to back! Obviously the compiler of Proverbs was well aware that these two proverbs gave different advice for a similar situation, and yet under divine inspiration he had no problem including them both. This was not a flaw he overlooked or some secret that was only discovered by later generations; the proverbs are two sides of the same coin, and so they were placed side by side. There are times when each is relevant, and it is better to keep both in mind than to always use one to the exclusion of the other.

There are other times when the Bible uses multiple accounts quite differently. Jesus' crucifixion is recorded in detail four times, yet we don't see the huge differences between the accounts that we do in creation or in the parables of the lost items. When Samuel/Kings and Chronicles give accounts of Israel's rulers, they select their details in order to fit their individual purpose, but yet the details mesh together. Saul is followed by David who is followed by Solomon in both accounts, and any differences are in minor details such as the exact moment a king died. Most of the details are exactly the same in both accounts (sometimes word for word).

In the creation accounts, by contrast, hardly any details are the same. While both describe God as creating everything, they do it in totally different ways. Somebody who reads Genesis 2:4-25 without any preconceived ideas from the preceding chapter would get a totally different picture of creation than one who tries to reconcile the second chapter to the first. I think we often miss much of what the second account has to say to us because we are only willing to view it through the filter of the first chapter, instead of viewing both through the filter of the entire Bible.

 

I believe Christ Jesus made the universe and all that is in it. I most certainly do not ignore that.

And in Exodus 31:17 where a similar statement is made, taking it equally literally would lead to a belief that God gets tired and needs to be refreshed from time to time. With Hebrews 4 as my guide, I take these references to God's rest as symbolic of a greater reality, both in duration and in what the rest entails. That's why I think the rest is more than a single day, and that's why I don't believe the rest is a time when God quits working and is "refreshed". God is still at work in the world now (John 5:17), even though in another sense, "His works were finished from the foundation of the world" (Hebrews 4:3).

 

Bob, do you believe God literally gets tired and needs to be refreshed?

 

I see you didn't answer the question, Bob.

That's not what I'm doing. I'm using what I do know about God. I know that God, aside from when he was subject to human frailty, cannot become tired or in need of refreshment. So, when a verse says that God refreshed himself (Exodus 31:17), I take that as an anthropomorphism. Human language that we can relate to is being used to describe something beyond our comprehension. According to Hebrews 4, God's rest since the foundation of the world is ongoing, and according to John 5:17, God is still working during his rest. And yet, God's rest is still something real, something memorialized in the seventh day of creation using symbolic language for both its duration and scope.

If you disagree, why not explain how you view God's rest, and how you harmonize your view with the passages I've brought up?