Anyone who thinks that a book on California Real Estate Law has to perfectly “gel” with a book about Navajo basket weaving not only has some very loose screws, but he has lost very many of them!
Perhaps you would find that you are more talented at basket weaving.
I have often found that folks who are loosing in debate begin to relegate themselves to sarcasm and deviation from the issues. You are doing both.
The Bible makes it expressly obvious that the seven days in Genesis were not literal days unless one acknowledges that the creation stories in Genesis describe a recreation of the inhabited earth.
Could the three days prior to this period not also have been 24 hour days? Did God really need the sun, moon, and stars to illuminate the Earth? Was not His glory sufficient to provide whatever light may have been necessary? His glory will be sufficient to provide all the light necessary in glory won't it (cf. Rev. 21:23)? Besides, you still have not provided me with one other example in the OT where the word
yom appears with a numerical qualifier and is translated as something other than a literal 24-hour day. Until you can, the burden of proof rests on you.
Ah, more sarcasm and disrespect - it's always interesting to see how moderates react when they are loosing in debate because they will not abide by sound exegesis and hermeneutics.
According this reasoning not one single dinosaur died until after Adam ate the forbidden fruit! Where in the Bible do you find Jesus being chased around by a Tyrannosaurus Rex? How can anyone dare to make such a mockery of the Bible?
This is the point I'm making: You can't just label as "nonsense" different portions of God's Word just because you don't like what they say. Paul plainly taught from Rom. 5-8 that death, disease, and disorder only entered the world and affected all of creation after the Fall of Man. To say otherwise is to say that enormous calamity and destruction would have reigned supreme throughout the lives of Adam and Eve, even if they had never sinned! Is that what you are trying to affirm? I'll choose to stick with God's Word. And by the way, how do you know that it was completely impossible for men to have lived with the dinosaurs? Were you there with Adam, Eve, and their descendents, or could it be that you are placing more trust in carbon dating and other flawed scientific methods than you are the Word of God? That seems to be your greatest problem. Will you at least admit that someone can't affirm the words of Paul in Rom. 5-8 in regard to the effects of man's Fall upon creation, and still affirm macroevolution at the same time? According to sound exegesis, you have to choose one or the other (or just choose to remain in the land of logical contradiction).
Genesis speaks of man exclusively as a completed creation; that is, as a homo sapiens. Whether God created him over a period a three billion years or in a nanosecond makes no difference at all to the account in Genesis. It is my personal opinion that Adam was created instantaneously as Adam, but that is just a personal conviction and I certainly would not try to prove it from Scripture.
You mean, you wouldn't try to prove your convictions from the Scripture because they can't be proven by the Scriptures? I'm sorry, but you would've made a pretty lousy Reformer - how can we say "Sola Scriptura" if we are not going to be bound by what it says? To say that the image of God "makes no difference at all to the account in Genesis" proves that you have never tried to do an serious study in Theology. The
imago dei is absolutely critical to one's understanding of humanity. The reason we preach and teach that all human life has dignity and is worthy of respect is because the Bible plainly says that man was "created" (not evolved into) God's image. If the
homo sapien is nothing more than a product of survival of the fittest, then you can't possibly argue man's dignity based on the image of God. Further, the word translated "create" in Gen. 1:26-27 is
bara and it must be translated "to create, shape, form, fashion, etc." In the Piel form, it actually carries the idea of "to cut." Tell me then, how do you come up with man evolving into the image of God from the word
bara ? Provide me with one example in the Hebrew OT where the words carries the idea of "evolve" and I will be happy to concede the point.
Some people think they do, some people think they don’t, some people think it doesn’t matter. I know that the gospel that Jesus preached is true, not because some Baptist pastor says so, but because I have seen the reality of the gospel in my own life and in the life of many others. Jesus came to preach the gospel; he did not come here to condemn the theory of evolution. Preaching the gospel produces eternal life; preaching against evolution makes a monkey out of the preacher and makes the Bible appear to be a sequel to Aesop’s Fables.
Wow, so now I'm a monkey just because I believe the Word of God. Please pass the bananas then. I'd rather be one of God's monkeys than one of Darwin's faithful followers.
Again, you assert that the whole of evolution doesn't matter. I'm thankful that our Anabaptist forefathers didn't have the same attitude when it came to believer's baptism. I'm sure there were many in their day who said that one's mode of baptism didn't matter, but they chose to remain faithful to God's Word. Consequently, Baptists are now the only major Christian denomination that consistently and faithfully practices believer's baptism in obedience to the command of our Lord. By the way, many of them were killed because they would not denounce one's need for believer's baptism. So then, do I think that this whole discussion has any merit - you better believe I do. I think it's important for my kids to know that God is not to be placed as some bookend upon a theory that was forged in the fires of post-Renaissance atheism. Further, what we believe about creation drives our theology. If man was not created in the exact way that the Bible says that He was, then how can we possibly be sure that man actually fell into sin (as the first eleven chapters of Genesis say that he did)? If the creation account of Gen. 1-2 is nothing more than night-time child's play, then who's to say that Gen. 3 is not the same? Again, the burden of proof rests of you and your flawed worldview.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis present to the scholar many problems that are unique to that portion of Scripture and we need to be exceedingly careful that we do not allow misunderstandings about these eleven chapters to derail us from the New Testament message and the correct interpretation and application of it.
What you call "misunderstandings about these eleven chapters," Bible-believing Christians call exegetical, hermeneutical, and logical consequences. You don't like those consequences, and so you have chosen to believe that the first eleven chapters of Genese are allegorical. That's your perogative, but don't try to come in here and say that macroevolution jives with Scripture - clearly it doesn't.
This is nothing but meaningless mumbo-jumbo.
Does anyone notice a trend of sarcasm, deviation from issues, and disrespect developing here. Like I said, these are usually tactics employed by the loser in a debate. Ah, but I digress.
What truly matters is that we understand that all men are born into this world with a human weakness that makes them so very vulnerable to temptation that each and every man sins and falls short of the glory of God, separating him from God and His blessings.
But how can we know this is we believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are allegorical? How can we know this if we will not believe what Paul has said about the effects of the Fall upon all of creation as seen in Rom. 5-8. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Either we can believe these passages to be teaching literal truth, or we can't - which is it going to be? YOU CAN'T JUST PICK AND CHOOSE. Clearly, your foot is caught in an exegetical and logical trap here. But of course, that's what happens when you try to make macroevolution "wash" with the Word of God.
That man’s beliefs about evolution are 100% irrelevant.
In other words, what we really need to do is make Christ our Savior but not our Lord? We need to welcome His grace with open arms, but then turn our backs to the clear precepts of His Word? Don't forget this: You can't say that you are a child of God unless you are willing to accept the plain teaching of the Word of God (that is of course unless you believe in the "fire insurance" salvation that so many of the fine folks in our pews are now banking their eternities on).
Personally, I believe that Romans 5:5:12-21 teaches that we all sinned in Adam and that death passed upon all men as the direct consequence of that sin, but that interpretation is not central to the gospel message. Indeed, it is not necessary to know anything at all about Adam in order to be saved.
Wow, I've never seen such double talk! The fact that man has fallen into sin and can't save Himself is not "central to the Gospel message?" My goodness, if men don't know that they are lost, why in the world would they want to be saved? Saved from what? If they are not sinners, why the need for salvation? Further, if one need not know anything about Adam and his helpless race, then why did the Apostle Paul spend so much time developing the argument from Rom. 5-8?
Craig, this is very disheartening. Can you see what you have allowed your vehement affirmation of macroevolution to do to your theology? Because you don't want to be bound by what Gen. 1-3 and Rom. 5-8 says about man's creation and his subsequent Fall, you are now willing to discard some of the most foundational parts of the Gospel. Please consider what you are saying here...I mean that only in the most sincere of ways.
The purpose of Romans chapter 5 is to show us that we need to be saved and that salvation comes exclusively through the obedience of Christ on the cross.
Once again, if the Fall is not "central to the Gospel message," then what does man need to be saved from? You've got some explaining to do.
What kind of nonsense is this? In what way has ANY evolutionary theory limited God?