The New Testament and Genesis 1-11

I can accept an old earth arguement on the basis of "days" meaning a longer period of time, etc. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I can understand the source of the interpretation.

However, I have no such charity for theistic evolutionists. Evolution is a discredited atheistic philosophy and there is no reason to attempt a reconciliation to a theory that is being discarded by scientists in droves.

OldReg is right about his statement regarding the NT and its support for a historical/scientific/factual understanding of Genesis 1-11.

Jesus certainly believed that Adam and Eve were created by God as male and female. Paul basis a whole arguement around the historicity of Adam and Eve.

To deny the "spiritual" facts of Genesis 1-11 is to undercut the NT. There is no way around this fact. Spritual truths are also historical and scientific truths.

Gray has given us an answer to this OE/YE question. For people who claim to believe God's Word, I would think his interpretation would gather more support.

Instead, many continue to pursue "evolutionary" concepts to support "what we know about the world" without digging in to what we know about the Hebrew text.

Perhaps, in the words of my former seminary professor, we should say, "A pox on both your houses."

Seriously, Genesis, IMO, teaches an undefined age for the universe and earth's core, and a recent age for the earth's biosphere. Genesis 1:3ff is a description of the earth's biosphere being formed and filled to make it habitable for life. It's really that simple and elegant.

 

your refute refuted..... http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i1/microwave.asp

 

anyway I am speaking for biblical authority not on the authority of falliable men. these men just represent a different interpretation of the data. same data just different presuppositions....we presume God created, evolutionists presume no God and time and processes created. neither is provable, Creationists are simply up front with their Bias evolutionists are not.

you've changed my mind on the squarra bird but what about the others, the same website has them, thank's for the website.

 

There may be an atheistic philosophy of evolution but what is being debated around here is the science of evolution, and science says nothing about whether or not there is a God.

Of course, we could ALL start using loaded terms - how about the "pharasaic" theology of special creationism?

 

These conclusions are at odds with the conclusions of the professional astronomers who made the actual observations. Here are enough of their papers on the matter to last a week. Papers which have been submitted to the peer review process to see if other professional scientists can find fault with their results. I would suggest that if the guys at AIG have an alternate interpretation that they should submit their results to the same scrutiny. The peer review process is the appropriate place for disagreements in science to be debated. If they choose not to participate, they must have a very low opinion of their own work.

http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/map_bibliography.cfm

Does anyone care to take each of these papers and show wherethe authors are incorrect?

 

Bunk!

Today's "modern" science is an abuse of the term science. Theology was the queen of the sciences until very recently.

Today's science can't lead us to God because it a priori excludes the supernatural!

That isn't science, that's philosophy!

 

i think the writers of the NT believed and taught in literal Gen 1-11.
Jesus said from the beginning He created them male and female (Matt19:4, Mark10:6).
The writer of Hebrews refers to those chapters as historic (Heb 11:1-7), here clearly referring to Cain and Able as real persons, as well as Enoch and Noah.
Peter in the context of Judgement refers to the Creation and Flood as historical facts (2Pet 3:4-6).
Paul in Romans (5:12-14)speeks of Adam as a historic figure and the events of the Garden as facts.
The point of the Geneology in Luke is to establish Jesus' direct link to Adam. I think to show that the promise made to Eve was fulfilled (Gen3:15). Why do this if you knew these (Gen 1-11) to be allagoric or figuretive. And how can you have millions of years of death and disease before sin(fossil record shows millions of years of STD's, cancer and many other diseases)?

Anyway I think it is selfevident that the writers of the NT (as well as the early church fathers) knew Genesis 1 thru 11 to be historic.


thankyou and God Bless

 

I guess it comes down to ,do we believe Jesus,Luke,Paul, and Peter, or do we believe the evolutionist.
I have seen many arguements on the board over the last 1 1/2 years regarding evolution vs creation.I don't know yet exactly what it is the evolutionist or theistic evolutionist actually believe about man's beginninigs.I am curious though.

 

Just as an added note ,I don't get the sense they are Dawinist in the classic sense.I get the sense they are old earther's.Beyond that I don't really have a sense of what they actually believe about man's beginnings.

 

This is what's known as the slippery slope fallacy. Evolution does not negate the possibility of Adam being a literal, historical figure. Nor does it negate a fall through willful disobedience to God.

 

evolution says that ALL biological life arose from simpler life, including humans. how can you have the consequences of sin (Rom 5:12) before sin itself?

 

What, spiritual death?

 

OldReg,

I'm with you. I have yet to see, hear, or know of a theistic evolutionist who accepts that Adam was an historical person. Evolution is antithetical to Scriptural revelation.

Either God created the world and everything in it, or it evolved by random, purposeless chance without the help or aid of God or anything like God. And since the latter is a scientific impossibility, "scientists" have postulated that life began on earth from alien life forms from distant galaxies.

So much for scientific objective truth!

 

Here's a fairly well-known example: [Glenn R. Morton].

I'm pretty sure some of the TEs here also insist on a historical Adam. Personally, I think Adam could either be a historical person or representative of a group of people (much the way the Tree of Life may represent God's sustaining power instead of having inherent magical properties). Last time this was brought up, I think most TEs here were more conservative on this issue than I am.

Why don't you consider it an option that God may be able to work in ways that seem random to us? Can't God control the weather? Can't he ensure that people are born where he wants them to be born, with the traits he wants them to have? Couldn't he even guide the process of casting lots in the New Testament? Why do you think randomness is such a problem for God?

(I've asked these questions so many times I've lost count, and have yet to get an answer.)

 

One reason I am drawn to theistic evolution is because is vanquishes the deistic Watchmaker who wound up the universe in six days and then stepped away to watch it spin down, or the Designer who turned the fully-wound universe over to Mother Nature to take care of from then on, except for a few interventions to tinker with it. Instead, it affirms that God created Adam and God created you and me. God makes the sparrows, the grass of the field, the stars in the sky.

Natural processes are sustained by God and used by him to accomplish his purposes. They do not operate on their own; they are not independent of God. God holds the matter of the universe together, and gravity and the other forces describe some of how God does that. God also does other things that cannot be explained by natural processes, such as miracles and other intersections between this universe and what is beyond it.

To describe this view of creation as deistic is to fail to understand it.

 

If God created all there is from nothing, then all there is was created by God. Pretty complicated concept huh?