The Seven Days of Creation

I am not sure if this is exactly what you quoted before from Cambridge but I can tell you that the idea of deep time came from the Hindus, was picked up by the Greeks and Romans, was picked up again from the Greek during the European Enlightenment by atheists and other anti-Chrisitans and non-Christians, and then became a corollary of Evolution because Darwinism needed lots of time to occur. However, the Enlightenment based their deep time on a misunderstanding of the sedimentary layers worldwide which their incipient geology attributed to long periods of erosion instead of recognizing them as the worldwide graveyard of the plant, marine, animal, and human life destroyed in the catastrophic Genesis Flood with wild tectonic plate upheaval creating the seven continents of the world today. The Great Unconformity suggests that the surface of the earth was ground down to its granite core. A new picture of this geology was found in the late 1950s when the bottoms of the oceans were first mapped. As far as I know, none of the Enlightenment geologists is considered correct today.

 

It is a transcript of a presentation by Mark Dever and his mentor Roy Clements (Dever was over there getting a PhD in Ecclesiastical History, he's since become an influential Southern Baptist minister)

 

Well, is this the exact same quotation that you cited once before or is this another quotation?

 

I added a brief summary and bolded the things relevant to this thread:

 

Precisely. For someone predisposed to it, developing it only for himself, or who isn’t logically savvy, your point works just fine. For those wary of such artificiality, and aware of past interpretive failures related to the earth’s status in the solar system, it works not at all. In other words, it is not the sort of thing to bring up as part of a debate, except perhaps for table banging.

However, much worse is rejecting the premise that there should be something to compare with. Not having even searched for such, sounds more than suspicious. And what if it turns out that the Hebrew grammatical forms in Genesis 1 do not really match those of the other occurrences supposedly supporting your point? Are you aware of that argument?

 

I don't know, Jerome, if you saw the movie Is Genesis History, but here is a clip showing the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

 

Bro. RLVaughn, you're right that Dever and Clements can't make much of a biblical defense of their position.

I'd encourage everyone to listen to their whole presentation. There are other troubling things said. I found it in the audio teachings at monergism.com

Dever and Clements on Christians and Science (audio file)

 

I think that it is safe to say that the SBC has a lot of old earthers, if not the majority. For example, one of the most influential theologians of our times, Norman Geisler, is old earth. People like Matt Walsh Matt Walsh is a writer, speaker, author, and one of the religious Right’s most influential young voices. who is called religious right but is RCC and considers all Protestantism as heresy is old earth and cannot even recapitulate the beliefs of YECs (Young Earth Creationists). Another Old Earther is Wayne Grudem. However, John MacArthur (Grace To You) may be a YEC--at least he went to Kentucky and seems to be a friend to Ken Ham.

 

As far as I know, they do not exist, which is precisely why the point fails in reality

My view is that the Bible does not focus on the age issue, and that we would do better to focus on those issues that have real traction when dealing with unbelievers. I had decided against it, but I think I will try to make that point a bit clearer or at least expand on it.

 

Keeping Deacon’s caveat (post #72) in mind, here are some points related to the text and to its interpretation:

Point 1: Neither the OT nor the NT makes an issue of the age of the earth or the universe.

Point 2: The ECF did not hold to a uniform doctrine of the age of the earth or the universe.

Point 3: Neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic Churches formulated an ‘age of earth’ doctrine.

Point 4: ‘Yom’ is versatile with more than one definition, even in the first chapter of Genesis.

Point 5: The seventh ‘yom’ was never closed in Genesis or anywhere in the Bible.

Point 6: The word ‘yom’ can mean a long, indefinite period of time.

Point 7: Events during at least some of the six ‘yom’ strongly imply more than 24 hours.

Point 8: “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

Point 9: The six days can be understood to apply only to the later development of earth.

Point 10: Church leaders sided against Galileo with an interpretation now abandoned.

 

The lack of emphasis on the earth’s age in Scripture, and resultant lack of a doctrine among early Christians, coupled with the possibilities for ‘yom’ and an open seventh day set the stage. However, the failure of the church to do science right, due to worldly influence and faulty Bible interpretation, along with further philosophic confusion and resultant attacks on the Bible, created caution and some setbacks, but also served as valuable lessons.

Now, opportunity is greater than ever. With the advent of new scientific discoveries which clash with their cherished philosophical paradigm, the atheistic community has been on the defensive against an ever more obvious, all too recent creation event. Those who continue to resist are being forced into ever more bizarre metaphysical imaginings. Even if they cannot fully agree on it, if Christians would follow Scripture and cease emphasizing age, and instead focus on the much bigger picture of origins and the implications of a finite expanding universe, they might just make monumental headway in the debate, perhaps even reverse the cultural tendency toward relativism, humanism, and scientism.

 

I don't think that you can show that the age issue is not addressed in Scripture. As far as I know the RCC is old earth although the church fathers were not. And I do have a close catholic friend who is YEC.

As for the science issue, the church did not change until the Enlightenment. And the recovery began after WW II when technology allowed for scientific mapping of the ocean floor. Blame poor American education for the fact that Americans are so far behind in science. Old earthers have lost the scientific debate. They have adopted Hindu doctrines so it is a spiritual problem in that they have been blinded by naturalism, perhaps the defining viewpoint of the baby boomers.