This is what I am trying to convey. The fulfillment was not instantaneous;
it was a process.
>
>Psalm 33 comments on God's speaking into existence various parts of the
>universe in Gen 1. Having referred to parts of the creation (Psalm 33:6,7),
>Psalm 33 then says, "Let all the earth fear Jehovah: Let all the inhabitants
>of the world stand in awe of him. For he spake, and it was done; He
>commanded, and it stood fast." In the context of the power of ancient Near
>Eastern kings, no one reading these words would have thought that a long
time
>intervened between the heavenly King's speaking, and the doing of his will.
REading that in several translations, I still don't see that this means
that it was immediately done. God spake about the messiah yet even in the
YEC view it took another 4000 years for the Messiah to come. Speaking does
not always mean instant gratification. I don't think your verse has the
effect you think it does.
In 1 Sam 16, God told Samuel that He had provided a king from Jesse's
family. It was approximately 3 decades later before David actually became
king. It seems that God's word doesn't mean instant gratification.
>There is an interesting parallel in the NT: Matt 21:19 And seeing a fig tree
>by the way side, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only;
>and HE SAITH UNTO IT, LET THERE BE no fruit from thee henceforward for ever.
>And IMMEDIATELY the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it,
>they marvelled, saying, How did the fig tree immediately wither away?
>
No one said God couldn't do it instantly. That is not the issue. What is
at issue is whether he did or not. The scientific data clearly says that
God didn't create everything in Genesis 1 instantly. So if you choose to
read it that way, then it would seem that you have either become a YEC
(which I know aint true) or you believe the Bible to be erroneous in its
statement of instant creation.
>Also, in spite of Basil, who is not a clear witness to your position, the
>Church both Christian and Jewish understood the results of God's speaking in
>Gen 1 to have followed immediately.
In the post before, I had told you all that Basil was the start of it. He
didn't have a fully developed view of the days of Proclamation. But at
least one day was. That is the import of Basil.
It is the historical understanding of
>the Church which drives me to identify the genre of Gen 1-11 as
fundamentally
>historical, or in Wenham's words, "proto-historical." I cannot, therefore,
>with any consistency reject the historical interpretation of the Church with
>regard to the immediacy of creation following God's speaking, especially
>since I do not see your reinterpretation being supported by anything in the
>text, parallel passages, or the historical context.
The text very clearly indicates this, at least to me, Alan Hayward Capron
and a few others. To say that the text does not indicate this ignorse the
simple fact that in Genesis 1, God DOES nothing. He says a lot but DOES
nothing. The Human writer is the being who said, "And God saw the light,
that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5And God
called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and
the morning were the first day."
But the human writer didn't say WHEN God saw that the light was good.
Point to the part of the verse that indicates a temporal relationship
between the speaking and the actualizing. The only thing that there could
possibly be to indicate instantaneous creation is the logic that a superior
God would do it that way. Of course, that is no guarentee that a
superior/omnipotent God did it that way.
You are correct that the historic understanding of Genesis 1 is that
creation was instantaneous, it is not at all a requirement that that is
what God meant when He inspired the writer.
>
>Nevertheless, it seems legitimate, if one so desires, to hold that the
>commands only initiated processes which eventuated in the formation of the
>material world. In the Markan account of the fig tree, the disciples do not
>notice the withering away until the next day. That is rather immediate; but,
>it is not instantaneous.
Paul, there are lots of cases where God's word was not instantly fulfilled
in addition to the one about David the King (which didn't happen for decades).
The Messiah didn't come for at least 4000 years after he was first promised.
The children of Abraham were not given the land until easily 400 years
later and actually they still don't have all the land promised to Abe. Yet
if we interpret God's word as you want it interpreted, the Cainanites
should have left the land in ca. 1800 BC. They didn't even leave the land
when Joshua came through.
The word of the Lord was given to prophets long before the destruction of
Ancient Judah. Judah didn't fall instantly.
Genesis could be doing the same thing, regardless of what historical belief
was. So, where is that word, 'instantly' found in Genesis 1?
>
>But, much more importantly, I cannot see any great value in this
>reinterpretation of the days of Genesis. For even if you can thereby
>rearrange the fulfillment of the events, the fulfillments entailing as they
>do the making of a rock-solid sky, setting an ocean above it which can pour
>down and flood the earth, having the earth arise out of an ocean, and then
>having the flat earth float on top of the waters (a fact which is seen more
>clearly later in the OT) will never be harmonizable with modern science
>anyway. The fact that the days are out of order geologically is minor
>compared to a solid sky with an ocean above it threatening to flood the
>earth. Or do the geological problems loom much larger to a geologist. :-)
Have you ever heard of the north pole? If you use this term you can't be
harmonized with modern science.
Have you ever heard of the setting sun? Jimminy, you must be non-scientific.
Have you ever heard of the rising sun? Obviously you believe that the sun
rises instead of the factual case that the earth rotates.
Have you ever heard of the ice box? You are behind the technological times.
Have you ever heard of the teamsters union? Do you think they drive teams
of oxen?
Certain words become fossilized in a language and have no implication to
the user's beliefs.
And when it comes to harmonizing the word of God--the Bible-- with science,
the beliefs of humans imo becomes subjugated to the harmonization. To claim
that we must stay with the old falsified views, seems not only silly, but
destructive and inhibitive of finding a view that works.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution