Thank you, believe it or not, that really means a lot to me.
But I would drop dead, if you didn't disagree with me on some issue or
another. :-)
Jim wrote:
>> Allegory is not divorced from truth. It is a WAY to DELIVER truth. That is
what Genesis 1 does, by its very terms, in my view.<<
Since we postponed the Great Genesis Debate, I have done some reading to
figure out what you were saying. I think I have a better understanding. I
am not a theologian; my total concern is to explain the data. Thus I have
deficiencies in the modern views of Scripture.
One of the things I have recently read was an absolutely excellent article by
a far too rare contributer to the reflector. It is "The Bible and Science:
Towards a Rational Harmonization" by John Mark Reynolds. in the 3rd Inter.
Conf. on Creationism, (Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship, 1994), pp
445-458 Robert Walsh, editor. I would recommend this article highly. I will
refer to this occasionally as Reynolds p.XX
In answer to your position on Genesis 1 which I think is quite different if
it is allegorical than Genesis 2-11. Genesis 1 supposedly describes the
creation of the universe, the earth, and life. My dictionary defines
allegorical as
"a story in which people, things or happenings have another meaning."
Since almost all agree that Genesis 1 is concerned with the creation events
itself, what OTHER meaning can be applied? How does a story about the
creation have a different meaning which is also about the creation? To apply
allegory to Genesis 1 seems to bend the meaning of allegory into autogory.
In the case of Genesis 2-11 allegory is permissible because they may be
tales of the creation of Adam and Eve, their offspring, the fall, flood, and
Babel, in which truths are taught by a parable, but in the case of Genesis 1
the truth IS that God created the world.
Secondly, I would like to quote Reynolds p. 453,
>>""The problem for Hasker is that creation is not the sort of event
that humans could 'know' on their own. If God, for example,
created with the appearance of age or history, then how could a
human being ever discover this fact? The age of the cosmos has
great theological and metaphysical implications and yet that is the
very sort of question that science can never answer with certainty.
God was the only being present at creation according to all
Christians. Events like creation are not repeatable. Creation is
a singular event. Whey would God conceal something that by its
very nature only He could know? Since this impacts humans whole
image of themselves, why would He do so?"<<
I think John Mark's question is probably the most profound when applied to
Genesis 1. Why would God use allegory here? Why not simply tell us the
truth or at least as much of the truth as the hearers could handle. To say
that they could not handle evolution or some other modern theory, Reynolds
p.451 states,
>>" One might claim that the scientific
truth is so complex in comparison with the theological truth that
the one was possible to convey to a primitive society while the
other was not. This does not seem like a very hopeful objection,
however. If evolution is true, it is not difficult to crudely
describe it. Philosophers such as Empedocles did this in a rough-
and-ready way in the ancient world around the same time as the
completion of Genesis. The mechanism and details of evolutionary
theory are highly complex. I am not suggesting god had to give
these. But would it not be the case that a roughly evolutionary
account of God's creative acts would be preferable to roughly non-
evolutionary account (if evolution is true)? God was capable
within the context of the ancient world of relating a coherent,
roughly evolutionary account of creation. In fact, it is necessary
if He is to be seen as potentially a being that is perfectly
honest."<<
Obviously, John Mark had not given proper consideration to my views since he
is against evolution. :-) But, the point is a valid one and the YEC's are
correct that God should have been able to tell us some part of the truth and
they believe their interpretation of Genesis 1 is correct.
Jim wrote:
>>Here, Glenn states that what Moses reports God as SAYING is "journalistic"
(my term) and what he reports God as DOING is "commentary." I don't see any
support for this dichotomy in the text. How, from the Hebrew, do we
distinguish "journalism" from "commentary"? <<
It is easy to tell what God said from what God did (eventually).
Genesis 1:2-5 And God said let there be light and there was light God saw
that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness'.
I left all punctuation out of that verse to mimick the lack of punctuation
in the Hebrew. Do you believe that God said [quote] "Let there be light and
there was light God saw that the light was good and he separated the light
from the darkness"[endquote]
If you do, then you have God speaking funny. That is how you tell what God
said from the commentary.
Equally do you believe that God said in Genesis 1:6-8 "Let there be an
expanse between the waters to separate water from water so God made the
expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it and
it was so'[endquote]
Your view presents a weirdly talking Diety.
Jim wrote:
>>This view sounds similar to Alan Hayward's (see Maatman, above, pg. 175),
and suffers from the same potential problem--assumption.<<
In my book I give full credit to Hayward. His book was the first I ever saw
this view in. I do give it a different twist than he has, since he places
the proclamations at the formation of the earth, I at the beginning of the
universe. I am embarassed to admit that I have not read Russ's objections to
Hayward's views and would love to hear them. I reviewed part of Hayward's
book for him prior to publication. He sent me a copy which I didn't read for
a until last year. In 1986 I was in the process of leaving YECism and I quit
keeping up at that point.
Jim wrote:
>>But there IS a reported time frame, and it is chronological. That time
frame is "evening and morning, the Nth --yom--." However you interpret "yom,"
you have explicit "frames." These cannot be ignored.<<
This is really strange Jim. Here you, Mr. Genesis-1-is-allegory-and-a-poem
are suddenly turning into Mr. Gensis-1-is-literal-as-court-testimony like
Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde! We both agree that Genesis 1 is poetic in
literary form. This may have been a poetic, memory device. As I said in my
post, I am certainly open to the possiblity that the proclamations occurred
entirely before the creation of the universe and were thus outside of
space-time. The days are then expressing a sequence in a manner
understandable to us. It is a matter of fact that prior to the sun's
creation, there was no good measure of "Day" anyway.
Jim quotes Gleason Archer,
>>"[I]n broad
outlines, the sequence set forth in the Hebrew account is in harmony with
that indicated by the data of geology. It is true that the mention of the
fashioning of the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth creative day does not
correspond with the quite conclusive evidence that the planet earth appeared
subsequently to the creation of the sun."
Frankly, I disagree a whole lot with Archer. Whales are found much later in
geologic history than the Scripture would indicate. Plants were created
before the sun and moon, grass like the kind you have to mow, does not even
appear in the fossil record until the Miocene epoch [thanks Art] and yet the
Genesis 1 would have you believe that it was created very early. Land plants
appear before sea creatures, conttrary to geology. I really dislike the type
of statement that Archer is making because it shows such a lack of knowledge
of geology and then makes the Bible look bad at the same time.
Gleason continues:
>>But inasmuch as the creation of light
on the first 'day' indicates the priority of the sun even in the Mosaic
account, we are to understand on exegetical grounds that the emphasis on the
fourth day was not the original creation of the heavenly bodies as such, but
rather their becoming available for the purpose of regulating time and cycles
of the rotation and revolution of earth and moon. The specific verb for
'create ex nihilo' (bara) is not used in Genesis 1:16, but rather the more
general term, 'make' (asah)." (Archer, Survey of OT Introduction, Rev. Ed.,
pp. 193-194)<<
Has Gleason ever considered that the Big Bang would have a whole lot of light
and would create the matter out of which the earth and moon are made so that
bara does not neet to be used in their case? Besides, the light of Genesis
1:1 must be different from the sun, because the sun was not made until day
four!
Jim wrote:
>>The KJV has it as "the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind,"
explicitly
opposed to Glenn's view.<<
I can most certainly believe that an apple tree will give rise to apples this
year. But that does not necessarily mean that the descendant of an apple
tree in two million years will produce apples. Even at that time, two million
years hence, that descendant will be producing fruit after ITS kind, not
after the APPLES kind. This verse does not exclude evolution! Both my
parents had blue eyes. They produced three children with eyes after their
kind. (We all have blue eyes) But I did not produce a single child with blue
eyes. Have I violated God's command to reproduce after my kind? Where is
the limit?
Jim wrote:
>>I agree with Glenn that the "LAND bringing forth" is what is emphasized,
but I would conclude the Bible is perfectly in accord with the concept of
MICROevolution. Large scale change is not indicated here, nor even implied.<<
O.K. while I believe that large scale change is required here, lets look at
it your way. This verse certainly does not rule large scale change out. I
do not see the words 'Land can only produce living creatures with minor
differences from their parents' in this verse.
Jim wrote:
>>This is, I think, explicitly precluded by Genesis 1:31: God SAW everything
that he had made...And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." Now
perhaps Glenn will argue that God, being omnipotent and timeless, "saw" all
this as future realization. But I would say that is eisegesis, not exegesis.
The text is quite to the contrary: God "blessed" man on the sixth day (v. 28)
and "spoke" (proclaimed!) to man on the sixth day (vv. 29,30). It would seem
that being consistent about the "present tense" use of proclamation (Glenn's
test), we would have to conclude man was indeed created on the sixth day!<<
Not quite so fast. While I agree that this is probably the toughest point in
Genesis 1, it is possible to include this as a commentary from Moses which
begins in Genesis 1:27.. I agree that it is not as satisfying as the others,
v 29 and 30 are separated by the beginning of the commentary portion of this
passage.
Jim wrote:
>>6. The Lay of the Land
I think this has possibilities. I'd like to do further study on this view. <<
The problem Jim is that if this portion is to have any reality in the
scientific knowledge we have, the Mediterranean was empty 5.5 million years
ago and has been ocean ever since. I looked up the drill holes and there is
unfortunately no evidence of later drying out of the Mediterranean. Thus, to
use this, you must use it 5.5 million years ago.
Jim wrote[a is the 99% similarity is chimp/human DNA]:
>>I would say that a. is as much an argument for a common designer as it is
for common descent. I have the same problem with b. as I do with the
vestigial organ argument. The "psudogene" argument is one from ignorance.
Because we don't know the function doesn't mean it doesn't have a function.
<<
You need to study the psuedogenes more. We know they don't have a function
because important control segments of the DNA are missing. Why did God design
a broken gene at the same place in 4 different species. I think your problem
is more with evolution than with the evidence.
Jim wrote:
>>I would conted the key is not LOOKS,
but ACTIONS, which give us the best indication of ancient man. How do we find
actions? Through cultural evidences. There is an ABRUPT appearance of
culture,relatively speaking, that distinguishes man from ape, and points
rather dramatically to special creation. <<
If by culture you are meaning civilization, I would ask why the tribesmen of
New Guinea did not partake of this ABRUPT appearance of culture? Does this
mean that they were not specially created? If you allow that stone tools are
"culture" then we have evidence of stone tools back to 2.6 million years ago
but little else from then on until the past 18,000 years. This does not look
abrupt to me- except on the scale of a 4.5 billion year old earth.
Jim wrote:
>>I don't have a problem with Glenn's local flood view. This was the view
held even by the staunch conservativeS Bernard Ramm and Hugh Ross. Archer
(above) has some cogent Scriptural arguments against this view, however.
Here, Christians can disagree agreeably, can't they?<<
Given the past behavior of christians, probably not.
I enjoyed your points very much
glenn