So would Denis Lamoureux! He's out collecting stones. :-)
>It
>appears that you are saying that it includes God's proclamations
>(the imperitive) as prophecy, albeit written later by human hands,
>and the fulfillment, as what was observed by the author as
>confirmation of the proclamation as an historical record. Is this
>correct?
>
Yes. It gets me out of all sorts of temporal problems like plants before the
sun, whales being created with the fish, birds created with the fish and the
land plants created before the fish. All of these are incorrect for the order
of appearance in the fossil record.
In order to explain the order of the fossils in the geologic column within a
Biblical framework, you must either say that the entire column was deposited
during a flood and then try to explain why whales are NOT found with the fish,
or, you must assume that the order was never meant to be taken as any sort of
order. Most TEs say the account is allegorical. I say it is a list of
proclaimations by God prior to the beginning of the universe.
>In your opinion, to what extent is Genesis 1 then "theopneustos"
>and to what extent can it be attributed to the writer's mind and
>observations? How do you distinguish the two? Is this also drawn
>along the lines of the imperitive-proclamation and the
>observable-historical account of the author?
Pardon my ignorance of theological terms. The little greek I had in school
years ago tells me that "Theopneustos" means "God breathed." If that is what
that word means, then I do believe that the account is inspired by God, not by
man. And I believe that my interpretation of Genesis 1 is the only one which
can allow Genesis to have historical content which is not contradicted by the
geologic record.
As to distinguishing between the two, I don't think one needs to. If all
scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim3:16) then 1 Chronicles 2, which is nothing
more than a list of people gathered by a human being, is equally God-breathed.
God wanted that historical information in the Bible for some reason.
But more to your question about what God said and what the human wrote (under
God's inspiration), it is generally easy to tell. God most certainly did not
say, "Let there be light. And it was so". That is a very funny way of
speaking. I don't tell an employee of mine, "Let there be maps and it was
so" or "Drill an oil well and it was so". No one speaks like that.
But if God said, "Let there be light" and the human, under God's inspiration
wrote, "And it was so." the verse is understandable. When was it so?
Instantaneously? No. Geology allows us to look at the layers of the earth and
determine when a given fossil appears. Whales were not instantly created at
the time of the fish. Birds were not created at the time of the fish. They
were created later, either by PC or by TE.
Notice also that verse 1 (sorry Denis I feel the stones coming) mentions the
heavens and the earth in existence prior to the command for light. You cannot
have the universe without any electromagnetic energy. Even if it is in the
form of virtual particles.
hope this helps.
glenn
>
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Foundation,Fall and Flood
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