On Sat, 11 Jul 1998 09:47:57 -0500, R. Joel Duff wrote:
[...]
RD>I recently attended a national meeting of the Presbyterian Church in
>America...Da pamphlet was placed on the commissioners chairs from Albert
>Anderson, founding member of the Creation Study Group of Greenville
>SC...The pamphlet entitled "None Dare Call it Heresy" is strongly 6-day
>creation....Reading through the pamphlet several things caught my eye,
>including an appeal to Douglas Kelly's book _Creation and Change_ ...the
>paragraph that really made me pause and think was the following:
>
>"...WHEN ONE REALIZES THAT MOST FOSSILS (OTHER THAN
>FOOTPRINTS AND VEGETATION) ARE DEAD CREATURES, the heresy
>of such belief becomes obvious reason, for a fundamental doctrine of the
>Christian Church teaches that death is the consequence of Adam's sin;
>therefore, Adam had to have been created before the fossil record formed."
It is not "heresy" to claim that "death" *of animals* "is the consequence of
Adam's sin"! The Bible only claims that "death" of *humans* "is the consequence
of Adam's sin":
"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through
sin, and in this way death came to all MEN, because all sinned..." (Rom 5:12. My
emphasis).
Hugh Ross writes:
"`Death through sin' is not equivalent to physical death. Romans 5:12 says, "Sin
entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death
came to all men, because all sinned." Some have interpreted this verse as
implying no death of any kind for any creature existed before Adam's sin and,
therefore, only a brief time could have transpired between the creation of the first
life-forms and Adam's sin. The proponents of such a view fail to realize that the
absence of physical death would pose just as great a problem for three twenty-
four-hour days as it would for three billion years. Many species of life cannot
survive for even three hours without food, and the mere ingestion of food by
animals requires death of at least plants or plant parts....Of all life on the earth,
only humans have earned the title sinner." Only humans can experience "death
through sin." Note that the death Adam experienced is carefully qualified the text
as being visited on "all men"-not on plants and animals, just on human beings
(Romans 5:12,18-19). (Ross H.N., "Creation and Time," 1994, p61)
[...]
RD>Most of the pamphlet bemoans how it wasn't until modern science came
>along no one ever thought of the days as being anything other than 24 hours..
This isn't true either. Ross points out that Augustine(as well as other Church
fathers) in the 4th century AD, well before the rise of "modern science" believed
the days of Genesis 1 were non-literal:
"Among all the early leaders of the Christian church, no one penned a more
extensive analysis of the creation days than Augustine (AD 354-430). In The
City of God, Augustine wrote, 'As for these 'days,' it is difficult, perhaps
impossible to think-let alone explain in words-what they mean.". In The Literal
Meaning of Genesis, he added, "But at least we know that it [the Genesis
creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar.".
Elsewhere in that book he made this comment: `Seven days by our reckoning
after the model of the days of creation, make up a week. By the passage of such
weeks time rolls on, and in these weeks one day is constituted by the course of
the sun from its rising to its setting; but we must bear in mind that these days
indeed recall the days of creation, but without in any way being really similar to
them." Augustine took the evenings and mornings of the Genesis creation days in
a figurative sense. He concluded that the evening of each creation day referred to
the occasion when the angels gazed down on the created things after they
contemplated the Creator, and that the morning referred to the occasion when
they rose up from their knowledge of the created things to praise the Creator." In
Confessions Augustine notes that for the seventh day Genesis makes no mention
of an evening and a morning From this omission he deduced God sanctified the
seventh day, making it an epoch extending onward into eternity." (Ross H.N.,
"Creation and Time," 1994, pp19-20)
[...]
Steve
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
--- Dr. William Provine, Professor of History and Biology, Cornell University.
http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/1998/slides_view/Slide_7.html
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3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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