Terry,
Thank you very much for your engaged position statement of 29 May 2002
23:14:28 -0600, Subject: Frustrations (was Re: Randomness)! My
theological convictions are usually very similar to yours. Occasionally,
though, we disagree (e.g. in the free-will question), as we apparently
do regarding "concordism". I asked Armin Held for his help with respect
to the Hebrew of the texts you discussed on 27 May 2002 22:58:37.
You wrote:
> ...
> BLOCHER
>
> From Henri Blocher *In the Beginning* (1984) pp. 45-46. [Blocher is
> an advocate of the Literary View ... --he is a
> conservative scholar that rejects a literal view of Genesis 1 on the
> basis of arguments from scripture itself and not on the basis of any
> desire to force a view that is compatible with modern science.]
I'd like to add what Blocher writes on p.44, introducing what you deal
with:
"The concordist theory deserved a large share of the favour it enjoyed.
It brings a responsible attitude to both revelation received and
knowledge acquired. It honours the call to a synthesis implied by the
summons of truth. It suffers, however, from a number of small failings
and comes up against one enormous difficulty."
Then he goes on to discuss the meaning of the word "day".
I think it is important to realize that he DOES NOT CONDEMN BUT SUPPORT
THE CONCORDIST CONCEPT IN PRINCIPLE!
It's just that he hadn't come across any feasible solution to the
problems he mentions. In our "Genesis reconsidered", PSCF 51/4 (Dec.
1999), 231-243 (www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF12-99Held.html), Armin
Held and I have dealt with all the problems he mentions, and more. We
don't consider his arguments to be convincing, least of all his
reference to Morris.
> After arguing that day-age interpreters have already equivocated on
> the meaning of the word day
I don't think it's equivocation to use either literal or figurative
interpretations of the same word, depending on the context. It's just a
property of all language that requires this.
> he writes:
>
> "Next, the agreement with the scientific view is not as easy and
> complete as at first appears. If we may pass over the problem of the
> unequal duration of the day-eras, there are noticeable differences in
> the order of the details. In the Bible, trees (Day 3) precede marine
> organisms (Day 5), and birds (Day 5) precede insects (Day 6);
> scientists think the opposite." (Here Blocher cites Morris in
> *Scientific Creationism* pp. 227f.--I will quote this later.)
Cf. our response below, under Siemens. Why should the unequal length of
eras be any problem? The claim that this should be problematic is not
logical.
> "But the biggest disagreement stares you straight in the face: the
> creation of the sun and stars on the fourth day, after the earth and
> its vegetation, even after the trees. On this reef the concordist
> boat is wrecked. The usual explanation, that at that particular epoch
> God dispersed a thick covering of cloud and *revealed* the luminaries
> for the first time, looks like an admission of failure. Once again,
> in order to get out of a difficulty, people would like to change the
> meaning of a word which is simple and well known. The geocentric
> viewpoint of the narrative gives no authority to turn 'make' into
> 'reveal'. Genesis has a perfectly good word for 'appear' when it
> needs to use it (1:9). We join many writers in rejecting the proposed
> 'solution'. Quite apart from the gratuitous nature of the 'cloud'
> hypothesis, the theory of day-eras does violence to the text with
> regard to the fourth day."
The day-era interpretation does no violence to the text at all. "Let
there be" (Hebrew "yehee") in v.14 does not indicate an act of creation.
In Gen.1:3, it similarly says "Let there be light" (Hebrew "yehee or"),
where nothing is created, but light penetrates the darkness.
And for "Let there be" in v.14, it doesn't even say "yihyoo" (plural),
which it should to refer to the origin of the many lights, but "yehee"
(singular): it introduces one single process, which then resulted in the
coming-to-be of many lights.
True, in Gen.1:9, "appear" is used: "let the dry land appear". But in
v.14, the idea of appearing is implicitly contained in "ma'or",
"lights". In English (and German), "light" doesn't distinguish between
light in the sense of illumination and a light in the sense of a lamp or
other source of illumination. But Hebrew uses "ma'or" for the
illumination emanating from a light source, but "ner" for this source of
the light rays, namely a lamp or other circumscribed light source.
Cf. Ezek.32:8, "All the bright lights [ma'or] of heaven, will I make
dark over you, and put darkness [ghoshek, as in Gen.1:2] upon your land,
says the Lord God." The lights (ma'or, i.e. the bundles of light rays
emanating from the individual light sources) are contrasted with the
darkness, which is not a body, either.
Where is the problem? The sky is darkened or overcast, so sun and moon,
as "lights" [ma'or], do not "come through". There is no change of
meaning at all.
Armin and I don't think it's worth while to deal with Morris' list of
contradictions, as it would only bear any weight for YEC, which is
completely refuted anyway.
> SIEMENS:...
>
> "There is a further problem with this interpretation, popular though
> it be. In the same issue of the journal, John R. Armstrong noted
> Buckland's 1837 objection that the "order of appearance in the strata
> did not match the order in Genesis 1" (p. 36). This difficulty cannot
> be met by explaining how there could be days before the appearance of
> the sun (p. 17). What is needed is an explanation of how there can be
> seed-bearing herbs and trees (polycots, Permian, 250 million years
> before the present; dicots, Jurassic, 200 m.y.b.p.-dates are rounded
> off very roughly) and grasses (monocots, Cretaceous, 100 m.y.b.p.)
> before fishes (Cambrian, 550 m.y.b.p., or Ordovician, 450 m.y.b.p.);
> and birds (Jurassic, 150 m.y.b.p.) before "creeping things"
> (amphibia, Devonian, 400 m.y.b.p.; reptiles, Carboniferous, 325
> m.y.b.p.). Adding the insects (Carboniferous, 300 m.y.b.p) as "flying
> things" (p. 15) and creepers (cf. Leviticus 11:20-46, where words
> from two roots are intermingled-Strong's 7430f, 8317f; Genesis
> 1:24-26, 30, uses the former) does not help sort things out. Can the
> Author of Scripture be that confused, not knowing what the Source of
> terrestrial life did?"
Armin thinks that in these timing details, the harmonization approach
(which you call concordism) has its biggest problems, for the moment. On
the other hand, I (Peter) feel that the problems are not so serious. The
"appearance" of the sun on day 4 is being discussed in our other
remarks. The sequence of fossils can be dealt with in the way we
proposed in our common paper, and/or by the concept of each epoch
("day") marking the begin of a new, characteristic reality, but
overlapping with all the subsequent epochs, as I wrote in my post of
April 29, 2002 3:07 PM:
"Of course, the 'days' of Gen.1 overlap, but only in the sense that
whatever was initialized in a given creation epoch continues to
characterize all of the later ones - like new geological and climatic
conditions. And since all of Gen.1 is summarized by: 'These are the
[toledoth] of the heavens and the earth in their being created'
(Gen.2:4), where 'toledoth' is genealogy or phylogenetic tree (table of
lines of descent), it is reasonable to expect that after epoch 3, more
types of plants evolve, after epoch 5 more types of water and air
animals, etc.
Naturally, this doesn't imply that the 'evening' ([^erev], transition
from one epoch to the next) of one epoch comes after the 'morning'
([boqer], dawning of a new epoch) of the next one. In this sense, there
is no overlap.
Cf. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF12-99Held.html"
If one accepts our postulate that Gen.1 may describe three "creation"
[bara'] events, combined with a long history of evolution characterized
by God "developing" [^asah] previously existing entities, the text
doesn't require that ALL plants originated before ALL marine animals, or
that ALL flying creatures (which were to reproduce on land) appeared
before ALL (other) terrestrial ones, or that the animals of the 5th day
were the first ones coming into existence, or that ALL types of animals
should be mentioned.
This interpretation appears to do away with Armstrong's dating problems.
In our 1999 article mentioned ("Genesis reconsidered"), more recently
determined dates of first appearance are indicated and discussed in
relation to the Genesis text.
It also bears mentioning once more that we never presented Genesis 1 as
a science textbook (of which complete and detailed dating information
might be expected), but see in it a broad-brush picture of what God did
(in which the few details given are broadly consistent with the actual
timecourse of events, as reflected in the most conspicuous ones, just
serving to underline the theological message which is its central
purpose).
> KLINE
>
> Finally, here is Meredith Kline's argument against the concordist
> proposal that the sun, moon, and stars weren't created on the fourth
> day, but merely came into sight or began to function as luminaries to
> counter the somewhat obvious conclusion of "light before the sun"
> objection to the concordist scheme. The is from "Space and Time in
> the Genesis Cosmogeny" (PSCF (1986)) on the web at
> http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1996/PSCF3-96Kline.html. This is a long
> and difficult read, but with patience and some work it will yield to
> even the stubbornist of intellects.
In "Genesis reconsidered", we wrote in note 78: "... Kline, M.G. (1996),
'Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony', Persp.Sci.Christ.Faith 48,
2-15 allegorizes Genesis 1-2 by his 'Two-Register Cosmogony', agreeing
with Scriptural theology and avoiding contact with science. But if God
is the Author of both creation and Scripture, the implication that this
poetic-spiritual interpretation rules out a parallel interpretation on
an historical-narrative level is not compelling. It is on this level
that we want to propose an interpretation for discussion, without
denying the feasibility of a spiritual-allegorical reading."
> (beginning of Kline quote)
> ...In terms of
> chronology, day four thus brings us back to where we were in day one,
> and in fact takes us behind the effects described there to the astral
> apparatus that accounts for them. The literary sequence is then not
> the same as the temporal sequence of events.
Only in Kline's particular scheme of interpretation.
> To avoid this consequence, alternative interpretations of day four
> have been sought. According to one proposal, the luminaries (though
> unmentioned previously) were in existence before the point in time
> dealt with in day four and were indeed present at day one as the
> source of light spoken of there.25 Day four describes simply their
> coming into sight, not their creation. Any such view is falsified by
> the language of the text, which is plainly that of actual production:
> "Let there be and God made and God set (lit., gave).
This is no problem. Here, God doesn't create anything, but he "makes" or
"prepares" [^asah], therefore the "lights" must have been in existence
before that. This is a point which is usually missed, but it is
important!
Armin has checked the other places where "yehee" occurs, but found no
acts of creation.
And concerning "gave": God also "gave" the humans plants for food (when
he blessed them!), although there had been plants since day 3.
> ... There is no more excuse
> for reducing divine acts of production into human acts of perception
> in day four than there would be elsewhere.
This interpretation begs the question. The text of Gen.1:14-19
explicitely deals with "illumination" [ma'or], not something like, e.g.,
the dry land, and "illumination" is something which in particular has to
do with visual perception.
In fact, it is to be expected that after day 3, when continents and
terrestrial plants appear, the atmosphere will change once more, and it
stands to reason that then the luminaries will be able to "rule" (cf.
Gen.1:16) in quite a new way.
It is also in the context of this "ruling" that one has to see the verb
"gave" (Hebrew "natan", v.17). It is a word frequently used in
connection with authority and territories or spheres of control. God
"gave" Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan (Gen.15:18), the
Pharaoh "gave" Joseph "over all the land of Egypt" (Gen.41:41), cf. also
Deut.1:8, Canaan "given" to Israel, and many other cases.
So now, on day 4, God "gave" the lights (which had existed before) the
authority / possibility to "rule" on the earth, in that they became
visible to the animals and (later) humans, for use in temporal and
spacial orientation.
Peter
-- Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
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