From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Sat Oct 11 2003 - 16:20:48 EDT
Michael Roberts wrote:
>
> George wrote being critical of first SDA interpretations and then the Gap
> Theory.
> >
> > This is flatly wrong, as is shown by the fact that nobody started
> promoting such
> > "gap" theories until geological & other evidence for the antiquity of the
> earth started
> > emerging. Trying to put a gap between 1:1 & 1:2 is forced & unnatural &
> no one would
> > have done it if scientific evidence hadn't forced them to look for a place
> in the
> > creation stories to put millions of years. Of course traditional
> interpreters knew
> > about the questions of when the angels were created, when some fell, &c.
> But they never
> > thought they had to have millions of years to do it.
>
> I am afraid I must take George head on and challenge him. Yes Chalmers did
> introduce his "Gap Theory " in 1802 but it was not an original idea. What he
> did was to modify the Chaos=Restitution interp which had been the dominant
> view for 200 years. This is that God first created Chaos and then re-ordered
> the created chaos in 6 days. There were inklings of it in the 16th century
> and in the early 17th was held by such as Grotius (whom Chalmers claims to
> base his ideas), Mersenne, Descartes and Bacon. Most commentators held it at
> the end of the 17th cent and Patrick reckoned that chaos could have last a
> long time. So far all the Theories of the Earth I have read adopt it, but
> Whiston reckoned each day lasted a year.
> Many held it during the 18th century and Buffon modified it with a period of
> chaos followed by 6 very very long days, as did Whitehurst and others . By
> the end of the 18th century some adopted a long day - de Luc and so what we
> have is Chalmers modification of 1802.
>
> This means that a form of Gap Theory was around before geologists put
> forward millions of years in 1780-1800 (lots throughout Europe) and many,
> including most evangelicals ( who were wise in thsoe days) adopted it as the
> interpretation which made most sense of geologists findings AND was
> basically the tradiotional understanding of the last 200 years.
>
> As the Gap Theory developed at the end of the 19th century under Pember and
> then Schofield it became very forced but it was not in its earlier forms
> whether pre-geological from 1600-1800 or post geological 18001860 when for
> all but proto-fundamentalists (whowere of course largely OE) it was replaced
> by DAy-AGE or a poetic view.
>
> My first fruits on this are in the Evangelical Quarterly for April 2002 and
> can email copies.
I yield to you on the history. In any case, there is nothing in scripture that
requires a gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2 & certainly nothing to indicate a lapse of long
periods of time. & it is quite fruitless to claim that millions of years were required
for the creation & fall of the angels &c. Any plausibility that the gap theory has
today (& I think it is very little) is because it provides a way to fit in the long
periods of time required by science.
Or put it another way. Even if one accepts the gap theory, the statement "chaos
could have lasted a long time a long time" has no more biblical support than "chaos
could have lasted a short time." The only way advocates of this view get any estimate
of the length of time that it lasted is by looking at the age of the earth. & thus the
claim that Allen made that this intepretation requires no scientific input is false.
Shalom,
George
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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