to fellow OEC advocates

[Wesley's son]

What is our understanding of the age of the universe?

1 million years?
100 million years?
1 billion years?
12 billion years?
20 billion years?


I have consistently encountered in literature a figure of 12-15 billion years.

[Warcraft3]

Today @ 04:17 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=111858#post111858)
Wesley's son:

What is our understanding of the age of the universe?

1 million years?
100 million years?
1 billion years?
12 billion years?
20 billion years?


I have consistently encountered in literature a figure of 12-15 billion years.

12-15 billion sounds about right.:thumb:


Russ

[Socrates]

:idea: For the edification of the rest of us, are there any biblical passages you could recommend to support your pick? :huh:

[wienerdog]

Yesterday @ 03:49 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=112292#post112292)
Socrates:

:idea: For the edification of the rest of us, are there any biblical passages you could recommend to support your pick? :huh:
The evidence that the universe is about 14 billion years old comes from general revelation, not special revelation. However, there are plenty of scriptural statements that the earth is "ancient," or use the world as a metaphor for eternity. Considering that the first people lived for about 1000 years each, two or three such generations would seem to be an inadequate period to fit such a description.

Oh wait. You really didn't have our mutual edification in mind, did you? :smile:

[Sher]

Today @ 03:44 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=113782#post113782)
wienerdog:

Oh wait. You really didn't have our mutual edification in mind, did you? :smile:

I can't speak for Soc ... but I am curious which Scriptures are used to support OE ... feel free to put them in a different topic though ... :smile:


/ot BTW, I love your sig, WD ... if I haven't said so before :thumb:

[wienerdog]

Today @ 12:06 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=113957#post113957)
SherBear:

BTW, I love your sig, WD ... if I haven't said so before :thumb:
Here's the whole passage from Dallas Willard's Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God, pp 217-18. I highly, highly recommend pretty much everything he has written.


Now as we come to the end of the book, I am still painfully aware of the one great barrier that might hinder some people's efforts to make such a life their own. That barrier is what Henry Churchill King many years ago called "the seeming unreality of the spiritual life." We could equally well speak of it as "the overwhelming presence of the visible world."

The visible world daily bludgeons us with its things and events. They pinch and pull and hammer away at our bodies. Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs. But instead of shouting and shoving, the spiritual world whispers at us ever so gently. And it appears both at the edges and in the middle of events and things in the so-called real world of the visible.

God's spiritual invasions into human life seem by their very gentleness almost to invite us to explain them away, even while soberly reminding us that to be obsessed nad ruled by the visible is death but that to give one's self over to the spiritual is life and peace (Rom 8:6)

We are hindered in our progress toward becoming spiritually competent people by how easily we can explain away the movements of God toward us. They go meekly, without much protest. Of course his day will come, but for now he cooperates with the desire and inclinations that make up our character, as we are gradually becoming the kind of people we will forever be. That should send a chill down our spine.

God wants to be wanted, to be wanted enough that we are ready, predisposed, to find him present with us. And if, by contrast, we are ready and set to find ways of explaining away his gentle overtures, he will rarely respond with fire from heaven. More likely he will simply leave us alone; and we shall have the satisfaction of thinking ourselves not to be gullible.

The test of character posed by the gentleness of God's approach to us is especially dangerous for those formed by the ideas that dominate our modern world. We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fasion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Only a very hardy individualist or social rebel--or one desperate for another life--therefore stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright.

[Socrates]

Yesterday @ 06:44 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=113782#post113782)
wienerdog:

The evidence that the universe is about 14 billion years old comes from general revelation, not special revelation.

Alas, a Rossite misrepresentation of general revelation. However, in systematic theology, this means the revelation accessible to all people at all times and in all places. So where is the widespread evidence of this age for the universe from people in the past, especially Christian commentators?


However, there are plenty of scriptural statements that the earth is "ancient," or use the world as a metaphor for eternity.

So how ancient is "ancient"? How long is a piece of string? Yet this is about the best that Ross can come up with, which shows the scriptural bankruptcy of his case.

Most of these words are used to describe human ages too. And compared to eternity, what's the difference between 4.6 billion and 6,000? It proves absolutely nothing. Rather, 6000 years IS old, and it's only uniformitarian indoctrination in the last 200 years that has brainwashed people into thinking that this is "young". So far better to interpret general terms by specific ones, e.g. interpret "ancient" by the specific teachings of the chronologies in Gen. 5 and 11 and the creation days with evening/morning plus a numeric.


Considering that the first people lived for about 1000 years each, two or three such generations would seem to be an inadequate period to fit such a description.

Another fallacious Rossite argument. You'll find that these terms are used when lifespans were much shorter, so they would have been very appropriate. They were also to describe periods of human history. And this argument backfires--the idea place to use such terms was in Genesis 1 or 2, and state unambigiously that ADAM was in a very ancient world.


Oh wait. You really didn't have our mutual edification in mind, did you? :smile:

Of course I did -- to try to return you to the Word of God.


Although Ross is the most vocal OEC'er I don't remember Wienerdog ever mentioning him in this thread. Therefore it doesn't seem right to label him a "Rossite", just as it wouldn't be right to label all YEC'ers "Hamites".
Thanks.

[Waterrock]

Greetings Wesley's Son,

I'm not altogether who the "we" is to which you refer. But my belief is that the universe appears to be about 14 billion years old. The recent WMAP observations may pinpoint this to something like 13.7 billion (I'm sure there's a website somewhere that provides the details).

Socrates asked, "For the edification of the rest of us, are there any biblical passages you could recommend to support your pick?"

No; no Scriptures specifically support this (just as no Scriptures support the notion that Dublin is a city in Ireland). A couple of rather vague passages in the Psalms would be about as close as Scripture comes to affirming an ancient age of the universe. Some early Christians (Irenaeus being the first, perhaps) overlapped a verse from Psalm 90 with Genesis 1 to come up with the idea that each "Day" in Gen. 1 was 1,000 years, but of course that is certainly not on the scale of the age that I think the universe appears to be.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Wesley's son]

Waterrock,

-the "we" is other old-earth creationists:smile:

[Socrates]

Today @ 08:58 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=114542#post114542)
Waterrock:

But my belief is that the universe appears to be about 14 billion years old. The recent WMAP observations may pinpoint this to something like 13.7 billion (I'm sure there's a website somewhere that provides the details).

Try www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0214nasa_bigbang.asp



Socrates asked, "For the edification of the rest of us, are there any biblical passages you could recommend to support your pick?"

No; no Scriptures specifically support this (just as no Scriptures support the notion that Dublin is a city in Ireland).

But no Scriptures contradict that either, unlike billions of years, as I've pointed out.


A couple of rather vague passages in the Psalms would be about as close as Scripture comes to affirming an ancient age of the universe.

Yes, they do -- as old as 6000 years, in fact!


Some early Christians (Irenaeus being the first, perhaps) overlapped a verse from Psalm 90 with Genesis 1 to come up with the idea that each "Day" in Gen. 1 was 1,000 years, but of course that is certainly not on the scale of the age that I think the universe appears to be.

No, this is wrong, as I showed at www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=53088#post53088 Irenaeus explicitly said that the days of creation CORRESPONDED to six thousand-year periods of Earth history. I.e. there was TYPOLOGY, not EQUATION. In fact, according to Irenaeus and other Church Fathers, the Earth was not yet 6000 years old!

[TheFiveSolas]

Wesley's Son,
I need you to clarify your intent in this thread. Did you want input from OEC'ers only or would you also welcome discussion/debate with YEC'ers?

[Waterrock]

Dear Socrates,

So far in this thread I haven't seen those passages which, you say, clearly rule out any notion that the universe is billions of years old.

"But no Scriptures contradict that either, unlike billions of years, as I've pointed out."

That's the real question: are those passages really saying what you say they're saying about the age of the universe?

SOC: "Irenaeus explicitly said that the days of creation CORRESPONDED to six thousand-year periods of Earth history. I.e. there was TYPOLOGY, not EQUATION."

Since you gave a plain quotation in which Irenaeus reflects a belief that the days are NOT 1,000 years each, I am willing to withdraw Irenaeus from the equation (especially since such a view is still a YEC view in my book -- even if Irenaeus did think the days of Genesis 1 were 1,000 years long each, that would still constitute a belief that the universe is less than 50,000 years old).

However, the quotation Ross provides on p. 18 of "Creation and Time" -- Against Heresies Book V, 23:2 -- is presented by Ross in the following words:

"...Now in the same day that they did eat, in that also did they die. ... On one and the same day on which they ate they also died (for it is one day of creation). ... He (Adam) did not overstep the thousand years, but died within their limit ... for since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them."

Istm that Irenaeus is approaching Gen. 2:17 with an apologetic agenda: the question has occurred to him, "How can it be that Adam and Eve died in the day in which they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, inasmuch as they clearly continued to physically live and reproduce?" Instead of shrugging off the question with the usual response (i.e., they died spiritually inasmuch as they were in that very day separated from fellowship with God), he used II Peter 3:8 [it's a closer match, I think, than Psalm 90:4] to define the "day" referred to in Genesis 2:17 as a thousand-year period.

This is not the same as saying that Irenaeus interpreted the days of Genesis 1 as 1,000-year-long periods, (which is what I had said, incorrectly - my bad. Claim withdrawn.) but when considering Irenaeus' views, it should be on the chart somewhere.

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Wesley's son]

Today @ 02:29 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=114833#post114833)
TheFiveSolas:



I original was only looking for answers from the OEC people, but the YEC dialog now is fine with me.

[Socrates]

Today @ 01:16 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=114949#post114949)
Waterrock:

That's the real question: are those passages really saying what you say they're saying about the age of the universe?

Yes.



SOC: "Irenaeus explicitly said that the days of creation CORRESPONDED to six thousand-year periods of Earth history. I.e. there was TYPOLOGY, not EQUATION."

....

However, the quotation Ross provides on p. 18 of "Creation and Time" -- Against Heresies Book V, 23:2 -- is presented by Ross in the following words:

"...Now in the same day that they did eat, in that also did they die. ... On one and the same day on which they ate they also died (for it is one day of creation). ... He (Adam) did not overstep the thousand years, but died within their limit ... for since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them."

Istm that Irenaeus is approaching Gen. 2:17 with an apologetic agenda: the question has occurred to him, "How can it be that Adam and Eve died in the day in which they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, inasmuch as they clearly continued to physically live and reproduce?" Instead of shrugging off the question with the usual response (i.e., they died spiritually inasmuch as they were in that very day separated from fellowship with God), he used II Peter 3:8 to define the "day" referred to in Genesis 2:17 as a thousand-year period.

But note that this was not a CREATION day as you note below. No one doubts that day in SOME parts of the Bible can mean something other than an ordinary day. The question is, can it mean anything but an ordinary day in the [i]specific context of Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11?


This is not the same as saying that Irenaeus interpreted the days of Genesis 1 as 1,000-year-long periods, (which is what I had said, incorrectly - my bad. Claim withdrawn.) but when considering Irenaeus' views, it should be on the chart somewhere.

Noted, thanx. Actually, you'll find that none of the people Ross quotes as day-agers actually believed that. In my post www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=53088#post53088 I show the same for Josephus, Basil, Augustine and Origen.

Yours in Christ,
Socrates.

[FirstSunday33ad]

05-29-2003 @ 04:17 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=111858#post111858)
Wesley's son:

What is our understanding of the age of the universe?

1 million years?
100 million years?
1 billion years?
12 billion years?
20 billion years?


I have consistently encountered in literature a figure of 12-15 billion years.

:read: 13.7 billion years.

[Socrates]

05-30-2003 @ 07:17 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=111858#post111858)
Wesley's son:

What is our understanding of the age of the universe?

1 million years?
100 million years?
1 billion years?
12 billion years?
20 billion years?

I have consistently encountered in literature a figure of 12-15 billion years.

:brow: I'm an old-earth advocate therefore I am addressed in the thread, and I think none of the above. But I do believe the Earth is extremely old -- 6,000 years old in fact! For more on this perspective, see The earth: how old does it look? Even many of those who believe that the earth is ‘young’ think that it looks ‘old’. But does it? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp)

[Sher]

Today @ 03:12 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=116939#post116939)
Socrates:

The earth: how old does it look? Even many of those who believe that the earth is ‘young’ think that it looks ‘old’. But does it? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp)

Could that title be any longer?

:lol:

[Socrates]

Yesterday @ 06:46 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=116949#post116949)
SherBear, replying to:


Socrates: The earth: how old does it look? Even many of those who believe that the earth is ‘young’ think that it looks ‘old’. But does it? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp)

Could that title be any longer?

:lol:

:shocked: Probably took millions of years to type :wink: