On the reconciliation of scripture to science

[oxmixmudd]

I am opening this thread in response to the oft used accusation that people that read Genesis 1 in a less literal way in response to what we see in science as regards the age of the Earth are 'distorting' the scripture only to accommodate or yield to 'the wisdom of men'.

Now, this is in Nat Sci because this is the forum where the reconciliation of science and faith is at the forefront, and where most of the accusations are made.

So I am going to put forward an example from scripture where the core issue finds its way obviously to the surface. And that is the story of the temptation in the Garden.

God tells Adam and Eve:

Source: Genesis 2:16,17

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: (17) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

© Copyright Original Source

Now. It says 'in the day' in terms of when they will die if they eat. This is in fact בְּ ים be-yom, pefix 'be' meaning 'in' and 'yom' the word almost anyone that has frequented this forum long would know is 'day'. So that is literally what God said. Straight forward, to the point. No reason looking at how it was said or from any element of context to think it means anything other than 'in the day'. And that would mean, taking it straight up, just like it says, they would be physically dead before an 'evening and a morning' had passed after eating. In fact, 'in the day' has a sense of immediacy to it, so one might be tempted to think it might even mean a good deal less than a day, like immediately.

But notice something else. Some modern translations leave out 'in the day' and just say something like ' for when'. And they do that as a kind of mitigation against the obvious conflict I will now discuss. (And I personally find that kind of translation hack job offensive)

Proceeding through the story, we see that part of what Satan tempts eve with is a challenge to the 'in the day'. Satan says:

Source: Genesis 3:4

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

© Copyright Original Source

And indeed, the women does heed the serpents deception and eats, and then not dying, she gives it to adam, and he eats, and he does not die either, well certainly not immediately, and in reality, physcially, not for many many more years to come!

So here is the Big Deal here as it relates to 'interpretation'. What God said to Adam was not true if taken absolutely literally and physically. They ate the fruit, and they did not die (physically) that day.

It's that simple. It's there in plain black and white. God's word did not mean exacty what it appeared to mean if taken literally and physically. And there are no clues in how it was said that would make them, or us, think otherwise.

Indeed, this is how Satan could get the upper hand. If Eve had died on the spot, Adam could not have been tempted. So the way God worded this actually sort of left the door open for doubt. Because hey, if you took it literally and physically, you don't really get what God was telling them, you get something else that leads to doubt when it doesn't come true. Eve standing there holding the fruit with a big bite taken out of it made Adam think - she didn't die! But God said she would!

So the precedent is there. Sometimes what God says to is ISN'T straight up obvious in terms of what it seems like it ought to mean. And sometimes He doesn't give us any ready clues in the text that let us know that is, in fact, the case.

But was what God said to Adam and Eve FALSE?

Well, if look at Eve standing there fruit in hand, and you don't ask yourself if God could possibly have meant something else, then the only conclusion is God wasn't telling you the truth, just like Satan claimed.

But if the statement wasn't false, then what did it mean. Well, first of all, in terms of 'in - the -day', it meant spiritual death, not physical. And it meant they would be blocked access to the Tree -of- Life, which meant eventually they would also physically die. So it wasn't false at all - but neither did they correctly understand what it really meant, and neither was it worded so they could (based on the words alone) understand what it really meant.

Why? Why do you suppose God would do that? Honestly, I don't really know. But He did, and so the precedent is set.

And today, as a Christian, I look at what we understand about the age of the Earth and the evolution of life, and I look at what Genesis says in chapters 1,2 and 3, and I see a parallel. I see that I could look at those things and do like Adam, I could wonder if God was telling the truth. But I also have the benefit of hindsight looking at the whole story, and I can see that, just like in how God told them about the fruit, the text just might mean something a little less obvious, but that if read in the less obvious way, it remains, in fact, true. Something more symbolic or perhaps metaphorical (like immediate spiritual death instead of immediate physical death).

And in light of the simple fact of the situation in the story above, I would argue that looking at what the possible other meaning of Genesis 1 might be in light of what we know from science is not distorting God's word, but rather a proper and faithful response, just as it could have been for Adam had he, upon seeing Eve standing there not dead but having eaten the fruit, asked himself what other things could God have meant in His warning to them, rather than listening to the Serpent tell him what he was seeing meant what God said was not true.


Jim

ETA: There is a third option I suppose. Adam could have stood there looking at Eve with the fruit and refused to ponder what else God might have meant, believing instead his eyes were deceiving him and that Eve must, in fact, be dead.

[seer]

So Jim, do you believe God created life on earth with all the obvious death and pain in the animal world, even before Adam came around? Why?

[oxmixmudd]

So Jim, do you believe God created life on earth with all the obvious death and pain in the animal world, even before Adam came around? Why?

I do believe physical death was in the world prior to Adam. I believe Evolution was the means by which the Earth obeyed God and brought forth life.

So why would God create in that fashion? I can only speculate seer, I can't know. BUT, it is clear that first the Garden was a special place on the Earth. A place where mankind could live forever if he but passed a single test. In it was the tree of life, which we know from scripture had the capacity to give immortality to Adam. But why did that tree even exist in the garden if it was not necessary for Adam? And why would God banish Adam lest he eat of it and become immortal if Adam was already immortal?

But why make the world that way in the first place? I think Ken Miller gives a very good answer. So that the universe would be a place where Adam could choose to sin, and his choice would not necessarily be eternal. So that the universe could be a place where Adam could choose, where his, and our, will to be what we want and to follow God or not follow God could exist unfettered by any external influence that would prevent the capacity for a fully free choice in the matter. And a place that would be suitable for the life of mankind regardless of the choice made.

There are many things about this that are difficult. Why even give mankind a choice knowing what horror it would bring? And yet He did. So what we can understand from that is that God values our capacity to choose. He doesn't want slaves, He wants us to choose to follow Him, and He does nothing that forces us in that manner - though He will come to us if we but seek Him. (Can you tell I'm not a full on Calvinist )

Jim

[37818]

I for one believe both Adam and Eve that day in the garden did in fact die. Though as yet they for all appearances were yet alive. We make the interpretation and distinction between types of death.

Death in all its forms is the opposite from life.

[seer]

I do believe physical death was in the world prior to Adam. I believe Evolution was the means by which the Earth obeyed God and brought forth life.

So why would God create in that fashion? I can only speculate seer, I can't know. BUT, it is clear that first the Garden was a special place on the Earth. A place where mankind could live forever if he but passed a single test. In it was the tree of life, which we know from scripture had the capacity to give immortality to Adam. But why did that tree even exist in the garden if it was not necessary for Adam? And why would God banish Adam lest he eat of it and become immortal if Adam was already immortal?

Well I agree that Adam was not immortal by nature, that his continuing life was dependent on the tree of life. To me the bigger question is why did God create animal life with so much inherent harm and suffering. CS Lewis suggested that in the distant past the Devil monkeyed with nature, like he did with Adam - though I'm not sure that flies.

But why make the world that way in the first place? I think Ken Miller gives a very good answer. So that the universe would be a place where Adam could choose to sin, and his choice would not necessarily be eternal. So that the universe could be a place where Adam could choose, where his, and our, will to be what we want and to follow God or not follow God could exist unfettered by any external influence that would prevent the capacity for a fully free choice in the matter. And a place that would be suitable for the life of mankind regardless of the choice made.

I have no problem with this. Does Ken Miller believe in a literal Adam and Eve?

There are many things about this that are difficult. Why even give mankind a choice knowing what horror it would bring? And yet He did. So what we can understand from that is that God values our capacity to choose. He doesn't want slaves, He wants us to choose to follow Him, and He does nothing that forces us in that manner - though He will come to us if we but seek Him. (Can you tell I'm not a full on Calvinist )

Jim

I'm a recovering Calvinist, so...

[Adrift]

Despite your claim to the contrary, it doesn't seem to me that this is the best subforum for this discussion. In an open forum like this you'll inevitably get white noise from those who are not Christian, and that's not going to be much help in selling your main point.

But to the point, it seems to me that you're sort of missing the bigger issue. Many literalists don't have a problem with differences in interpretation so much; What they have a problem with is an approach to scripture that they see as (in a way) denying any interpretation altogether.

So, using your example, it's not actually the case that spiritual death is a less literal interpretation. In fact it's a very literal interpretation. The narrative says they will die that day, and they do die that day. A spiritual death is just as literal a death as a physical death, and the interpretation assumes that the events actually happened as described. Many literalists don't reject that. What they reject is the idea that the whole narrative is mythical. The idea that God never really came to Adam and told him he would die if he ate the fruit. Or that there was any fruit at all. Or a garden. Or, perhaps, a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. Many Christian non-literalists see the entire narrative as something closer to something like a parable. It's a myth told to convey a greater truth, originally addressed to non-scientific people, without the need for any of it having actually happened. That's quite different, quite abstract from an interpretation that may need a little more explaining to understand the literal meaning, but in a spiritual sense.

[shunyadragon]

I am opening this thread in response to the oft used accusation that people that read Genesis 1 in a less literal way in response to what we see in science as regards the age of the Earth are 'distorting' the scripture only to accommodate or yield to 'the wisdom of men'.

Now, this is in Nat Sci because this is the forum where the reconciliation of science and faith is at the forefront, and where most of the accusations are made.

So I am going to put forward an example from scripture where the core issue finds its way obviously to the surface. And that is the story of the temptation in the Garden.

God tells Adam and Eve:

Source: Genesis 2:16,17

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: (17) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

© Copyright Original Source

Now. It says 'in the day' in terms of when they will die if they eat. This is in fact בְּ ים be-yom, pefix 'be' meaning 'in' and 'yom' the word almost anyone that has frequented this forum long would know is 'day'. So that is literally what God said. Straight forward, to the point. No reason looking at how it was said or from any element of context to think it means anything other than 'in the day'. And that would mean, taking it straight up, just like it says, they would be physically dead before an 'evening and a morning' had passed after eating. In fact, 'in the day' has a sense of immediacy to it, so one might be tempted to think it might even mean a good deal less than a day, like immediately.

But notice something else. Some modern translations leave out 'in the day' and just say something like ' for when'. And they do that as a kind of mitigation against the obvious conflict I will now discuss. (And I personally find that kind of translation hack job offensive)

Proceeding through the story, we see that part of what Satan tempts eve with is a challenge to the 'in the day'. Satan says:

Source: Genesis 3:4

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

© Copyright Original Source

And indeed, the women does heed the serpents deception and eats, and then not dying, she gives it to adam, and he eats, and he does not die either, well certainly not immediately, and in reality, physcially, not for many many more years to come!

So here is the Big Deal here as it relates to 'interpretation'. What God said to Adam was not true if taken absolutely literally and physically. They ate the fruit, and they did not die (physically) that day.

It's that simple. It's there in plain black and white. God's word did not mean exacty what it appeared to mean if taken literally and physically. And there are no clues in how it was said that would make them, or us, think otherwise.

Indeed, this is how Satan could get the upper hand. If Eve had died on the spot, Adam could not have been tempted. So the way God worded this actually sort of left the door open for doubt. Because hey, if you took it literally and physically, you don't really get what God was telling them, you get something else that leads to doubt when it doesn't come true. Eve standing there holding the fruit with a big bite taken out of it made Adam think - she didn't die! But God said she would!

So the precedent is there. Sometimes what God says to is ISN'T straight up obvious in terms of what it seems like it ought to mean. And sometimes He doesn't give us any ready clues in the text that let us know that is, in fact, the case.

But was what God said to Adam and Eve FALSE?

Well, if look at Eve standing there fruit in hand, and you don't ask yourself if God could possibly have meant something else, then the only conclusion is God wasn't telling you the truth, just like Satan claimed.

But if the statement wasn't false, then what did it mean. Well, first of all, in terms of 'in - the -day', it meant spiritual death, not physical. And it meant they would be blocked access to the Tree -of- Life, which meant eventually they would also physically die. So it wasn't false at all - but neither did they correctly understand what it really meant, and neither was it worded so they could (based on the words alone) understand what it really meant.

Why? Why do you suppose God would do that? Honestly, I don't really know. But He did, and so the precedent is set.

And today, as a Christian, I look at what we understand about the age of the Earth and the evolution of life, and I look at what Genesis says in chapters 1,2 and 3, and I see a parallel. I see that I could look at those things and do like Adam, I could wonder if God was telling the truth. But I also have the benefit of hindsight looking at the whole story, and I can see that, just like in how God told them about the fruit, the text just might mean something a little less obvious, but that if read in the less obvious way, it remains, in fact, true. Something more symbolic or perhaps metaphorical (like immediate spiritual death instead of immediate physical death).

And in light of the simple fact of the situation in the story above, I would argue that looking at what the possible other meaning of Genesis 1 might be in light of what we know from science is not distorting God's word, but rather a proper and faithful response, just as it could have been for Adam had he, upon seeing Eve standing there not dead but having eaten the fruit, asked himself what other things could God have meant in His warning to them, rather than listening to the Serpent tell him what he was seeing meant what God said was not true.


Jim

ETA: There is a third option I suppose. Adam could have stood there looking at Eve with the fruit and refused to ponder what else God might have meant, believing instead his eyes were deceiving him and that Eve must, in fact, be dead.

Good opening post for discussion of the interpretation of Genesis and the apparent extreme conflicts between science and the literal interpretation of Genesis.

Like all ancient religions I consider much of ancient scripture to be the 'human view' of their relationship with God and Creation. By the evidence much of Genesis evolved from more ancient texts from other literate cultures, before Hebrews had a significant system of writing of their own.

The scripture of the Bible reflects an evolved human history of compilation of prexisting sources, editing and redacting. and not a specific written record of Revelation. I believe that the Bible was written progressively in history and not a history itself. This is a weak foundation for those who wish to portray the Bible as accurate history and specifically inspired Revelation.

There are two possible reasonable explanations for the interpretation of ancient scripture and related literature. The first is that the humanist version history of religions is a natural evolution of human cultures and associated religions, by the way a good argument based on the evidence. The second is the progressive spiritual evolution of humanity based on progressive Revelation from God.

[Just Passing Through]

There's another interpretation that doesn't get much mention. "On the day you eat it you will surely die." The construction translated "surely" doesn't mean with certainty, and in no possibly way will I change my mind. It means "utterly." You will die utterly and in every sense of the word "die," physically, spiritually, and eternally. And he meant it literally. So why didn't they die physically or eternally? Because God forgave them. He came to them that sae day and gave them the first promise of a Savior.
Does that mean God lied? No, he himself says he has the right to reverse a judgment he announced if people repent (Jer. 18:8).
So why do we still die physically, if God has forgiven us? In the original command death was pure punishment. After God forgave them, death, like the thorns, thistles, and pain, is a chastisement for the believer, not a punishment. It teaches a lesson and it serves a loving purpose, so God did not remove physical death. For the lost it is still punishment, however.
Which makes more sense? That when Adam woke up the next morning he thought, "I'm still alive; I guess God only meant that I'd die spiritually," (when he really had no real concept of spiritual death up to this time), or that Moses (or whoever you think wrote Genesis) didn't notice this huge gaping hole in his narrative, or that Adam woke up and said, "I'm alive; God lied," or that he said, "I'm alive. God is gracious"? There is no need to jettison the literal here.

[Mikeenders]

So here is the Big Deal here as it relates to 'interpretation'. What God said to Adam was not true if taken absolutely literally and physically. They ate the fruit, and they did not die (physically) that day.

It's that simple. It's there in plain black and white. God's word did not mean exacty what it appeared to mean if taken literally and physically. And there are no clues in how it was said that would make them, or us, think otherwise.

Weak and utterly weak

A) you opine in another section that theologicial discussions are not for this section then start a thread trying to fudge your way to where you want to go that is purely theological

B) You try and fudge the word physical into the text when no such word appears

C) in your zeal to get where you want to go you didn't even bother doing what any first year Bible student would do - consult the the hebrew. If you did you would see the best translation is

"dying you shall die."

Shucks you could have even Googled that one

So your pretext that you wish to use to justify rendering the entire two chapters as non literal wherever you wish fails miserably. Simliar expressions are used in the OT to indicate the certainty of death that had not yet come. In the day that they ate the certainty of death became a fact - dying they would die. Its also likely that for the first time cells in their body actually died as well. Theres nothing non literal about it and again the word physical never appears anyway . You just stuck it in there to get to your conclusion.

In short your precedent claim is defeated because you didn't even bother to consult the original language. the original language works literally in regard to spiritual or physical

Your whole argument is contrived and biased to say the least. Does anyone claim God is physical and not Spirit as Jesus affirms? So does that mean that anywhere the name of God is mentioned since he is a spirit that the passage is not literal because he is not physical? By golly now we can just about wipe out the entire Bible as everywhere not literal. Paul said God raised Jesus from the dead but God is spirit so it not literal. SO even if God were referring to spiritual death how would that make the argument the passage is not literal.........sigh. Think. If theres a mention of a spiritual fact it would make no statement about any other literal physical fact. Its no precedent to then go distorting the text as you go as you wish it to be.

Poor reasoning, poor grasp of scripture and poor hermeneutics.

[rogue06]

I am opening this thread in response to the oft used accusation that people that read Genesis 1 in a less literal way in response to what we see in science as regards the age of the Earth are 'distorting' the scripture only to accommodate or yield to 'the wisdom of men'.

Now, this is in Nat Sci because this is the forum where the reconciliation of science and faith is at the forefront, and where most of the accusations are made.

So I am going to put forward an example from scripture where the core issue finds its way obviously to the surface. And that is the story of the temptation in the Garden.

God tells Adam and Eve:

Source: Genesis 2:16,17

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: (17) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

© Copyright Original Source

Now. It says 'in the day' in terms of when they will die if they eat. This is in fact בְּ ים be-yom, pefix 'be' meaning 'in' and 'yom' the word almost anyone that has frequented this forum long would know is 'day'. So that is literally what God said. Straight forward, to the point. No reason looking at how it was said or from any element of context to think it means anything other than 'in the day'. And that would mean, taking it straight up, just like it says, they would be physically dead before an 'evening and a morning' had passed after eating. In fact, 'in the day' has a sense of immediacy to it, so one might be tempted to think it might even mean a good deal less than a day, like immediately.

But notice something else. Some modern translations leave out 'in the day' and just say something like ' for when'. And they do that as a kind of mitigation against the obvious conflict I will now discuss. (And I personally find that kind of translation hack job offensive)

Proceeding through the story, we see that part of what Satan tempts eve with is a challenge to the 'in the day'. Satan says:

Source: Genesis 3:4

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

© Copyright Original Source

And indeed, the women does heed the serpents deception and eats, and then not dying, she gives it to adam, and he eats, and he does not die either, well certainly not immediately, and in reality, physcially, not for many many more years to come!

So here is the Big Deal here as it relates to 'interpretation'. What God said to Adam was not true if taken absolutely literally and physically. They ate the fruit, and they did not die (physically) that day.

It's that simple. It's there in plain black and white. God's word did not mean exacty what it appeared to mean if taken literally and physically. And there are no clues in how it was said that would make them, or us, think otherwise.

Indeed, this is how Satan could get the upper hand. If Eve had died on the spot, Adam could not have been tempted. So the way God worded this actually sort of left the door open for doubt. Because hey, if you took it literally and physically, you don't really get what God was telling them, you get something else that leads to doubt when it doesn't come true. Eve standing there holding the fruit with a big bite taken out of it made Adam think - she didn't die! But God said she would!

So the precedent is there. Sometimes what God says to is ISN'T straight up obvious in terms of what it seems like it ought to mean. And sometimes He doesn't give us any ready clues in the text that let us know that is, in fact, the case.

But was what God said to Adam and Eve FALSE?

Well, if look at Eve standing there fruit in hand, and you don't ask yourself if God could possibly have meant something else, then the only conclusion is God wasn't telling you the truth, just like Satan claimed.

But if the statement wasn't false, then what did it mean. Well, first of all, in terms of 'in - the -day', it meant spiritual death, not physical. And it meant they would be blocked access to the Tree -of- Life, which meant eventually they would also physically die. So it wasn't false at all - but neither did they correctly understand what it really meant, and neither was it worded so they could (based on the words alone) understand what it really meant.

Why? Why do you suppose God would do that? Honestly, I don't really know. But He did, and so the precedent is set.

And today, as a Christian, I look at what we understand about the age of the Earth and the evolution of life, and I look at what Genesis says in chapters 1,2 and 3, and I see a parallel. I see that I could look at those things and do like Adam, I could wonder if God was telling the truth. But I also have the benefit of hindsight looking at the whole story, and I can see that, just like in how God told them about the fruit, the text just might mean something a little less obvious, but that if read in the less obvious way, it remains, in fact, true. Something more symbolic or perhaps metaphorical (like immediate spiritual death instead of immediate physical death).

And in light of the simple fact of the situation in the story above, I would argue that looking at what the possible other meaning of Genesis 1 might be in light of what we know from science is not distorting God's word, but rather a proper and faithful response, just as it could have been for Adam had he, upon seeing Eve standing there not dead but having eaten the fruit, asked himself what other things could God have meant in His warning to them, rather than listening to the Serpent tell him what he was seeing meant what God said was not true.


Jim

ETA: There is a third option I suppose. Adam could have stood there looking at Eve with the fruit and refused to ponder what else God might have meant, believing instead his eyes were deceiving him and that Eve must, in fact, be dead.

There were a number of the Early Church Fathers who clearly taught that the days of creation were a thousand years long based on the fact that Adam didn't die within 24 hours after eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as he was told ("for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" -- Genesis 2:17) but lived until he was 930 years old (Genesis 5:5). To them this indicated that the days were a thousand years long^[1].

For example, in his Adversus Haereses ("Against Heresies"), Book 5, Chapter 23 (written between 175 and 185 AD) Irenaeus wrote, "And there are some, again, who relegate the death of Adam to the thousandth year; for since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them, thus bearing out the sentence of his sin."

Twenty or thirty years earlier, Justin Martyr, while writing about the reign of a thousand years, expressed a similar sentiment in his "Dialogue With Trypho", Chapter 81, when he commented that, "For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years."

Later (c. 250 AD) Cyprian of Carthage, in his "Treatise 11," or "Exhortation to Martyrdom," (section 11), also expresses a comparable view in passing when he wrote that, "As the first seven days in the divine arrangement containing seven thousand years..."

Victorinus of Pettau, who I've heard some say taught that the days were 24 hours long^[2], wrote in "On the Creation of the World" that "Wherefore to those seven days the Lord attributed to each a thousand years," indicating that he held that the days of creation were each a thousand years long, though I don’t know if he used the same reasoning as the others did.

The idea that Adam’s life span being less than a thousand year "day" was not a new one and can be traced back to Jewish literature. It is found, for instance, in the Book of Jubilees (generally dated from between 160 and 150 BC): "And at the close of the Nineteenth Jubilee, in the seventh week in the sixth year thereof Adam died, and all his sons buried him in the land of his creation, and he was the first to be buried on the earth. And he lacked seventy years of one thousand years; of one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens and therefore was it written concerning the tree of knowledge: ‘On the day ye eat thereof ye shall die.’ For this reason he did not complete the years of this day; for he died during it."^[3]


















1. not to mention that the psalmist wrote that with God "a thousand years is as one day, and one day is as a thousand years" (Psalm 90:4; cf. II Peter 3:8). According to the Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Methodius said that Origen suggested the possibility that each day was a thousand years long based on II Peter 3:8.

2. James Mook, "The Church Fathers on Genesis, the Flood, and the Age of the Earth," in Terry Mortenson and Thane H. Ury (both employed by AnswersinGenesis), eds., "Coming to Grips with Genesis"

3. One source lists this as Jubilees 4:29-30 (HERE as well) whereas another says it was Jubilees 4:21-22

[Just Passing Through]

It should be noted that some of those who made the "thousand years=one day" claim were not saying the days of creation were each a thousand years long, but trying to support their belief that the world would stand for six thousand years followed by a thousand year Sabbath rest of Christ's millenium.
Cyprian, for example, points out shortly before the quoted line that the world was just under six thousand years old, and he expected Christ's return soon. "As the first seven days in the divine arrangement containing seven thousand years..." meant that those seven literal days were a symbol containing the whole future history of the world.
Likewise Justin Martyr, was saying that Adam's thousand-year day was the first of seven that encompass all of world history, not that it should cause us to reinterpret the seven days of creation.
Victorinus, too, is talking about seven future thousand-year days attributed to the seven literal days of creation. Just before the quote he says, "And thus in the sixth Psalm for the eighth day, David asks the Lord that He would not rebuke him in His anger, nor judge him in His fury; for this is indeed the eighth day of that future judgment, which will pass beyond the order of the sevenfold arrangement."
They may have viewed this thousand year day as a way to explain God's command not to eat, but it seems more like trying to make excuses for God rather than a meaning that God or Moses originally would have been understood to mean.

[Mikeenders]

It should be noted that some of those who made the "thousand years=one day" claim were not saying the days of creation were each a thousand years long, but trying to support their belief that the world would stand for six thousand years followed by a thousand year Sabbath rest of Christ's millenium.

Quite right and good point out. The world will last a week is much more prominent in the literature than a creation application. it much more eschatology than Creation based

They may have viewed this thousand year day as a way to explain God's command not to eat, but it seems more like trying to make excuses for God rather than a meaning that God or Moses originally would have been understood to mean.

The problem with relying on "church fathers" for theology is that a number of scriptures indicate that as soon as the original apostles were dead (and even before) heresies would creep into the church. Several "church fathers" had even totally non biblical views that affected their theology. I tend to put a little credence to those who actually had met or were discipled by an apostle but by the time you get out to lat e second century or third their opinions are no more binding, inspired or authoritative than anyone's today

[Juvenal]

Despite your claim to the contrary, it doesn't seem to me that this is the best subforum for this discussion. In an open forum like this you'll inevitably get white noise from those who are not Christian, and that's not going to be much help in selling your main point.

Adrift is spot on here. Inevitably, someone looking on is going to point out there never was a physical Adam that could in any sense be matched up with the Adam of Genesis. This isn't Nat. Sci. material. If it stays here, prepare to be inundated with the reasons we know this is not the case.

This thread should move.

[shunyadragon]

Adrift is spot on here. Inevitably, someone looking on is going to point out there never was a physical Adam that could in any sense be matched up with the Adam of Genesis. This isn't Nat. Sci. material. If it stays here, prepare to be inundated with the reasons we know this is not the case.

This thread should move.

I sort of agree, but in the view of Natural Science Genesis does not remotely fit the more objective scientific view of geologic, nor recent known Neolithic to Bronze Age history of of the world.

Some in responding to this thread are arguing individual interpretation of aspects like life and death in terms of the Fall and Original Sin, which is only an issue in terms of the facts that nothing here fits the geologic nor the science and history of humanity, even some of the rewrite and redaction to less literal interpretations of Genesis.

[Mikeenders]

Adrift is spot on here. Inevitably, someone looking on is going to point out there never was a physical Adam that could in any sense be matched up with the Adam of Genesis. This isn't Nat. Sci. material. If it stays here, prepare to be inundated with the reasons we know this is not the case.

This thread should move.

Though I opined Oximudd's duplicity in arguing in one thread about not having theological debates in this section and then starting one here exactly who are you all trying to fool? this sections if FILLED with commentary on theological issues about creation and you all regularly use this sub forum as a means to directly attack that theology and yes even on theological not scientific grounds. Even in your above amusing chest thumping about what you know as fact (which you don't and are just delusional) you are making claims to being even competent to determine what or who the Adam of genesis would be or look like when you aren't even remotely competent in the area to make a determination. Whether you like it or not or will admit it or not ANY view of genesis or adam is theological. You are making an interpretation to claim you know something or anything about a biblical issue - Thats theology

IF anything this thread and the complaint about theology just exposes a VAST hypocrisy in this sub forum among the regular participants - Its rarely a science forum. Its more a bash theist YEC's and even OECs and support theistic evolutionist forum and its deeply seated in theological discussions. Anyone honest enough to go and search this forum will see countless, what are in affect theological, statements being made in almost every thread.

The distinction for this area is a total sham