I. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good.Just saying.
II. After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it; and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God, and had dominion over the creatures.
Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter IV, Of Creation.
You?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletedepends what you mean by 'in the space of six days...'
ReplyDeleteYes!
ReplyDeleteMJ. Our job is not to interpret the WCF, just to accept it. It says 6 days in the bible, it says 6 days here. All good.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm trying to figure out what would be different if they'd said 'in the time of six days'!
ReplyDeleteHaven't read all of the WCF but nice to know that at least this part actually agrees with God's report of what He did as recorded in the Bible.
ReplyDeleteWCF Gold.
ReplyDelete6 yom.... apparently gives you more room to move.
ReplyDeleteThat is the sense in which I understand the Scriptures.
ReplyDeleteGary.
I saw John Lennox give a talk at Easter Convention about the 'days' in Creation. It was very interesting. I have no issue with the six days thing, with it being literal, God can do anything. But Lennox gave some really interesting interpretations, saying we tend to look down a bit on this bit of the Bible as being simplistic, when really if you stop and properly look at it, it's far more sophisticated and complex than first appears. He then put forth the arguement that the word 'day' has several meanings throughout the bible, and is used in several ways even just in the first couple of chapters of Genesis.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, to answer your question, yeah, I'm good with that.
Ben - was John Lennox therefore arguing that one can take the days of Creation Week to mean any amount of time?
ReplyDeleteIn general, Hebrew scholars agree that when the Hebrew for 'day' [yôm] is combined with a number (as in which day) and the evening/morning cycle, it means a 24 day with no ambiguity.
You can find more info here:
http://creation.com/how-long-were-the-days-of-genesis-1
or here:
http://creation.com/genesis-questions-and-answers
I can't remember exactly what his personal stance was, I think he was more saying, hey don't get so uptight about it-- there are a LOT of possibilities in this small bit of text.
ReplyDeleteOne idea he put out there, which was one I personally hadn't thought about was, even if the 'days' here are 24hours, it never says the six days are all in a row. For example, on day 1 he makes such and such, then there could be a thousand years before He has another Creative day (I can relate to this personally!). Just another possibility.
ps- thanks, I'll have a squiz at those links.
Now, if only someone could explain to me how and when dinosaurs fit in to the story, I'll be content.
ReplyDeleteDinosaurs were largely wiped out in Noah's Flood. That's why we actually have relatively many fossils of them. When dead things are not buried rapidly (e.g. in sediment deposited in a flood or a landslide) or snap frozen they decay too quickly to turn into fossils.
ReplyDeleteIf one takes the view that there could have been unidentifiably long periods of time between the days, then one would have to accept that God told the Hebrews (and consequently, us) that they were to work for a day plus an unidentified time period x 6 before they could have a single day off (Ex 20:9-11).
I like Gary's answer.
ReplyDeleteDave's answer sounds like he's got someone looking over his shoulder.
Laetitia. In general, Hebrew scholars agree that when the Hebrew for 'day' [yôm] is combined with a number (as in which day) and the evening/morning cycle, it means a 24 day with no ambiguity. Not this Hebrew scholar. Which is not to say that I think God didn't make the world in 6 24hr periods.
As for me, I'm an elder in the Presbyterian church and have taken vows......
Al - I'm interested - what makes you say that you disagree as a Hebrew scholar? As in, what is it about Hebrew that makes you disagree?
ReplyDeleteNot sure what taking vows as an elder in the Presbyterian denomination has to do with it.
Sorry Laetitia. I can see that my comments are obtuse. And it was cheeky of me to call myself a Hebrew scholar. I'm far from it. I had aspirations to be. But fell lamentably short. Sorry for that.
ReplyDeleteWhat I should have said is that the current disquiet in the academy concerning Genesis 1 - 3 is because it is no longer the case that, in general, Hebrew scholars are in agreement about what "day" means.
And as for the vows thing - I've promised to uphold and defend the WCF. And I wouldn't have done that if I didn't agree with the body of Simone's post.
I think it's dumb that we have to tread on eggshells when answering this question.
ReplyDeleteI don't care which way you swing on this question, or if you swing both ways.
And I think it's a bit silly that a denomination in Queensland wants to make this a point of distinction.
I'm almost tempted to be a contrarian guinea pig even though I can, in principle, sign up to the wording of the WCF. I don't get how some people think there's a loop hole in that chapter. You have to squint very hard and tilt your head at an impossible angle to see it. The authorial intention of the confession is pretty clear.
Treading on eggshells? I find it much easier and more natural to stomp on eggshells.Don't transfer your paranoia to me Albainia! LOL.
ReplyDeleteI must say Nathan has me confused. What denomination does he mean?
And I'm wondering why Simone has lit this up.
Are you just starting bushfires for others to put out?
I think what we really need is to all get together and have a couple of beers at a Reds v Waratahs game followed by a few cigars around the bar at the Caxton. With Michael 'zero tolerance' Jensen there. I'll even shout the first round. Then we can get on with talking to the barflies about the gospel.
Your bro-cous
Dave
I'm not starting a bushfire. Just saying there's actually not much kindling here to ignite anything.
ReplyDeleteAll of us would agree that the bible is the inspired word of God. None of us think God was lieing in Genesis 1-2. What the WCF says at this point is very similar to what the bible says. So we agree with it.
Where's the problem?
My point is that there is no need for paranoia. We stand confident in our denomination on this issue.
.... 'zero tolerance' Jensen says: 'Make mine a XXXX!
ReplyDelete:-)
Carl Trueman, no less, told me that in signing the WCF it is usual to allow people a couple of 'scruples'. Interesting, I thought.
Hmm - Must be my job to be the person who thinks differently this time. Maybe because I'm not presbyterian. Leaving aside the question of scientific evidence, at a purely biblical level, did the author of the early chapters of Genesis intend his or her description literally? The text of Chapter 1 has a lot of features of poetry or song - the repetitive themes ("God saw that it was good...", "there was evening and morning...", "and it was so..."). The next chapters follow up with a lot of symbolic material - the trees, the fruit, the talking snake. This is clearly not a scientific account and therefore a misunderstanding to treat it as such.
ReplyDeleteJon - having features in common with another literary genre doesn't actually mean that it is that literary genre.
ReplyDeleteWhat's so symbolic about trees, fruit and a talking snake? Did Balaam ride a symbolic donkey?
There was this radical guy - you might have met him - he was the one through whom all things were made and without him nothing was made that has been made; he seemed to consider it a literal history.
Jon, I'm not sure you're so different in your thinking to the majority of us. At this point you're dealing with a different question. This thread requires a little reading between the lines.
ReplyDelete@ Laetitia - I guess in theory God can do anything, but in practice you get nutrition from fruit, not moral knowledge or eternal life, and snakes can't talk. But that's incidental to this thread. The point is that a common Christian approach (as seems to be embodied in the WC) is to treat these accounts as a literal rendering of history, and therefore to make belief in them as literal historic accounts an article of faith. It doesn't matter a whole lot to me whether people believe this or not, but as an article of faith I think its flawed. I'm also not sure where Jesus insists they be taken literally.
ReplyDeleteApologies Nathan if I'm still missing the meaning of the white space - obviously I'm an outsider but sometimes that helps.
Jon, I'd be happy to discuss the issues that you and I seem to be talking about but perhaps this isn't the forum. I'm also not a Presbyterian so it took me a while to clue in to the 'real' issue of this post - the WCF.
ReplyDeleteAnd my apologies if I was a bit terse in my previous comment. I'm not known for tact. :-s
Jon,
ReplyDeleteThe leeway comes because it doesn't say how long the days are.