To Christians who aren't creationists

[DeeTee]

Christians who aren't creationists

taken from the OP.

I find it difficult for anyone, unless they are a new believer in Jesus, to claim to be Christian when they call God a liar and disbelieve His word.

Try having a relationship with your mate or boy/girlfriend when you call them a liar each and everyday. How can you have a relationship with God when you do the same to Him?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I find it difficult for anyone, unless they are a new believer in Jesus, to claim to be Christian when they call God a liar and disbelieve His word

Two logical fallacies in one sentence,not bad,but not a record here:

(1)What you find hard to believe is irrelevant. That's called an "argument from incredulity".


(2) That a [true] Christian could not say or do x y or z is another logical fallacy,called "the no true Scotsman"


ANY given belief ,religious or secular may imply (suggest) certain behaviour,but in no way guarantees anything. I would have thought a Christian who believes all men are sinners would have grasped that.

The reality of Christian behaviour en masse was pithily expressed by Mohandas Gandhi

I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

[DeeTee]

Two logical fallacies in one sentence,not bad,but not a record here:

I will disagree AND CLAIM THAT YOU MISREAD WHAT i WROTE.

What you find hard to believe is irrelevant. That's called an "argument from incredulity".

First, I did not say 'I found it hard to believe...' as I know people do this all the time.

Second, I did not say who was or wasn't a true Christian. Methinks you applied your thinking to my words and responded to your own faulty comprehension of what I wrote.

ANY given belief ,religious or secular may imply (suggest) certain behaviour,but in no way guarantees anything

UHM...In Christianity we CAN guarantee that God created all things just as He said. For if He didn't then He lied, and if He lied He then demotes Himself from being God and we lose all hope, for there is no such thing as salvation, heaven etc. If God lied he then becomes fallible and in need of a savior Himself and if that were the case we could toss the Bible out and not listen to it for its words would be meaningless.

IF God lied no one would follow the Bible or use it in their cultic beliefs to entrap the unwary. The Bible would become just another book gathering dust on a library shelf somewhere tossed away or ignored without worry.

These are the ramifications that come from those people who claim to be Christian but deny Genesis 1 and other creation passages found in the Bible. They shoot themselves in the foot and destroy the message of the Bible, and their own claims to being a Christian.

If one is to be a Christian then they must proclaim all of God's word true or they are just hypocrites and not Christian.

[Minimalist]

Christians who aren't creationists

taken from the OP.

I find it difficult for anyone, unless they are a new believer in Jesus, to claim to be Christian when they call God a liar and disbelieve His word.

Try having a relationship with your mate or boy/girlfriend when you call them a liar each and everyday. How can you have a relationship with God when you do the same to Him?

Um...your boy/girlfriend is presumably REAL unlike your god.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

If God lied he then becomes fallible and in need of a savior Himself and if that were the case we could toss the Bible out and not listen to it for its words would be meaningless.

I think you're catching on to something!

"IF God lied no one would follow the Bible or use it in their cultic beliefs to entrap the unwary. The Bible would become just another book gathering dust on a library shelf somewhere tossed away or ignored without worry."

IF Allah lied no one would follow the Koran or use it in their cultic beliefs to entrap the unwary. The Koran would become just another book gathering dust on a library shelf somewhere tossed away or ignored without worry.

IF Yahweh lied no one would follow the Torah or use it in their cultic beliefs to entrap the unwary. The Torah would become just another book gathering dust on a library shelf somewhere tossed away or ignored without worry.

etc. etc. etc.

[DeeTee]

1. IF Allah lied no one would follow the Koran or 2. use it in their cultic beliefs to entrap the unwary

Let's look at this statement for a minute. I put the numbers in the quote for clarity.

#1. You forget about the deceptive work of satan. Of course people will follow the Koran even though Mohommad lied because evil wants people to reject the truth and go with the false belief.

#2. No one does use it in their cultic work to deceive others. ONLY the Bible is used. You need to understand how a con works to get the full gist of this.

IF Yahweh lied no one would follow the Torah or use it in their cultic beliefs to entrap the unwary. The Torah would become just another book gathering dust on a library shelf somewhere tossed away or ignored without worry.

God didn't lie in the Torah nor the Tanakh. YOUR rebuttal fails miserablely.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

...

God didn't lie in the Torah nor the Tanakh. YOUR rebuttal fails miserablely.

Actually, Jews could discount Christianity for your reasons since the NT adds onto their book just like the Book of Moron adds onto the OT and NT. What if Christianity is the cult and Judaism is the one true religion?

And there are plenty of Eastern religions that aren't connected to the Abrahamic tradition. They have their own holy writings and founders.

[Ryft]

I just have a few questions to those Christians here who are not young-earth creationists, do not deny evolution, etc. I'm having trouble seeing how the text can really allow evolution. First of all, how do you interpret Genesis 1 and 2? I'm aware of the day-age theory, gap theory . . . and framework hypothesis.

My view takes after the exegetical model described by Old Testament scholar and professor John H. Walton of Wheaton College, an interpretation which an increasing number of Christian scholars are beginning to take notice of and recommend, which he introduces in The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2009) and lays out in exhaustive detail in the far more technical Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Eisenbrauns, 2011). Through a robust historico-grammatical exegesis of the text which cannot be found in old-earth and young-earth creationist literature, Walton explains that the Genesis creation account is a temple text describing the functional origins of the cosmos as temple in a seven-day inauguration ceremony. After naming the functions and installing the functionaries with God finally entering his resting place, the cosmic temple comes into existence, created in that inauguration ceremony. (This interpretation is also consistent with the Wellhausen hypothesis that this text is composed by the Priestly source.)

Although the Bible elsewhere is clear that God brings everything into material existence, the fact is that Genesis does not contain that story (Walton 2009, 96; nor would an account of material origins be consistent with the Priestly source). Genesis describes the beginning of redemptive history, an anthropocentric story rooted in the sovereign purposes of God who "tabernacles" with his image-bearers, a story set in motion during the creation of this cosmic temple which God established over a seven-day inauguration ceremony and finally came to rest in, and from which he providentially ordains redemptive history according to his purposes.

Redemptive history originates with God establishing and entering the cosmos as temple, electing and setting apart Adam as his image-bearer, federal representative of mankind in covenant with God, and priestly steward of this newly minted sacred space. The creation of a temple, whether local or cosmic, is not constituted by the material phase of construction; it is the establishment of functions and functionaries and the entrance of the presence of God taking up his rest that creates the temple (2009, 92). "This is what makes day seven so significant, because without God taking up his dwelling in its midst, the (cosmic) temple does not exist. The most central truth to the creation account is that this world is a place for God's presence. Though all of the functions are anthropocentric, meeting the needs of humanity, the cosmic temple is theocentric, with God's presence serving as the defining element of existence" (2009, 84-85).

In other words (and as you might be beginning to suspect), the Genesis creation account does not regard the material origins of the universe. And, as Walton explains in considerable detail through extensive historical and textual evidence, this is because the people of the ancient Near East did not have a material-oriented ontology like we do; rather, they had a function-oriented ontology. So when we read Genesis as an account of material origins we are engaging in eisegesis, imposing an ontology on the text that is foreign to it. Like in Egyptian thinking, that which had no function in an ordered system was considered non-existent, depicted as primeval cosmic waters of the deep prior to creation of the cosmos as temple, the classic form that non-existence takes in the function-oriented ontology of the ancient Near East (2009, 49). If Genesis offered an account of material origins, then we would expect it to begin with no material; but if the text offered an account of functional origins, then we would expect it to begin with no functions (2009, 47). And the latter is just what we find; the text of Genesis begins with the heavens and earth as tohu and bohu, usually translated as formless and void but in fact "refers to that which is nonproductive, nonfunctional, and of no purpose," which Walton correlates with the Egyptian concept of the non-existent (2011, 140-144); "The precosmic world was understood not as a world absent of matter but a world absent of function, order, diversity, and identity" (2011, 119).

"‘Create’ is the English word for bringing something into existence. If existence is defined in material terms, creating is a material activity. If existence is defined in functional terms, creating is a function-giving activity. We cannot assume that creating is a material activity just because our ontology happens to be material. We must let the word and its usage speak for itself" (2009, 39). As Walton observes, if we want to say that the text includes material creation alongside functional creation then "this view has to be demonstrated, not just retained because it is the perspective most familiar to us. The comfort of our traditional worldview is an insufficient basis for such a conclusion. We must be led by the text. A material interest cannot be assumed by default; it must be demonstrated, and we must ask ourselves why we are so interested in seeing the account in material terms" (2009, 93-94).

The Genesis account presupposes the material construction phase, as it were, in its revelation of the inauguration phase—with the building ready, the ceremony ushers in the creation of the cosmos as temple over a seven-day period culminating with God coming to rest in it and the beginning of redemptive history with Adam who was "chosen from among the animals" (to steal the title of Joshua M. Moritz's brilliant dissertation on the meaning of imago Dei).

Assuming you believe in long ages, how do you account for the order of creation being different than what science tells us?

By pointing out that it was not an account of material origins in the first place, so the difference in order is irrelevant.

How do you reconcile evolution, which requires death for natural selection to work, with the idea of death entering the world after the fruit of the tree was eaten?

I am not sure how exactly relevant biological evolution is here; the earth and its biosphere having been around for hundreds of millions of years would have given rise to a ubiquity of death prior to the fall even if each new species was specially created by God. In other words, whether affirming or denying evolution, the so-called problem of death before the fall presents itself.

I could present my argument on this point here, but since I already have elsewhere I will simply point you in that direction. See my article "Romans 5:12–14 and animal death prior to the fall."

Who really were Adam and Eve? Were they truly the first human beings?

No, they were the first human beings created in the image of God. And with respect to "created" I refer back to Walton's point about the function-oriented ontology of the ancient Near East informing that term, that they were assigned and equipped for a function in the newly minted ordered system (the cosmos as temple), not that they were brought into material existence ex nihilo as fully grown adults. I also highly recommend the lecture by Joshua M. Moritz regarding his dissertation on imago Dei as a function of election, "Chosen from among the animals: The end of human uniqueness and the election of the image of God." (See video at the end of this post. I could not get it to hyperlink my text; it kept wanting to display the video itself.)

Was Noah's flood universal or local? How did men live to 900 years old? Or did they? Was the tower of Babel a real event? If so, does it account for all the languages of mankind?

Irrelevant to your question about the Genesis creation account and how evolution can be allowed.

Is your interpretation truly what the text intended?

Yes, as Walton's very extensive historical and textual evidence attests.

In other words, how do you defeat creationist's arguments that you take it to mean whatever you want it to mean to accommodate science?

By responding, "Nice loaded question fallacy there" (assuming as it does that the intent is to accommodate science). As a matter of fact, this interpretation not only makes zero appeals to science, which has nothing to say about texts that do not address anything under its purview, but also goes so far as to repudiate concordist attempts to reconcile Genesis 1 with contemporary scientific theories and understanding. As Walton candidly explains, if the text of Genesis 1 regards a function-oriented ontology describing the creation of the cosmos as temple, "then the seven days and Genesis 1 as a whole have nothing to contribute to the discussion of the age of the earth. This is not a conclusion designed to accommodate science—it was drawn from an analysis and interpretation of the biblical text of Genesis in its ancient environment. The point is not that the biblical text therefore supports an old earth, but simply that there is no biblical position on the age of the earth. If it were to turn out that the earth is young, so be it" (2009, 95).

"We have neither the right nor the need to force the text to speak beyond its ken. This is not only important on a theoretical level, it is observable throughout the text. As mentioned in chapter one, there is not a single instance in the Old Testament of God giving scientific information that transcended the understanding of the Israelite audience. If he is consistently communicating to them in terms of their world and understanding, then why should we expect to find modern science woven between the lines? . . . The most respectful reading we can give to the text, the reading most faithful to the face value of the text—and the most ‘literal’ understanding, if you will—is the one that comes from their world, not ours. Consequently, the strategy we have adopted for reading the text as ancient literature offers the most hope for treating the text with integrity. We are not trying to bypass what the text is saying, nor to read between the lines to draw a different meaning from it. Concordist approaches, day-age readings, literary or theological interpretations all struggle with the same basic problem. They are still working with the premise that Genesis 1 is an account of material origins for an audience that has a material ontology" (2009, 106).

Also, thank you for not being creationists.

You're welcome?

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http://vimeo.com/22540440

[Reforged]

Christians who aren't creationists

taken from the OP.

I find it difficult for anyone, unless they are a new believer in Jesus, to claim to be Christian when they call God a liar and disbelieve His word.

Try having a relationship with your mate or boy/girlfriend when you call them a liar each and everyday. How can you have a relationship with God when you do the same to Him?

Big difference though DeeTee, little suprised I have to point it out, let me just think of the most eloquent way to put this...




We don't want to fuck God!

But believe it or not there is a cult that does... I'm not making this shit up but I wish I was:
http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Loving_Jesus

[Neo-Scholastic]

My view takes after the exegetical model described by Old Testament scholar and professor John H. Walton of Wheaton College,...explains that the Genesis creation account is a temple text describing the functional origins of the cosmos as temple in a seven-day inauguration ceremony.

Thank you for the scholarly reference, one that is most worthy of attention. What you have described appears to support my belief that Gen 1 describes the process of a soul's regeneration. I say this because the ultimate temple is not a building, but rather the human heart. (John 2:21, 1 Cor 6:19)

DeeTee, I will seriously consider the opinion of any literalist who has plucked out his own eye. Until then...