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The Age of the Earth.

8/28/2015

First...

1. There is a God.
2. Moses was His prophet.
3. Therefore, whatever Moses wrote in Genesis is inerrant.

Second...

I use what's called the grammatical-historical method of interpretation. This method represented a rejection of the medieval Roman Catholic philosophy of Scripture interpretation, which held that every Scripture had multiple levels of meaning. It is also a rejection of what is called the esoteric (secret, hidden) approach, used by occult groups. The least important level, in these two approaches is the passage's literal meaning.

Then would come what we might today call allegorical, theological, and devotional meanings, which were considered "deeper" and "truer" meanings. These approaches reduced the Bible to a blob of verbal putty which were twisted by creative thinkers into any shape they wanted. Those methods ignored contexts, used partial quotations, and treated literal words as symbols. E.g., the seven palm trees at the oasis of Elim symbolize the perfect blessing of the Holy Spirit's baptism. (hint: none of that statement is true. The palm trees were just palm trees).

The grammatical-historical method recognizes that each passage of the Bible had an author (sometimes several authors, such as Psalms or Proverbs), were written at a particular time, in a particular order, in a particular historical setting, and usually for a particular audience, with certain themes and purposes (often stated explicitly). So the reader is not free to just make up his or her own meanings as the whim moves them. Every book, chapter, paragraph, and sentence has an objective meaning that stands true apart from the wishes, feelings, and opinions of the readers. That meaning never changes, no matter how many centuries roll on.

Also, words mean what they mean according to how they are used in an immediate context, not by what they mean "to us." We are not free to project 2015 A.D. word-meanings onto 2015 B.C. words. This is why we use tools like concordances, Bible encyclopedias, Bible atlases, and Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic dictionaries.

Third...

I have no good reason to take the Hebrew word yom in Genesis 1, translated "day" in English Bibles, as anything other than a 24-hour period. That is how Moses uses it in Exodus 20:8-11, in the Fourth Commandment. Moses explicitly equates the Sabbath yom to the six yoms of creation. There you have the same author, speaking on the same topic, using the same noun, in the same context, saying the two things (the six days of creation in Genesis 1 and the Jews' Sabbath day) were the same thing.

Some people object to this, but their objections don't hold up. Some say that there couldn't have been 24-hour days, because there were no constellations till the fourth day (Gen. 1:16-19). But reality, such as time, is determined by what God knows. In Genesis 1, this is God saying that a day, comprised of morning and evening, had passed. God knew how long a day would be. He applied the term to creation days 1-3 before He created the constellations.

Some will say that the days could not have been 24-hour days because of the appearance of age (such as, the amount of time that starlight takes to travel from the originating star to earth's atmosphere, or the amount of radioactive decay in a rock). But these objections do not hold up, because they are based on a presuppositions of naturalism and uniformitarianism. And both of those presuppose atheism. But God inhabits the universe. God created the vacuum of outer space, not just the thing sin it. God is inside the universe.

So, this God -- not some Greco-Roman Unmoved Mover, but Yahweh -- created the star that emits the starlight, and created the starlight in transit through space, and caused the starlight to be striking and penetrating earth's atmosphere. When Adam looked up, he saw stars in the sky. God said He created the constellations as methods for shedding light upon the earth (Gen. 1:17). Humanity didn't wait thousands of years before a small number of weak twinkles appeared. By Abram's time, the sky had millions of stars (Gen. 15:5). God created all starlight in mid-existence and mid-function.

God created everything on earth in mid-existence and mid-function. God didn't create a world full of bird eggs. He filled the sky with flying birds. If you could have been there and caught a seagull, you would have said it was a year old, but it might have been 30 seconds old.

God didn't create the seas and rivers full of fish eggs. He filled the seas and rivers with millions of adult fish and other swimming creatures.

God didn't plant a world of tiny saplings, He created forests of fully grown trees, and every other kind of vegetation (because His creation would need all of it as a fully-ready food source).

God didn't create two human fetuses and keep them in a cocoon. He created Adam and Eve as fully-reasoning adults. They had fully formed speech and vocabularies. Adam was created with the intellectual powers to name every creature (Adam never went to school, yet he could talk to God, and be entrusted with the garden's management). Adam and Eve were already able to reproduce. Everything in Genesis 1-2 shows God creating things fully grown, fully developed, and already well along.

This is why the argument for a millions-of-years-old earth from radioactive rock-dating carries no weight. Once you allow for a Creator God at all, and then say that Genesis 1 is true (not an allegory), uniformitarianism is shot (and we don't know whether decay rates can change. There is no difference between dating the age of Adam and dating the age of a rock.

If you had a TARDIS, and could travel back to half-an-hour after God created Adam, you would swear that Adam had been born, let's say, 25 years prior. His teeth were fully formed. His skeletal structure was 100% mature. The proteins in his blood would have been adult proteins. But he says to you, "No, God made me three hours ago!"

Your efforts to use science to date Adam's age would fail. Every effort to date things by tracking features of them backward through time only work to a point, because God made everything out of nothing. Moses comes to uniformitarianism like a sword, and he cuts its head clean off.

There is no categorical difference between Adam being made as a fully grown, functioning, knowledgeable adult, and God creating trees already having hundreds of rings (and bugs), and rocks having the elements in all stages of radioactive decay. It's all the same. And the accusation that this would make God "tricky" is an empty complaint, since God tells everyone in Genesis 1-2 that this is how He did it. It isn't deception. It's the faultiness of finite human reason. Reason cannot know certain facts unless God reveals those facts. Genesis 1-2 is included among those otherwise-unknowable facts.

Scripture does not exist to sanctify Darwinism. Scripture and science are not equal partners. Scripture is over science, at all points, and every point. Scientific findings are always mutable. The Scripture is not. And the Genesis 1-2 account of creation shatters uniformitarianism. So the real question is, was Moses the prophet of God?

Christian Reviewers Need To Be Careful & Accurate

8/14/2015

I receive a free magazine named The Arminian, produced by the Fundamental Wesleyan Society. I enjoy reading it; I have always found John Wesley's work and heritage interesting, and the magazine comes from a section of evangelicaldom that I don't inhabit. But I was dismayed when I read how a Reformed Christian brother named Kevin deYoung was mishandled in the latest issue.

The artcle's writer, Dr. Vic Reasoner, claims that Calvinism promotes evil (which by itself is absurd, honestly, but that's another point), and he quoted something from pastor deYoung as proof. DeYoung in some place wrote that if a preacher has never been accused of preaching a license for sin, then he probably hasn't been preaching the Gospel correctly. Dr. Reasoner cited this quotation as proof that Calvinists don't care about holy living.

Thing is, I remember reading for myself DeYoung's original quotation. DeYoung was quoting the late British preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who himself was explaining why the apostle Paul started answering the question, "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" in Romans 6:15. Everything Paul taught about the saving grace of God in Christ in Romans 1-5 might lead a Pharisee opponent to make that accusation.

That was Lloyd-Jones' point, and DeYoung was seconding it. The justifying grace of God in Christ is so free, so unmerited, so not earned by works, that it was easy for a legalist to draw the wrong conclusions and make that accusation. Paul's critics were drawing that erroneous conclusion in Paul's own lifetime. So Paul goes on, in Romans 7-8, to show that the unmerited saving grace of God is the only power that does produce actual holiness of life.

In fact, DeYoung has a book, titled The Hole In Our Holiness, in which he criticizes antinomian teachings about the relationship between faith and works. The very teachings that Reasoner claims DeYoung promotes. DeYoung's unstated primary focus in that book was on the antinomian teachings of Tullian Tchividjian, the former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian church.

This published claim that deYoung promotes Christian carnality, when the reality is that he criticizes, from a Reformed standpoint, the lawlessness that Reasoner is against, is an example of how to break the Ninth Commandment: "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor." Writing calls for precision. If we sum up someone's ideas in a written format and then publish it, it's important we take the time to really read up, and get the facts right. Dr. Reasoner didn't simply adopt an "uncharitable reading" of DeYoung, he was in flat error. He really should have known better.

(P.S. I have tried to e-mail Dr. Reasoner, but the e-mail link at his organization's website doesn't work).