I don't have any, other than some of the names Adam gives the animals suggest they are animals of prey.

I also don't have scriptural support that the earth revolves around the sun.

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Daniel
PCA
Memphis, TN

Daniel, your commentary, though understandable in that you admire Keller, is a little frustrating in that Kellers position is anything but the norm. It is fine to defend Keller, but I see valid assertions made using his own statements in context. Maybe you could cut some slack to those who think differently from you.

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Michael P Doyle
Waukesha WI
Member of http://www.cornerstone-pca.com/
Attending http://www.lampseminary.org/

Jenny your Martian would say the earth has four corners. It isn't so simple. There is poetry, metaphore, historical narrative. I happen to think Keller is wrong but it is complex theology.

I happen to believe in geocentricity (the earth is at the center of the solar system and the sun with planets and all the stars rotate around the earth daily). They are not as far away as you think and the subject of the speed of light decreasing parabolically in measuremts since 1600 is fascinating. There is an entire group of Reformed physicists and astronomers with the material on this ( Gerhardus Bouw is the most famous). The models both work perfectly ( geo and heliocentric) so it can't be proven either way, although the Michaelson Morley experiments conclusively proved the earth does not move unless you want to swallow Einsteins junk that light measures the same if you are moving or not.


I am saying all this to say that any young earther creationist who turns around and believes in heliocentrism is guilty of the same liberties that the old agers and theistic evolutionists hold to. The exact same. You can twist and turn and come up with all the reasons why the sun does not rise and set nor why it did not stand still and what the ancients didn't know that we know now, but it is all the same logic- or illogic. You must not condemn Keller or any evolutionist unless you are prepared to embrace geocentricity in my opinion, or you become a hypocrite. That's how I see it, no offense intended. But if you can turn some narrative into poetry or ancient scientific mistakes, then the evolutionists have the same right to do so.

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Lynnie

PCA

Central NJ

What is prey now, was not necessarily prey before the fall, right?

On your second point, nice try, but that's not what anyone's positing.

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Anna
Wife of Tim/Marrow Man
Louisville, KY
Member of Midlane Park Presbyterian (Associate Reformed Presbyterian)

Lynnie, thanks for this reply. It blew me away. Forgive my slowness...
Are you serious about geocentricity? you aren't just using it for a reductio argument?
I am absolutely fascinated, because I have just started reading and thinking about this. I see what follows - yes, it is the same, (though I think you also have to be prepared not to be too hard on sincere believers who happen to have been evolutionarily brainwashed from earliest youth) .
Would you care to start up a thread on geocentricity?? I was considering doing so myself, just to get some input! (sorry, off topic)

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JennyG
Church of Scotland (Presbyterian)
Fife, Scotland

So Adam, it's not possible to hold an abberant view of homosexuality while still being Reformed and conservative (at lease theologically)? I guess that means when we're saved we are automatically granted, with our faith, a perfectly correct view of homosexuality. No need to work through that one I guess. No room for sanctification there.

My premise is that no one is perfect in their belief system. All of us hold things that are inconsistant, sometimes radically so, from our otherwise sound Reformed views. I don't know your views of homosexuality. I do know that there are some very nuanced views out there that many here, perhaps you, would disagree with. That does not make those views sinful or wrong. Perhaps they are both. Perhaps not.

I continue to maintain that homosexuality is singled out by many as a sin above others. If one does not toe the line in their view then they must be cast aside or not admitted into a church.

You are simply wrong in your final assertion.

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Jon Peters
Member, Reformation Fellowship (OPC) (Roseville, CA)
Folsom, CA

Daniel,

The Hebrew (and the Septuagint's translation of those terms) of Gen. 2:19-20 have nothing specifically to do with prey. They merely distinguish between animals to be used in a domesticated manner, and those that live in the field.

Both terms are used in a post fall context to describe carnivorous animals, as well as sheep and livestock, but it would be exegetically unsound to necessitate the reading of a word in one place always to apply to the word in another. That is a word study fallacy. By the biblical account, post-fall (and then post-flood) creation differs substantially from the pre-fall state.

This is why it's a lame attempt to prove pre-fall death by the invokation of Psalm 104. It's often asserted that it is a psalm about creation, and therefore proves death before the fall, but it is ignored that David was writing his observations regarding creation in a post-fall setting. Of course he saw lions tear their prey - he killed one who went after his sheep

-----Added 10/6/2009 at 05:09:27 EST-----

No. Theology includes ethics.

__________________
Adam J. Myer
Slated for the Jan. 10th Chaplains Basic Officer Leadership Course
Estacada Christian Church
Sandy, Oregon

Soli Deo Gloria

The point doesn't stand. Long and complicated and be just as correct as short and simple. Your knock at Kline is simply an unsupported assertion. The definition of a cheap shot.

You sound as though someone cannot honestly work through the text of Genesis and arrive at anything other than what you believe. That is simply arrogant.

I'm not trying to prove pre-fall death with that passage. That passage doesn't prove anything, like you said. I admitted that I don't have Scriptural support for my belief in pre-fall death, which Anna requested. But I don't think I need it. I stated that I also believe the earth revolves around the sun, even though there isn't Scriptural support. I know Anna doesn't think it's a valid argument, but I do. I base my belief of pre-fall death on what I see in creation. I see an earth that is billions of years old. I see animals who are uniquely designed for devouring other life, like venomous snakes, spiders, anteaters, etc.

Don't your first two sentences contradict each other? Your first sentence would have you as a geocentrist, for example. Your second sentence has you incorporating things beyond scripture that are far from proven (the carbon-dated pine cone, for example). Since we are predators at the top of the food chain, so to speak, does your last sentence include humans? Why?

Jon,

You're just finding things to fight against. I've worked through the Hebrew of the entire first 11 chapters of Genesis in detail. I have also read Kline in detail, and therefore find it no unsupported assertion. It may have been unkind, but not unsupported. Are you a supporter of Lee and Misty Irons per chance? That is an honest question.

Btw, are you going to challenge my point about your attempt to separate ethics from theology? If not, then you should retract your assertion that it is wrong to make the statement that one cannot hold aberrant views of homosexual unions and still be considered a theologically orthodox and conservative Reformed Christian.

Anna,
You lost me. How is it that I'm a geocentrist? And please also explain your comment on humans being the top of the food chain. I don't see what that has to do with what I said.

We see the sun rise and set. It appears to the naked eye ("what I see in creation") that the sun moves, not the earth. We devour other life; are we uniquely designed to do so? Why?

Jenny yes I am serious.

I was first introduced to this maybe 20 years ago before the internet age, but this seems to be a site to get you started.

Geocentricity

I only had books and videos. The thing I liked best was an appendix in a British book by Malcolm Bowden called True Science Agrees with the Bible. Much of the technical material is far over my head.

The most important thing to know, which even my daughter's secular text book states, is that both models work. ( in the geo one, the other planets orbit the sun which goes around the earth). They both accurately predict the retrograde motion of planets, eclipses, etc. It is not necessary to science to have heliocentrism, but that model is simpler and also lends itslef more easily to the big bang cloud of dust condensing into swirling balls that become planets. ( until you talk about the moons of planets that orbit with an opposite spin, and then they come up with strange theories that will never fit the swirling condensing model.)

The main geocentric discussions center on the Michaelson Morley experiments, which tried to measure the speed of the earth hurling towards a star part of the year and then hurling away from the star the opposite part of the year. They were well done and no one argues with the technique but they yield a zero value, that the earth is not moving.

Eiensteins "genius" was that the speed of every other wave on the electromagnetic spectum can be measured by adding and subtracting velocities as you move towards and away from the source ( radio, radar, TV waves, etc),but visible light, this one little slice of the spectrum, does not behave like the rest. It measures the same if you move towards or away from a source...no adding or subtracting velocities.

This is from the Time Magazine Person of the Century Cover Story ( Einstein)

TIME 100: Person of the Century - A Brief History of Relativity

You would expect light to travel at a fixed speed through the ether. So if you were traveling in the same direction as the light, you would expect that its speed would appear to be lower, and if you were traveling in the opposite direction to the light, that its speed would appear to be higher. Yet a series of experiments failed to find any evidence for differences in speed due to motion through the ether.

The most careful and accurate of these experiments was carried out by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at the Case Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887. They compared the speed of light in two beams at right angles to each other. As the earth rotates on its axis and orbits the sun, they reasoned, it will move through the ether, and the speed of light in these two beams should diverge. But Michelson and Morley found no daily or yearly differences between the two beams of light. It was as if light always traveled at the same speed relative to you, no matter how you were moving. ( lynnie edit- it was as if the earth stood still)

But it was a young clerk named Albert Einstein, working in the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, who cut through the ether and solved the speed-of-light problem once and for all. In June 1905 he wrote one of three papers that would establish him as one of the world's leading scientists — and in the process start two conceptual revolutions that changed our understanding of time, space and reality.

In that 1905 paper, Einstein pointed out that because you could not detect whether or not you were moving through the ether, the whole notion of an ether was redundant. Instead, Einstein started from the postulate that the laws of science should appear the same to all freely moving observers. In particular, observers should all measure the same speed for light, no matter how they were moving.

Let me say that I am not an expert on these matters and don't have time to debate them here, but all the material is out there for anybody who cares to study it- focault pendulums, sattellites, the supposed clock that was slower on a plane, all of it. The geocentrists blow holes in all the heliocentric junk that was fed to you in highschool.

Another big deal for geocentrists is the Sagnac effect, I am sure it is discussed on that site.

This tends to be very hard at first to believe, as people think science has proved heliocentricity and the theory of relativity. That is not true, any more than science has proved the earth is billions of years old or that evolution is true. I happen to think that every young earth creationist needs to investigate this subject, and decide how they can toss aside biblical references to the sun rising, setting, and standing still, while demanding literalism from the evolutionists and old earthers on Adam and the days of creation. I see no difference. After I spent time reading materials on this I was relieved to see that there is solid science behind it, and my faith in geocentricity is every bit as scientifically solid as my young earth views.

Ah, I see. When I said "what I see in creation" I wasn't talking about the naked eye. I'm talking about what I can deduce through scientific discovery.

As to humans, I'd say we were uniquely designed to rule over all other life. But I'm still not certain where you're going with that. I mentioned things like venomous snakes and spiders because it is not clear to me why they would be created like that if there were no death. Were spiders catching leaves in their webs? What was the purpose of a spider or snake's poisonous bite?

Turning Genesis into metaphor and theistic evolution are all grist to Satan's mill.

Thus can liberalism seep and then flood into the good ship Evangelicalism.

__________________
Richard
communicant member, FCoS
Perth, Scotland UK

His Name forever shall endure;
last like the sun it shall:
Men shall be blessed in Him,
and blessed all nations shall Him call (Ps. 72:17)

But obviously we can't accurately deduce the age of the earth through scientific discovery---the age changes all the time, according to those on the old-earth side. Evidence at Mt. St. Helens makes it clear that what others would say takes millions of years can be done in hours or days.

You're assuming that nothing about those animals changed after the fall. We didn't eat meat before the fall, but through God's providence and plan, now we do.

Well a possibility is that the creation was changed/spoiled/cursed after Adam's Fall. What about the multitudinous illnesses that afflict Mankind? Were they around before the Fall or carrying out the current havoc that they wreak among Mankind? Or under God's curse did they change/evolve?

It would have been wrong for God to leave sinful Man, as head of the creation, in a perfect world.

There are a number of indications in the Bible that God subjected the creation to the curse after the Fall, which would be both logical and moral.

According to the Bible the Earth was made for Man, not Man for the Earth. Why should Man enjoy the felicity he had on Earth before the Fall?

Well, I do see 6 day creation, but I think as a newcomer, the confusion would be the different accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. I still find having the two accounts difficult.

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Kathleen M
nondenominational
Montana

Back to the OP...

The answer to this question depends on the strictness of the membership vows and on the Session/Consistory. However, I believe in a more 'liberal' vow - that any Christian should be able to swear to our vows. Is it better, as it were, to leave a brother or sister unconnected to the Body of Christ if he or she is willing to be taught and submit to his or her elders? Were not we all in that place at one time or another, where we held to errors?

Even Chuck Smith could be a member at a confessionally Reformed church - though I doubt he'd be willing to submit to the oversight and discipline of our elders (smile). For the peace and purity of the church, of course, it may not be a good idea to admit someone who is simply there to accuse us of cultism.

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BJ Mora
Grace OPC, Modesto, CA
Reformed & Presbyterian Churches & Denominations in North America

My main problem with geocentric view of the solar system is that it makes rocket launches to other planets totally impractical. The paths of the planets "around the earth" including the distances from the earth (measurable with simple geometry that we use in surveying a field, but on a larger scale) become almost absurd to describe. It isn't that they aren't set, but that it is complex beyond comprehension. Put a heliocentric view of the solar system into play, and we can predict the path of a comet we have no knowledge of prior to seeing it. Make the earth the center, and then do the same without first doing the predictive path using a heliocentric view is impossible. What is worse, is that if you start with a geocentric solar system, figure out what it would take to send a space probe to a moon that we observe (see it with a telescope, and almost our naked eye) around Jupiter. Do the calculations with no predictive heliocentric look first--I don't know anyone with the math to do it as the calculations are more complex than anyone I know can imagine. Ask a college physics student to do the same with a heliocentric solar system and he should finish in a matter of a couple of hours, and be near perfect.

The other problem I have with geocentric is you might as well be flat earth as well. There are references to "the four corners of the earth" that literally taken would support a flat earth. We have seen the earth from space, and it is not flat. We have traversed it and found it to be nearly spherical. If we accept that what we have seen and measured in terms of the earth not being flat, then the use of figurative language (what we even use today when we say "when the sun rises tomorrow...") shows nothing.

When Jesus said "Tear down this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days" he was using figurative language. In that instance, it is stated. Where in scripture does it say that God has to tell us when he decides to use figurative language when he speaks to us?

Is God bound by what we say? Does he care if "liberalism" might use the opportunity to infiltrate the church (as if he is not in control in the first place)?

God is sovereign. If he chose to use historical figurative language, we are stuck with it. If he did things in a way that are inconvenient to our showing how right we are about evolution being wrong, we are still bound by what he chose.

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Brian Withnell
Deacon, OPC
Leesburg, Virginia

You cannot train for war in the midst of a battle. Prepare before the battle starts; if the battle is long and hard, you will wish you had.

I would say myself that the scripture in its entirety is compromised entirely if it is diluted at this point. God is the fount of all truth, and if God did not create ex nihilio and partially allowed time+plus chance+nothing to take effect via theistic evolution then logically it follows that He would and could have no interest in the areas where chance was allowed free rein.So if the claim is that The Earth is involved in this evolution there is no point in God saving the Earth, there is no point,purpose or reason in saving mankind, thereis no historic space time fall of mankind, we are free to doubt the humanity of Christ because it is only God's inspired word that assures us of our divine origin ie coming from God but not God's ourselves and that we are who we say we are and therefore even more powerfully that Jesus is who He says He is, fully man and fully God and places his divinity in question,places his once for all substituitonary sacrificial death in question,place His historic space-time resurrection in question, and place our redemption in question therefore according to this theory we are still in our sins and there is no basis for law, for morality, for altruism, for art, for beauty, for science , for literature for drama.If we are weak at this point or fail to fight for God's truth the next generation will note our failure and take the fall and the failure further and further.I saw the fruits of my labours in the sixties fighting against the rules,I and my generation and those following us of the postwar generation are now paying a terrible price for that sin.We were so wrong.May God in mercy bring reformation and revival to us so we can like Nehemiah strenghten the walls, strenghten that which remains.

Not to worry.. this too was found to be an evolutionary process. In the early 70's scientists realized there had to be examples of long periods of stasis interrupted by short, rapid evolutionary advancements.

The sudden arrival of Eve found in Genesis was the perfect example they had been looking for. "PuncturedRib ToSequelHim" had been written from the beginning. It just needed some scientific eloquence, thus it was adapted slightly..

("Punctuated Equilibrium": the hypothesis that evolutionary development is marked by isolated episodes of rapid change, interrupting long periods of little or no change.)

Bryan

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Bryan
Deacon, PCA
Tampa, FL

Brian (Withnell) says,I am not sure yet what the answer is here, though I'm sure there is one. Lynnie, you're ahead of me on this topic.... any thoughts?
oh, wait though.....maybe the earth is flat with four corners!!*

As Highlander says, when it comes to acknowledging God's sovereignty over his Creation, it really is all or nothing, so there can be only one answer.

Kathleen, sorry I didn't respond (I was suddenly very busy). On the (supposed?) discrepancy between Gen. 1 and 2, I won't reinvent the wheel by giving my own explanation. On AiG or CMI and probably the Answers site as well, there is a lot of material dealing with it from every angle

*[only kidding ....I put that in for the benefit of any atheist evolutionists who may be reading. They love nothing better than when a Creationist plays up to their stereotype]

I suppose part of my problem is that many people will acknowledge that figurative language is used in many places in the Bible (there are instances of mentioning figurative speech) but then if there is any uncertainty in what a passage might mean, some people are unwilling to think their world view (of things that do not affect faith, life and practice) ought to be the only one that works and they bring that to the scriptures and look for support of it.

I don't care what position a person holds, that is just plain wrong. We don't approach the Bible as a means to support our position. We should approach the Bible as the authority, and look at what we see within it as having to be true, and if we see that it might be different from what we think, then we ought to hold charity toward others' view. Credo and covenant baptists hold to their position (both groups) out of a sense of what they believe the Bible teaches. Yet we still believe we are brothers. The strength of how some people hold to doctrines though is sometimes related to not what the Biblical argument might hold, but what would through the largest difficulty into the world view of those outside the faith.

In a sense, I don't care what those that are outside the faith believe. I proclaim the gospel to them in order that they might come into the faith (or be more thoroughly condemned for trampling underfoot so great a salvation) and when they do come to faith, then I'll worry about the rest.

No worries. And I should clarify that I don't have problems with the supposed contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2 - just that I can see why new converts (or even people who have been Christians for a while) would find it troubling or confusing. It isn't the clearest part of Scripture.

I understand! (and of course agree with you in not personally finding any problem). A question maybe for another thread, too - this one has strayed a bit from base already! Have a great Sunday
Jenny