Thoughts on theistic evolution or Old Earth creationism?

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Here are some resources, based on a post I made last year.

General Old Earth vs. Young Earth
OPC report on creation – does a good job laying out several different views: http://www.opc.org/GA/creation.html

PCA report is good as well: http://www.pcahistory.org/creation/report.html

Both the PCA and the OPC reports have outlined several views including Old Earth and Young Earth (though of course some individual congregations and presbyteries don't allow all of these views).

The Creationists by Ronald Numbers – This is an academic work on the origins of modern young earth creationism and an analysis of how it came to be a pervasive view in American (and elsewhere) Evangelicalism. It's a long work, but easy to follow and very insightful: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674023390&content=reviews

Debate on the Age of the Earth, hosted by John Ankerberg – This is the best debate I've seen on the topic. It includes 4 participants: Jason Lisle, Ken Ham, Hugh Ross, and Walter Kaiser. This is a young earth astrophysicist, a young earth apologist, an old earth astrophysicist and apologist, and an old earth Bible scholar. It was well done, respectful, and brings up many important issues:

A core issue at hand oftentimes when considering the age of the earth is death before the fall (particularly as it relates to animal death). Joshua John Van Ee (Professor at Westminster Seminary California) wrote his doctoral dissertation on the topic and it's quite interesting. He believes there is not human death before the fall but there is animal death. You can read it here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qm3n0mt

Theistic Evolution
Calvin's Doctrine of the Creation by B.B. Warfield – Interesting thoughts, also relates Calvin's views to modern scientific views: https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/warfield/warfield_calvincreation.html

Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople by Tim Keller – This article, even if you disagree with some of the exegetical remarks on the early chapters of Genesis, does a great job of laying out why evolution in particular is a difficult problem, how to address it pastorally, and also is helpful in defining and distinguishing terms: https://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Keller_white_paper.pdf
 
TE Christians are all over the place and mainly contradict each other within their own camps.

OEs seem primarily concerned with age and not much else whereas TE’s are merely evolutionists.

Biblical Creationists (and even ID,) I don’t really like the term YEC, are pretty consistent across the board. Not as much contradiction. These are merely my impressions as a casual observer. I may be misrepresenting a bit.

https://www.gotquestions.org/old-earth-vs-young-earth.html

https://www.gotquestions.org/old-earth-creationism.html

TE often depart on various aspects of biblical truth and the infallibility of scripture... OEs are maybe a little insecure from a scientific perspective whereas maybe us YECs are a little insercure from a biblical perspective but our intent is sincere
 
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Biblical Creationists (and even ID,) I don’t really like the term YEC, are pretty consistent across the board. Not as much contradiction. These are merely my impressions as a casual observer. I may be misrepresenting a bit.

There's a whole range of views within YEC too. Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have started advocating for a sort of hyper-evolution to answer more of the questions regarding how we got from the ark to now. It's interesting to me because historically within fundamentalism, there was more concern in being anti-evolution than being young-earth (even men like William Jennings Bryan and C.I. Scofield were some form of old earth creationists), but Ham seems to have flipped it around a bit and is willing to use evolution more readily. Here is some critique of Ham's view from a PCA guy: https://thenaturalhistorian.com/yec-hyper-evolution-archive/

You can see how this manifests itself with practical questions. For example, ICR tends toward saying there were 15-30,000 animals on the ark, whereas Answers in Genesis says there were a smaller number of animals (1,500 different), but they were all different from what we see on earth today a few thousands years later (and there has been rapid differentiation within the kinds represented on the ark). ICR and AiG are both more mainstream and sensible still, not to mention all of the men like "Dr. Dino" (Kent Hovind).

That said, most modern YEC have in common that they use flood as a catastrophic event to explain geology, biology, etc. that would otherwise appear old. This was originally based on visions of the prophetess founder of the Seventh Day Adventist church, Ellen G. White, who inspired her follower George McCready Price to write about this in more detail. These views made it into the evangelical Protestant mainstream by way of the publication of the Genesis Flood by John C. Whitcomb and and Henry M. Morris who were published by Presbyterian & Reformed in 1961 (though they were not themselves Presbyterian or Reformed). You can read more about this history in the aforementioned book The Creationists by Ronald Numbers.

Edit: Of course, this is in regard to modern apologetics organizations. Many theologians are not as concerned with the "how" of fitting together the two books God has given us (cf., section 2 of the Belgic Confession) so I'm not saying the position of the age of the earth rests on what we can discover from nature.
 
So far as I'm aware, flood geology has been around a long time. I'm not a fan of "creation science" (as a science; as opposed to educated guessing of an "if X were true, then Y is a good explanation" form), but creation.com (CMI) tends to be pretty fair in treating various YEC issues.

I'm against both TE and OEC, but I hold to mature creation (or rapidly matured creation), so I would say that there is a sense in which the earth is old, while being historically young.
 
So far as I'm aware, flood geology has been around a long time. I'm not a fan of "creation science" (as a science; as opposed to educated guessing of an "if X were true, then Y is a good explanation" form), but creation.com (CMI) tends to be pretty fair in treating various YEC issues.

I'm against both TE and OEC, but I hold to mature creation (or rapidly matured creation), so I would say that there is a sense in which the earth is old, while being historically young.

That is my position as well. As I believe that God created a mature earth, I do not like the term Young Earth Creationist, but perhaps that is being pedantic?
 
That is my position as well. As I believe that God created a mature earth, I do not like the term Young Earth Creationist, but perhaps that is being pedantic?
Yes, I also do not like the term (or the related ones, like recent earth creationist) because of all the baggage it tends to carry (I think the term itself is fine if "young" is understood to refer to history). However, I personally find it easier to say I am YEC and then qualify if necessary than to say I am OEC and qualify from there, especially given the circles I run in.
 
That is my position as well. As I believe that God created a mature earth, I do not like the term Young Earth Creationist, but perhaps that is being pedantic?
I think "young" is usually taken to mean "there's only been a few thousand years since creation", rather than that God created the earth in an embryonic state. After all, when God made Adam he (Adam) was mature enough to get married that same day, so there's no reason to suppose all other things weren't created in a state of maturity as well.
I'm not in the least uncomfortable with the term, though I think "Young Universe" might be more....universal. Perhaps we could say "recent origin"?
 
I may not be reading it right but is OP implying an either or scenario? There are multiple views out there. I for one would say that im against TE but I'm also not a TEC.
 
what is everyone’s thoughts on theistic evolution or Old Earth creationism?

If you don’t hold to some younger age of the earth, then how do you reconcile death entering after the one man’s sin, Rom 5, with death before the one MSN’s sin, which would be implied in an older earth scenario?


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