WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.299 for questions. So, just started the recording. Okay, so we're faith and science this morning. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:13.160 So, just a few general remarks about Christianity and science to sort of begin. So, many people 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:18.199 assume that there is this inherent conflict, and that there's always been this conflict between 00:00:18.199 --> 00:00:25.480 faithful believers and scientific rationalists. But that's not a good way to, that's not even 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:32.079 true historically. Okay, so if you look at, say, the early modern period in Europe, like 16th, 17th, 00:00:32.079 --> 00:00:41.480 18th century, that's when modern sort of experimental science was developed. And, in fact, 00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:48.780 the modern experimental science is based on some assumptions that are very consistent with the 00:00:48.780 --> 00:00:53.719 picture the Bible paints the world in. So, particularly three assumptions, the world is 00:00:53.719 --> 00:01:01.119 orderly, so it's not completely chaotic or random. The world is intelligible. In other words, 00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:06.700 human beings can understand that order at some level. And the world is contingent. Now, 00:01:06.760 --> 00:01:12.079 contingent just means it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly that way. So, you sort of have to, 00:01:12.079 --> 00:01:20.599 like, discover what it is rather than just think your way to what it must be. And those are the 00:01:20.599 --> 00:01:25.199 assumptions, those, you have to believe those assumptions in order to do experimental science. 00:01:25.439 --> 00:01:30.039 You have to believe there's some order that you're trying to find, that you, as, that we as human 00:01:30.039 --> 00:01:35.060 beings have some way of understanding that order, and that we're not just going to figure it out by 00:01:35.060 --> 00:01:42.399 reasoning our way to it, but by discovering it experimentally. Now, lo and behold, right, that's the 00:01:42.399 --> 00:01:46.459 picture of the world that, those are three assumptions behind the picture of the world the Bible gives, 00:01:46.459 --> 00:01:52.679 right? The Bible, the world is orderly because God, God's made it, and it reflects some of his 00:01:52.679 --> 00:01:57.179 wisdom and order. As human beings made in God's image, we have an ability to understand that, 00:01:57.379 --> 00:02:03.119 not perfectly, but at some level. And the world doesn't necessarily have to be the way it is. 00:02:03.179 --> 00:02:10.139 God could have made it differently. So, so it's interesting. God set up the world so we can explore 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:14.579 its workings and marvel at, and often be surprised by its variety and vastness, right? If you look at the 00:02:14.580 --> 00:02:19.140 history of science, it's a history of surprising discoveries, right? That many times people didn't 00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:25.100 expect and resisted for a long time and thought it must not be this way, and finally you get to the 00:02:25.100 --> 00:02:32.100 point you're like, boy, we've got to change our whole way of thinking about these things. I've included 00:02:32.100 --> 00:02:36.939 a few quotes from some older scientists and some more recent scientists who are Christian believers. 00:02:36.939 --> 00:02:44.180 We could add many more of these, but just some examples of scientists who had a sort of profound 00:02:44.180 --> 00:02:55.379 prayer life, were committed church members, loved Jesus Christ, believed the Bible. Anyway, 00:02:55.460 --> 00:02:59.759 these are just a few examples. I won't read them for you. And just broadly speaking, according to the 00:02:59.759 --> 00:03:05.360 Bible, God's revealed himself in the world that he's created, that it sort of displays his handiwork, 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:11.660 as well as in the words of the Bible. So if we understand them correctly, science, seeking to 00:03:11.660 --> 00:03:16.620 understand the world that God has made in scripture, seeking to receive and rightly interpret the words 00:03:16.620 --> 00:03:22.240 that God has spoken, really should reinforce each other and sort of bear witness to God's glory 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:27.560 together. Of course, there's a problem that in this fallen world, we don't always see things rightly. 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:35.320 That's one of the effects of sin and sort of living in a broken world, is it, 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:43.720 our understanding, our categories get confused and, you know, we think we see things that we don't see 00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:47.340 and we put things together in ways that maybe isn't the best way to put them together. 00:03:49.340 --> 00:03:53.980 And that happens both in how we understand science, right? If you look at the history of science, 00:03:54.400 --> 00:03:58.100 there's many times people thought, of course, you think the world must be this way, and today nobody 00:03:58.099 --> 00:04:04.919 believes that, right? And if you look at the history of interpreting the Bible, right? I mean, 00:04:05.180 --> 00:04:08.620 right, that's why we're having this conversation, because sometimes we struggle to know how do we 00:04:08.620 --> 00:04:14.060 interpret the Bible? You know, yes, there's a clarity to the main message of the Bible, 00:04:14.500 --> 00:04:20.719 and God's given us his Holy Spirit to help us, but still we struggle. We struggle to really, 00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:24.740 to understand especially some of the details, some of the more challenging parts. 00:04:24.740 --> 00:04:29.600 So today I want to focus on how we interpret the Scripture and how that relates to some 00:04:29.600 --> 00:04:35.319 sort of modern questions. Now, I'm not a scientist. I've never been a scientist. I was a history major 00:04:35.319 --> 00:04:41.019 in college, sort of, you know, I took a couple science classes because I had to. I enjoyed them 00:04:41.019 --> 00:04:46.680 and appreciated them, but I'm not going to try to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different 00:04:46.680 --> 00:04:53.639 scientific theories. So I'm not going to make pronouncements about, you know, whether this theory is 00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:58.459 really strongly well established or whether this theory is more provisional. And anyone who's in 00:04:58.459 --> 00:05:04.459 the sciences knows that there's a range, right? Some scientific theories, they're pretty well 00:05:04.459 --> 00:05:09.719 established, and there's lots of evidence behind them, and it would be pretty hard to completely 00:05:09.719 --> 00:05:13.740 throw them out. And other theories are more provisional, sort of like, well, this is the best 00:05:13.740 --> 00:05:17.379 we can do right now, but we're still working on it, and maybe this isn't quite the best model. 00:05:17.379 --> 00:05:23.040 Maybe we'll improve on what we know. But I do want to help us interpret the Bible carefully, 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:28.259 because that is my job as a pastor, right? That's my particular responsibility. So that's 00:05:28.259 --> 00:05:33.420 what I'm going to focus on this morning. So two basic guidelines for interpreting Genesis. I think 00:05:33.420 --> 00:05:40.120 broadly speaking, from a Christian point of view, we can affirm two things, at least these two things, 00:05:40.199 --> 00:05:46.800 about Genesis. First, there's plenty of symbolic and figurative language in Genesis. 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:51.860 Genesis. And you can even demonstrate that from the rest of the Bible, because the rest of the 00:05:51.860 --> 00:05:58.139 Bible refers back to Genesis and refers to some of the imagery in some passages that are obviously 00:05:58.139 --> 00:06:05.400 poetic or symbolic. For example, Proverbs talks about wisdom as the tree of life. Ezekiel 31 talks about 00:06:05.400 --> 00:06:10.199 Pharaoh as a tree in God's garden. Obviously, it's not speaking literally there, right? But it's using 00:06:10.199 --> 00:06:15.580 the imagery. Ezekiel 47, there's a river of heavenly life flowing out of the temple, Revelation, 00:06:15.579 --> 00:06:23.579 a lot of Garden of Eden imagery appears in Revelation, as well as the serpent, right? Who is 00:06:23.579 --> 00:06:29.779 also a dragon in Revelation. Anyway, so there's symbolic and figurative language in Genesis. 00:06:30.539 --> 00:06:37.199 I think when we approach Genesis, we should remember Genesis is not written, is not primarily aiming at 00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:44.180 scientific precision or exactness. It's also not a complete survey of ancient history. 00:06:44.180 --> 00:06:51.139 So Genesis does not tell us about all the people who ever existed ever in the world, right? No, 00:06:51.300 --> 00:06:55.000 that's not the purpose of Genesis. In fact, if Genesis was doing either of those things, 00:06:55.079 --> 00:07:00.720 it would be so long that we would never get through it. And we would also miss the point 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:05.780 of who is Genesis introducing us to? Genesis is introducing us to the one true God, 00:07:05.779 --> 00:07:17.139 who's the king over the whole world. So we want to understand Genesis in light of what its purpose was. 00:07:17.779 --> 00:07:24.899 And also that, remember, Genesis was written about 3,500 years ago. And so we need to ask, 00:07:25.019 --> 00:07:30.759 what would Genesis have meant back then, right? When some of the conversations that we're having today, 00:07:30.759 --> 00:07:36.719 right, for example, Darwin's theory of evolution, like nobody was exactly discussing that back then, 00:07:36.939 --> 00:07:43.740 because Darwin hadn't, you know, Darwin was thousands of years of the future, right? So we need 00:07:43.740 --> 00:07:47.680 to start by asking, what did Genesis mean back then? And then we can apply it. Of course, 00:07:47.879 --> 00:07:53.920 we need to ask the question, what implications does Genesis have? And how does it relate to some of 00:07:53.920 --> 00:08:02.000 these modern scientific theories, right? But we want to sort of start with taking Genesis as it is. 00:08:02.040 --> 00:08:07.620 Now, that's what we've tried to do in the sermons. And that's affecting how we've approached the 00:08:07.620 --> 00:08:12.819 sermon series. And while we haven't sort of immediately dived into some of these science 00:08:12.819 --> 00:08:16.680 and faith questions, but we also want to deal with the science and faith questions, which is why we're 00:08:16.680 --> 00:08:23.780 having a class today. Okay, so that's the first thing. Christian interpretation of Genesis can affirm 00:08:23.779 --> 00:08:29.799 there's figurative and symbolic language in Genesis. It's not primarily a scientific treatise. But the 00:08:29.799 --> 00:08:35.299 second thing that I think Christians should affirm about Genesis is Genesis is referring to real events. 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:42.819 So it's not just an imaginative story that has no basis or no connection to any historical reality. 00:08:43.620 --> 00:08:48.399 One of the fundamental claims of the Bible is that we're talking about a God who actually works 00:08:48.399 --> 00:08:56.879 in history with real people through his providence, sometimes even through miracles, ultimately by 00:08:56.879 --> 00:09:03.699 sending his son Jesus Christ into the world. So one particular example of this is the Apostle Paul 00:09:03.699 --> 00:09:10.419 speaks of Adam as a person who was as real as Jesus Christ in passages like 1 Corinthians 5, 00:09:11.220 --> 00:09:17.679 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5. Now we'll get back to that claim later on and some of its implications. 00:09:17.679 --> 00:09:23.319 So those are, I think, sort of two sort of broad things that we can affirm. 00:09:25.219 --> 00:09:33.179 Now many people ask this question, should we seek to harmonize or sort of, you know, develop a sort of 00:09:33.179 --> 00:09:41.939 grand unified theory of Genesis combined with modern science, right? You know, should we sort of 00:09:41.940 --> 00:09:51.080 seek to merge these together into one coherent picture? Now many of us, our instinct is, yeah, 00:09:51.300 --> 00:09:57.160 we'd love to do that. Boy, wouldn't that be amazing if Genesis sort of shows us how God's glory is revealed 00:09:57.160 --> 00:10:02.020 in every scientific theory and it shows us the big picture and we can put it all together. 00:10:02.019 --> 00:10:10.199 But I want to give a few warnings before we try to run down that road. Okay, so a few cautions. 00:10:11.059 --> 00:10:16.319 First, for the most part, science and the Bible are focused on exploring and answering different 00:10:16.319 --> 00:10:23.500 questions. So the main purpose of science is looking at questions like how and when. How do things 00:10:23.500 --> 00:10:30.600 normally happen in the natural world? When do things normally happen? So science doesn't tell us why 00:10:30.600 --> 00:10:39.879 something exists rather than nothing. Science also can't really rule out the possibility of divine 00:10:39.879 --> 00:10:46.399 intervention or miracles or providence in the world, right? Science doesn't really have a way to, 00:10:46.399 --> 00:10:52.919 you know, you can't, you can't demonstrate by repeated experiments. You can't demonstrate miracles 00:10:52.919 --> 00:10:56.819 by repeated experiments, right? Because the whole point of miracles is God chooses to intervene the 00:10:56.819 --> 00:11:04.139 way he wants to. And he's not necessarily going to do it again the same way. So, you know, science is 00:11:04.139 --> 00:11:13.199 dealing with how and when. The Bible is primarily dealing with why and who. Why are we here who made us? 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:18.680 So there's some overlap in what science and scripture are dealing with, but I actually think 00:11:18.680 --> 00:11:22.900 that most of the questions science and science and the Bible are dealing with are sort of just 00:11:22.900 --> 00:11:28.120 both important, but they're different realms. Now, there is an overlap, and that's what we're trying 00:11:28.120 --> 00:11:34.540 to deal with today. But we should remember this. Second, scientific theories have changed over time, 00:11:34.600 --> 00:11:40.580 often in ways that nobody could have predicted at the time. Again, this doesn't mean we should just 00:11:40.580 --> 00:11:47.740 ignore the findings of careful scientists or just dismiss everything that scientists say, but 00:11:47.740 --> 00:11:54.960 sometimes we can look back on previous attempts where people have thought, oh, scripture, you know, 00:11:55.060 --> 00:11:59.460 sort of attempts to harmonize science and scripture, and we can see obvious flaws in the science of the 00:11:59.460 --> 00:12:06.540 day. So, for example, some, there was the whole controversy about does the sun go around the earth or 00:12:06.539 --> 00:12:15.139 does the earth go around the sun? And some people thought, well, of course, the sun goes around the 00:12:15.139 --> 00:12:23.259 earth, and of course, the psalms teach that. Now, almost nobody believes the sun goes around the earth 00:12:23.259 --> 00:12:30.819 today. And was it a good idea to think that the psalm teaches that? No, the psalms are poems, 00:12:30.820 --> 00:12:39.320 right? They're songs, right? They use, like, regular, they use imagery, right? The sun rises and goes like 00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:44.080 a champion from one end of the sky to the other, right? You know, it's not saying the sun's a living 00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:52.220 being. It's just saying, like, it's just, it's a picture, right? So, so we have to be careful that we 00:12:52.220 --> 00:12:58.680 don't sort of connect the Bible to scientific theories that might change, and then we think the 00:12:58.679 --> 00:13:03.319 Bible's supporting something that has been demonstrated probably not to be true, right? 00:13:03.419 --> 00:13:10.439 That's, that's a problem we can learn from our, from, from our sort of past mistakes of other 00:13:10.439 --> 00:13:16.139 Christians. Third, there's a danger of projecting our own opinions or our culture's assumptions or 00:13:16.139 --> 00:13:21.739 current controversies onto scripture itself, right? So is, were the authors of the Bible trying to teach 00:13:21.739 --> 00:13:27.399 us whether the earth is flat or round, whether the sun goes around the earth, or whether the earth goes 00:13:27.399 --> 00:13:35.360 around the sun? Now, I think the answer is very unlikely, right? We don't, you know, if you think 00:13:35.360 --> 00:13:43.019 about, like, the Israelites walking through the desert, like, is that one of their concerns? Probably not, 00:13:43.419 --> 00:13:50.819 right? You know, is, is that the language that, that, that, anyway. So, biblical writers use poetic 00:13:50.819 --> 00:13:55.879 language, they use ordinary speech, we even speak the same way, right? So when sun rise, right? Even though 00:13:55.879 --> 00:14:01.519 technically, okay, it's like the earth's turning, right? We don't always use technical language, we 00:14:01.519 --> 00:14:08.179 just use normal language, and the Bible tends to use everyday language. Or common concepts, I won't 00:14:08.179 --> 00:14:12.799 get into this one, but the firmament in the midst of the waters, or the expanse above the waters, sort 00:14:12.799 --> 00:14:18.620 of the idea of, like, a canopy or a tent, is the sky, there's waters above that, waters below that. 00:14:18.919 --> 00:14:24.000 That was a common concept in the ancient world. I don't think Genesis 1 is sort of making a 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:30.139 scientific pronouncement about, like, the structure of the sky and the earth, and et cetera, et cetera. 00:14:30.299 --> 00:14:37.200 It's just using common concepts that everybody would have understood, okay? Last caution, very few 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:43.200 people have both extensive scientific expertise, and there's many branches of science. So a physicist 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:47.860 is not a biologist, is not a chemist, now you can be a biochemist, I mean, you can be at the 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:52.120 intersection of these fields, but, but right, even if you're a scientist, your expertise will tend to be 00:14:52.120 --> 00:15:00.340 in one field. And very few people have expertise in science and expertise in, and training in 00:15:00.340 --> 00:15:07.799 historical background of the Bible, cultural background of the Bible. So, so many people who 00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:13.539 try to sort of bring these together are experts in one area, but they're sort of relying on other 00:15:13.539 --> 00:15:20.480 people in another area. And again, so for all these reasons, I think we need to be very cautious 00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:32.519 about attempting to sort of unify the result, sort of do this harmonizing work, okay? It's a legitimate 00:15:32.519 --> 00:15:37.560 area of exploration, right? That's part of what we're working through this morning, but there are 00:15:37.560 --> 00:15:43.899 many reasons to be cautious, and often I think the right posture has some humility to it to say, 00:15:43.899 --> 00:15:51.919 we might be wrong, but here's what might be plausible, right? Proverbs indicates that the one who states 00:15:51.919 --> 00:15:56.980 his case first seems right until the other comes and questions him, and that applies to lots of things, 00:15:56.980 --> 00:16:03.819 right? You got to hear both sides of the story, and sometimes that takes a while to sort of sort that 00:16:03.819 --> 00:16:10.899 out. Okay, so these are sort of general comments. Let's jump into a few specific areas relevant to the 00:16:10.899 --> 00:16:17.959 opening chapters of Genesis Science and Faith. First issue is how do we interpret the days of 00:16:17.959 --> 00:16:26.939 creation in Genesis 1? God's creation happens over a period of six days in Genesis 1 through chapter 2, 00:16:26.980 --> 00:16:36.139 verse 3. There are basically three main interpretations of these days, okay? Interpretation number one is 24-hour 00:16:36.139 --> 00:16:44.319 literal view. These were six 24-hour days that happened in a row. 00:16:46.299 --> 00:16:49.659 According to this view, the Earth is probably pretty young. 00:16:52.699 --> 00:16:56.360 The only exception to that is the gap theory, which I put in a footnote, but hardly anybody 00:16:56.360 --> 00:16:59.939 believes gap theory anymore, so I'm not going to deal with that. 00:16:59.940 --> 00:17:08.660 If you do believe gap theory, we can talk about it. I think that's unlikely, but we can discuss that. 00:17:09.380 --> 00:17:11.640 But most people who take the 24-hour view 00:17:11.640 --> 00:17:20.360 would say, well, yeah, that means it all happened in the course of 144 hours, 00:17:20.500 --> 00:17:24.880 and the Earth is relatively young. Now, strong points of this view, well, it seems to be the most 00:17:24.880 --> 00:17:28.720 straightforward understanding, right? There was evening and there was morning the first day. 00:17:28.800 --> 00:17:33.240 There was evening, there was morning the second day. You know, doesn't that settle the case? 00:17:34.460 --> 00:17:37.920 It's probably also the most common interpretation throughout church history, 00:17:38.660 --> 00:17:46.660 but we'll get back to that one. But it is certainly a very common interpretation, 00:17:46.860 --> 00:17:53.640 probably the most common. Some objections to this view from the biblical text itself. 00:17:54.880 --> 00:18:00.980 So, some sort of questions or problems for this view. Sun, moon, and stars don't appear until day four. 00:18:01.700 --> 00:18:05.540 So, what kind of days are we dealing with before the sun, moon, and stars come on the scene? 00:18:08.760 --> 00:18:14.140 Second issue or problem is the seventh day seemed to last more than 24 hours, right? God rests from 00:18:14.140 --> 00:18:20.340 his work on the seventh day. And you might say, well, what happens on the eighth day? Well, it doesn't 00:18:20.339 --> 00:18:26.699 seem like God gets up again and then goes on to create a different universe, right? And in fact, 00:18:26.740 --> 00:18:33.699 the rest of the Bible seems to imply that that seventh day continues. So, Hebrews 4 talks about 00:18:33.699 --> 00:18:39.379 entering into God's Sabbath rest. It says, God's works were finished since the creation of the world. 00:18:39.380 --> 00:18:47.580 In other words, God's sort of inviting us to join him in that sort of final rest. 00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:54.820 So, you know, if the seventh day lasts more than 24 hours, then it might imply that the other days, 00:18:55.060 --> 00:19:00.080 maybe we're not just dealing with sort of six consecutive 24-hour days. And some other people 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:04.220 have argued that the Hebrew word translated day can also mean period of time in other contexts. 00:19:04.220 --> 00:19:10.279 Now, people who take the 24-hour view tend to resist this and argue about that. And I'm not, 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:13.440 I'm honestly, I'm not going to get into that because I don't think that's actually the strongest 00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:19.940 argument one way or another. But I've given you a couple examples that, you know, you can think 00:19:19.940 --> 00:19:25.059 through on your own. Second view. So some people, so that's first view, 24-hour view. Second view 00:19:25.059 --> 00:19:33.120 is what's called day-age view. So in the day-age view, we have six consecutive periods of time of 00:19:33.119 --> 00:19:39.879 indefinite length. So Genesis 1 is sort of showing us a picture of how life developed over time 00:19:39.879 --> 00:19:46.959 and showing us sort of those, some of the main stages. But we can't put a time, we can't put 00:19:46.959 --> 00:19:58.659 sort of a time frame on it from our modern or our experience. But it's still sort of, sort of 00:19:58.660 --> 00:20:10.120 showing us a general picture of how life on earth developed. Now, so now in one sense, many people 00:20:10.120 --> 00:20:15.600 would sort of agree with this at some level, because Genesis begins with God created the heavens 00:20:15.600 --> 00:20:19.720 and the earth, and the earth was formless and void. There's sort of a progression of some kind, 00:20:19.800 --> 00:20:25.660 and human beings come last. Pretty much everybody agrees with that, right? You know, whether the 00:20:25.660 --> 00:20:31.140 earth is created in six 24-hour days or over millions of years, right? Human beings are, have 00:20:31.140 --> 00:20:38.100 come on the scene sort of at the end, the climactic moment. But if you take this view more particularly, 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:44.019 and you say, well, okay, it's all consecutive in order, then you've still got a few issues. So how do 00:20:44.019 --> 00:20:49.120 plants and trees on the third day exist before the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day? Now, most people 00:20:49.120 --> 00:20:54.320 who take this view say, on the fourth day, the sun, moon, and stars became visible. The cloud cover 00:20:54.319 --> 00:21:00.740 dissipated. But that's not actually what Genesis says. Genesis says God made them on the fourth day. 00:21:02.039 --> 00:21:07.740 And the other caution I have about the day-age view is that many people who adopt this view 00:21:07.740 --> 00:21:15.039 say that Genesis 1 is sort of a, sort of like a hypothesis that we can test. And if we can confirm 00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:18.899 the hypothesis, then that's another reason to believe the Bible is true. 00:21:18.900 --> 00:21:27.240 But again, I think it's very unlikely that the author of Genesis was trying to give us 00:21:27.240 --> 00:21:32.880 a hypothesis of how the earth developed over time that we could now test by modern scientific methods. 00:21:34.700 --> 00:21:39.080 And again, with some of these issues, you know, plants and trees before the sun, moon, and stars, 00:21:39.320 --> 00:21:44.820 I think there are some problems we run into. And I think if we sort of read Genesis 1 as like, 00:21:44.819 --> 00:21:50.759 this is an outline of the natural history of life on earth, well, then what if the scientific 00:21:50.759 --> 00:21:54.460 conclusions don't seem to support that, right? Does that mean the Bible's false? 00:21:56.700 --> 00:22:04.480 So I think there are some issues here. The third view is what is usually called the framework view. 00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:11.139 In other words, the six days are a literary framework. So Genesis 1, in other words, Genesis 1 speaks 00:22:11.140 --> 00:22:17.240 about God's creation in a topical or thematic way, but not necessarily a chronological way. 00:22:18.520 --> 00:22:26.200 So Genesis 1 describes God's work week, not our work week, would be one way of putting it. 00:22:26.560 --> 00:22:30.320 Some other people, a variation of this view is that God revealed the story of creation to Moses 00:22:30.320 --> 00:22:39.380 over six days, and the six days are sort of those six days. So there's a little variety within this 00:22:39.380 --> 00:22:47.180 view, but basically it's saying this chapter isn't meant as a play-by-play account, but it's more 00:22:47.180 --> 00:22:55.860 an orderly picture, sort of affirming God's purpose in making the world and overseeing it. 00:22:56.920 --> 00:23:00.460 So I think some strong points of this view, this view highlights some of the patterns that are right 00:23:00.460 --> 00:23:07.080 there in Genesis 1, forming and filling rulers and realms. Pastor Matt pointed those out in his sermon 00:23:07.079 --> 00:23:13.639 on Genesis 1, if you were here for that a couple weeks ago, and you can make a nice chart. Day 1 00:23:13.639 --> 00:23:20.259 corresponds to day 4, day 2 to day 5, day 3 to day 6. That's very orderly, and it sort of all seems to 00:23:20.259 --> 00:23:25.159 fit together under that forming and filling, setting up realms, and appointing rulers over them. 00:23:25.759 --> 00:23:31.759 So in this view, God is telling us not so much how things develop, but who is in charge of what. 00:23:31.759 --> 00:23:41.799 Second point is the reference, let's see, the reference to the heavens and the earth makes it plausible that 00:23:41.799 --> 00:23:47.240 the days might be referring to heavenly time and not earthly time, and this would make sense of the 00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:52.920 fourth and seventh days. Third reason for this view, again this is from Genesis itself, so I'm not 00:23:53.619 --> 00:24:00.599 arguing for this based on a scientific theory. Third point is Genesis is set apart from the rest of the book 00:24:00.599 --> 00:24:08.579 as a prologue. I don't think it's quite right to call it a poem. It's not quite a poem. It's not exactly a psalm, 00:24:08.839 --> 00:24:15.879 but it's written in a more rhythmic way. In fact, if you read Genesis 1 out loud in a group and just have 00:24:15.879 --> 00:24:23.099 one person read each day, you can sort of hear that. There's a majesty to the chapter, whereas if you read 00:24:23.099 --> 00:24:28.779 the rest of Genesis, it's great, it's a narrative, but particularly in Genesis 1, you have this rhythm, 00:24:28.779 --> 00:24:33.299 the first day, the second day, the third day, and it all leads up to the climax of the sixth day, 00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:38.619 and God's saying it's very good, and then God rests, and sort of it's complete, and God joyfully 00:24:38.619 --> 00:24:47.619 delights in his work. So perhaps the structure of Genesis indicates that Genesis 1 should be 00:24:47.619 --> 00:24:53.539 interpreted in something like this way, but there are objections to this view. I think two of the main 00:24:53.539 --> 00:24:59.680 objections to this view is, one, this view is mostly motivated by a desire to accommodate Genesis 00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:05.920 to evolutionary theory, and not by anything in the biblical text itself. So many people will say this. 00:25:06.559 --> 00:25:14.099 My first response would be these three strong points that I have pointed out that I think 00:25:14.099 --> 00:25:19.059 that are all connected to the biblical text and not dependent on any scientific theory. 00:25:19.059 --> 00:25:25.399 My second response to this would be many Jews and Christians in pre-modern times held to a 24-hour 00:25:25.399 --> 00:25:31.419 view, but others, including the early church fathers, Augustine and Origen, medieval rabbis, 00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:37.720 Rashi and Maimonides, as well as Philo, a Jewish scholar who was before or around the time of Christ, 00:25:38.279 --> 00:25:44.299 all those people interpreted the days figuratively or allegorically. They saw things like the sun, 00:25:44.379 --> 00:25:48.379 moon, and stars don't appear until the fourth day. They discussed that, right? They didn't have 00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:53.300 scientific theories back. I mean, there were scientific theories, though most of us wouldn't 00:25:53.300 --> 00:25:57.640 accept most of the scientific theories that were around in those days, but they looked at the text 00:25:57.640 --> 00:26:04.480 and they said, you know, there's probably something more going on here. This isn't necessarily teaching 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:12.960 the sort of 24-hour consecutive view. So this isn't only a modern view. Second objection is, if you don't 00:26:12.960 --> 00:26:18.299 hold to the literal meaning of Genesis, in other words, a 24-hour view, you will go down a slippery 00:26:18.299 --> 00:26:24.360 slope and deny every other core Christian doctrine, and you will end up denying miracles and the 00:26:24.360 --> 00:26:29.980 resurrection of Jesus and the atoning work of Christ and everything else that's at the heart of 00:26:29.980 --> 00:26:37.599 Christianity. Now, you could certainly find examples of people who have gone down that road, 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:44.740 but my response to this would be, it depends on the reasons for your interpretation of Genesis. 00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:49.319 So if you have biblical reasons for interpreting Genesis according to the framework view, 00:26:49.940 --> 00:26:55.839 then you are not going to be inclined to deny other biblical doctrines. Now, if you just say, 00:26:55.839 --> 00:26:59.839 well, I'm just ready to throw out the Bible, the minute I find something else that seems to disagree 00:26:59.839 --> 00:27:05.699 with it, well, then I'm fine. You'll find other things in the world that seem to disagree with the Bible 00:27:05.699 --> 00:27:12.279 and that we have to work through, right? That's part of the challenge, is we're all going to face 00:27:12.279 --> 00:27:15.779 questions, we're all going to face doubts, we're all going to face issues, and if you just immediately 00:27:15.779 --> 00:27:20.899 pitch the Bible the minute you are dealing with any of those things, then yes, you're prone to going 00:27:20.900 --> 00:27:29.600 down a slippery slope. But I don't think it's a fair, slippery slope arguments are slippery, right? 00:27:31.259 --> 00:27:38.980 There's some truth to them, but it's also something that's not quite fair to just throw at anybody who 00:27:38.980 --> 00:27:45.060 interprets a certain part of the Bible a little differently than you do. So you have to sort of 00:27:45.059 --> 00:27:51.059 say, well, why are you interpreting it this way? You know, what are the reasons for your different 00:27:51.059 --> 00:27:56.119 interpretation? And again, I would say if you have good reasons from within the Bible text, then 00:27:56.119 --> 00:28:02.359 that's not, you're probably not going to be inclined to go down that way. So you may be able to tell by 00:28:02.359 --> 00:28:08.519 this point, I am personally inclined to the framework view. However, I also want to be clear that the church, 00:28:08.919 --> 00:28:14.240 Trinity Baptist Church, does not have an official position on this matter. You are free to hold to any of 00:28:14.240 --> 00:28:21.500 these three views, or other views that are substantiated from Scripture. And the most important thing that we 00:28:21.500 --> 00:28:27.779 believe as the elders is that Christians can be united by the main point of Genesis 1, which is exactly what we've 00:28:27.779 --> 00:28:34.140 been preaching in the sermons about God is the maker and sustainer of all that exists. He's a sovereign and good 00:28:34.140 --> 00:28:46.259 king. And we human beings are made in his image. So there's, so that's the days of Genesis 1. Now let's go on to a few 00:28:46.259 --> 00:28:53.280 other questions where we believe that we, as I'm speaking sort of for the pastors or elders of Trinity, 00:28:53.280 --> 00:28:58.080 where we believe that faithful Christians can hold a range of views. Doesn't mean that faithful Christians 00:28:58.079 --> 00:29:07.240 can hold any view that's out there, but we think there's a range of reasonable views that can be held. 00:29:08.639 --> 00:29:13.960 Okay, so one question, how old is the earth? This is mostly an implication of what we've just discussed. 00:29:14.939 --> 00:29:19.819 So does, here's the question is, does Genesis indicate whether the earth is relatively young, 00:29:19.939 --> 00:29:25.059 say a few thousand years old, or whether the earth is older than that? Also, does it indicate an 00:29:25.059 --> 00:29:31.559 approximate time frame when Adam and Eve might have lived? Now there's basically two, so statement, 00:29:31.740 --> 00:29:39.259 so if you, so in order to say that Genesis indicates something one way or the other about this question, 00:29:39.259 --> 00:29:45.220 you have to rely on two things, or you have to assume two things. One is, one, if you are trying to 00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:50.559 say that Genesis argues for a certain age of the earth, then you basically have to say it's talking about 00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:56.159 24-hour days. Because if you take the day-age view, if you take the framework view, then that leaves the 00:29:56.159 --> 00:30:02.379 question open. Doesn't say the earth has to be old, doesn't say the earth has to be young, both those, 00:30:02.460 --> 00:30:07.299 those second and third views leave that question open. View one, the 24-hour view, 00:30:07.859 --> 00:30:12.700 if you take that view, that would seem to lead you down a young earth view. 00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:21.480 But the second thing is the genealogies. So pretty much everybody agrees, Abraham's around 2000 BC. 00:30:22.600 --> 00:30:28.519 That's Genesis 12. And there are two genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 that go from Adam 00:30:28.519 --> 00:30:38.880 to Noah, and then from Noah to Abraham. And those genealogies tell about the ages of, there's 10 men 00:30:38.880 --> 00:30:44.260 in each genealog, 10 individuals in each genealogy, and they, each of the genealogies describes their 00:30:44.260 --> 00:30:50.600 age at death. So some people have added up the ages in those genealogies and those 10 generations 00:30:50.600 --> 00:30:58.260 and said, aha, we can find when Adam lived. And if you just add them up without adding, you know, 00:30:58.440 --> 00:31:05.980 if you assume there's no gaps, then you get about 4000 BC. The caution I would say here is that the 00:31:05.980 --> 00:31:10.360 genealogies in Genesis and throughout the rest of scripture are not necessarily complete in the 00:31:10.360 --> 00:31:16.599 sense of being exhaustive. They're more often representative. So the word father, translated 00:31:16.599 --> 00:31:24.700 father, can also mean ancestor. So when it says, you know, Adam was the father of Seth, that now in 00:31:24.700 --> 00:31:31.559 this case, that seems, you know, it talks about Eve giving birth to Seth. So that seems, that seems to be 00:31:31.559 --> 00:31:37.440 the literal meaning there. But in many other cases, father can mean ancestor, right? Or even the 00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:42.759 beginning of Matthew says, Jesus is the son of David, the son of Abraham, right? Now, obviously, 00:31:42.759 --> 00:31:48.259 Jesus isn't the physical son of David and Abraham. No, he's the descendant, right? So when it talks about 00:31:48.259 --> 00:31:54.319 sons and fathers, it's not only talking about the literal father and son that we think of. It's 00:31:54.319 --> 00:32:01.079 talking more broadly about an ancestor and a descendant. So genealogies regularly intended as 00:32:01.079 --> 00:32:05.379 summaries using round numbers. That's why genealogies are often in groups of seven or 10 or 14. 00:32:06.119 --> 00:32:11.960 And they often skip generations when we compare them with one another or other accounts. So Matthew 00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:16.559 chapter one, for just one example, skips three generations between King Joram and King Uzziah, 00:32:16.899 --> 00:32:24.720 when it's talking about from David to the exile. So I think we should be careful, sort of hold that 00:32:24.720 --> 00:32:34.019 with at least somewhat of an open hand about sort of calculating back to Adam and recognize that those 00:32:34.019 --> 00:32:41.079 are the two assumptions that are behind the claim that Genesis teaches that the world is blank number 00:32:41.079 --> 00:32:48.620 of years old. Okay, so that's the age of the earth. Next question. Could God have used an evolutionary 00:32:48.619 --> 00:32:53.699 process to guide the development of life on earth? Or did he create every species individually? 00:32:54.979 --> 00:33:01.379 Now, some people point to the phrase, God made them according to their kinds, which appears 00:33:01.379 --> 00:33:06.739 throughout Genesis one as an indication that God created each species or group of species distinctly 00:33:06.739 --> 00:33:11.839 and separately. There's usually some discussion about what is a kind? Is it a species? Is it a genus? 00:33:11.919 --> 00:33:16.539 Is it a family? Is it a whatever, right? How does that relate to our modern system of scientific 00:33:16.539 --> 00:33:26.259 classification? Now, other people point to another phrase, they say, well, you know, notice in the 00:33:26.259 --> 00:33:32.899 parts about the animals and the plants, God says, let the earth bring forth in the Genesis one account. 00:33:33.240 --> 00:33:39.680 So maybe that seems to be more open to some kind of evolutionary process is developing naturally 00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:46.519 through secondary means, God's still overseeing it. Again, I think in both of these cases, we might 00:33:46.519 --> 00:33:53.319 be reading more into Genesis from our own questions than the author of Genesis was intending to say. 00:33:54.900 --> 00:33:59.799 So personally, I'm not convinced that either of these arguments actually gives you a strong 00:33:59.799 --> 00:34:04.440 conclusion one way or the other. Just because I don't think the author of Genesis was actually 00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:10.500 consciously attempting to make either of those points. Now, I think if we step back from Genesis one 00:34:10.500 --> 00:34:16.019 and sort of look at the Bible as a whole, I think that we see examples throughout the Bible where God 00:34:16.019 --> 00:34:21.840 intervenes directly and miraculously. And there's also other examples in the Bible where God works 00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:31.059 over a longer period of time through secondary means. And still, in both cases, God is accomplishing 00:34:31.059 --> 00:34:37.199 his purpose and carrying out, carrying that out intentionally and with great care. 00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:43.500 So just two examples, book of Exodus, God delivers his people from slavery in Egypt. There's a lot of 00:34:43.500 --> 00:34:50.539 miracles there, right? There's a lot of divine intervention and prophetic words and 10 plagues and 00:34:50.539 --> 00:34:56.719 crossing the Red Sea and manna in the desert, all kinds of things that are, you know, they're claimed to 00:34:56.719 --> 00:35:04.799 be miraculous, right? That's pretty clear. You can't explain Exodus just sort of as natural things that 00:35:04.800 --> 00:35:10.539 happen on their own, where they happen apart from God's direct intervention. But then if you look 00:35:10.539 --> 00:35:17.019 at Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, God is also delivering his people. In that case, he's bringing 00:35:17.019 --> 00:35:23.039 them back from exile or in Esther, he's sustaining them who are still in exile in Persia. But there are 00:35:23.039 --> 00:35:31.539 no miracles in these books. There's no sort of, now there is God's providence working through people. 00:35:31.539 --> 00:35:37.000 You know, if you look at the book of Esther, I mean, Esther is the best example of this because 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:44.380 Esther doesn't even mention God directly. And yet the whole book of Esther is full of God's 00:35:44.380 --> 00:35:49.699 providence, full of him working behind the scenes, working through Esther, working through Mordecai, 00:35:50.079 --> 00:35:57.679 you know, bringing judgment on Haman. And sort of in the end, God rescues his people from being on the 00:35:57.679 --> 00:36:08.239 purge of annihilation. And God does it without sort of acting directly and obviously, but he's still 00:36:08.239 --> 00:36:14.659 very clearly behind it. So I think that in principle, Christians can rejoice in God working in both ways. 00:36:15.199 --> 00:36:21.419 And we should be open to God working in both ways, miraculously and directly, or providentially and 00:36:21.420 --> 00:36:28.920 patiently. Now, if, if you accept that principle, and if you apply it to the origin and development of life, 00:36:29.700 --> 00:36:37.480 I think that you that Christian biologists who are researching the history of life on earth are in principle, 00:36:38.039 --> 00:36:46.860 free to conclude that God worked directly and miraculously, or indirectly and through natural means, or in both ways at 00:36:46.860 --> 00:36:56.920 different times. Now, of course, many times we might say, we can't be completely confident, but we might, you know, 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:05.079 have an inkling one way or another. I think Christian biologists would have that freedom to conclude anywhere 00:37:05.079 --> 00:37:12.620 along that spectrum. Now, on one note, is secular biologists do not have that option. Because if you are a 00:37:12.619 --> 00:37:17.400 biologist and you do not believe in God, or you do not believe in the possibility of God intervening in 00:37:17.400 --> 00:37:25.579 the world, then by definition, you must find a natural explanation for every single thing that has 00:37:25.579 --> 00:37:33.039 happened in the history of life on earth. And so, you know, I, that is, and that is not a scientific 00:37:33.039 --> 00:37:40.000 conclusion. That's a philosophical presupposition. That's an assumption that you, that is going to affect how 00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:48.440 you interpret the science. But I think actually Christians have, have freedom to either say, 00:37:48.579 --> 00:37:55.900 here's a way that God might've accomplished this through secondary means, or to say, we can't really 00:37:55.900 --> 00:38:03.639 see any way that secondary means can explain this. This seems to be like a radical leap. And as a 00:38:03.639 --> 00:38:10.639 Christian, maybe that, you know, perhaps God was doing that directly, or perhaps we'll find some 00:38:10.639 --> 00:38:15.480 secondary explanation through secondary means later on. And then we can say that God accomplished that 00:38:15.480 --> 00:38:19.339 through secondary means, or, you know, and, and we're going to be humble about that because 00:38:19.339 --> 00:38:26.339 there's a limit to how confident we can be in those conclusions in general. So I think Christians 00:38:26.339 --> 00:38:30.619 should actually, Christian biologists actually have a freedom and, and don't necessarily have to feel 00:38:30.619 --> 00:38:39.199 the same pressure, uh, to land on one side or the other. Uh, okay. One other relevant question is a 00:38:39.199 --> 00:38:44.279 bit of a digression, but it affects this issue. Could God have developed things through evolutionary 00:38:44.279 --> 00:38:50.159 processes is this, does the Bible allow for the possibility of animals and plants to die before the 00:38:50.159 --> 00:38:56.159 fall? Um, and many people have assumed, no, they think before the fall, the world was perfect 00:38:56.159 --> 00:39:06.339 and nothing died. Well, the Bible never quite says that. Now Romans five does say sin entered the world 00:39:06.339 --> 00:39:14.940 through one man and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all people. So, um, human beings 00:39:14.940 --> 00:39:20.639 would not have been destined to die apart from sin. That's the whole thing about tree of life, 00:39:20.719 --> 00:39:25.480 right? By continually eating of the tree of life, God would have sustained them and, and kept them. 00:39:26.159 --> 00:39:32.639 In the garden, right? Uh, but the Bible doesn't say that about animals. And in fact, Psalm 104, 00:39:32.940 --> 00:39:38.539 which celebrates God's wisdom displayed in his creation, it also celebrates lions that roar for 00:39:38.539 --> 00:39:46.159 their prey and seek their food from God. Um, and it doesn't seem to be describing that as a, uh, as an 00:39:46.159 --> 00:39:55.179 effect of the fall. So, um, so I, I, I think we should not say that, uh, I think we should not say 00:39:55.179 --> 00:39:59.759 there was no animal death before the fall. Um, cause I don't think the Bible tells us that. 00:40:00.139 --> 00:40:07.059 I think at the very least we need to leave that question open. Okay. Um, most, here comes the most 00:40:07.059 --> 00:40:14.039 difficult question. What about human origins? Uh, this is the thorniest question cause it has the 00:40:14.039 --> 00:40:18.940 most significant implications, right? How does Genesis fit with modern theories about human origins? You go to 00:40:18.940 --> 00:40:24.700 the PBD museum, uh, you go to that exhibit on the first floor, it's there all the time, right? 00:40:25.300 --> 00:40:30.920 Apes, uh, gradually develop into modern humans or through a, there's, sorry, it's not apes into humans. 00:40:30.920 --> 00:40:36.980 It's a common ancestor who develops branches off one way or the other, right? So what do we think about 00:40:36.980 --> 00:40:44.480 that? Okay. So let's start with what the Bible says most clearly and repeatedly. Number one, human 00:40:44.480 --> 00:40:49.800 beings bear the image of God and we're different from all other creatures in that respect. Second, 00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:59.740 uh, the human race is a unity and is represented by Adam. Um, and, uh, there are important implications 00:40:59.740 --> 00:41:06.480 of both of these statements. Okay. So scripture does not support the idea of human beings emerging 00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:13.440 purely gradually from other life forms. Um, because there's no such thing as a creature that half 00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:19.440 bears the image of God. And, and, you know, if you think that there could be creature, that there 00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:24.500 could be creatures who sort of look like they're human, but aren't actually human, ooh, there is a 00:41:24.500 --> 00:41:30.579 dangerous road you can go down. And people have gone down that dangerous road in the past when you 00:41:30.579 --> 00:41:37.079 want to say that one race is not really fully bearing the image of God. So there are some very dangerous 00:41:37.079 --> 00:41:44.739 implications, uh, if, uh, if you, if you do not accept a biblical view of human beings as distinctly 00:41:44.739 --> 00:41:54.380 bearing the image of God. Um, second, the unity of the human race represented by Adam, um, Romans 5, 00:41:54.559 --> 00:41:57.940 sin entered the world through one man. First Corinthians 15, death came through one man. 00:41:58.219 --> 00:42:03.319 So Paul refers to Adam and Eve as real persons whose disobedience had real and tragic consequences. 00:42:03.320 --> 00:42:11.519 And this also makes sense of many of our human intuitions, right? You go to a funeral, uh, uh, 00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:16.920 for someone that you loved and you, or, you know, right, you have the death of a loved one and you 00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:24.960 think this is not the way the world was supposed to be. There's something wrong about this that we're 00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:32.640 wrenched apart from one another. Um, and we sort of have this longing for something that we don't 00:42:32.639 --> 00:42:38.400 experience in this world, right? We have a sense that things are not quite the way they were just 00:42:38.400 --> 00:42:46.119 supposed to be. Um, even the sense of longing to regain something that we lost long ago. And you know, 00:42:46.239 --> 00:42:54.579 that, that feeling makes a lot of sense within the biblical story that God made, uh, uh, uh, the, 00:42:54.699 --> 00:43:02.039 the made made a good world and appointed human beings to reign over it. Um, and yet, uh, through our 00:43:02.039 --> 00:43:07.980 disobedience, we have lost, uh, what we once had the relationship with God that we once had. 00:43:10.099 --> 00:43:16.320 So those are, I think, important points to hold. Now the traditional view and the most straightforward 00:43:16.320 --> 00:43:21.840 view is Adam and Eve were specially created by God and that they are the biological ancestors of the 00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:27.480 entire human race. On this view, we can acknowledge genetic and physical similarities between humans and 00:43:27.480 --> 00:43:33.000 apes as well as other animals. Uh, however, these similarities are due to common design, not common 00:43:33.000 --> 00:43:39.199 ancestry. Uh, so that's sort of the most straightforward view. Um, however, some Christians 00:43:39.199 --> 00:43:44.420 who accept, uh, theistic evolution or evolutionary creation have supposed, proposed somewhat more 00:43:44.420 --> 00:43:49.519 complicated views. Uh, in, in general, these views attempt to reconcile biblical statements about 00:43:49.519 --> 00:43:54.199 the uniqueness of human beings with the views of biologists who propose that human beings share a 00:43:54.199 --> 00:43:58.899 common ancestor with apes or the views of geneticists who say that modern humans are not all descended from, 00:43:58.899 --> 00:44:05.559 uh, two ancestors. So look at the chart on the next page. I've sort of summarized these, uh, sort of 00:44:05.559 --> 00:44:13.460 three main views, uh, young earth creationism, um, and, uh, uh, connected with the 24 hour view, 00:44:13.719 --> 00:44:18.299 old earth creationism. This is often connected with the day age view, uh, although it could be connected 00:44:18.299 --> 00:44:24.179 with the framework view, um, and then theistic evolution. And, uh, what I particularly want to deal with, 00:44:24.179 --> 00:44:32.179 with here is that, um, within the, the theistic evolution camp, there are a wide range of views 00:44:32.179 --> 00:44:40.199 about Adam and Eve. Okay. They, people are not all of one mind about this. So there are some views 00:44:40.199 --> 00:44:51.460 that sound more traditional, um, and, uh, include a clear sort of historical Adam, right? Uh, an individual 00:44:51.460 --> 00:44:59.659 at a specific point in history. Um, so view one would be Adam as, uh, a developed hominid, 00:44:59.659 --> 00:45:05.659 right? Whose body had developed over time, but God breathed at a specific point, breathed life into him. 00:45:05.659 --> 00:45:12.179 He became the first image bearer of God and he became the ancestor of the rest of us. Uh, a second view 00:45:12.179 --> 00:45:20.579 is that, uh, is, is, is, is Adam. Um, but sort of, this gets a little more complicated. He's seen as a 00:45:20.579 --> 00:45:27.579 divinely set apart representative head or chief of a tribe of existing hominids who, uh, the image of 00:45:27.579 --> 00:45:35.819 God, uh, was given to them, uh, sort of first to Adam and then through him to, to them. And, uh, but then 00:45:35.820 --> 00:45:42.019 there are other views that are, how shall I say looser many different Adams and Eves who received 00:45:42.019 --> 00:45:46.760 some divine revelation, but disobeyed it. Some people even just say Adam and Eve were literary 00:45:46.760 --> 00:45:52.620 figures and not historical individuals. It's not clear exactly what that means for, um, how humans 00:45:52.620 --> 00:46:02.260 developed. So what do we make of these views? Okay. Again, I think this is the most, um, the thorniest 00:46:02.260 --> 00:46:07.220 area. So let me speak first to those of us who hold more traditional views about Adam and Eve and 00:46:07.220 --> 00:46:12.580 who think, well, we think it's pretty clear Adam and Eve were specially created by God and they're 00:46:12.580 --> 00:46:17.920 the ancestors of the rest of us. Um, so I think we should recognize that many of the people who 00:46:17.920 --> 00:46:22.160 affirm some of these more complicated views are in other respects Bible believing Christians. 00:46:22.680 --> 00:46:28.360 Uh, Francis Collins and Dennis Alexander, um, they speak on university campuses and they talk about 00:46:28.360 --> 00:46:33.539 their belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Um, so they're certainly not sort of gradually trying 00:46:33.539 --> 00:46:40.220 to deny, uh, all biblical doctrines. Uh, there's other, uh, I've listed some, uh, Bible commentators 00:46:40.220 --> 00:46:44.880 and theologians, Derek Kidner, Don, John Walton, John Stott, N.T. Wright have expressed some openness 00:46:44.880 --> 00:46:50.579 to views one or two. Uh, note that these views do affirm a historical Adam and Eve in some form. 00:46:51.579 --> 00:46:57.760 So it's not fair or charitable to dismiss all theistic evolutionists as heretics. Um, even if we may 00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:03.900 express concern about the downstream theological consequences of some of these views. Now, on the 00:47:03.900 --> 00:47:07.360 other hand, let me speak to those of us who may be inclined toward theistic evolution or at least 00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:13.700 toward some aspects of it. Uh, I think we should be cautious about immediately embracing these somewhat 00:47:13.700 --> 00:47:20.400 novel views, especially views three and four, which do not affirm historical Adam. Uh, many theistic 00:47:20.400 --> 00:47:24.280 evolutionists. So some theistic evolutionists are pretty committed to the authority of the Bible. 00:47:24.280 --> 00:47:28.360 And you can see that in the way they treat the rest of the Bible. Um, but many theistic 00:47:28.360 --> 00:47:35.260 evolutionists are not. So the camp is very broad. Um, and I think you can find some who are, uh, 00:47:35.260 --> 00:47:41.100 too quickly ready to dispense with not only the idea of, uh, Adam and Eve as real persons, 00:47:41.100 --> 00:47:45.380 whose actions had real consequences, but other important biblical teachings as well. 00:47:46.120 --> 00:47:51.160 So we should not ignore or dismiss the conclusions of biologists and geneticists. And again, I am neither, 00:47:51.159 --> 00:47:56.119 so I'm not really qualified to evaluate these claims, um, but we should be even more wary of 00:47:56.119 --> 00:48:00.019 dismissing what scripture repeatedly affirms, especially when such concepts play an important 00:48:00.019 --> 00:48:08.699 role in the larger story of redemption. Um, so that's what I would say. Uh, now as the time frame 00:48:08.699 --> 00:48:13.399 of when Adam and Eve might've existed and how this relates to the fossil record, um, there are a wide 00:48:13.399 --> 00:48:18.519 range of views among theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists. Uh, I think Henry Blocher, 00:48:18.519 --> 00:48:24.559 he's a French theologian, uh, who wrote, uh, good, uh, some, uh, a book called in the beginning 00:48:24.559 --> 00:48:28.679 about the opening chapters of Genesis. Uh, and he made this point, which I think is a good point. 00:48:29.079 --> 00:48:34.139 He said, it is difficult to forecast what aspect of being made in the image of God would actually 00:48:34.139 --> 00:48:38.920 show up in a scientific description of mankind. So it's not quite certain what it is we're looking 00:48:38.920 --> 00:48:44.420 for when we try to discover the first man largely in terms of incomplete skeletons, right? 00:48:44.420 --> 00:48:50.639 Same could be applied, uh, as we, uh, in terms of discovering the first, uh, people in terms of 00:48:50.639 --> 00:48:56.980 their genetic material, right? Um, so again, this is an area where science and the Bible are dealing 00:48:56.980 --> 00:49:02.059 with questions that overlap, but being made in the image of God is not exactly the same thing as 00:49:02.059 --> 00:49:08.720 having an opposable thumb or walking on two feet. Um, so again, this is something where I think we, 00:49:08.719 --> 00:49:15.859 it is wise to have some humility in the conclusions that we hold. Um, and that's where I want to end, 00:49:15.859 --> 00:49:22.579 uh, with, uh, Henry Blocher's words. Uh, he wrote, we, uh, as he, he sort of has a longer discussion 00:49:22.579 --> 00:49:30.539 about, um, uh, uh, Genesis and evolution in general, and then Adam and Eve in particular. So he says, 00:49:30.539 --> 00:49:35.639 we end on an inconclusive note. Uh, so he's particularly referring to like when Adam and 00:49:35.639 --> 00:49:40.619 Eve might've existed. Uh, we end on an inconclusive note, which in certain respects illustrates the 00:49:40.619 --> 00:49:45.340 attitude of faith for faith does not have all the answers straight away, nor does it claim that 00:49:45.340 --> 00:49:50.059 contemporary science gives it complete support. If certain factors in today's scientific picture 00:49:50.059 --> 00:49:55.340 appear contrary to the word of God, faith is not shaken. It has such confidence in that word that it 00:49:55.340 --> 00:50:00.840 can be quite open about its hesitations and wait patiently for the clouds to clear. 00:50:02.900 --> 00:50:10.440 Um, if you're interested, I have a pile of books on this topic and I'm happy to loan those out, 00:50:10.440 --> 00:50:19.600 uh, if you would like. Um, sorry, I went late. So, uh, I'll, I can take like one or two questions. 00:50:19.940 --> 00:50:23.059 Um, and, uh, then we got to end Gary. 00:50:23.059 --> 00:50:28.159 Who was the author of Genesis? Who was the author of Genesis? Uh, I think Moses was the primary author 00:50:28.159 --> 00:50:32.980 of Genesis. That's another long topic for another day, but that's short answer. Moses. Peter. 00:50:33.299 --> 00:50:41.059 Um, really, really good summary. I mean, just thank you. Um, I, to this point of the historical 00:50:41.059 --> 00:50:47.159 particularity of Genesis, I think it's really important to hold. Um, and one of the things about, 00:50:47.159 --> 00:50:53.039 uh, Adam in particular is that scripture gives him an age, you know? And so, 00:50:53.059 --> 00:50:59.960 I think internet, so you can talk all you want about how, you know, whether the days of Genesis 00:50:59.960 --> 00:51:06.599 one or whatever, but when scripture assigns an age to someone, it seems to me like strong 00:51:06.599 --> 00:51:13.880 evidence textually that that person, there's a specific person in mind and they lived that 00:51:13.880 --> 00:51:20.460 long. Um, the only other way around that I guess would be to try to find an example in 00:51:20.460 --> 00:51:27.199 scripture where, you know, someone, you know, where an age, it was given to someone and that 00:51:27.199 --> 00:51:32.880 age is sort of symbolic. Is there precedent for that scripturally or not? I guess it's 00:51:32.880 --> 00:51:34.059 not. Do you know? 00:51:34.960 --> 00:51:39.019 Yeah, I don't think we have any other figures who are given symbolic ages. So there is, there's 00:51:39.019 --> 00:51:44.260 some discussion about, so the ages of the patriarchs in Genesis are, you know, 900, 800, 700 years. 00:51:44.260 --> 00:51:52.340 So some people have wondered, are those numbers, uh, meant literally, or are those numbers meant 00:51:52.340 --> 00:51:57.700 symbolically? But nobody has quite been able to find a coherent way of understanding them 00:51:57.700 --> 00:52:01.060 symbolically. Um, and so, 00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:01.860 965. 00:52:02.080 --> 00:52:07.500 965, right, right. Um, you know, they're not like the numbers in Revelation, which are all 00:52:07.500 --> 00:52:14.099 multiples of 7 or 1,000, you know, or 10 or whatever, right? Um, so, so they're, they're 00:52:14.099 --> 00:52:19.760 not sort of obviously symbolic numbers. So yes, I think that is one more piece of evidence 00:52:19.760 --> 00:52:24.420 from Genesis itself that Adam is seen as a real person. And yeah, I do think there's a 00:52:24.420 --> 00:52:31.159 distinction between Genesis 1 and how that's written more as prologue, and then sort of the 00:52:31.159 --> 00:52:38.719 rest of Genesis is written as a narrative, right? And, um, so, so I think, yes, I think 00:52:38.719 --> 00:52:43.960 you're making a good point there. All right. Um, so we will come back next week and Danielle 00:52:43.960 --> 00:52:48.799 will, uh, lead us, uh, from her perspective as a physicist. Um, and I'm happy to talk with 00:52:48.799 --> 00:52:51.980 anybody more if you have questions or concerns. Thanks.