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And if Adam did not appear mature, I would certainly say that Eve seemed to. At least to Adam. That was pointed out in the text issue itself. It's been so ever since. He's over the edge. God made Adam and talked to Adam, and Adam responded to God. And I didn't make any remark that I can remember that would imply that he was not mature immediately after his creation. Any comment on that? Do you know at what point on the sixth age, it's not written down, but it's part of that claim, do you think Adam was mature? I don't know how long that sixth age was. I've not committed myself to any particular eons of time. I've not committed myself to the times of uniformitarian geology. I've simply said that these days are uncertain. The first day, if the first day may have been 20 billion years, I don't know. Time enough for any big bang if you want it, or lots of things. I'm simply saying that the biblical text does not specify the times how long these days may have been. Some may have been very short, some may have been very long, all may have been very long, or all may have been very short. And if anybody holds to the 24-hour days, well, I have no objection to that. They may have been 24-hour days. I'm open on the matter of the length of the days. And so, the sixth day, as far as I can see, the sixth day, Adam would have been, I don't know, I'd have to have the text before me. What does it say? The animals were created and Adam was created. Adam apparently was then created as a crown, but as far as I can see, early in the sixth day, created in the Garden of Eden. And I do hold, and I think the text clearly says that Genesis 2, 4 and on is referring to Eden. The King James Version surely is wrong when it speaks about a river going through Ethiopia. They didn't realize that there was another kush in the Mesopotamian area, and that these rivers flowed out of Eden, as has been said here someplace. I think that's against the statements of the Hebrew. The Hebrew says that the headwaters of these rivers are outside of Eden. The rivers flowed into Eden, united in Eden, irrigated Eden, and then flowed out to the Persian Gulf. The rivers flowed before the same way they do now, and no reason to think that there was any other geography as far as Eden is concerned. Well, Jack's going to appreciate this because it will enable him to expand now on what he has said. Jack, there's a series of questions here that have to do with Yom. If there are no instances or examples of Yom when employed with the article or with an ordinal within the Pentateuch that refer to anything other than normal 24-hour day then on what basis could one assert it may mean something other than a 24-hour day when used and then that also your statistical you could at this point explain then your statistical I thought it was written down, it's not, but this will give you a good opportunity to tell us, since maybe I did not properly understand what you said. And then when God uses language to his present audience in words they understood, why would God use language to his present audience, in other words, the initial recipients, in words they understood as literal days but did not mean what he said? I don't know if you can clarify what you've said about that. I mean, you hold that the Hebrew wording allows for a six little 24-hour day, but does not require it. In contrast, could you please give an example? We'll save that one, because the others have really to do with your reference. Oh, here it is. Statistical. Would you speak to the questions of both statistical and textual problems of the arguments about ordinal numbers and evening and morning? So that really is what relates here. Yoam used In any way, not as 24-hour day or daylight, known as semantic range, and then the statistical. Thank you. Five minutes or less. No. No, because it will take a little bit longer. And so when you are wearied, you will just leap to your feet. Don't put weariness in there. Oh, you mean you don't get weary then, ah. No, the other way around. I am weary already. Well. If I'm going to leap to my feet when I'm weary, you're in trouble. I'm sorry, sir, so am I. And I yearn more than anything else to see my wife and my little barons again. That's what I'm thinking of right now. Now, let me be very clear here. I am not advocating a use of the word yom in anything other than the sense of normal day. Let me be clear. Let me just read what I have for my paper here. In my judgment, the day age position, what I call view four, suffers from a serious semantic problem. Generally speaking, the Hebrew word yom, day, has several attested senses. In the singular, it can designate first a period of daylight, second a period of 24 hours, and third a period of time of unspecified length. To be lexically responsible, we should try to indicate criteria by which a reader would discern one sense or another in a given context. Senses one and two are fairly easy to discern in Hebrew as well as in English. That is to say, these are the senses that require the least supporting information from the context. Sense 3 exists in English as well as Hebrew, and we detect it in both languages based on qualifiers such as day of the Lord, day of Jerusalem, day of Ra, in that day, and so on. Such qualifiers are not present here in Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3. So it would be better to find an interpretation that does not rely on sense 3. Elsewhere, I have argued that the expression on the day that, the yom plus infinitive construct in Genesis 2, 4, does not provide the needed evidence for sense three being present here. In the light of my discussion of the communicative purpose of the chapter, we may also say that this view, the Day 8 view, and I think Dr. Harris is less in this category based on his comments here, so I'm thinking of others that are highly concordistic, say like Hugh Ross or something like that. We may also say that this view asks too much harmonization with modern scientific theories for us to see its connection with what the ancient account was actually for. The punctuated activity theory, that's the Bob Newman theory, position two, it seems to me, does not adequately account for the refrain and seems like the day age approaches to ask for too large a degree of direct harmonization and that does apply to Dr. Newman's book. At this point, it is worthwhile to take note of an argument frequently put forward in favor of the literalist reading, or at least in opposition to the other readings, an argument which critical inspection shows to be invalid. Some have maintained that the days of Genesis 1 must be literal days because whenever the Hebrew word yom day has a number in the rest of the Old Testament, it is a literal day. For example, Henry and John Morris, their modern creation trilogy, say that there are over 200 such instances. These authors also observe about the words evening and morning, each occurring more than 100 times in the Hebrew, never are used to mean anything but a literal evening and a literal morning ending and beginning a literal day. Unfortunately, this is my comment, this statement of theirs ignores the word order of the refrain It also ignores its significance in the culture of the audience and its function in the context of our passage. So the statistic they cite may in fact be accurate and I admire the industry that produced it. But statistics alone are not enough to establish an inductive argument. That is to say you must stand back and ask what is the structure of this argument and what would it take for this argument to be a valid one? We would need not just a statistic, but an explanation of why the statistic demonstrates a principle. In medical research, they face this all the time. I'm staying with a medical researcher there, Dr. Wardell, and he was just telling us the other night that there's a particular marker, I think it's a protein, that if it's present in your, well, it's really in your genome, isn't it? then you have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's. But they really don't know whether that, they don't know in what sense it's a marker. They don't know whether it's the cause or whether it's correlated with something else or whatever. They don't know why it's a marker. So the statistic cannot establish a causal relationship on its own. For a lexical argument such as this one, this explanation would be in terms of the combinational rules of the Hebrew word yom, day, and the kinds of words with which it is being combined. An example of the right kind of argument from English would be the English word house has several possible meanings. For example, physical structure in which people live. That would be one meaning. Second meaning household. And third meaning would be lineage. If we modify the word with a color term, for example, red house, we virtually eliminate the second two senses from consideration, except in very unusual instances, which need not concern us now. And it's reasonably clear why. We wouldn't ordinarily use a color term to describe any of the other senses. This illustrates what I mean by explaining a statistic with a motivation. For this argument to be good, then, we must propose a combinational rule for the Hebrew word yom when it is modified by a number. We would then have to show that the rule applies in every case, and to do that, we would have to show that it was the rule and not the context of the other usages which secured the interpretation of yom, precisely as my medical researcher friend would have to do with the statistic that he is citing. But to do so, we would have to compare like with like, i.e. we would need a context comparable to that of Genesis 1 where the proposed rule overrode any contextual factors which pointed away from a strictly literal understanding of Yom. Unfortunately, I do not know of such a context in the Hebrew Bible. Further, one would have to be convinced that such a rule was possible in Hebrew or any other language for that matter. That is to say, one would have to find some motivation for the rule. I myself find it hard to believe that such a rule would be possible. I'm a Hebrew lexicographer, have been for over 10 years, and those are not the kinds of combinational rules that we actually discover. My doctoral thesis was three long years of research into combinational rules for Hebrew verbs. And then my first, as it were, break once I became an academic was an invitation to write some articles for the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Just saying the name of the work will take a little bit of time. But I've been doing this for a while, and it just does not strike me as the kinds of rules that one finds. Call that subjective if you like. I like to call that a judgment based on experience with this sort of thing. I've done the same with grief. And finally, the reason I'm not particularly interested in the argument, and so I really have about no further zeal other than the fact that you could call me a purist. I have no further zeal to pursue this. The most this proposed rule could do, even if it were valid, would be to count against the day age theory. Since the other interpretations listed above do not, strictly speaking, involve figurative uses of the word yom, instead they posit a literary use of an ordinary meaning of the word. And so if you're really unhappy with that third sense of yom, I've given what I think are better reasons for being unhappy with the invocation of that third sense of yom, but I don't feel that my own position is particularly affected by that. I think I'll just stop there. There were a host of questions here, but rather than... No, I think you've got the heart of it. Thank you. I'd just like to say a word on that third use of yom. Of course, it is true that you do have the day of the Lord and so on as qualified, but that it has to be qualified in order to be a long period of time is another question. It can be qualified, it can be thought of as qualified here by a couple of items. First of all, you do have, and it's not been mentioned very much here in Psalm 90, you do have a word by Moses who says that the day with the Lord is a thousand years. The Lord's perspective is not the same as the perspective of mankind. Even the astronauts don't, they see the sun rise and set time after time as they go around the earth every 90 minutes or whatnot. So the type of description we have in Genesis 1 is not the type that you have in the daily sacrifices of later Israel. And I don't know a rule that says you have to have the day of the Lord or that day or something in order to have this extra usage of the word Yom. To reinforce that, there have been extensive discussions we have had about the seventh day, where the seventh day seems to, I would say, settle the matter. And the nature of the creation account is unique. And so to have the days here listed, you have the oddity that the day is listed before the days mark seasons. You have it from God's perspective. So to say that it cannot mean a long day unless you have a qualifier, I think is not true. The context is sufficient to qualify. I'm not a Hebrew lexical scholar. I'm a bear with a wee brain. But I would wonder, where are you, Jack? I am tired. By the very fact that Hebrew and Greek as well as English have ordinal numbers and cardinal numbers, that doesn't speak to your position. But it does speak to a framework that an ordinal number is an ordinal number. There's no statistic that can change that. And we're not talking about verb combinations, we're talking about an ordinal number attached to yom that in every instance, I mean, is used as a sequential day and all but one with a possible question of the literal day. Every other instance of it is used order. So, no, that's what I'm saying. But no, you said that statistically we can't make that combination. Why can't we say that an ordinal number with yom always means sequence, and we have no example, although you say you'll agree that it's a literal day, so you don't have a problem with that. We do need to understand you. You're saying that it means it's a 24-hour day, that deliberately was designed and communicative intent with a biological no I mean you may I mean I think you've cleared I want to try to stand what you're saying when you say that statistically I can't say, but an order number with Yom was used in every other instance in the Bible for sequence and a literal day, with the one possible exception in Hosea 6-2. If you want to talk about ordinals and sequences, you'll recall that I don't believe that that helps with the finding of sequences. But I would not do so on the basis of a statistic simply cited without explanation of why. All right, but then the whole work of semantic range does not have to have motivation, does it? In Greek, in the book of Revelation, we have seven trumpets, we've got seven plagues, and we've got the use of the ordinance. But I, for one, wouldn't be committed to the idea that the content of each trumpet, each plague, each bowl of wrath, etc., was always subsequent to the one before. No, but John didn't see them in order. He didn't see them simultaneously. That's all that order tells you in relation. He saw these visions in order. Now, the comment is simply that the events which they describe, whatever order in which they are told, the events which they describe are not necessarily in a chronological sequence, and that's the force of my point, that the use of 1, 2, 3, 4, the days, while that is certainly the order in which they are being told, the events which are being told may not follow the order. You're saying that seven trumpets, the first, second trumpet didn't follow the first trumpet? I'm saying that the events described, in the same way that, within the book, the fact that we have trumpets and bowls of wrath, that doesn't necessarily mean that all bowls of wrath followed all trumpets. Right? Nor does it mean that... Right. And when the first seal is opened up, does it mean that all the events described in subsequent seals always happened historically subsequent to the opening of the first seal? Well, I mean, the seals were opened in order. That's all the vision is saying. That's the way in which the revelation is given. Right. But what's being revealed, what's being revealed are events that are not necessarily in historical sequence. That's the only point I'm trying to make. Right. That's the point. And it's not that I want to make the stronger claim that I have proof that they didn't happen in that order. It's just drawing back from the idea that the use of an ordinal number is a guarantee that a historical sequence has been identified. But I maintain the difference is that the ordinal numbers in Genesis are the order in which John saw the visions, which is all they claim to be in the context. You see, that's the difference. You cannot describe that order in any other fashion. It's not that he saw the visions all at once or in some literary framework and he then described them in order. According to the text, he received the visions in order, and within them he saw the four horsemen with the seals broken in order, which is all that says. When you come back to the Urnum with Yom, that's a very different situation. We come into narrative writing, not visionary writing, and every other use of narrative writing is sequential, literal day. That's still the issue that I've yet to hear anybody from framework address outside of saying, well, it teaches a poetic framework or a figurative framework. But how do we know that? I mean, what is there about Orden numbers with Yom when he could have used cardinal numbers with Yom and had it grammatically then a framework then? Now that I understand what Dr. Collins was getting at, I think I'm in agreement with him. The point being that, for example, if you look at Numbers chapter 7, we have there the listing of the tribes as they come day by day to present their offerings for the building of the tabernacle. And it says, for example, on the first day, the tribe of such and such brought. And then it lists all of the details. The second day, the second tribe brought. And we know that those are days in order and that they are normal, ordinary days, not from the combination of first, second, third, fourth with Yom, but simply from the context. In other words, The number with Yom doesn't determine what meaning of day this is. That's the point Collins is making and I think he's right on that. Where I would disagree with Dr. Collins is we're in agreement that Yom in Genesis 1 has the ordinary meaning or has the meaning of ordinary day. We then diverge because he takes them in a, that it's being used in a literary sense. I think that it's being used in its plain sense, but I would agree that the simple occurrence of the number with the day does not tell us which of the lexical meanings of day is under consideration. Go to Dr. Ross if I can find it in my stack here. Arguments that ordinary providence is the modus operandi of creation based on the two-fold deficit, two-fold answer, cause and effect relationship seem very problematic. Our standards define providence as God's most totally wise and powerful, governing and preserving all his creation. In fact, creation and providence are contrasted as the two ways in which God works to suggest that God creates by means of ordinary providence, seems to blend the two into meaninglessness. Providence as understood by the Westminster divines, it seems to me, requires a completed creation over which God then governs and preserves by means of secondary causes, which process itself depends on a closed system of creation with interdependent relationships in order to operate. In other words, the framework wants to have providence as the operating principle by which creation was occurring, even though providence by definition depends on a completed system of creation in which to operate. discussions already. Whoever wrote this may want to follow up if you allow them that, but simply point out this, that I don't think the writers of the Confession intended to make such a radical separation between creation and providence that one would think that if creation was operating there was no providential operation going on. By the view that the days were 24 hour days and chronological season. From the very first day you have the alternation of day and night. That's ordinary providence. That is an act that continues on going. We've got day and night operating today. So ordinary providence is already operating within the period of creation while creation is still going on with respect to other things. I am not of the opinion that ordinary providence was intended to, that only ordinary providence was operating and that ordinary providence is capable of explaining the complete diversity of the world in that. I think I've demurred from the implication, and I don't know that we can settle the matter on where Klein and Futado stand on that here, but I'm not committed to the idea that ordinary providence is capable of explaining all the acts described in Genesis 1. My point is much more minimal than that. It is simply that I think there are indications both in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2 that ordinary providence is operating within that period of time. Again, ordinary providence and creation are clearly distinguished by the confession and the catechisms. In like manner, the confession also distinguishes between civil, ceremonial, and moral laws. I don't think that the framers of the confession had the idea that there were not some laws where there was perhaps some difficulty, if you will, of deciding which of the three categories they fit into. In other words, there was overlap between the three categories of the law. And I think, again, I think Dr. Ross is right here, that there is a certain overlap, even though the two things, creation and providence, can be logically distinguished, and I think properly so, yet in the actual carrying out of creation and providence there is, I think, some overlap. And I appreciate being disassociated from the theonomist, which earlier too. Did you do that? It would probably be a good, maybe a follow-up discussion at this point, is with the fourth day and the creation of the sun, which we all agree was created sometime in that process, then at that point God's ordinary providence for separating distinguishing days took effect before the end of creation. We all would agree on that. It might be, because there's a question here and I'll just ask the three non-littles at this point. I'm sorry. Look, we've already defined what we're saying. This is not pejorative. We've already defined that. after day four were they ordinary days at that point how does ordinary province this is this point regulate time or if it were on day one we're not ordinary days are antecedent to day one how does this day for relate to I don't know that I would put the question the way it's given. It is true that day four emphasizes that you have now the variation of day and night and times and seasons and years and so on that are markers, and that's understandable. And from there on, presumably, you do have that. Whether you have that earlier or not is a matter of debate. But to say that thereafter, that the days have to be 24-hour days when they might have been earlier time longer days. I don't see that that would be a necessity. There's still a creation account. Of course, I've argued that the seventh day is very different, and the idea of Dr. Collins that the days, all of them are 24-hour days, there'd be no more reason why they would be used, what would you say, analogically, later and not earlier. I would say all seven would be handled alike and the fact that they were created on the fourth day and were used for the ordinary diurnal purposes, years and whatnot. You have mention of years when you only have two days left, three days left. So I don't see that the question is significant that there should be a big change in the fourth day. I really don't have anything to add to what Dr. Harris said, except to point out that I actually dissent from the assertion that the fourth day does, in fact, designate what is being called the creation of the Heavenly Lightbearers. That's why I said earlier that in the appearance of them, you do say it happened on the fourth day. No, I would say that there is a Let me just come back up here, just to give a follow-up with that then. Would the heavenly bodies on day four become a proper motivation in the context take young with the ordinal number as a literal day in sequencing so that we could at least say the days four through six contextually demand then but what you're saying in terms of the motivation and that was I understood what was dr. Charles saying but now we have a context that demands that because this is all we know well I have said that the the You may read it that way if you like, but the text, I would insist, does not demand it. And partly, really for the reasons that Dr. Harris has mentioned, we have the seventh day and so forth. Dr. Smith? One of the things that was of interest in my study was that Abraham Kuyper held that view of the first three days not being determined by the sun, And then once the sun having been set on the fourth day, that the rest of the days apparently were literal days. Now that's maybe something of an inconsistent sort of a viewpoint. And I believe David Kaufman was showing me something of Bavik, that Bavik seemed to be in the same sort of camp with Kuiper on that. So that, at least in the Dutch school, that was considered a possibility, the idea of The first three days may be being different lengths, but then after the fourth day, from then on, they were measured by the sun. I don't have it. Where I ran into that was in Berkhoff's Treatment of Systematic Theology, in which he talks about Kuiper and Bobbings holding that viewpoint. So if you go back to him, whether he references it, I don't remember that he does. But Bobbings is in our reasonable faith. Bobby there says that we have to be undogmatic about days 1 through 3, but days 4 through 6 are solar days. I think that's really hard. I think it is hard. I think it's being driven by the text. That's what they've got. I won't use the word solar day for the first phrase. It's a normal day within the semantic range, but What we can know is from day four forward, we have all the outside motivation that we need, and nothing in the text. What do you do with the word years, then? Years of the sun. I mean, that's the purpose of it. That's what we see in the rest of Scripture. It's not fulfilling, right? Not fulfilled in that creation week, but with beginning after the creation week, the measuring of the years. Dr. Harris has asked, if it's not fulfilled in the years and seasons, why fulfilled in the days? Because we know from the motivation from the rest of Scripture, the days happen within 25 hours of your time, seasons approximately three months, years of 365 days. And so it's the purpose, just it was the purpose of the birds and the fish to fill the earth. They didn't do that even in a day age phenomenon, or man and woman were to have children and fill the earth. They didn't accomplish that, obviously, until after the time of creation. So you compare scripture with scripture, it seems that purpose statements in Genesis do have to do with the subsequent history of the creation. Dr. Smith can read his own question or summarize it. Let me go back to one of the earlier questions also of interest, because Dr. Rankin last night pointed out that Woodrow held to what sounds like a strange view, that the man was evolved and that the woman was specially created from the man. It's very interesting. In my readings of it, I think that A. A. And B.B. Warfield held the same sort of view. I don't know whether you've run into that, but that's my impression, that they felt that there was a special creation of the woman. And though they held to something of a theistic evolution for the development of man's body, but then from the intervention or the giving of the soul from that time on, then there's that special creation of the woman. Now, these have to do more with the matter of our application of this in the Church, that there are men who hold to the inspiration and fallibility of Scripture, who in good conscience interpret the days of Genesis 1 to be of an indefinite length, that the use of the phrase in the space of six days was not original to the Westminster Confession, but was adopted from the Irish Articles of 1615, and that although the phrase definitely conveys the idea that a period of time was involved, excluding instantaneous creation. It does not actually define the length of the creation days. The question is, does it not follow that if a man believes the creative acts of God occurred over a long period of time, his view is not out of accord with the precise wording of the standards? And then going along with this, do you believe that it's possible that the intent of God for the framers of the Confession to be somewhat ambiguous on this point so as to allow scientific investigations of general revelation to play a role in the interpretation of Genesis. With regard to that last question, I doubt that that was in the view of the Westminster Divines. I doubt that they really were thinking about science that was going to change this matter. I think they felt that it was pretty much settled. I think in the practice of the Presbyterian Church, my treatment of the history, the practice of the Presbyterian Church, was to allow men to hold longer views. I think that certainly we have to recognize that. Men like Warfield were never questioned. In our committee on creation held last fall at Covenant Seminary, Will Barker wanted to know why didn't Warfield, for example, have to come forward and say, I have now changed my view, or take an exception. The very interesting thing is, the Northern Church did not have that thing that we have in the PCA vowel, and which claim came out of the Southern Church, that if you change your views, you are to declare it to the court that has ordained you, and then they decide as to whether it is serious or not. So that Warfield, I'm sure, didn't feel that he had made anything, or had in any way broken a vow. He wasn't breaking that part of the vow with regard to it. I think the thing that is facing us in the PCA at this point is whether we're going to hold to a strict construction. See, I think David Hall has made some major studies with regard to those men of the Westminster Divines and come out with the conclusion that at least anybody who has spoken about this matter has indicated that it's It's the 24-hour-a-day view that they held. If that's the case, then it would appear that the Westminster Divines and our Church, in adopting those standards, has really taken a position. And then the question of how do we press this matter as far as exceptions are concerned? We already have at least one presbytery, Westminster Presbytery, saying they won't even allow the exception. But other presbyteries, certainly in practice, have said that the exception, it is an exception, and you may or you may not teach it. That's one of the further questions I have. If we say it's an exception, will it be allowed to be taught, that you're a different view? This presbytery here, Calvary Presbytery, in dealing with one case at least, has actually taken the position that they would not allow the exception to be taught, and the candidate agreed to that, willingly agreed to it. But it's my understanding that this Presidiary, since then, has allowed someone to come in who took the exception, or maybe they didn't even press it as an exception, and so they have not acted consistently with regard to this matter. I don't know what our Committee on Creation is going to do. Jack is on it, and Dr. Wardell is on it, and others are here that may be on that committee. I don't know what we're going to do. Dr. Patterson's on it. My own feeling would be for us to state that the Westminster Divines did say it was six literal days, and that we leave it to the Presbyterians, very much as we did on the Masonic Order. We said we thought that joining secret societies of that sort was unbiblical and not a good Christian practice. Well, we've left it to the local courts to deal with it on a case-by-case matter. And some courts will ignore it. Some courts will practice it. It seems to me that that would be a good direction. Now, I suspect the committee as a whole may not want to come out with that. And I don't know where the committee will be. They may want to say, well, look, we've been allowing it in our practice. Bill Smith, who's on the committee, said, well, he's been examined by three presbyteries and he takes the long day view and has never been examined on it. Does he have to now go back and call it an exception? He doesn't want to be forced to do that. And Dr. Barker, for example, Will Barker, doesn't want to allow it. He wants to say, well, there is that possibility. The Westminster divines didn't mean to restrict it only to the six In our committee, we've got that sort of a division with regard to this, and I don't know how our committee will come out and how the assembly will act. The committee was only advisory to the assembly. We were specifically said that we would only be advisory, and all we can do is say, well, this is the history of the thing, and these are the views that are being held, and this is the critique of those views. In a sense, that's what we've agreed to as our format. We're going to lay out each of the views. We're going to lay a critique of each of the views. And then we're going to try to deal with this constitutional matter. And I don't know where the assembly will come out, but my guess is it's going to be pretty much left to the discretion of Presbyterians and Sessions with regard to this matter as to how far you practice that exception. I'd be interested in Mr. Coffin's reaction to that, because I know he differs with me some on this. But constitutionally, don't you think that's about where we are as an assembly, probably? uh... that at most if they say it they would say then it's up to the individual court to to practice i certainly hold the westminster assembly in high regard uh... it was they who said that all councils have heard and doer and uh... westminster assembly uh... we do not hold to the Westminster Assembly documents. I think that's really true. We hold to them as modified. The Westminster Assembly people declared that the Pope is the Antichrist. I don't know whether they were unanimous in that or not, but they were certainly wrong. And we have cut that out by later in mandation. There was a whole chapter there that says it is the duty of the magistrate to extirpate heresy. Now this was the rule in Europe for many years, the state church It was inquisitions, they would burn heretics, and sometimes Presbyterians were heretics, and sometimes it was the Baptists that were the heretics, and they got burned by the Presbyterians. But that chapter we took out of the Westminster Assembly. We think that the Westminster Assembly was wrong in that chapter. And so we do not hold to the views of the Westminster Assembly because they're the Westminster Assembly. We hold to the Assembly's principles and statements but the question of strict subscription is a how strict is a subscription is I suppose a matter of considerable debate but this is hold to the system of doctrine as the ordination vow historically I would say if I could gently demur and make a make a point about example that was given The Westminster Confession was written by the Westminster Assembly, but was adopted first and only in Britain at the time by the Church of Scotland in 1647. The Adopting Act includes two specific exceptions to the Confession. One dealing with the matter on church state, another dealing with the matter of church government. Yes, later in the American experience we expunged the phrase concerning the Pope is Antichrist, but notice that because you expunge a phrase, it does not mean that the church says that the assembly was wrong on that issue or that it's wrong to hold that belief. You see, we could expunge the phrase in the space of six days from the confession, but that would not mean that we did not, that the assembly or that the church thought the 24 hour creation was wrong. And that's a subtle difference that has a profound implication. One reason why I would be very hesitant about expunging out of the confession the phrase, in the space of, just to make it in six days instead of in the space of six days, is because precisely the same shift could be made in another 10 or 15 years in interpretation of the action. And those of us that hold to a 24-hour view could then rightfully if the church so wished, on constitutional grounds, be excluded from the church. So we have to be extremely cautious when we're dickering with the Constitution. I would hope to model, we do have a very serious constitutional problem though, and Dr. Harris alluded to it earlier. At the time of JNR, the RP opinion and range of opinion on the question before the House today was in print. It was being taught at the denominational seminary, Covenant Seminary, at the RPCES. But the DAEU was taught quite freely there. But if you look back at the printed record, the negotiating committee, and it was a four-way committee with the PCA and the RPCES, the OPC, and the RPCNA, the Covenant Annals, they looked at, I think, 39 different theological issues that might caused division and problems with the church's merging, hoping to merge all four. The creation question was never discussed. It was never brought up. It was not one of those 30-some issues that were discussed. And when I went back and looked at the publication that came out of this joint committee looking at Union, I called Paul Settle on the phone. I said, Paul, where's the creation issue? Why wasn't it looked at? And my memory, Paul, of your comment was that it It wasn't something that people realized there was a difference in house over. And it's not just the difference between a 24 hour view and a day age view. As Dr. Piper made reference earlier today, in the OPC, the question of evolution is a serious question over which they've had divisive court battles. So this is an issue about which we already have a tremendous amount of division in practice. And that makes it a very sticky wicket. It may be that the only way forward retaining constitutional integrity is to handle it much like the millennial question is handled, which is the confession teaches that certain millennial views are right and are wrong. And that's been so clear in past Presbyterian history that some denominations who held premillennialism felt the necessity of changing the larger catechism. But there's something of a gentleman's agreement which says, partly out of Scottish precedent, partly out of American precedent, that historic pre-mill brotherhood are welcome and are not excluded on that grounds. And constitutionally, I think that's probably where we are on this issue, functionally. Some of the things that we have spoken of amongst ourselves, not just here, but I know that I've sent some emails in the past to David Coffin about this, I think it's necessary for the peace of the church in the first place that I believe there needs to become a constitutional integrity. Now, David, I disagree on this, but I think that framework, day, age, and logical views ought to be declared as exceptions. And then presbyteries will decide to what degree then is that exception is explained It is allowable to teach or not to teach or to be in the church. For me, there's some non-negotiables. One is, there's got to be a commitment to eight fiat acts of onological origination. So we've got a major problem now. And there needs to be a commitment to the confession statement that death, physical death, is penal and not just... Those have to be further exceptions that are declared. And if a man does not believe in eight fiat acts, then I'm going to have a problem with this being in the PCA, period. A framework man that takes exception but says, I believe in eight fiat acts, I just don't think we can tell from the text the order of those acts, I will live with that. And I think these are the kind of things, but just to say we're going to have a gentleman's agreement, I think those are too broad because we do have the other problems of theistic evolution and such as that that we're giving room for. So that's the kind of thing that I'm thinking about. The question was addressed broader as well to the panel. Anybody else want to talk about that? Maybe so. By a gentleman's agreement, I don't at least mean to say that you can be an unfortunate professional. Just like, for example, a pre-millennial position doesn't allow for relaxation. It is interesting with regard to this so-called gentleman's agreement. He just mentioned the eschatology. I visited the Joe Morecraft Church, which pulled out as a theonomic church holding full post-millennialism. And I said to that session, I said, why do you need to pull out? We've allowed eschatological freedom. And then I went back and tried to find wherever it had been actually explicitly allowed, and I couldn't find the record. It's historical. We've allowed it. We allow post-millennials, pre-millennials, non-millennials in the PCA, and the PCUS had allowed that. But I could not find in PCUS records wherever any declaration was that we would allow eschatological freedom. And that's one of those things. That was sort of a gentleman's, it's still a gentleman's agreement. We allow those differences of viewpoint. But if you read the Confessions strictly, you might say, well, it's pressed towards more of a post-millennial. position or a non-millennial, which is a form of post-millennialism. Well, I'm glad I got one question. How do you reconcile the morality of God with his creating with apparent age? Is there deception? And Dr. Collins did raise this question. And I think it's an appropriate question to ask. I was asked a very similar question when I was examined for ordination. And someone on the floor of the presbytery asked me, well, what would you say to someone who gave you evidences about a long or an old earth? And they used this way of illustrating it. Let's suppose that Adam and little Cain are walking down the path together, and little Cain looks up to his daddy and he says, Daddy, how old am I? And Cain looks down at him and says, You're four years old, son. And Daddy, how old are you? I'm five. Logically speaking, wouldn't Cain be thinking, I'm going to be that big a year from now? Is there any deception there? No. I'm convinced that in order for there to be deception, there has to be the intent to deceive. Adam was created a mature being, and I'm convinced that the The world was also created fully mature. Now we could argue whether or not Adam and Eve had navels, we could argue perhaps even whether or not trees had rings. I would suspect that they did have rings. The height of those trees would have suggested their maturity and so forth. But I don't believe that there's any deception, nor could God be a target for deception if indeed there was this visual idea of a mature earth. Adam had nothing to compare his environment to. He only saw what was in front of him and undoubtedly accepted it. He didn't have the opportunity to say, well, this is what an old earth looks like and this is what a new earth looks like. And I think that from the presentation that we saw by Dr. Patterson yesterday, we can see that there is reasonable argumentation for a relatively young Earth view. And my understanding of the evidence for an ancient Earth is the geological strata, which I feel, and this has been answered quite some time ago, as being best explained by the universal Noahic flag, so that that really isn't a legitimate way of evaluating the age of the earth. So I really believe that there is no deception on God's part by creating a fully mature world. This handwriting is as bad as mine. I think I understand what he said. And I'm not sure it's addressed just to me. In fact, it isn't. It says, please discuss the relation of general revelation to the whole debate. But it goes on to say a response is wanted from the non-literal, what they call a non-literal in this view, and one from the seminary. Well, I'm neither. But I'll just say this. You can answer for both sides. OK. I'll just say this. I have no problem at all with one of the men from, I forget which one it was, one of the Hodges or Warfield or somebody, Alexander, who said that there can be no conflict between general revelation, the facts of science and so on, properly understood, and the scriptures properly interpreted. Well, who could quarrel with that? Both are God's revelation, of course. The problem comes in establishing properly understood. Because the very same person who said that goes right on to say, very shortly thereafter, geology has obviously categorically proved once and for all indefinitely that the earth is ancient. The geological column is what he was talking about. This, by the way, was pre-Darwin. It was based on the geology, ancient geology. So you see, the problem is that, at least the way I look at it now, I do certainly believe that we should look at the evidence. I tried to indicate that yesterday. but the problem is establishing some definite conclusion based on your science. All you can do is look at some evidences and intend to marshal which side they seem to fall on because our understanding of the facts of science will always be tentative and will always be incomplete and therefore that's the reason I cannot do what the people in the 1800s did which was to concede the whole battle by saying, well, science has definitely established the following things and therefore we have to bend our interpretation of the scriptures to fit it. That's where I differ. That's where I part with them. And if they still today were here, people like the Hodges and Warfield, and I don't care how many people revere them, if they took the same position today they did then, I would not admit them to my presbytery because they're saying that the science has been established once and for all and that is impossible. The very nature of science says it's impossible. if they insisted on that and said we've got to bend our interpretation to fit it, I couldn't live with that. Let me say one, can I go back to one other question? Sure, go ahead. Who was Rush Yen or Angel Spirit of Threat? Jack and I are both on the committee, as you've heard, and by the way, Duncan is too, he wasn't mentioned. So we've been around this track before, but the business about... his idea about having a rule. There's really not in the argument, it's no point in our argument anymore, I think we're through, because Jack says, unless you have a rule of statistics on anything, you have to have this rule, but he goes on to say, after his 10 years of experience says, there can be no such rule. So if you have to have the rule, and you know that there can't be such a rule, what's there to argue about? I always state things the way I state them, not the way Jack states them. Question is what might be the eventual effects upon a believer or a church if they hold to a was described here as non-literal view. Let me just answer that question by giving either extreme. There might be little to no effect. And I would argue that the brethren that we have before us here are examples of folks who would hold to a non-literal view, but that would not impact their theological system such that they would end up having a radically different theology. or a radically different view of others who differ with them on that narrow question. That's entirely a possibility. And just because we look at certain possible implications doesn't mean that those ripple effects through one's theological system or belief are going to happen in every or even many cases. But now let me also give you an example of another extreme. Ian Barber's book, Religion and Science, Historical and Contemporary Issues, revised and expanded edition of Religion in the Age of Science. Barber is one of the recognized authorities dealing with the relationship between science and religion. As a matter of fact, he was on national radio yesterday, NPR, a long interview with him. The Templeton Foundation has just bestowed a major grant. And if you know anything about John Templeton, he has a lot of money to give away, which gives you a lot of power. And here in his volume, I think he shows the other extreme quite eloquently. We can see the danger to science when proponents of ideological positions try to use the power of the state to reshape science, whether it be a Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Khomeini's Iran, or creationists in the United States. That's a serious statement he's making there. And one that is listened to quite carefully by those in the halls of power. So what are the possible implications on one's world and life view? They're radically different and extreme possibilities. Well, that is Ian Barber. And what's amazing is that He is this little elderly man, sweet as can be. I mean, to read something like that in what he's written just really takes you aback. And it shows that the issue is one's metaphysic or worldview. And that's where the issue turns. And when we're talking about natural revelation, actually, We have to be very careful what we mean by that. In fact, I would argue that just from philosophical principles, we don't have a right to talk about science. We have to talk about the science says, and they're different. And it would be a mistake, or let me put it this way, it would need to be argued that a naturalistic worldview or metaphysics that is explicitly dominant in Darwinism. And I could give you the URL for the National Science Teachers Association and the National Association of Biology Teachers, for example, if you disbelieve me on that, which you probably don't. That is an explicitly naturalistic worldview projecting itself into the interpretation of the empirical data. There is no question about that. But that's that particular science. It certainly happens in uh... you know the cognitive sciences and so on you know as you get closer and closer to man uh... the these kinds of things uh... come into play it's you have to argue that uh... and not just asserted uh... when when you're talking about other sciences big bang cosmology has has uh... taken some pillory in this week but uh... uh... it it is an illegitimate uh... assertion to say that it is ipso facto naturalistic. It's not. It has been used to endorse naturalism. It's being used illegitimately. If you ask why did Stephen Hawking write A Brief History of Time, he wrote it, and come up with the theories behind it, to avoid the problem that the Big Bang actually presents cosmologists with, which is an uncaused beginning. He wanted to provide a naturalistic explanation for these things. So you understand that we have to be precise and understand that what we're dealing with is actually the metaphysics. And so, again, what we hear a lot of in these discussions is an argument whose structure is, this is a slippery slope. We've got to understand under what conditions a slippery slope argument has any any actual validity. It has enormous emotive power. But in terms of critical and rational validity, that's what needs to be evaluated. And so you've really got to do the closer analysis, namely that of the worldview underlying it. And so that, I think, is something that we haven't addressed very much. In my paper, I address what I consider to be a methodological problem involved in the hermeneutics of these three guest positions. And it is still my maintenance after having read them again and many others that methodologically it is subjective and it has no breaks. Thus I agree with Dr. Rankin that these men here who are committed to biblical orthodoxy don't methodologically, it's not a slippery slope argument, see, it's not saying this, it's saying that methodologically it has no breaks. And I argue in my paper then, and I don't cite the names simply out of respect of people, but methodologically I can show how the people who are using this hermeneutic Well, we've already seen that here, are denying death, physical death, penally advocating animal death before the fall. Many of them are using their hermeneutically theistic evolution. These men are not doing that, but many advocates of this position are applying their same hermeneutic to Genesis 2 and 3. They're using Genesis chapter 1. A great number of them are denying not only the universal flood, but now they are using the same hermeneutic. These are men teaching in Reformed seminaries. They're denying that all flesh was killed in that flood. Now, these are all applications of the hermeneutical method, but I do not ascribe all of them to these men. I don't know their position. Dr. Harris believes in the universal flood and has stood as a champion of that. And I would assume that these brothers do. I don't know. I've not asked them that question. But I have asked others, and I do know what they're teaching. So I personally will say that methodologically, not slippery slope, and I don't think I personally want to see more objective in our continuing conversations, exegesis. For example, we have this assertion of analogies, but what of what are they analogous? Nobody can answer that question. Lee Irons says, God did not reveal to us what is being revealed in the two-tiered cosmogony. So all we know is that God did something in God's kind of days. We don't know what it is. That is unbiblical. There is no biblical analogy that does not make God clearer to us. And that's the problem. And at this point, as you write more, I trust that you will do that, but that's part of Why do we need an analogy if the Bible doesn't make clear what the analogy is? And that's what I mean by subjectivity. You may, yeah. I don't want to pick on you. Well, I'll pick right back. What I mean, unfairly. I want you to have the last word. I'm unmanned at such a comment, I'll tell you that. And in fact, you've driven out of my mind precisely what I was going to say. I would argue that I would strongly dissent from the position that the methodology itself leads to these consequences. The methodology will lead to these consequences if it is not accompanied with an appropriate awareness of what certain of the metaphysical and worldview issues are. And so that I think would be my assertion. I want to admonish my friend to be more precise in your language. No, I'm teasing you, but I do want to make a point about that. We tend to say science says so-and-so or science does so-and-so. Science is not a thing that says or does anything. I agree completely on it. I think we usually understand what we mean by that. Somebody practicing science in a particular field has discovered so-and-so and claims so-and-so, but as he pointed out, there are different sciences and we need to be careful which one we're talking about. It makes a difference, but as his example indicated, referring to Hawking for example, it's not just the different sciences, it's different scientists It depends on the individual. You're practicing the science. That's the real crux, I think. And to dismiss the idea that there could be a slippery slope, there are slippery slopes, folks. Whether it's, you know, one that we're about to step on one in a particular case is a question you need to look carefully at. But it's kind of like the old saying, even somebody who's paranoid can have real enemies. To try to answer Dr. Piper's questions and demand in a brief way, it seems to me that the objections to the positions that I've taken principally have focused on certain conclusions that I've reached relative to the use of the word dead. But I don't know that there's anything unique about my methodology and my hermeneutics. I try to study the Bible and look at words and things like that. I didn't see anything different about his methodology except that this man's brighter better at it than I am on those things, but I think we're trying to do simple exegesis of the text and arrive at a conclusion. As far as the analogies are concerned, which you haven't seen, what I'm trying to suggest, I think, is that in the way that there is the being of God, and we are made in the image of God, and thus there is an analogy of being between us and God, the way in which Hebrews says there is a heavenly sanctuary, And the earthly tabernacle was a shadow and a copy of that. So I want to say the work of God in creation and providence is imitated and reflected in the work of man in what creation he is enabled to do by God and what providence he is enabled to do by God. And so that the analogy that is involved there is that God's work of creation is reflected in our weak work. that as he labored six days and rested one, though I'm committed to the idea that the scripture isn't committing us to God working in 24-hour periods, he, in seeking to impose his image upon us, ordained not only that we exist in his image, but that we work in his image, and that the week became the way in which he reflected that out. I might say along the way, a couple of things have been A couple of times it's been asserted that the week exists in every culture of the world, and I don't think that has been... It's been often said it existed in every, but I don't think that's true. Now, I agree that the fact that it does exist is testimony to the sanctification of the Sabbath, but I do think it's incorrect to suppose that every society is operated on the basis of that. I just want to respond quickly to Mark's last statement. If I asserted that the week exists in every culture, I didn't mean to assert that. I was referring to an article that I had read a number of years ago. A guy got interested in the week for whatever reason, and he began to investigate the occurrence of the week in different cultures because he knew that it wasn't a solar or lunar basis for the seven-day period. And as he investigated, he found very few cultures. In fact, I think his conclusion was about four or five that did not practice a seven-day week. And then there were a couple of attempts, France in the revolutionary period and Stalinist Russia, where there was an attempt to impose a non-seven-day week that ultimately those events failed. But it does seem to me that there well again just clarify that point that no the seven-day week is not universal but it is very nearly so All right, I've actually been given questions in two categories. Can I take the one and just mention it very briefly? This has to do with the Taylor-Lewis work. Well, I didn't want you to have that yet, no. Oh, Dr. Smith passed on you. I gave that to him. Oh, I see, I see. Hey, you, I'm the moderator. Like a good soldier, do as you're told. After listening to Dr. Collins' lecture regarding the effects of sin and death, would he take an exception to Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6, Part 6, and Shorter Catechism, Number 19? That's the first part. Is the physical death of man a result of the fall or not, and why? related to that is, could you speak to your interpretation of what death applies to after the fall? How do you understand the Isaiah 11 passage? Somebody took the hint, didn't they? And how was the ground cursed in God's judgments after the fall? Let me start by saying, golly, I certainly don't want to suggest, for example, that that the physical death of man was not a part of the penalty for their sin. If I imply that, I am sorry. I don't mean to suggest that at all, but it wasn't the focus of the penalty that is described in Genesis 2.17 that I would insist on. I'm sorry, and I think it came out when Dr. Dyer was speaking and I I answered his question before I realized where he was going with it, and that was my lapse on that, and I apologize. Then the shorter catechism number, well, I guess I don't really need to go into it. Because you're saying you do believe that physical death is part of the penal. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I never meant to suggest other than that. But I do insist that it's for men. Right. And then how is the ground cursed in God's judgment after the fall? And again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify it. And as Mr. Shaw suggested, that is something that unfortunately got said as time was evaporating, and it still evaporates from us. The issue becomes, what does it mean in Hebrew that the ground is cursed? Arurah ha'adamah in the Genesis 3 curses. Well, does it suggest that the properties of the creation are themselves being transmuted? The answer to that is no. And if you look at how words are used, the noun that's formed off of that verb, arar, me'erah, the noun a curse, you look at how that's used in Deuteronomy. for example, Deuteronomy 28. I don't have the exact verse reference in front of me. Look at how that's used. Well, those are the curses, but there's actually a specific use of that word there. Thank you. The features of the ground are used as the means for working out God's disciplinary purpose for his people. And that's different from saying that the properties of the creation are somehow transmuted. That, I think, is the issue. And that, of course, will then translate into questions about, were lions different prior to the fall? And then they were reconstituted so that their musculature, their dentition, their digestive system, You can only think of the Hebrew word, tippurayim, their claws all of a sudden become different as a result of the fall. I don't think that that would be a correct, I think that would be, that that kind of exegesis of the text would take a lot more support than mere assertion, put it that way. And in fact, it is we who bring I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is we, my brothers and sisters, who are deeply, deeply stained with sin, much deeper than any of us would care to imagine. And we bring that stain with us to everything that we do. And we miserably, miserably defile God's good creation. And God, who is infinite in his love and compassion, supports the creation nonetheless, supports us in existence, and also uses his creation to discipline us, to testify to us of his goodness, and so forth. So I think that would be a proper perspective of the creation, and in fact that is the perspective of the creation that we see implicated in Psalm 104, including verse 21, the lion getting his prey, his terep, that's the stuff that he snatches, those are the gazelles that he bites in the neck and kills. What's interesting about the structure of that psalm is that the mention of the wicked comes at the very end, and the recognition of this, if you would like to see the arguments, see it in Dalich's commentary there, that's not an appeal to authority. If you'd like to, you can see how he develops this, but he recognizes that sinful human beings are seen as a blemish on God's good creation, and that is an offense to the Almighty in His goodness. That, I think, is my understanding of how the curses work themselves out. And again, it just comes from asking the question, what does it mean? What is the terminology that we find in Genesis 3, 14 to 19 actually mean? How has that been exhibited later in the Bible? I have another part, which is the Isaiah 11 passage. Yeah. The best thing is to read what I have written on this elsewhere. If you will give me a second to locate what I have written. Paul in 1 Timothy 4 verses 3 to 5 says that God created marriage and foods for believers to use thankfully and that everything created by God is good, certainly reflecting Genesis 1, 28 to 31. But how does this square with Romans 8, 20 to 22 where he says that the creation was subjected to futility and awaits its liberation from the slavery of corruption and that it groans and suffers birth pains together? Does not Paul suppose that the creation itself is out of kilter because of the fall? I do not think that is a necessary conclusion. And I say there that I'll delay proof of that until the next chapter. What do I say in the next chapter? Recall further that in the previous chapter, we saw that in 1 Timothy 4, 5, that God's verdict of Genesis 1, 31 still applies to his creation. However, what shall we make of Romans 8, 20 to 22 where that same Paul says that the creation was subjected to futility and awaits its liberation from the slavery of corruption, and that it groans and suffers birth pains together. Is this a contradiction? No. Instead, we humans are out of kilter and unable properly to perform our function of ruling on behalf of God, and sometimes we express our sinfulness by exploiting and abusing the creation. In that respect, the creation groans with us as it awaits the glorification of believers who will then rule it properly and purely. The entire context of Romans 8, 18 to 25 is eschatological, with a focus on humans' hope of glory. Compare the repetitions of the verb awaits, verses 19 and 23, the noun hope, or is that a verb, in verses 20 and 24, groans, 20 and 23, and the glory theme, 18, 21, and 30. And so the creation, if you like, is subjected to futility by having by having human beings who are sullied by sin as nevertheless still ruling over it and doing such a bad job of it. I think that's how I would, and so if, I mean, we, hey look, we can identify with this. Do we not groan with the leadership that we have now and await the replacement of this leadership with something much more fitting and consonant with the divine will. I think I'll leave it at that. Well, I have more to say on that, but I shall refrain. You didn't allow me to talk about Isaiah 11 and maybe that can be another time. Yeah, that's fine.
Questions and Answers, Pt 2
Series 1999 GPTS Spring Conference
Q&A from the 1999 Spring Theology Conference presented by Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The theme of the conference was 'Did God Create in Six Days?'
Sermon ID | 322101138350 |
Duration | 1:26:02 |
Date | |
Category | Teaching |
Language | English |
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