Watch me and friends from church discuss the age of the Earth (I’m the one who was freeze framed with my eyes closed):

I’ll point out for those curious, this was not meant to be a debate, but instead a discussion of general positions people hold, and which positions we hold in particular. There was so much more all of us wanted to say, but as you can see from the length of the video, we already failed our 45 minute hard stop. It seemed like every question and tangent could have been its own hour long discussion. 

As you can see, I’m not the best speaker, and apparently my mom was correct in that I cannot sit still and fidget too much. So I wanted to clarify or expand on a few things here. Like I said, this wasn’t a debate, so we didn’t really interact with each other’s positions that much, but this is my site, so I can do what I want. 

I thought that there would be a little more on the Literary Framework Interpretation, so I kind of cut it short, but it works better as a visual anyway. The main argument is that we have a symmetry where God creates ‘realms’ so to speak, and then fills those ‘realms’, then as Ruler of all and uncreated, He rests on the seventh day (which also establishes the Sabbath, which we didn’t get much into). It looks something like this:

Creation Kingdoms	Creature Kinds
Day 1: Light	Day 4: Luminaries
Day 2: Sky/Water	Day 5: Birds/Fish
Day 3: Land/Vegetation	Day 6: Land animals/Man

The Creator King
Day 7: Sabbath

For people who are interested in a non-literal, chronological reading of Genesis 1, I think this a good understanding. Of course, and I thought we’d talk more about literal vs literary, very few people actually have a literal view. If they did, they would have to believe that there is a dome above the Earth (the firmament) that separates the waters from above. Very few people believe this anymore. Martin Luther was adamant that you had to have this view, while Calvin was a little more understanding that conception of cosmology has changed (though he was still a strident geocentrist).

I think that is something we have to wrestle with if we try a truly literal view from Old Testament cosmology. This was the debate around Galileo, that the Earth simply could not revolve around the sun. Why? Because the Psalms and Job said that the Earth is fixed on its foundation and cannot be moved. This is even attested to in the New Testament where we learn that the plan of salvation goes back to before the foundation of the world.

That is what changed my position, as I tried to state in the video. Nothing about science, but by learning about Ancient Near East cultures and their cosmology. Understanding Genesis in its place and world, helps you to understand the purpose.

As for evolutionary science, I don’t really care. If something came out tomorrow and all of sudden all scientist agreed that evolution was wrong all this time, that would not change my interpretation of Genesis. However, as it stands now, someone’s feeling or opinions are irrelevant to the science of evolution, it is established fact (for now, I suppose it could change). However, I maintain that this isn’t the point of Genesis and so to reiterate, I’ll end with the J.I. Packer quote I read last night:

I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and I maintain it in print, but exegetically I cannot see that anything Scripture says, in the first chapters of Genesis or elsewhere, bears on the biological theory of evolution one way or the other.