They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks; They have made their paths crooked, Whoever treads on them does not know peace. – Isaiah 59:8
The LCMS wound up the convention yesterday (held every 3 years) – Matthew Harrison had been re elected to his 4th term among other things.
To me, one big action was resolution 5-09a to reaffirm the synod’s previous position on the Genesis 1 account of creation. Bold move in today’s age where others are backing off the clear reading of scriptures to be relevant in today’s culture.
I liked this quote from the article – Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the LCMS, said: “We try to only say what the Bible says, and otherwise keep our mouths shut. It’s hard for me to believe the Genesis account, … but I do believe it because I believe it’s the Word of God.” https://blogs.lcms.org/2019/convention-confesses-god-created-the-world-in-six-natural-days/?fbclid=IwAR2yhWfydtqdHqWXVQU1MX7xhMvh6R_ZB9Ch-BSzmFPRajIvy_tJm9kVKRg
What the LCMS did would have been a bold move, if it had done what Harrison claimed, but regrettably it went beyond what Scripture says and replaced sound exegesis with an Answers in Genesis fundamentalist approach.
Not so, it gave the scriptural evidence in the Genesis 1:5 passage not to mention 1st day, 2nd day etc.
To come up with the passage supporting long passages of time one must put their own reason above the words – and as I said, usually to be culturally relevant.
Hey, if I am going to stick with the story that a man once dead is now alive and ruling the universe, I think I can stand the forces who say “look around at what you see, not what you read.”
I say it was bold to affirm what the LCMS has always held while other denominations are still trying to figure out which restroom to use.
I’m not going to hijack open blogging to debate Gen 1 with you, so this will be my final comment:
The question is not between a 24-hour day and a day age theory. That debate is actually two different interpretations of the same flawed paradigm, that Genesis one is giving a scientific account of the creation of the universe
The term “natural day” is never used in Genesis 1. First, the biblical cosmology is geocentric, so whatever a natural day to us might be is not what it was to the original readers of Genesis. Second, a natural day is predicated on the earth rotating around the sun. The sun was not created until day 4. So you couldn’t have had natural days before day 4.
In addition, there are exegetical cases for reading the original creation of the heavens and the earth (in the beginning) as occurring before day 1.
Lastly, Genesis I and Genesis II do not line up, if one imposes a scientific gloss on those two chapters.
MLD, I think this is great. However does this mean you have to believe in literal days to be served communion? How much tolerance is there for ordinary members?
The 24 hour day is not predicated on a revolution around the sun – it is based on a single rotation on it’s own axis – independent of any sun.
God created light the first day (perhaps it was a cosmic flashlight) – but a sigular rotation of the earth would have a light period and a dark period – hey, like evening and morning.
One other thing, all previous LCMS statements to this topic precede AIG – perhaps they are stealing from us Lutherans. 🙂
In Old Testament cosmology, the earth doesn’t rotate; it is the sun that rotates. So is a natural day predicated on a cosmic flashlight and not light from the sun?
I don’t know – I can only read the words on the page. This is the same ‘reasoning’ that denies the words “This is my body” and “this baptism saves.”
Now in your defense, the ELCA denies this LCMS reading of Genesis also.
The LCMS resolution discredits its reading of “this is my body,” by its dogmatic interpretation of Genesis 1. Now it must deny the literal meaning of many other texts in the Bible which teach that the earth is fixed and that the sun revolves around the earth. By choosing a fundamentalist reading, it now must give a figure of speech interpretation to many other passages. The result is to call into question the Biblical scholarship of the LCMS; this then weakens Gospel proclamation.
Well look at it this way, if this were 1974 and we were at the St Louis seminary, you would have walked and I would have stayed. Your argument was soon taught at Seminex.
Is anything in Genesis 1 to be taken literally?
But not to extend the point, I think it was great that the resolution passed.
Jean. You make two observations below that are a good starting point.
1.A day to us does not mean the same thing as a day in Gen.
2. A day is approximately one (axis) revolution of a specific planet, as of then, non-existant.
However, I think you are then making several mistakes.
A. What if the account is in fact so scientific, that humans will only discover pieces of the underlying physics in latter history. Example: General and Special Relativity, with dates such as 1915.
B. Why do you say it is geocentric, when the earth is not yet created on day one? The Narrator is not standing on Earth as he speaks.
It is neither a 24 hour or aligorical day. Time (as we know it) is one of 4 demensions of this World. But the Narrator is not telling the story from our World due to its ack of existance, therefore the story is predicated on a seperate time, decoupled from ours. Time (as we know it) does not exist till Day two.
This is a three-part understanding of reality.
Heaven-Firmanent-Earth. Three separate things. If a three-part concept is adopted, instead of the traditional Heaven-Earth two- part, the day type dispute is obsolete.
Gen one is discribing a quantized origin of matter and time, and a division into two Worlds.
…”..First, the biblical cosmology is geocentric, so whatever a natural day to us might be is not what it was to the original readers of Genesis. Second, a natural day is predicated on the earth rotating around the sun. The sun was not created until day 4. So you couldn’t have had natural days before day… “….
I like that part that weakens the gospel presentation – LOL . I don’t think I have once proclaimed the gospel, given long or short witness to individuals and have led with Genesis 1.
Perhaps they do it different in the Midwest.
MLD why do you call yourself that in light of the scripture below?
You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
Nathan Priddis,
“A day is approximately one (axis) revolution of a specific planet, as of then, non-existant”
Where did you come up with this – that the earth was not created on the first day? My Bible says that the very first things created on day one were the heavens and the earth (in the beginning)
Now the earth may have been a ball of water but it was in place and I am sure spinning around on it’s axis. The water and the land masses were separated later but earth, and I assume the other planets were included in “the heavens” on that first day.
Genesis 1 is not a science course but the plain reading is that God is doing the creating and he is doing it systematically, using 1st day, 2nd day and Day and Night, evening and morning language for a purpose.
MLD.
A “literral” reading, whatever literal may mean, is extraordinarily scientific.
On day one, the story is telling you there is no planet, stars, solar system, there is no time, because there is no universe. There is also no protocal to differentiate between light and dark. This means there are no photons.
Light is information as well as energy. There is neither.
There will first need to be an established protocal by which information can distinguished. A bit of information can be 0 or 1. Its an assigned value.
That is your first step to create a rotating planet to mark of your 24 hour day. Days, not created as yet. There are a few other things needed besides a protocal.
Nathan – I don’t know about the “literal” meaning as much as the natural reading. If I handed the passage to a jr high kid, he would “naturally” come up with a 6 day creation.
If “in the beginning” is not day one, then I guess we have different starting points. My reading is that in eternity past there was nothing (in the common sense of nothing) – and in the beginning, Day 1, God create time, space and matter. Also on that 1st day God created light and separated the darkness and the light. If the earth was only water and not spinning on it’s axis, what held the water on the round planet? – not centrifugal force or gravity.
I guess the other point would be did 24 hr days begin on day 4 with a spinning earth and the sun – so days 1, 2 & 3 are of an undetermined length – but days 4, 5, 6 are literal 24 hr days?
I know we don’t know for sure – but it’s fun to discuss. My point was I was happy my church body took a stand to support what it has always confessed and not allow it self to be confused by a confused culture.
You are taking what you learned in school about gravity and the earth (being a ball) and retrojecting your modern scientific learning back into your interpretation of Scripture. That is not the way good exegesis is conducted.
We should be asking, what does the Bible actually say and how would the original audience have heard the Bible? That doesn’t exhaust its meaning by any measure, but it’s the beginning point.
The OT does not depict the earth as a ball and does not depict it as rotating. It depicts the earth as fixed on a foundation by pillars. It depicts the sun as rotating around the earth.
When Joshua says “The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day,” a literal reading would not be that the earth stood still, but the sun.
“Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.”
“He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.”
If you look at the artwork in the Luther Bible, you will see the 3-tiered cosmos depicted in Scripture. Both Luther and (I understand) Calvin believed, based on Scripture, in geocentric cosmology.
The OT Jews had the same ANE science as their neighbors. They wouldn’t have understood a science textbook based on modern science. Thus, the Bible isn’t a science textbook. It does convey theological realities in concepts that the OT Jews could understand.
Jean,
This is funny – you are suggesting that Moses is writing Genesis 1 based on what he knew or what his community understood at the time and not on what God is revealing in the passage.
Let’s stick to early Genesis for the moment. Are you suggesting that Moses and the community had no understanding of biology, so from their cosmology he wrote that man was created from the dust of the ground and woman from man’s rib? Science says that is not possible, but God in his revelation disagrees.
Again, you execute in the realm of ‘look around’ theology and not God’s revelation.
Oh, look around, we don’t see people created from dirt – I wonder what God really mean?
“Are you suggesting that Moses and the community had no understanding of biology,”
No, they had an understanding, an ancient understanding of biology, which thought a man sowed his seed in the womb of a woman. They didn’t have an egg and sperm understanding, but a seed and ground understanding, like the seed of a plant. Thus a woman who couldn’t conceive was called barren.
So did God actually make the first man out of dirt and the first woman from his rib or is this just a story to help early folks understand a larger point?
(some old earthers teach that God took some sub human creature and when he breathed into him that is what made him man – or that evolution of man from the common ancestor was in full swing and when it reached a certain point, God declared one of them to be his Adam.)
But I will leave it there – I am sure that I hold the minority position within this group.
i believe that this planet was here before God went to work on creating a habitation for man, but it was much nicer when He finished…. the age of the dirt hasn’t got much to do with it…
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Em, so God created the heavens and the earth and then got sidetracked for a billion years? I may be more like God than I give myself credit – I too have a whole bunch of unfinished projects around the house. 🙂
MLD, yes he formed Adam from the ground. I think however, it is vital to define terms. Every word becomes important. I do believe the text is scientific, but also am convinced scripture is scrubbed of key facts to constrict our understanding of the operating physics of the two Worlds.
I think there are four words used to discribe humans coming into existance. You said man came from “dirt.” One of them would be a yes, Adam was formed from material of the Earth itself. But there are also other things going on. Adam has more then just one component, and Eve’s beginning is not discribed exactly as Adam’s. Another of Adam’s natures was spiritual, and would not have been subject to the dimension of time in the same manner we are. He was listed as a son of God, and therefore immortal along with the host of Heaven
Your jr.high kid faces a major hurdle, because he needs to come to a realization the definition of time is vital to aswering the question. What is the nature of reality?
If he says time is relative, he has just crossed a counter-intuitive threshold. Mankind has only reached this position in the last century.
Two things eliminate the conflict between a YEC dating, and astro-physic’s 10Ă· billion years estimation.
1. A realization that space/time is relative.
2. A belief that the relative location of the Genesis narrator will detemine how one interprets the narrative.
It’s all yours today…
They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks; They have made their paths crooked, Whoever treads on them does not know peace. – Isaiah 59:8
The corruption of CCA/PFM is so blatant, only a stupid blind fool would still close their eyes and say, Amen!
The LCMS wound up the convention yesterday (held every 3 years) – Matthew Harrison had been re elected to his 4th term among other things.
To me, one big action was resolution 5-09a to reaffirm the synod’s previous position on the Genesis 1 account of creation. Bold move in today’s age where others are backing off the clear reading of scriptures to be relevant in today’s culture.
I liked this quote from the article – Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the LCMS, said: “We try to only say what the Bible says, and otherwise keep our mouths shut. It’s hard for me to believe the Genesis account, … but I do believe it because I believe it’s the Word of God.”
https://blogs.lcms.org/2019/convention-confesses-god-created-the-world-in-six-natural-days/?fbclid=IwAR2yhWfydtqdHqWXVQU1MX7xhMvh6R_ZB9Ch-BSzmFPRajIvy_tJm9kVKRg
What the LCMS did would have been a bold move, if it had done what Harrison claimed, but regrettably it went beyond what Scripture says and replaced sound exegesis with an Answers in Genesis fundamentalist approach.
Not so, it gave the scriptural evidence in the Genesis 1:5 passage not to mention 1st day, 2nd day etc.
To come up with the passage supporting long passages of time one must put their own reason above the words – and as I said, usually to be culturally relevant.
Hey, if I am going to stick with the story that a man once dead is now alive and ruling the universe, I think I can stand the forces who say “look around at what you see, not what you read.”
I say it was bold to affirm what the LCMS has always held while other denominations are still trying to figure out which restroom to use.
I’m not going to hijack open blogging to debate Gen 1 with you, so this will be my final comment:
The question is not between a 24-hour day and a day age theory. That debate is actually two different interpretations of the same flawed paradigm, that Genesis one is giving a scientific account of the creation of the universe
The term “natural day” is never used in Genesis 1. First, the biblical cosmology is geocentric, so whatever a natural day to us might be is not what it was to the original readers of Genesis. Second, a natural day is predicated on the earth rotating around the sun. The sun was not created until day 4. So you couldn’t have had natural days before day 4.
In addition, there are exegetical cases for reading the original creation of the heavens and the earth (in the beginning) as occurring before day 1.
Lastly, Genesis I and Genesis II do not line up, if one imposes a scientific gloss on those two chapters.
MLD, I think this is great. However does this mean you have to believe in literal days to be served communion? How much tolerance is there for ordinary members?
The 24 hour day is not predicated on a revolution around the sun – it is based on a single rotation on it’s own axis – independent of any sun.
God created light the first day (perhaps it was a cosmic flashlight) – but a sigular rotation of the earth would have a light period and a dark period – hey, like evening and morning.
One other thing, all previous LCMS statements to this topic precede AIG – perhaps they are stealing from us Lutherans. 🙂
In Old Testament cosmology, the earth doesn’t rotate; it is the sun that rotates. So is a natural day predicated on a cosmic flashlight and not light from the sun?
I don’t know – I can only read the words on the page. This is the same ‘reasoning’ that denies the words “This is my body” and “this baptism saves.”
Now in your defense, the ELCA denies this LCMS reading of Genesis also.
The LCMS resolution discredits its reading of “this is my body,” by its dogmatic interpretation of Genesis 1. Now it must deny the literal meaning of many other texts in the Bible which teach that the earth is fixed and that the sun revolves around the earth. By choosing a fundamentalist reading, it now must give a figure of speech interpretation to many other passages. The result is to call into question the Biblical scholarship of the LCMS; this then weakens Gospel proclamation.
Well look at it this way, if this were 1974 and we were at the St Louis seminary, you would have walked and I would have stayed. Your argument was soon taught at Seminex.
Is anything in Genesis 1 to be taken literally?
But not to extend the point, I think it was great that the resolution passed.
Jean. You make two observations below that are a good starting point.
1.A day to us does not mean the same thing as a day in Gen.
2. A day is approximately one (axis) revolution of a specific planet, as of then, non-existant.
However, I think you are then making several mistakes.
A. What if the account is in fact so scientific, that humans will only discover pieces of the underlying physics in latter history. Example: General and Special Relativity, with dates such as 1915.
B. Why do you say it is geocentric, when the earth is not yet created on day one? The Narrator is not standing on Earth as he speaks.
It is neither a 24 hour or aligorical day. Time (as we know it) is one of 4 demensions of this World. But the Narrator is not telling the story from our World due to its ack of existance, therefore the story is predicated on a seperate time, decoupled from ours. Time (as we know it) does not exist till Day two.
This is a three-part understanding of reality.
Heaven-Firmanent-Earth. Three separate things. If a three-part concept is adopted, instead of the traditional Heaven-Earth two- part, the day type dispute is obsolete.
Gen one is discribing a quantized origin of matter and time, and a division into two Worlds.
…”..First, the biblical cosmology is geocentric, so whatever a natural day to us might be is not what it was to the original readers of Genesis. Second, a natural day is predicated on the earth rotating around the sun. The sun was not created until day 4. So you couldn’t have had natural days before day… “….
I like that part that weakens the gospel presentation – LOL . I don’t think I have once proclaimed the gospel, given long or short witness to individuals and have led with Genesis 1.
Perhaps they do it different in the Midwest.
“Is anything in Genesis 1 to be taken literally?”
Everything. But that doesn’t solve the question.
MLD why do you call yourself that in light of the scripture below?
You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
directambiguity – it’s an online moniker – nothing more
Nathan Priddis,
“A day is approximately one (axis) revolution of a specific planet, as of then, non-existant”
Where did you come up with this – that the earth was not created on the first day? My Bible says that the very first things created on day one were the heavens and the earth (in the beginning)
Now the earth may have been a ball of water but it was in place and I am sure spinning around on it’s axis. The water and the land masses were separated later but earth, and I assume the other planets were included in “the heavens” on that first day.
Genesis 1 is not a science course but the plain reading is that God is doing the creating and he is doing it systematically, using 1st day, 2nd day and Day and Night, evening and morning language for a purpose.
MLD, Okay, thanks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/village-church-texas-sexual-abuse-lawsuit.html
MLD.
A “literral” reading, whatever literal may mean, is extraordinarily scientific.
On day one, the story is telling you there is no planet, stars, solar system, there is no time, because there is no universe. There is also no protocal to differentiate between light and dark. This means there are no photons.
Light is information as well as energy. There is neither.
There will first need to be an established protocal by which information can distinguished. A bit of information can be 0 or 1. Its an assigned value.
That is your first step to create a rotating planet to mark of your 24 hour day. Days, not created as yet. There are a few other things needed besides a protocal.
Nathan – I don’t know about the “literal” meaning as much as the natural reading. If I handed the passage to a jr high kid, he would “naturally” come up with a 6 day creation.
If “in the beginning” is not day one, then I guess we have different starting points. My reading is that in eternity past there was nothing (in the common sense of nothing) – and in the beginning, Day 1, God create time, space and matter. Also on that 1st day God created light and separated the darkness and the light. If the earth was only water and not spinning on it’s axis, what held the water on the round planet? – not centrifugal force or gravity.
I guess the other point would be did 24 hr days begin on day 4 with a spinning earth and the sun – so days 1, 2 & 3 are of an undetermined length – but days 4, 5, 6 are literal 24 hr days?
I know we don’t know for sure – but it’s fun to discuss. My point was I was happy my church body took a stand to support what it has always confessed and not allow it self to be confused by a confused culture.
MLD,
You are taking what you learned in school about gravity and the earth (being a ball) and retrojecting your modern scientific learning back into your interpretation of Scripture. That is not the way good exegesis is conducted.
We should be asking, what does the Bible actually say and how would the original audience have heard the Bible? That doesn’t exhaust its meaning by any measure, but it’s the beginning point.
The OT does not depict the earth as a ball and does not depict it as rotating. It depicts the earth as fixed on a foundation by pillars. It depicts the sun as rotating around the earth.
When Joshua says “The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day,” a literal reading would not be that the earth stood still, but the sun.
“Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.”
“He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.”
If you look at the artwork in the Luther Bible, you will see the 3-tiered cosmos depicted in Scripture. Both Luther and (I understand) Calvin believed, based on Scripture, in geocentric cosmology.
The OT Jews had the same ANE science as their neighbors. They wouldn’t have understood a science textbook based on modern science. Thus, the Bible isn’t a science textbook. It does convey theological realities in concepts that the OT Jews could understand.
Jean,
This is funny – you are suggesting that Moses is writing Genesis 1 based on what he knew or what his community understood at the time and not on what God is revealing in the passage.
Let’s stick to early Genesis for the moment. Are you suggesting that Moses and the community had no understanding of biology, so from their cosmology he wrote that man was created from the dust of the ground and woman from man’s rib? Science says that is not possible, but God in his revelation disagrees.
Again, you execute in the realm of ‘look around’ theology and not God’s revelation.
Oh, look around, we don’t see people created from dirt – I wonder what God really mean?
“Are you suggesting that Moses and the community had no understanding of biology,”
No, they had an understanding, an ancient understanding of biology, which thought a man sowed his seed in the womb of a woman. They didn’t have an egg and sperm understanding, but a seed and ground understanding, like the seed of a plant. Thus a woman who couldn’t conceive was called barren.
So did God actually make the first man out of dirt and the first woman from his rib or is this just a story to help early folks understand a larger point?
(some old earthers teach that God took some sub human creature and when he breathed into him that is what made him man – or that evolution of man from the common ancestor was in full swing and when it reached a certain point, God declared one of them to be his Adam.)
But I will leave it there – I am sure that I hold the minority position within this group.
FWIW, I’m with you MLD.
i believe that this planet was here before God went to work on creating a habitation for man, but it was much nicer when He finished…. the age of the dirt hasn’t got much to do with it…
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Em, so God created the heavens and the earth and then got sidetracked for a billion years? I may be more like God than I give myself credit – I too have a whole bunch of unfinished projects around the house. 🙂
MLD, yes he formed Adam from the ground. I think however, it is vital to define terms. Every word becomes important. I do believe the text is scientific, but also am convinced scripture is scrubbed of key facts to constrict our understanding of the operating physics of the two Worlds.
I think there are four words used to discribe humans coming into existance. You said man came from “dirt.” One of them would be a yes, Adam was formed from material of the Earth itself. But there are also other things going on. Adam has more then just one component, and Eve’s beginning is not discribed exactly as Adam’s. Another of Adam’s natures was spiritual, and would not have been subject to the dimension of time in the same manner we are. He was listed as a son of God, and therefore immortal along with the host of Heaven
Your jr.high kid faces a major hurdle, because he needs to come to a realization the definition of time is vital to aswering the question. What is the nature of reality?
If he says time is relative, he has just crossed a counter-intuitive threshold. Mankind has only reached this position in the last century.
Two things eliminate the conflict between a YEC dating, and astro-physic’s 10Ă· billion years estimation.
1. A realization that space/time is relative.
2. A belief that the relative location of the Genesis narrator will detemine how one interprets the narrative.
Nathan, would you apply such reasoning in explaining the ‘how’ of the resurrection?
Im not sure I understand applying reasoning to the “how” of the resurrection, and what you mean by this, or if there is a specific area of question.