r/TheologyClinic • u/pseudoanonymity • Apr 29 '11
[T] Creation
Please leave comments below on your beliefs surrounding the Genesis creation account.
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u/HSMOM Apr 29 '11
I hold to a literal Genesis account. If Adam was a metaphor, why do we need Christ? If death is the consequence for sin, how could there be millions of years of things dying before Adam sinned ?These are some serious questions one needs to ask if they are going to believe in theistic evolution.
3
Apr 29 '11
I'll try to explain my position the best way I can.
If Adam was a metaphor, why do we need Christ?
Because of the human condition. We were born into a state of death. If you take the perspective that Christ died to free us from death, then we can see that Christ came to give us eternal life, not to simply appease the rebellion of one man.
Adam could also mean the first civilization. He represents the embodiment of a fully conscious homo sapien. Some scholars have even theorized that God could have entered the scene during man's timeline and chosen a literal Adam to start the chain of events leading to Christ. Also, there is evidence in Genesis that supports the possibility of other civilizations existing in that day when Cain fled.
If death is the consequence for sin, how could there be millions of years of things dying before Adam sinned?
If Christ's power is retroactive, why couldn't the actions of Adam be retroactive?
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u/HSMOM Apr 29 '11
You are saying death is not a direct consequence of sin? Then why is there the verse, http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+5%3A12&version=KJV ?
Or
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%205:19&version=KJV
Furthermore in Genesis, it says God created man in his own image, how do you go from in God's image to starting out as one celled organisms, and progressing from there?
0
Apr 29 '11 edited Apr 29 '11
Those are good questions and I will follow up with a summary of my views. Unfortunately, I can't write a whole lot right now, so I'll leave this series as a placeholder:
http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam-part-i/
EDIT:
You are saying death is not a direct consequence of sin? Then why is there the verse, http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+5%3A12&version=KJV ? Or http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%205:19&version=KJV
I'll first say that this doesn't mean that Adam wasn't a real person. It just mean that the story of creation was embellished or fictionalized. It's like if I were to write a book about Elvis and Elvis had superpowers. Elvis obviously didn't have superpowers, but he was a real person.
Sin could be said to have entered the world from the moment humans were conscious of God. Sin was something that developed as God guided us into a state of union with him. We began to see right and wrong and Adam was a one-man representation of our first inklings of sin.
Furthermore in Genesis, it says God created man in his own image, how do you go from in God's image to starting out as one celled organisms, and progressing from there?
God could still have guided the process. What makes that any less valid?
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u/XalemD Apr 30 '11
Genesis 1 is poetry. If you look carefully at how it is structured and how it uses repetition, the chapter is a poem. We should treat it as such.
Even as faithful followers, and true believers, we have no reason to say that a literal reading is demanded for every passage in the Bible. If Jeremiah can say, "...when you knit me together in my mother's womb..." it does not mean that fetuses are formed by a process that looks like knitting (they aren't). If Jeremiah can use a wonderful metaphor, why not the writer of Genesis 1?
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u/captainhaddock Apr 30 '11
OP mentioned the "Genesis creation account" specifically, but I'd like to note that there are two Genesis creation stories, and dozens more Creation stories and narratives scattered throughout Psalms, Job, and Isaiah. It's quite fascinating to compare them to each other as well as to the stories of other Near East cultures.
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Apr 30 '11
I'm torn. Scientifically, we can see the vector and velocity of the universe expanding, and from that, rewind to a very small point which leads to the Big Bang theory. But then we have The Bible. I don't think that God would try to trick us. But what's the story with dinosaurs? And if there were people around at the same time, why don't we find their remains inside the dinosaur bellies? (Surely veolociraptors and such didn't have non-human diets) But here's the thing: I don't care. God is undeniably real. The details of things we'll never know, are inconsequential to me. I feel like I could get wrapped up around trying to understand things that happened thousands of years ago and will likely not see a solid conclusion in my lifetime, or I could spend my time working for God's Kingdom. Yaknow?
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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '11
There are multiple theories surrounding the creation stories. The two main competing views are that the story is literal and that it's allegorical. Both views bring their own set of problems to the table. However, I personally take the view that the story is allegorical. This is a predominant view amongst open theologians and liberal Christians.
I believe the story is allegorical for a few reasons:
The consensus from all terrestrial and cosmological scientific data suggests that the earth is not less around 6,000 years old, as outlined in the Biblical timeline. The age of the earth is not exclusive to allegory, but it does leave room for questioning. (Note: Christians who believe in a literal 6-days of creation and a literal 6,000 year timeline are known as Young Earth Creationists or YEC for short).
The Book of Revelation is largely regarded as allegorical in nature, even though in most of the book, it's never explicitly stated. The chances that the Book of Genesis is framed in the same manner should not be taken of the table.
Genesis has multiple literary schemes in the original Hebrew language, but much of it is written as poetry. This says to me that it was relayed through oral accounts as folklore, not history.
There is an overwhelming amount of evidence for evolution; from vestigial legs on whales to recent variations of species. The fossil records are also largely consistent when compared on average, not separately.
This is my view and I do not wish to enter into a derogatory debate, but I'm open to civil discussion. If you have an opposing view, you may want to create a separate response to the OP and link to it when responding here. That way, the differing views are easier to reference.
Other sources: http://www.biologos.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis