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Nobody in ancient times could have imagined that the earth was billions of years old, so you won't see any explicit attempts to reconcile the Genesis creation stories with an old earth. However, the early Christians did see discrepancies that made them question how literally the creation stories should be understood. Second century Christian apologist ...

The issue is not that OECs have a "weak faith," but we believe we are taking a more appropriate view of the scripture. Indeed, if the text is indeed written metaphorically (as we believe), then reading it literally is the weaker position. If you don't want to read my rather long (yet still way too short to pay true justice to this topic) answer, I suggest ...

I'm very hesitant to answer anything on this as no matter what position I take, it will incite endless debate and comments. However, I believe there is a simple answer that all sides can hold as acceptable truth. The fact is that we all have the same evidence. Whether Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Wiccan, YEC, OEC, the evidence never changes. The ...

Death through Sin The idea of "death through sin" in Romans 5:12 refers to Genesis 2:17, where God warns Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The NIV translation of Genesis 2:17 is questionable, so I'm offering four other translations, because the wording is important for understanding the passage: but of the tree of the ...

There is a idea, known as Gap Theory, that says that the first few verses of Genesis should be translated as the following: Genesis 1:1 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth [became]* 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. * ...

The reason that many would discount a literal interpretation (in the sense of a historical reading) of the books of the Bible is more to do with an acknowledgement that they weren't primarily written with intent to convey history, but to teach us something about God's relationship with us. There's a lot of literary study involved in fleshing out all the ...

There's going to be some confusion in any answer, because the strictness of interpretation of Genesis (especially 5) is precisely what divides a young earth creationist from an old earth creationist. By definition, the old earth creationist appeals to extra-biblical "evidence," and hence there cannot be a "biblical" old earth creationist stance. The YEC ...

I think that "is there Biblical evidence" is a completely different question than "do old earth Christians believe". The Bible gives no mention of human ancestors, and specifically states in the Genesis account that God created Adam and Eve rather than that they evolved from a proto-human ancestor, so the answer to "Is there Biblical Evidence" is "no". To ...

For the sake of not getting into an argument, let's assume a genesis / biblical creation, literal/YEC-style. The "trees/rings" thing is pretty much unanswerable, but fortunately we don't even need to know anything about the garden of Eden / Adam, because what we do have is the light from other stars, for which we have good confidence for the distance / ...

I'm going to say that he probably couldn't. Naturally, I admit the very real possibility of being wrong. I use Occam's Razor when it comes to determining which scenario is more likely. There are similar questions to "Did the first trees have rings (correlating to actual years of existence)?" Did Adam and Even have navels? It's impossible to say for sure, ...

For most issues in Christianity, doctrine is only clearly defined once a heresy (or disagreement) comes up which requires it. For instance, the canonization of the New Testament only happened because people started circulating their own canons which were clearly bad. Historical theologians probably did not think about the age of the Earth in specific ...

One thing to keep in mind is that the precise definition is "day" is not a 24 hour period. The precise definition of "day" is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to complete one rotation; to the Jews, a day was the time from when the sun rose to the time it set. It is interesting that, prior to creation, the bible says the "Earth was without form and ...

It takes some interpretation as well as synthesis from scientific sources but the biblical narrative roughly follows the evolutionary process. edit: Genesis 1:3-10 describe the initial stages of order coming into place. Day, night, water, land, atmosphere. Vegetation appears next in vv. 11-13. Vegetation would have been the first macro-organism on the ...

I have a detailed treatment of this subject on my website. The broad points made in that article are as follows. First, scripture is is clear that the creation in and of itself is sufficient evidence of God's existence that mankind is held eternally accountable on the basis of creation alone: 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because ...

What if the Old Earth view was the more literal view? Remember that the ancient Jews who wrote this defined a day based on the sun. When a day started or ended depended on what time the sun sets. This is much earlier in the Winter than in the Summer, for example. With that in mind, the first couple "days" don't make much sense as a 24-hour period at all, as ...

If the author (e.g., the human author) meant to be writing figuratively, or poetically, or even mythically, then in theological parlance, the figurative, poetic, mythic interpretation is the literal interpretation. In theology, it goes by authorial intent, not by high school literature course canons. E.g., St. Augustine talks about 'ages' instead of days, ...