A Telling in Six Ordinary Days

[Philosurfer (Daniel Deen)]

@swamidass

I’m not sure…I think there is compelling reason in a plain reading to recognize off the bat that this is a telling , from the ordinary perception of an observer.

I don’t think I’m disagreeing with this. In fact, I mentioned that it is a telling NOT from an eyewitness to the events. I can theoretically or, perhaps, philosophically make the double referent argument you suggested. However, as I’m reading some of the early Lutheran theologians, they seem to be saying something more akin to @deuteroKJ – why?

Now –

@swamidass

I think it will be exceedingly helpful in @Philosurfer’s context, and for many in the AIG camp.

– perhaps as a way to rhetorically get a conversation going and dislodge preconceptions about old earth, day age theories, or whatever in my particular scenario it may be helpful. It may be really helpful if I can start to grasp what “my” early theologians meant by discussing the days of genesis mainly in a homiletic context – which, I think relates to this,

@swamidass

I’m asking a different question. I’m not saying the passage is teaching day-age or that God was intending to communicate this. Rather, I am saying the author was intending to communicate his perception of a telling, that he knew it was a telling, and expected his audience to know it was a telling too.

If that is the case, we can ask ( theologically not hermeneutically) why God might have done a telling this way?

the theology that follows will always be debatable and under-determined by the text.

@swamidass

A six ordinary telling is also a really long telling, but also within the range of ordinary perception . He couldn’t tell the story in years or ages without losing the observer’s attention. So it makes sense, even, that these are six-ordinary days.

This comes to suggest (though not quite teach) that this was a really long period of time over which God created everything, because a six day telling is a very long telling.

I’ll run it by a theologian or two tomorrow to see what they say!

@swamidass

I’d say Genesis is teaching us of our origins …How we got here, which instructs us in who we are and who is God. Origins can be described from multiple points of view (including scientific and historical). I’d say Genesis 1 was given to be understood through the ages, both in the original context and into our time. There is a timeless quality to it, which is why I resist mapping it too closely to scientific claims (which are bound to our moment).

This seems exactly right to me.