Evolution and missing out on the fullness of scripture

I was a Christian at that time.

Not really. But some of it is. I never took the story of Jonah as literal. I suspected that the book of Job was a morality play rather than an actual report.

Psalms are “literally” sacred songs and poetry, and in that sense are not meant to be taken literally. I mentioned in another post that I read “waters above the mountains” in reference to clouds, and the psalm in general addressing the constant regeneration of nature, not creation…nor a flood.

And I can start a list of why his list would be a very limited Christian view.

Evolution and Christianity are not at odds. Creationism is not Christianity, though a portion of Christians are the ones that press it. Evolution and Creationism are at odds for sure, but Christianity does not require one to hold on to creationism in any scriptural sense other than that God is the Creator of all, including the process of evolution.

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Less than you may think if you do not include the popular version of Evolution.

There is no reason to fight over these issues. It should be obvious that sincere Christians can disagree (which suggests to me they aren’t all that important). If a Christian’s ability to enjoy another Christian is impacted by their few of how God created the world, I’d suggest their Christian priorities are out of line.

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There is every reason to “fight” over these issues. The implications have huge ramifications how we read scripture, view life and death, etc. Should the church not have cared about the doctrine of the Trinity, or the person of Christ? To me, this is not a trivial issue. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy one another’s fellowship, but it does mean we should work towards truth.

Mark put it well:

Your idea of the Christian God seems more like my idea of Zeus.

Are you saying that this only applies to Jews? That’s there’s no lesson in this for you, today?

Is this “your” referring to me? Please show from the Bible and Greek mythology how my idea of God (whatever you think that may be) is more like Zeus than like the Bible.

No, and no. All of scripture is profitable for reproof and correction.

It is. You are misrepresenting what I wrote. I will not respond to your blatant straw-man fallacy.

So why didn’t you answer my question?

What lesson is there for YOU?

I would disagree. I think how we read scripture may impact on what we believe about how God could have created the world. But our view on the science of evolution should not change how we read scripture.

I guess we have to each decide what are core truths for our faith, and what are secondary issues. I would view how God created the world as a secondary issue that has minimal impact on my faith.

I think your comments point to something however. I do thing how we read and interpret scripture will impact on whether we accept evolution. Our focus therefore as Christian’s should be on discussing and seeking truth in how to understand scripture, and not focus our energy on “fighting” over secondary issues like how God created the world.

I think of the best things a Christian can do is take one of the free online courses on hermeneutics. It really helps you understand how and why you read/interpret the scriptures the way you do, and if that is an appropriate way to interpret that particular passage.

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My church teaches YEC. I’ve discussed the issue with multiple elders there. One thing we all agreed on was that my acceptance of old earth and evolution was not a reason to disfellowship (and my church does practice church discipline). You see, in our discussions, we found that we all got the same theological ideas from the text, even though our ideas of how it happened exactly were different. My acceptance of old earth and evolution didn’t affect any major doctrine, nor did it affect our ideas of the work and worship of the church or how to become a Christian or any of that.

So no, a “fight” is not necessary at all. That “fight” is what drives Christians away from the faith. Please, stop fighting.

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But there’s plenty of evidence on the forum that people read Scripture a different way because of their views that evolution is a correct origins theory.

It isn’t about how God created the world - it’s about what norms were instituted at the creation of the world - life, marriage, the image of God and the equality between the sexes, along Eve being created of Adam and them being one flesh as Adam and Adam being part of Adamah as the head and pinnacle of this creation.

See above why it does.

You are entitled to your opinion but that does not mean it is the only one and that does not mean it is right. If you were to come to my church and express your evolutionary views, well, it would be a totally different outcome.

Contrary to your statement about “not fighting”, I am persuaded that original and pure doctrine in the church be fought for. How about the book of Jude where we are supposed to

“earnestly contend for the faith delivered one-time (once and for all) to the saints”?

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I’ll be sure to stay away from your church then. :slight_smile:

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I don’t differ on any of those topics from my YEC brethren at church.

What would be the outcome?

Why shouldn’t you allow experience to help guide you in interpretation? If there are multiple ways to interpret something, why not look elsewhere to help clear things up?

OK. What view do you hold? Evolution + GAE or other?

How did God institute marriage at the beginning of creating male and female in your view?

How is life a creation norm if there is death before the fall into sin?

Just briefly passing through but I’ll add my own contributions to this discussion:

By instituting and blessing the coming together of HAADAM and HAWWAH in Genesis 3.

The Bible says that death among Image-of-God humans was NOT the norm before the fall. The Apostle Paul emphasizes that fact in his Epistle to the Romans.

Of course, death was part of the cycle of life in the biological world in general before the fall. No scripture says otherwise. And that’s why Adam and Eve lived in a garden which provided an antidote against their own death: the fruit of the Tree of Life. Once they sinned, they were barred from continued access to that death-defying fruit. Loss of access to the antidote for death meant that they fell into the same life-and-death cycle of life that had always existed for the rest of the earth’s biosphere.

No antidote for death would have been necessary if the metabolic processes of death were non-existent before the fall.

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I’m not GAE really, but I do think Adam and Eve were called by God. While they could have been specially created, I doubt they were. Genesis 2-3 has a lot of figurative sounding language, so I think it’s talking about a real event but not meant to be taken literally.

Adam and Eve would be the first marriage (union instituted by God). I don’t think they were physically one person, but they were one flesh in the same way my husband and I are one flesh.

I don’t really understand this question, and I’ve never heard anyone at my church talk about it that way. Though the YEC’s at my church think there was no death before sin (and no rain before the flood).

When God tells Adam and Eve that they will die in the day that they eat of the fruit, I think He was talking about spiritual death. They didn’t physically die that day, but they were removed from God’s presence, so that was a spiritual death. You could also say they physically died in the sense that they lost access to the tree of everlasting life. If they had not sinned, they would not have physically died, because they would have had access to the tree.

I suspect there’s symbolism going on with the trees and such. All sin like Adam and Eve did, but we have access to eternal life through Jesus.

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Jesus here, in Matthew 19:

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

Mark 10

But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,[a] 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Refers to
Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:24

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

These together make up one story that Jesus uses to define marriage.

It doesn’t have to, because there is no separate biological world. The passages clearly state Adam is the first human. The passages clearly state that death reigned after sin.

The only reason you have to come up with explanations is because OoL and common ancestry exist in the sciences. But in 100 years our current understanding of genetics will look primitive but we’ll already be answering to God why we didn’t stand for His Word when it’s obvious throughout history science ALWAYS changes.