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.
Are you quote-mining the bible…?
Jude : 3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord [b]God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
So are we to contend for:
Or are we to contend for faith in Jesus. My faith is in Jesus, not in the church, which is historically corrupt. Anyone that says that our faith should be in something other than Jesus is probably one of the certain men to watch out for in verse 4.
Why is it that I keep feeling that a YEC belief structure is more apt to cause someone to miss out on the fullness of scripture than evolution?
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There’s no mention of marriage in Genesis 1:27.
Nobody is claiming that there is a “separate” biological world. (Not even sure what that would mean.) The Bible states that HAADAM was distinguished from other creatures due to being created in the Image of God. (Defining that Imago Dei has consumed theologians for centuries and it remains much debated as to its meaning. But I don’t know of any theologian who claims that the metabolic processes are different from the rest of the biological world, involve a different brand of genetics or biochemistry.)
The passage states that HAADAM was made an Image-of-God creature—but considering the many ambiguities of the passage, I would be very careful about emphasizing what is “clearly stated.”
As to “human”, that is an English word and has been defined in a variety ways as to the early chapters of Genesis.
If you mean death among HAADAM and descendents, yes. See Romans 5.
Here again one must also consider the various semantic domains of the associated words in Hebrew, Greek, and English.
No. This is basic systematic theology I learned in seminary even when I was still an anti-evolution Young Earth Creationist.
No. (If I follow accurately what you are saying.)
The reason scientists study OOL and Common Ancestry is because of the overwhelming evidence we observed in God’s creation. And considering that Genesis also states that biological life had a beginning—that is, such life is NOT eternal and therefore must have had an origin—there is no conflict between OOL research and the book of Genesis. Genesis says that God created the biological world and science has discovered nothing to deny that claim. Indeed, science makes no claims about the existence or non-existence of deities. As to Common Ancestry, I find nothing in the Bible to deny Common Ancestry of life on planet earth.
Depending upon what you mean by “primitive”, one might say the same 100 years from now in terms of our present knowledge of sub-atomic physics, epidemiology, and astronomy. (However, I would deny that our present knowledge of genetics is as “primitive” as you claim nor will that label necessarily be at all applicable 100 years from now. Much is known about genetics presently. Some people may have a “primitive” knowledge of genetics now but I know scientists on this forum who do NOT have anything at all describable as a primitive knowledge of genetics.)
In any case, I’m not sure I know what you mean—unless you are simply resorting to the traditional Ken Ham, Ray Comfort, Kent Hovind denialism which says “The scientists who disagree with me just don’t know much. Someday they will all be proven wrong and I will be proven right!”
One needn’t go back all that many centuries to find famous Christians making the same kind of taunts against their Christian comtemporaries who dared to disagree with them by claiming that geocentrism was false. Your tactic is an old one.
Sounds like you are changing topics. Genetics and standing for His Word are very different matters. But it sounds like you are resorting to a common “creation science” tactic of warning opponents “If you disagree with me, God is going to judge you for it because my position is biblical and yours isn’t!” ’
I agree with that. Our scientific understanding of the world God created continually increases as we gather more evidence and better and better explanations are worked out in greater detail. That continual progress of better understanding the universe is why the scientists on this forum chose their careers.
[@Puck_Mendelssohn: Bingo card center square.]
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That wasn’t the point. The point is Jesus puts them together into one story, which means Genesis 1 and 2 ARE one story. Mark 10:6 matches Genesis 1:27b and Mark 10:7 matches Genesis 2:24. If we separate the stories we are denying Jesus’ words.
Absolutely there is.
Which overwhelming evidence is that? I’m learning about genetics and the evidence is overwhelmingly that there could have never been common ancestry. This is way too complex.
Then why reference kinds at all?
Am I some kind of joke?
Because without sin there should be life, which is Jesus our Savior.
And I don’t disagree with any of that. All life comes from God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t find that incompatible with the existence of death prior to sin or God’s creation of the natural laws that make evolution work.
You seem to still be following a false dichotomy that if it’s “natural” it isn’t God’s doing. That makes no sense to me, when God is the one that creates and maintains the natural world. Whatever method He used to create, it was His doing either way.
It feels like you’re trying to get me to deny Jesus or something? I mentioned earlier on that when I read Genesis, I clearly see that man sins and needs a savior. That savior is Jesus. Evolution doesn’t affect that belief for most people.
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That’s really all there is to creationism.
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Is there something terribly wrong with that? Our scientific theory of the shape of the earth and the solar system also affects how we read Scripture - as can bee seen from how heliocentrism was resisted on biblical grounds back in Copernicus’ day.
I don’t see how something like the GAE view negates this. God still instituted these norms in the creation of Adam and Eve, and communicated them to us through Scripture.
Maybe it got lost in the thread split, but I can’t see it. What major doctrine(s) is/are contradicted by evolution?
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Life is spiritual and physical together. When you deny God, you begin to die spiritual and physically. That’s why you need to be born again of the Spirit. That’s why our bodies need to be resurrected.
No, I’m not and haven’t said that at all. I agree everything natural is God’s doing.
That part doesn’t sound Biblical, and you made another statement the other day that sounded like you believe sin causes disease? Is that true?
The book of Job and Jesus both address that sin is not the cause of all disease. That was a common belief at that time, but it was not true. A righteous person can have disease (Paul and his “thorn in the flesh”!). The man born blind wasn’t born that way because anyone sinned.
Sin causes separation from God. Yes, we must be reborn (through baptism) to have access to God. But we all die physically. That just isn’t the end. We’ll be raised with new bodies.
And my theological difference here doesn’t have anything to do with evolution. My preacher would say the same thing about what you’ve said here, and he’s a die hard YEC.
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The fall into sin caused disease yes. There was no disease at the beginning of creation until the fall into sin.
Please show evidence of this.
Of course. Specific diseases aren’t evidence of sin in most cases. In a few cases they are in the Bible - mental illness in Nebuchadnezzer. And leprosy in Elijah’s servant.
Yes. And Jesus is life. So sin causes death. And our sin is paid for, so we have life again.
Where does the Bible make such a statement?
Did Escherichia coli exist before the fall? Did they ever create any problems within their hosts?
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Maybe, but certainly not O157:H7 
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You read my mind!
That would be great not having to worry about O157:H7. But I certainly hope that the vitamin K producing E. coli were plentiful—I don’t know the strain ID#s of those—and that each E.coli strain knew how to stick to its assigned role. (Of course, if evolutionary processes didn’t exist, then I suppose I shouldn’t worry about any changes over time.)
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Where does the Bible say this?
The book of Job has his friends telling him he’s sinned and that that’s why all this horrible stuff is happening to him. That was false.
John 9:1-3:
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
The blind man was not blind because of anyone’s sin.
I agree that some disease can be caused by sin, but I don’t know of anywhere that says that all our even most disease is caused by sin.
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