YEC and Historical-Grammatical Interpretation

It is true in practice if not in theory.

I mean, it depends on whether you’re talking about the sort of person who would even care about inerrancy. Otherwise, the idea of attributing divine intent to the whole corpus of Christian religious text isn’t particularly meaningful. But if you’re in the group of people who says, “God had an intent in providing the Bible, and his/her intent was _____” then it becomes an important question.

For that group, I think the most workable solution is to say, as I said above, that God intended the Bible to communicate theological truths, and not to specifically teach or affirm particular propositional truths about science or history, despite certainly touching on real history at many points.

Outside of a theistic framework, I think we can say that the intent of the human authors was clearly to do the things you described, which is one reason why the fundamentalist view of inerrancy is so obviously wrong.

That’s exactly what I meant. It really isn’t possible to assign any single intent to the Bible outside of someone’s religious faith in some meaning to the Bible.

It isn’t possible to assign any single intent to anything. Most things are done with multiple intents, especially when multiple people are involved. In the case of Scripture, Scripture itself is explicit in stating multiple intents about the same passages. No serious scholar would purport to claim there is a single intent to all of Scripture.

Rather, the idea is that there is overarching meta-narrative that coherently holds the individual stories together. This does not claim a single intent to Scripture, but precisely the opposite, that there is a plurality and multi-valence of intent to Scripture.

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Also Josh to be clear by saying there is no single intent to the Bible I’m also saying the Bible legitimately means different things to different people so that there is really no single unambiguous interpretation of the Bible either, even for people of faith.

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I don’t see that anymore than I do any single intent to the Bible.

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How do you interpret Genesis 2:2,3.

Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Did God rest on the 7th day and then get back to his work of creation from the 8th?

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Ben, how do you deal with the prophecies about Jesus in the OT based on the above outlook?
As far as i can see, there was very little chance that Isaiah’s contemporaries understood Isaiah 7:14 as having to do with the Messiah.
Yet the bible tells us that the Holy Spirit had Jesus in mind when this prophecy was made.
Is this miscommunication?

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First of all, nobody that I know of, AiG included, argues that YEC is essential doctrine. Secondly, there was no debate over the approximate age of the earth in Augustine’s time. Why would they devote time to arguing over something which was not in dispute?

Thirdly, you have given away the store. Yes, exactly. Augustine and others understood the earth to be as old as the historical record of Genesis said it was because that’s all they had available. They weren’t trying to reconcile Genesis with other sources of information. And that means their interpretation of the text should be more authoritative than those who are highly motivated to corrupt it with outside information. As I recall, that’s called eisegesis.

You mean Bishop Ussher’s standards, who was 17th century btw. I can’t figure you guys sometimes. Sometimes you claim YEC is a recent thing only, and other times you don’t. YECs today don’t argue that there is some exact date of creation that we can know exactly and with 100% certainty. I also think it’s hilarious six days difference is more important to you than 14 billion years.

Let me quote AiG’s statement of faith:

The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of creation.

Creation Ministries International has a similar belief statement with almost exactly the same wording.

By these standards, Augustine would not be able to get a job at AiG as a resident theologian.

Nobody was arguing that. But most YECs seem to believe that creation occurred in six 24-hour days. Isn’t that the point of arguing so much about the word yom?

The point is that Augustine was open to a figurative interpretation of the days of creation even in the absence of scientific evidence against a young earth at the time.

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Hahahaha!!!

Of course they do.

If you believe AiG’s insistence that they do not teach YEC as essential doctrine, I have a bridge to sell you.

The fact that you think this is “giving way the store” is telling.

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Jason Lisle on this:

“This is very poor reasoning. Consider this argument: “Last week I worked every day, Monday through Saturday. On Sunday I rested. And today I’m still resting. Therefore, today must be Sunday!” Is such reasoning cogent? Of course not. My rest can continue after the day ends. God has been resting from His work of creation since He finished precisely because He was finished (Genesis 2:2-3).”

Isaiah is a different genre than Genesis. Poetry and prophetic literature are expected to contain things like this. Historical narrative is blandly descriptive of what happened. See for example Stephen Boyd’s look at determining poetry versus historical narrative. Or you can just turn to Judges 4 and 5 to see for yourself an example of the same event told in narrative versus poetry. Genesis is narrative. Most of Isaiah is poetry.

So? AiG doesn’t get to define who counts as YEC or not. HINT: It’s in the name.

And my point is that Augustine was not open to even historical evidence contradicting the Genesis chronology, regardless of what he transiently thought about the days of Genesis 1. If you look into the context of the quote I gave you, Augustine was arguing against a much older chronology, perhaps even the Sumerian king’s list. That means he accepted that Adam was created at the beginning of creation, which is stated in the New Testament by Jesus, and that regardless of Genesis 1, Genesis 5 begins with creation of the first man and everything else. Genesis 1 could not even exist and Augustine would still be a YEC.

I will require evidence of this, considering that they always explain exactly what they believe.

“Scripture plainly teaches that salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ, with no requirement for what one believes about the age of the earth or universe. Even though it is not a salvation issue, the belief that earth history spans millions of years has very severe consequences.”

In other words, YEC is not essential to the faith, it just has consequences. And also notice that there is no mention of six 24 hr days in their basic definition of YEC.

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How many self-identified YECs would interpret Genesis 1 in the same way as Augustine? How about you?

Sure, but I can understand it from his point of view. He was faced with several different chronologies, one considered sacred (Genesis) and two others from pagan nations (Greek and Egyptian). Emphasis mine:

They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed. And, not to spend many words in exposing the baselessness of these documents, in which so many thousands of years are accounted for, nor in proving that their authorities are totally inadequate, let me cite only that letter which Alexander the Great wrote to his mother Olympias, giving her the narrative he had from an Egyptian priest, which he had extracted from their sacred archives, and which gave an account of kingdoms mentioned also by the Greek historians. In this letter of Alexander’s a term of upwards of 5000 years is assigned to the kingdom of Assyria; while in the Greek history only 1300 years are reckoned from the reign of Bel himself, whom both Greek and Egyptian agree in counting the first king of Assyria. Then to the empire of the Persians and Macedonians this Egyptian assigned more than 8000 years, counting to the time of Alexander, to whom he was speaking; while among the Greeks, 485 years are assigned to the Macedonians down to the death of Alexander, and to the Persians 233 years, reckoning to the termination of his conquests. Thus these give a much smaller number of years than the Egyptians; and indeed, though multiplied three times, the Greek chronology would still be shorter. For the Egyptians are said to have formerly reckoned only four months to their year; so that one year, according to the fuller and truer computation now in use among them as well as among ourselves, would comprehend three of their old years. But not even thus, as I said, does the Greek history correspond with the Egyptian in its chronology. And therefore the former must receive the greater credit, because it does not exceed the true account of the duration of the world as it is given by our documents, which are truly sacred. Further, if this letter of Alexander, which has become so famous, differs widely in this matter of chronology from the probable credible account, how much less can we believe these documents which, though full of fabulous and fictitious antiquities, they would fain oppose to the authority of our well-known and divine books, which predicted that the whole world would believe them, and which the whole world accordingly has believed; which proved, too, that it had truly narrated past events by its prediction of future events, which have so exactly come to pass!

Augustine noted that the Greek and Egyptian chronologies differed from each other and that the former was closer to that of Genesis. Even this Egyptian chronology was taken from a letter written by Alexander based on a narrative from an Egyptian priest - basically a second-hand source. Faced with these contradictions and uncertain provenance of these alternative chronologies, I am not surprised that he thought he did not have a strong basis to question the Christian chronology.

I would be interested in what he would say if faced with the evidence we had today - multiple independent lines of scientific evidence agreeing that the Earth is old (some of which is evidence collected and affirmed by Christian scientists) and not just second-hand narratives of uncertain provenance. After all, Augustine did disapprove of the Manicheans who spoke embarrassing nonsense about astronomy and other scientific matters (even by the standards of the time).

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Yeah everyone always brings up that other Augustine quote. The problem with that is views on science have changed since then. Today, scientists insist that they can determine what happened in the past from observing things today, and that this method is superior to consulting historical records. You can claim all you want about would’ve, should’ve, could’ve. I can claim Augustine would have accepted historical evidence over scientific evidence when reviewing historical claims.

But he wasn’t open to the earth being other than young. Instant creation a few thousand years ago vs. 6-day creation a few thousand years ago isn’t the issue. It’s the “few thousand years ago” that’s the issue.

Is there any major YEC proponent today who holds to Augustine’s view? Instantaneous creation several thousand years ago?

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This is just patently false. Did you know that @BenKissling? Do you care to know?

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Consulting historical records is observing things today. Those historical records are things that are being observed now.