They can insist until they are blue in the face that they do not consider YEC to be a doctrinal essential, but actions speak louder than words.
2 Likes
Not to my knowledge. Why?
Why do you think there arenât any YECs who hold to his view?
Dunno. Why? Please come to some sort of point as soon as possible. The Socratic method often seems passive-aggressive.
My point is that whatever Augustine is, he wasnât a YEC. He would not be able to get a job at AIG. He wasnât an OEC either. He would probably not be able to get a job at RTB. Of course heâs not a TE/EC either. But the point is that the existence of Augustine and his views on Genesis 1 way before the advent of evolution or modern geology suffices to prove that:
- The YEC interpretation of Genesis 1 has not been held unanimously throughout history. It is not part of dogma.
- There are reasons independent of external modern scientific pressures to adopt a figurative interpretation of the six days of creation in Genesis 1, even if we donât necessarily agree with Augustine 100% (e.g. regarding the overall age of the universe).
To go back to the last question I asked, the reason why most YECs donât hold to Augustineâs view is that their hermeneutics doesnât allow a figurative interpretation of Genesis 1. Therefore, any claim that YEC hermeneutics is part of Christian dogma or a marker of orthodoxy is wrong.
(Letâs put aside for a moment as to whether any of these hermeneutics are properly considered âhistorical-grammaticalâ. That term seems to be more of a later concept used most by modern evangelicals. We donât see that term pop up as much in discussions of historical orthodoxy and dogma.)
Now, granted, as far as I know Augustine did not argue for a figurative interpretation of the genealogies of Genesis 5 and other parts of Scripture that are sometimes cited to support a young earth. So the existence of Augustine doesnât automatically mean that OEC and TE/EC hermeneutics are acceptable. But Augustine does open the way for something other than YEC hermeneutics.
1 Like
I think youâre making a stand on definitions, and I donât like your definition. I would define a YEC as somebody who thinks the world, life, and the universe are only a few thousand years old. Some flavors of creationist think that involves creation in 6 24-hour days. But there are other flavors.
Just because Augustineâs particular flavor has no living representatives (so far as we know), that doesnât mean he isnât a YEC. It just means he isnât an AiG-style YEC. Whether YEC was ever a universal belief is not relevant. Whether creation took 6 days is not relevant. Whether itâs part of dogma or a marker of orthodoxy is irrelevant.
YEC is a modern term describing a modern phenomenon occurring in a modern context. Itâs not just an abstract classification. And Augustine is not a YEC according to most definitions of YEC. Just like a Last Thursdayist who thinks that the whole universe is a simulation by aliens created last Thursday is not a YEC either.
Iâm going to guess that youâre just going to insist on the literal meaning of the word âYECâ. But language doesnât work that way. When we say âYECâ today, we think of Ken Ham and AIG.
1 Like
Then by definition, nobody much more than a hundred years ago could possibly be a YEC. I find that definition bizarre and see no point in arguing further. We mean different things by the term, and thatâs all this is.
1 Like
If it wasnât clear, that was the point that I was arguing for (not just assuming or defining), and I think @David_MacMillan as well: the modern YEC movement cannot claim to be the sole heirs of traditional hermeneutics.
1 Like
âŚand the current YEC movement includes by definition the only YECs, ever.
By definition, John, the current YEC movement includes only YECs living today. Thatâs a tautology.
Now youâre dicing words. You know what I meant. I used the word âcurrentâ as a substitute for âmodernâ, which if I recall was your word. By definition (your definition), no YECs can have existed who were not part of the modern YEC movement, right? There can by definition have been no YECs in â what? â the 19th Century? The 18th? Certainly not any earlier. Is that correct?
1 Like
@David_MacMillan knows more about this than I do, but Ronald Numbers argued pretty convincingly in The Creationists that the true pioneer of the modern YEC movement was Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price in the late 19th century.
Modern YECs like to argue that most theologians before modern science believed in a young earth. Thatâs probably true, but that doesnât prove the contention that the modern YEC hermeneutic is correct. Even if they believed in a young earth, they didnât always hold to the YEC hermeneutic regarding Genesis 1.
1 Like
That seems reasonable enough. So by definition, nobody before Price could have been a YEC. Is that correct?
So? Itâs probably the genealogies that would be the main biblical âevidenceâ. Certainly thatâs how Ussher worked it out.
2 Likes
your main argument was as below -
You are ok with Isaiah and his contemprories not understanding Godâs message about the messiah in Isaiah 7:14. But you are not ok with the same in Genesis and moses.
The prophecy in Isaiah is about something that would happen thousands of years later⌠And the portion in Genesis is about something that happened long long ago (atleast several thousands of years before Mosesâ time even according to AIG).
Why is it impossible for Moses and his contemprories to not understand everything, while its ok for Isaiah and his contemprories to miss out on the main message.
This seems to be double standards.
Besides, Genesis 1 is not a narrative. Its poetic.
This is not what the text is teaching. Its showing an example from Godâs action.
God rested on the 7th day, not from the 7th day.
There is further emphasis on this because its an example for the israelites to follow. Rest on the 7th day, i.e the Sabath, and go back to work from the 8th.
If God was resting on the 7th,8th, and upto several thousand days continuously, it doesnât work as an example for Sabath.
We also know from the bible that God is still resting.
So, the best understanding from the text is that we are still in the seventh day.
Why is everyone assuming that Augustine would have believed exactly as he did then if he lived today?
Genesis 5 begins with the creation of the first man and doesnât mention anything else, let alone state that Adam was created at the same time as everything else.
The three step method for refuting creationists doesnât just apply to scientific texts.
People are concentrating on Augustine as an example of someone who believed in a young earth (why wouldnât he?) and yet was not a YEC. (@dga471 is, IMO, correct. Usage is king and todayâs usage is that YEC == somewhere in the neighborhood of Ken Ham.)
Augustine wasnât the only âchurch fatherâ (if you can call him that) who was not a YEC. YECs generally interpret Godâs warning âon that day (that you eat from the forbidden tree) you will surly dieâ as meaning something like on that day you will begin the process of dying. The problem being that Adam breathed for another 900+ years. But in the early church famous figures solved this problem differently, with a millennial day solution. For example Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) wrote:
For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years [Gen. 5:5]. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression âThe day of the Lord is a thousand yearsâ [Ps. 90:4] is connected with this subject" (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 81 [A.D. 155]).
What Justin is saying, is that a solution to the Adam-did-not-die-as-God-promised problem is to take âdayâ in Gen. 2:17 to mean a thousand years, a la Ps. 90:4 and 2 Pet 3:8.
So he was a young earth creationist, I suppose, but definitely not a YEC. Others had, at least at times, similar non-literal views of Genesis days, including Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.
5 Likes
Yes, youâre absolutely right. Price formalized the teachings of SDA founder E.G. White â although this was more early 20th than late 19th â into what would become flood geology. Before him, the idea of rock strata being deposited by Noahâs Flood was really just not a thing. Morris and Whitcomb pretty much just took Priceâs writings and repackaged them in a format convenient for evangelicals.
4 Likes
That, however, is not a requirement for being a YEC. In fact Iâve commonly heard another explanation/excuse: that the death referred to is spiritual death rather than physical. And Iâd say that anyone who thinks that the days of creation were each a thousand years long is still a YEC. Sorry.
Of course it was. The early Neptunists were inspired by Noahâs Flood. Fossils dug out of rock strata were commonly believed to have died in the Flood â for an explicit statement, look up âHomo diluvii testisâ.
1 Like