Why does God need more than 24 hours?

Why does God go out of His way to be so blatantly deceptive about the 24 hours?

Why does God go out of His way to show He creates with age and maturity already built in?

(07-08-2024 07:29 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  The issue with "federal headship" is that its not an explicit biblical truth. Romans 5 does not say that Adam was the representative of the human race, only that “by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man” (Romans 5:17). God never says exactly how the transference of the sin nature occurred, only that it did occur.

I would agree with the first part of this. The term 'is' invented by scholars to try and understand how we are "in Adam". But, this goes both ways. Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 do not specify that to be "in Christ" or "in Adam" is a heritable condition either.

In your post you use the phrases: "sin was inherited by all of us through him", "All of us are sons of Adam", and "a sin nature that we inherited from Adam". But review these passages and you will see no mention of inheritance or biology; these are your terms which you are adding to scripture. Certainly we understand that being "in Christ" does not mean we are Jesus's biological heirs; by analogy, this is not what Paul means when he says we are "in Adam" (though perhaps we can conclude from non-Pauline facts that all humanity is 'also' biologically descendant from Adam).

It is an ancient Christian notion that came to prominence with St. Augustine who taught that Adam's guilt was transmitted via sexual intercourse. Augustine's specific belief has perhaps been refuted by the existence of thousands of IVF-conceived individuals who are just as sinful as the rest of us.

Paul's discussion of being governed by the flesh vs. the spirit in Chapter 8 helps illuminate his understanding of the human condition and what he meant in Chapter 5. Governed by the flesh is our default condition. Adam and Eve too were governed by the flesh, seeing and taking what was pleasing to the eye (Romans 8:5). They did not take on flesh 'after' their sin; that is how they were created. Their flesh is what gave them the propensity to sin in the first place.

In Romans 5, Paul is not describing a propensity to sin or a sin nature as that which is transmitted. It is Adam's punishment (death) or guilt (condemnation) which is transmitted. Paul repeats this 6 times in Romans 5:12-19. To read this as transmission of sin or a sin nature is to errantly read Augustine's conclusion into the text.

(07-14-2024 03:41 AM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(07-14-2024 01:40 AM)Crayton Wrote:  Agree 100%. Not everything is an eye-witness account or a scientific treatise. There are parables and poetry and (arguably) outright fiction. The inspired authors used all tools at their disposal to shepherd God’s people.

I’m not yet sold on “Allegory” for Genesis 1. In an allegory, story elements correspond to real life facts. A “day”, for example, could correspond to a longer period of real time even if, in-story, it is 24 hours.

But I think the original audience saw the 6 days of creation as an etiology for their own work week, itself derived from earlier pagan traditions. This renders Genesis as a bit of a polemic, against pagan traditions and placing the one, true God in control of the cosmos.

John Walton disagrees with Genesis as a polemic, but has written the best book I’ve read disentangling the original context of Genesis from our modern presumptions of Genesis being an eye-witness account.

Its not a "modern" take that Genesis is a first hand account by God. Both the OT and NT say time and time again all scripture is God breathed and these are the Words of God, not man made. The NT says Jesus was there and is the Creator, and He said repeatedly that God made the earth in 6 days, and that man was there from the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning. In John chapter 5 Jesus says "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

Its also a fact that God Himself wrote "six days" by His own hand on the two tablets of stone. (Ex 20:11, Deut 9:10)

If the starting point is "this isn't really God's account, this isn't really authored by God", then its pretty much whatever you personally wish it to be. Therefore your going to have a hundred different "views" that all contradict each other and really make all of it pretty meaningless.

If its not Gods Word its pretty much worthless. Its just one of a gazillion other man made fantasies. So who cares what it says?

If Genesis 1-11 is not literal, then how can we argue the Gospel is literal? There is no Gospel without a literal Genesis 1-11. The entire foundation of Christ being able to save us by His death and resurrection is based on a literal Genesis 1-11. If parts of Genesis 1-11 are fiction, then who is to argue the Gospel is not fiction? How can it be Gods Word, but its also full of man made fiction? How does that make sense? How does God have the ability to speak the entire universe into existence, yet He lacks to ability to keep deeply embedded man made fiction out of His own eternal Word?

How does a person make that make sense?

Remember its God who promises over and over and over again throughout the Bible that He would preserve His Word and we would have it even into the last days and all eternity? So do we make God a liar? 24 literal hours is not necessary for salvation, but for most people its NEVER just the 24 hours, its that ++++ that is not literal or is fiction added in.

The Bible is not a buffet, yet that is how many people want to look at it. Take the parts they like, discard the parts they don't like.

How do I know Hunger Games is fiction and Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir? Am I picking and choosing based on what I 'want' to be true? No. Am I judging the content based on my own perceived sense of reality? Maybe; the Hunger Games is rather fantastical. But, more than that, there are clear differences in how the material of each of these books is presented. The rhetorical devices indicate to me how the author wants me to understand the facts presented.

The same is true for any authored work. The different books of the Bible all use different methods of conveying truth. Some, like the Pauline epistles, are familiar to us. Others, like the apocalyptic literature of Daniel and John are more obtuse without training.

Is Genesis 1-11 Allegory? You are correct, I cannot say "Yes" or "No" based on what I 'want' to be true. At the same time, it is not automatically allegory based on how a third party interprets it, whether that is some heretical preacher or Jesus of Nazareth.

Whether a passage is allegorical depends upon whether the author intended to communicate to his original audience through allegory. Literary analysis often helps us modern interpreters answer questions like this, though older scriptures often have less cultural context to inform that answer.

The early church fathers commonly interpreted these passages as allegorical, but this is that same "third party" logical flaw. "Allegory" is a rather Greek method of communication and likely was not at work in the composition of Genesis 1-11.

Neither the Old or New Testament describe the text of Genesis as an eye-witness account. Though both do affirm the events as real. God 'did' stretch out the heavens (repeated many times in the old testament) and all things 'were' created via God's Word (the opening of John).

(07-16-2024 07:48 PM)Crayton Wrote:  How do I know Hunger Games is fiction and Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir? Am I picking and choosing based on what I 'want' to be true? No. Am I judging the content based on my own perceived sense of reality? Maybe; the Hunger Games is rather fantastical. But, more than that, there are clear differences in how the material of each of these books is presented. The rhetorical devices indicate to me how the author wants me to understand the facts presented.

The same is true for any authored work. The different books of the Bible all use different methods of conveying truth. Some, like the Pauline epistles, are familiar to us. Others, like the apocalyptic literature of Daniel and John are more obtuse without training.

Is Genesis 1-11 Allegory? You are correct, I cannot say "Yes" or "No" based on what I 'want' to be true. At the same time, it is not automatically allegory based on how a third party interprets it, whether that is some heretical preacher or Jesus of Nazareth.

Whether a passage is allegorical depends upon whether the author intended to communicate to his original audience through allegory. Literary analysis often helps us modern interpreters answer questions like this, though older scriptures often have less cultural context to inform that answer.

The early church fathers commonly interpreted these passages as allegorical, but this is that same "third party" logical flaw. "Allegory" is a rather Greek method of communication and likely was not at work in the composition of Genesis 1-11.

Neither the Old or New Testament describe the text of Genesis as an eye-witness account. Though both do affirm the events as real. God 'did' stretch out the heavens (repeated many times in the old testament) and all things 'were' created via God's Word (the opening of John).

NO, the church fathers of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century did NOT interpret these things as allegory. that is just demonstratively false. They were nearly universal in a literal interpretation, these were the men taught directly by the Apostles and their immediate disciples.

The highly allegorical approach began to creep in with the latter 3rd and 4th centuries with the Gnostics, Origen and Augustine and others. This was a big shift from the first few centuries of the church and how Christ and the Apostles spoke of these things in the NT.

You say its not written as an eye witness account but God wrote of the 6 days with his own hand on the tablets of stone. If God is writing it with his own finger its just insanity to then argue its not a first hand account.

Furthermore Genesis 1-11 is not a prophetic narrative so its a big fallacy to try and compare it to prophetic books of the Bible. But even if you did this is still a terrible argument. Lets just look at the countless prophecies of Jesus first coming. Even those that would at first glace appear to be allegorical or metaphorical they ended up have incredibly hyper literal fulfillments.

Jesus was born of a LITERAL Virgin, of the LITERAL house of DAVID, LITERALLY born in the town of Bethlehem. LITERALLY lived in Galilee, LITERALLY fled to Egypt as child, LITERALLY survived the slaughter of the innocents, LITERALLY healed the sick and lame.

He LITERALLY claimed to be the Son of God, HE LITERALLY rode into Jerusalem on a LITERAL donkey, He LITERALLY entered the temple, He LITERALLY was hated and plotted against by the Sanhedrin, He was LITERAL betrayed by a close friend, LITERALLY crucified at Passover, LITERAL buried in a rich mans tomb and LITERALLY rose on the third day.

The overwhelming majority of these would be read today as "allegory" and "metaphorical" if the first coming was now, and these were often read as such back then as well which blinded many form the truth. But there fulfillment where OVERWHELMINGLY literal, even when using some obvious allegorical language.

Same thing with the book of Daniel, which often used animals and beasts to signify kings, kingdoms and nations. Look at the apparently highly allegorical tale of the he-goat with one great horn and the ram, yet the fulfillment of these chapters were again HIGHLY literal as Alexander the great was the great horn of the he goat and met the ram (Persia) in battle and over ran him and moved at will across the earth as he conquered. And the apparently allegorical breaking of the great horn and 4 smaller horns that came up after it was again extremely literal in fulfillment as Alexander dies and his great empire was split into 4 parts.

Seemingly allegorical language that had a highly detailed and literal fulfillment.

Its the attempt to see only the allegorical language and deny the literal meaning and fulfillment that has blinded people for millennia on these things. And its not something we have to guess about, we have over 3000 years and massive amounts of key fulfilled prophecy in the Bible to see the literal application and fulfillment of such prophecies across the board. We have this massive blueprint on how to read an understand these things with with a majority of prophecies already fulfilled, and yet some are so stubborn they still insist and doing a complete 180 from this blueprint and trying to allegorize all the end times and 2nd coming prophets and deny the literal fulfillment of Gods prophets.

Whats most mind boggling is so many of these are in the same books and even same chapters where we see the first coming prophecies we now KNOW were literal but people insists on taking the 2nd coming end time passage in the same chapters and books and insisting these are somehow NON literal.

Its so completely illogical and inconsistent that it leads you to think it must be a spiritual blindness that causes the wild inconsistency of interpretation.

But again Genesis 1-11 is not an allegorical narrative at all, its a historical narrative and gives exact days of creation, exact names and genealogical records, exact counts of days all the way to the flood, the number of days they were on the ark, the actual year and day the ark came to rest on Mt Ararat.

If we can take such blatantly obvious historical narrative and then argue is just allegory, then we make the Bible an empty canvas that can mean whatever a person wishes it to say and mean. We are left with ZERO basis to argue the Gospels are in any way literal as it is written in the exact same historical narrative. Not to mention the obvious issue that without a LITERAL Genesis 1-11 there is ZERO Biblical basis to say Jesus can save us by His death burial and Resurrection. Its literally rips apart the entire foundation of the Gospel, its has nothing to stand on anymore, its now a completley isolated story that no longer has its foundations with the book of Genesis. The gospels and mans redemption through Christ begin THERE and there alone. His claim to be able to redeem us by His blood comes from Genesis 1-11 and without that being literal there is no basis for his death and resurrection to be able to save us.

Jesus openly and BLATANTLY treated the accounts in Genesis as literal historical record. These historical accounts include Adam and Eve as the first married couple (Matthew 19:3–6; Mark 10:3–9), Abel as the first prophet who was killed (Luke 11:50–51), Noah and the Flood (Matthew 24:38–39), Moses and the serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14), Moses and the manna from heaven to feed the Israelites in the wilderness (John 6:32–33, 49), the experiences of Lot and his wife (Luke 17:28–32), the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15), the miracles of Elijah (Luke 4:25–27), and Jonah and the big fish (Matthew 12:40–41). As New Testament scholar John Wenham has compellingly argued, Jesus did not allegorize these accounts but took them as straightforward history, describing events that actually happened just as the Old Testament describes. Jesus used these accounts to teach His disciples that the events of His death, Resurrection, and Second Coming would likewise certainly LITERALLY happen in time-space reality.

We are also told how Jesus created: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:6-9). All the miracles of His earthly occurred instantly—at His Word. He instantly turned water into wine in His very first miracle, which “revealed His glory” as the Creator (John 2:1–11; John 1:1–3, 14, 18). It was the instant calming of the wind and the waves that convinced His disciples that He was no mere man. So it was with all His miracles (Mark 4:35–41). He did not speak and wait for days, weeks, months, or years for things to happen. He spoke and it was done. So, when He said, “Let there be . . .” in Genesis 1, it did not take long ages for things to come into existence.

Jesus, who is the Word, created everything by simply speaking things into existence.

Not only this, but the one who spoke the words “six days” also wrote them down for Moses: “Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly” (Deuteronomy 9:10).

Jesus said clearly that He created in six days. And He even did something He didn’t do with most of Scripture—He wrote it down Himself. How clearer and more authoritative can you get than that?

If we can't get in line with how Jesus Himself taught them, then what in the world are we doing?

Its a really good discussion through Crayton, I'm glad we are able to flesh it out like this. Thanks for posting.