Paula

Grudem has written that he believes mutual submission is impossible. He does this purposely to keep “helper” as an inferior, to the point of making God inferior to man every time he helps him! Here is a quote from his Systematic Theology:

Recently some writers have denied that the creation of Eve as a helper fit for Adam signals any difference in role or authority, because the word helper (Heb. ‘ezer) is often used in the Old Testament of someone who is greater or more powerful than the one who is being helped.

In fact, the word helper is used in the Old Testament of God himself who helps his people. But the point is that whenever someone “helps” someone else, whether in the Hebrew Old Testament or in our modern use of the word help, in the specific task in view the person who is helping is occupying a subordinate or inferior position with regard to the person being helped. Page 461-462

I realize this belongs under the “needy” thread but didn’t want it to be missed. But it does tie in with the overall “male godhood” teachings that come from many Christian leaders today, and it should be noted that Calvinism is involved as well. They look to the Puritans as role models. While the Puritans had some good influence, such as being anti-slavery, they thought nothing of flogging women who even so much as taught other women the Bible in their own homes.

Misogyny is the “universal sin”, the one that pervades all societies and religions, including “churchianity”.

I really doubt he’d listen, even to someone he’d respect, and he’d never respect anyone who would disagree with his misogyny.

I’m slowly learning to let God fight for my honor, while I fight for his. If people won’t listen to God now, they surely will at the judgment, and their “reward” will be sealed by then. Slick is proud of his genetics, his “ministry”, his following, his position. Pride goes before a fall, and that will happen in God’s timing.

The church has already fallen a great distance when it can read “husband as prophet, priest, king” and not bat an eye. This is just horrible.

The progression (really, regression) I’m seeing in so-called complementarianism is the same as any other subversive group in history: allow them to voice their opinion, accept their beliefs as optional, their beliefs become dominant, and finally their beliefs become law. They started with “servant leadership” and are now into “king”; what used to be “complementary” is now “unilateral”; in place of “joyful submission” we have “obedience as to God”.

Of course, they see us as the subversives, since history has been on their side. Never mind that it was never God’s will, it’s all about domination over half the human race. Man does want to be prophet, priest, and king— and then God.

Anyone who calls himself “prophet, priest, and king” is a blasphemer, and anyone who worships such a self-made god is an idolater.

Prophecy is a gift; priest is what we all are, and only Jesus is as mediator between God and people; king is reserved for God alone or a human civic ruler.

I’ve seen the hoops the patriarchalists jump through to say things like: “she can have the gift of prophecy but not the office” (there is no “office”)”, or “she had the gift of apostle but not the office”, or “gentiles, slaves and women are equally saved, and gentiles and slaves are equal socially, but women are only equally saved”, etc.

They are Pharisees who make impossible burdens for women and never lift a finger to help. They love to have the seats of honor, to be praised, to be called ‘rabbi’ (or king or priest or prophet or Pastor or Bishop or lord or master). They shut the kingdom of heaven in women’s faces.

Michael,

Paula, I think you know full well that Jack is a nickname for John, just like John Kennedy was known as Jack. Ankerberg goes by both. What earth does this have to with anything we are talking about?

Huh? You mentioned him first, and I related what I knew about him as it pertains to OEC. I don’t know how you missed the connection. And the name correction is important when you’re talking about well-known apologists and personalities. I don’t recall ever hearing anyone call him “Jack” in all the years I watched his show. It is not a general rule to call anyone named John, “Jack” either.

And this was your main comment on that post?

Hmmmm…

You err in misunderstanding what “ordinal” means. It is not “one” but “first”, not “two” but “second”. Most of your examples of yom used with a number all used cardinal numbers, not ordinals. The only one you cited that was an ordinal was Hosea 6:2, and it is in a poetic passage. This is hardly a refutation of the point that taken together, the phrase “evening and morning, the nth day” must refer to 24-hour days. Genesis is not written as poetry but as historical narrative. Huge difference.

You claim also that since only Genesis uses this phrase that it must therefore have some off-the-wall meaning. This is utterly ridiculous. It’s like saying that if Paul uses the word authentein only one place that we can just rip it out of context and attach any meaning we want.

Then you use the old “primitive language” excuse as a last resort to denying the literal meaning of the text, as if God were at a loss for words and didn’t know what to tell Moses to write.

My conclusion: Let the text tell you what God did, instead of insulting the intelligence of either Moses or God or the ancient Hebrews. What it can mean if you stretch it a lot is not what it does mean.

And yes, the order of evolutionary theory cannot abide plants before sunlight, or millions of years of plants without insects. It doesn’t match at all.

I’m sorry but it’s obvious no minds will be changed in spite of the plain meaning of scripture or the true facts of science. I’ve done all I can. I’ll leave you with a non-AIG and non-ICR science site:
http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/sage/index.htm

Of particular interest to you might be this list of links about scientists and credentials:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?cp=1252&FORM=FREESS&q=credentials&q1=site%3AScienceAgainstEvolution.org

Farewell.

Tanx!

Please excuse the typos in my previous post. I did some sloppy copies and hasty pasties and didn’t check my spelling.

Michael,

I am not saying that individual days are equal lengths, only that they are unspecified lengths of time but distinct periods.

I didn’t say they were equal in length, but that the days would be equal to ages, that is, they would stand for ages.

The length of time between Adam and Eve’s creation was in the sixth day (period) but when Eve was created the sixth day (period) ended. Apparently nearly all of Adams 930 years were in the seventh day (period).

How do you know Adam was created near the end of the sixth day, just because he was created 2nd last? Or that the 6th day ended right after Eve’s creation? According to the day-age view, measuring time is pretty much impossible and extremely arbitrary.

We see in Genesis that God spoke and something colossal happened. There is no hint of how long it took. Each creation day could have been started with a creative act at the very beginning, with the majority of the day having no activity. So even on the 6th day, we have no idea how long it was or how much of it was left after humans were made. I have to conclude that your statement here is a baseless assertion.

Again, you have lost me. The Hebrew yom is the word translated day. Hebrew has a thousand times fewer words than English. Many words in Hebrew carry many meanings that can only determined by context. Yom can be the period between sun-up and sun-down. It can be a 24-hour period. It can be an endless era.

My point was that there is no objective way to measure time if day-age is true. But as I already stated, yom with an ordinal always means a literal solar day, especially accompanied by “evening and morning”. I don’t see where you have addressed this yet.

My dad is retired Ph.D….I have a long time friend … I have a MA… I have spent the last 25 years…I have been around scientists all my life and I have read …

This is an appeal to credentials, and as I’m sure you know, is only logically valid if all people with similar credentials agree on a given subject. That is not the case at all, so this is an irrelevant point.

I did peruse the speakers lists at AIG and found maybe four with Ph.Ds in relevant fields. Of those, it was unclear whether they believed in a young earth or were simply opposing evolution. The young earth folks at AIG are in an exceedingly small minority of even Evangelical Christians. I have been around Evangelical Ph.D scientists all my life and don’t recall ever meeting one although clearly some exist.

Here we have an attempt to “poison the well”, along with an appeal to majority view. Both logically irrelevant.

First, how did evolution get into the picture? I don’t recall saying anything about evolution.

Evolution is the only reason day-age was concocted. It is the reason, as has been documented, that so many people have rejected Christianity because they see the futility of trying to make Genesis fit with an old earth. Without it, there would be no justification for day-age.

The evidence for an ancient earth has been consistent and overwhelming and it has been so more at least 300-400 years…

Not true at all. But what good would it do for me to list the proof? If PhDs at AIG, ICR, and a host of other groups don’t mean as much as your MA etc., then what credentials are required?

I see no age tags on any rocks, or transitional forms etc. Instead, I see evidence for the Flood. I see polonium halos in granite that prove near-instantaneous creation instead of millions of years of cooling. Old earth theory is full of gaping holes. If that were not true, then there wouldn’t be discussions about whether to allow unfavorable scientific facts to be allowed in science classrooms. (That happend in my state. They debated whether to only present those facts that seem to support long ages. This is not science!) I also see non-old earth scientists routinely censored from publication and funding. I could go on.

So the reason for the my question back was that if all of these witnesses from the beginning of the church to the present have seen no issue with it why are those militantly insisting on a 24-hr day doing so?

Who is militant, if not the OECs? They are every bit as narrow, every bit as biased, every bit as dogmatic about their view. For them to insist that yom cannot mean 24 hours in spite of “evening and morning, the nth day” is most militant and narrow. YECs simply take scripture as the context dictates.

(For an excellent definition of the literal/historical hermeneutic, I recommend http://cyber.wmis.net/~ixthys/gpdd-mill-3.htm . It is part of a debate on Preterism but does a very thorough yet concise job.)

But again, you appeal to credentials and majority. I don’t determine truth by those criteria, but by investigation and prayer. YECs and OECs both have the same facts, the same science, the same credentials. The difference is over interpretation, which is wholly philosophical.

Hi Martin,

Good point, but we still have the evening/morning/number for the creation days that we can’t ignore. And as one of the linked articles points out, God is working still, building his kingdom and preparing a place for us. So all things considered, it seems to me that the “rested” of the 7th day only refers to the creation of the physical universe and all it contains.

So even if the 7th day were different from the rest, we still have a six-day creation.

Plus, if the days are ages, then what significance do they have to the Ten Commandments? Exodus 20:8-11 says “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. … For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

We would also have to find an explanation for the 7-day week, which is observed in practically every culture.

On top of all that, we have the differing orders of creation week and evolutionary theory, and the enormous difference in time scale even if we allow thousands of years per day.

Just little problems 😉

P.S.

Here are some excellent articles from AIG.

the meaning of yom: http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v5/i1/semantic.asp

the seventh day of rest:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/seventhday.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i2/rest.asp

Re: On Length of Days:

(Heb 4:4-11)
The seventh day has not ended. Is Hebrews in error when it suggests the seven day was not 24 hours?

I think you’re mixing days here, the physical and the spiritual.

If the 7th day has not ended then you could say the days of Genesis equal ages. But there are several problems with this.

One is that Adam had to have been thousands of years old instead of what the Bible states. Do years mean ages too? Why not?

Another is that Genesis says God RESTED, not “is resting” or “started resting”. But Hebrews speaks of God’s rest, something that people can enter into. If this were the 7th day, then all people have already entered into it, not just the saved. Yet Hebrews says only the saved enter it.

I have done considerable reading and study in the history of science over the last twenty years. Church fathers like Irenaeus, Origen, Justin Martyr, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas suggested periods of longer than 24 hour days. Some speculated that each day was a thousand years.

The people at AIG also have spent their lives studying science, and many were teachers of biology etc. before the evidence convinced them that YEC is true.

The idea of “a day is as a thousand years” comes from 2 Peter 3:8 but it is taken out of context and highly speculative. Even so, it cannot be uncritically applied to Genesis.

It was solid devout Christians, many of them clergy, that were the first geologist in the 17th and 18th centuries.

So? This proves nothing but that people during that time were eager to relegate the Bible to inferior status compared to man.

As for Contemporary Evangelical leaders, all of the below at a minimum allow for an ancient earth and almost all actively embrace it.

Jack Akenberg (apologist)
Gleason Archer (Prof. of OT/Hebrew, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Jack Collins (Prof. of OT at Covenant Theological Seminary)
Chuck Colson
Norman Geisler (theologian, apologist)
Hank Hannegraff (apologist author)
Jack Hayford (Pastor of Church of the Way, Four Square Gospel)
Walter Kaiser (Prof OT and President of Gordon-Conwell Seminary)
Greg Koukl (apologist)
C. S. Lewis (apologist)
Paul E. Little apologist, author)
Mark A. Noll (Prof. Christian Thought at Wheaton College)
Bernard L. Ramm (Eminent Evangelical theologian and defender of inerrancy)
Francis Schaeffer (apologist)
Chuck Smith, Jr. (pastor)
Lee Strobel (apologist)

These are just the Evangelicals.

Not scientists. And there are many, many theologians who disagree with them, and many scientists, both Christian and atheist. Another site I highly recommend besides AIG is http://www.defendyourfaith.com/ , where on the lower left you can click for a list of the many scientists who no longer accept Darwinian evolution.

Note: It’s JOHN Ankerberg, not Jack. I saw the “debate” he staged between Ross and Ham, and it was a pathetic display of bias. I’ve seen many Ankerberg-hosted debates over the years and they were all one-sided, but of course nobody minds when it’s in favor of the Bible. Yet in this case, the exact opposite is true. The YEC position was continually interrupted while OEC had free reign. Archer and Geisler were, if memory serves, Ankerberg’s college profs, and he adopted their OEC views. This is not to put down the many good teachings of all those people, but they have made a grave error on this issue.

Yes, and why do they believe animals have been around for millions of years. Because those are unequivocally and incontrovertibly the facts! The question is why those who insist on a 24 hour period insist on a more narrow interpretation than is warranted. This interpretation needlessly creates a barrier to people hearing the gospel as it seeks to promote some extra-biblical agenda. While we dare not ignore what scripture does say we also dare not make it say things it does not say.

Not so! The facts are not the problem, it’s the interpretation of them. That’s philosophy, not science. There is not one shred of proof that anything existed for millions of years. Not one. There are even open challenges for million-dollar rewards for anyone who can prove evolution, and they’ve never been claimed.

Why do some of us insist that the days of Genesis were 24-hr. periods? I’ll tell you, but I could easily turn the question back on you: why do you insist that they are not?

Look at the language used: “And there was evening, and there was morning, the nth day”. Hebrew experts whose articles I’ve read show without a doubt that whenever an ordinal is used with “yom”, it means a literal day. And what is the meaning of “evening and morning”, unless you stretch it beyond reason?

But all of these common arguments in favor of the philosophical interpretive framework known as evolutionism are already soundly defeated in the many writings at fine sites like AIG, Defend Your Faith, and ICR. This debate goes on and on in a thousand message boards every day, and never ends. I seriously doubt we’re going to solve it here. But since all these arguments are already covered, why reinvent the wheel?

We’ve all been forced to believe in an old earth, through school, entertainment, and documentaries all slanted to favor evo without discussing its faults. You can’t read a book, watch a show, or take a class without it being forced down your throat. This is reality. So nobody can say we haven’t heard the evo side of the story. Now it’s time to hear the Bible’s side, the YEC side. To catch up to the years we’ve had to listen to evo, it’ll take many more years to listen to YEC. Until then, this debate here is pointless and uninformed.

Hi Cheryl, just a couple general comments.

You briefly mentioned your “crisis of faith” about the Crucifixion timing. I made a chart some years ago that I derrived solely from scripture. It can be viewed at http://theology.fether.net/index.php?id=20 . I’d be interested to know if you think it makes sense.

Also, I totally agree that the Bible must come first in all things. We either trust God, who witnessed his own creative acts, or modern man, who wasn’t there and wouldn’t even dream of doubting Genesis unless godless people had proposed other ideas. Since non-YECs agree that science keeps changing its mind on what the facts are, science is therefore unreliable. The fact is that true science is not the issue at all, but interpretations of them based upon one’s worldview and philosophy.

This is Ross’s fatal error, as you pointed out. He has put, not science, but interpretation above scripture. And it is a constantly changing interpretation at that. AIG has some very revealing facts about Ross’s numerous scientific and exegetical blunders at http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i2/hugh_ross.asp .

Thanks Cheryl. It’s always good to be prepared.

Got a question, which I’m sure comps would bring up:

The same phrase “the man” is also used to describe who “has become like us, knowing good and evil”. Can it be argued that if only Adam was driven out, then only Adam had become like God, knowing good and evil? I noticed also that the TNIV says God drove THEM out, but I don’t know the Hebrew.