Frank

Don, I, like you, have various reasons for being an old earth creationist, and while I agree quite a deal with Cheryl as regards the events occuring on Day Six, I personally believe Day Six, though less than an age, was certainly more than 24 hrs. And I also believe Days One through Five, are indefinite periods of various length. As I have indicated elsewhere, I view Gen 2:4 both as a summarization of 1:1-2:3 and as a lead into 2:5-3:16, which I view as a “historical” commentary on the events, on Day Six, that occurred prior to and after God gave both Adam and Eve the “cultural mandate” of Gen 1:28. Gen 2:4 clearly states, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” (NASB) Long ago, I came to the conclusion that–on the basis both of same word (Yom), being used here as it is of the individual days 1:3-2:3; that only in 1:14 doe God declare that 24 hr, rotational days are now to be marked; and that God’s Sabbath rest from his creating work continues to this very day, even as he carries on his work of providence and redemption (cf. Gen 2:2 with John 5:16-18 and Heb 4:1-7)–Gen 1:1-2:3 describes an Age of Creation, each of the days being of various length, and Day Six being the shortest. And in this way I am able to harmonize the Scriptures and the proven facts of astrophysics, geology, biology and history, though not in the way insisted on by either Neo-Darwinians or “Scientific” Creationists. For I had serious problems with a number of arguments pressed not only by the Neo-Darwinians, but also with a number of those pressed by the “Scientific” Creationists as well. But that is something to be discussed elsewhere under Creation vs. Evolution, not Women in Ministry.

Now, my point in stating my OEC viewpoint is not necessarily to win everyone to my position. I state it because I want us all to remember that whether we are YEC’s and OEC’s, the majority of us have a high view of the inspiration, infallibility, and authority of Scripture; believe that whatever role reason, history and experience play in our formulation of doctrine, from first to last, Scripture has the final say; and, I think, we all try to live by the Puritan dictum, enunciated by Richard Baxter, “In essentials, unity; in disputable matters, liberty; but in all things, love.”

Just recently, CT had a review on a book by OEC authors, THE BIBLE, ROCKS, AND TIME, who argued that this passage was “allegorical.” Though the reviewer made some valid critiques of the book, he then went on to imply that if you were of the OEC persuasion, you inevitably denied that there was a historical Adam and Eve, or that there was a historical Fall that had universal spiritual and physical consequences. I felt compell to comment on the review, first stating where I thought my fellow OECers had erred, but then correcting the reviewer on his misrepresentation of OECers as a whole. And so this commentary I write is an exercise in caution, not persuasion. But I felt this was something I needed to say for the benefit of us all.