To you, the God who has made the heavens and the earth, we come to bow down. We come today to worship. We come to rest, to find our rest in you. We praise you for the dawning of this day, in it that we can remember that you, by the word of your power, formed the world. That you, by your mighty power, raised Jesus Christ from the dead. We remember these things. We glory in them. We praise you for them. We pray now that as we return to this study of the beginnings of this world and everything in it that you would grant to us an insight into your word, a new understanding what your word teaches, and a better understanding also of how we should hold to your truth in the midst of a world of so many competing ideas and even interpretations of your word. We pray for your spirit. We might indeed be faithful students of your word. We pray all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, let's turn to Genesis chapter 2. Well, we'll start reading at 129. Now we'll read to 2, verse 9. You'll see in a few moments why we're doing this. Let's hear the Word of the Lord. And God said, See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed. To you it shall be for food. And also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food." And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good, so the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, and the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Before any plant of the field was in the earth, for any herb of the field to grow. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. The Lord formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed, Out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Well, we are picking up here where we left off. Last week, last week I think we finished the days We're not going to look at the Sabbath day until later on in our study of Genesis 1 to 11. But where we are right now is today what we're hoping to do, and if I could give you an outline so I don't have a handout today, we're going to pick that up again next week. Handouts for the rest are done, but this week was shorter than most. thorny question. We've looked at a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, and now comes, now we're going to look at some of the different ways people seek to interpret the same chapter, different than we have interpreted them. We're going to look at the different ways that people seek to interpret Genesis 1, particularly in light of the relationship of Genesis 1 to Genesis 2. It's going to deal with, we presented the six-day literal view. Now how do we respond to these other views? First, what are they? And how do we respond to them? So what are these other views and what's a response or a rebuttal to them? Well, very quickly, some review. We've looked at the history of the doctrine. We've seen the view that we looked at last week in more detail, particularly in the text, the view of six 24-hour days. Being the pattern in which God created the world is, first we saw that it's basically 2,000 years of church history. I'm taking the 24-hour view apart from Augustine's view, which is instantaneous creation that nobody argues for long ages. Until we get to the modern period and we have the influence of two things, science and the scientific method, rationalism, as it influences two sciences, the natural sciences, the life sciences, and, we're going to see today, archaeological science. Those two will begin to impinge on our interpretations of Genesis 1. We've seen the doctrine of creation throughout the scriptures. We've seen that Exodus, for example, Exodus chapter 20, the commandment concerning the Sabbath day, assumed six 24-hour days. We've seen that Christ, in his ministry, repeatedly connected the beginning of creation with the creation of man, and he assumes a very short period of time between those two things. The Apostle Paul does the same thing in Acts 17, Romans 5. Very simply, and this is reviewing what we've looked at in past weeks, assumes a position that is a literal interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. The best place to look at this, I gave you the book, I gave you the title, Creation and Change, I think it is, by Doug Kelly. Doug Kelly has a whole chapter on the Bible's interpretation of Genesis 1, in other words, scripture interpreting scripture. And it's very, very helpful to show The internal coherence of the scriptures also points to this, not just the text. and the wonder of what God has done in the creation of the world. But now we're going to look at, as I said a moment ago, the doctrine of creation, patterns in Genesis 1, the relationship of Genesis 1 to Genesis 2, really Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 4, and the rest of Genesis 2. And we're going to look at various views on the doctrine of creation that are present today that you might run into in Reformed and Evangelical churches. And then we're going to try and answer some of the questions that are raised. Now, I hope this isn't too technical. I want, the point of this is that we presented a view, if you pick up a book, and it's not too uncommon that you pick up a book and you find somebody presenting a completely opposite view or even assuming a completely opposite view, that's not the 6 24-hour days. Why is this and where do these views come from? Particularly from those who are a high view of the doctrine of scripture. You understand what I mean? In other words, they say we're taking the Bible as it is written, as the word of God, but still come up with an interpretation where Genesis chapter 1 has long ages in it, and evolutionary theory is not excluded in their view by the text. Why is this? What are these views? And how are we to deal with them? Very quickly, I said two things, and these are two things to note. There's two reasons why people will go to Genesis chapter 1 and 2 and argue for long ages. First of all, in this argument here, even as I bring it forth, I don't hold to it, but I don't see at all. I'm going to prejudice the whole discussion here. I don't understand why at all it's compelling. But one of the things people have noticed in Genesis chapter 1 is that if you take the first three days, if you take the first three days of creation, where you have light, sky and water, firmament divided, and then you have land and vegetation on the third day, so if you take those three days, if you were to put those into a column, and stars and then when you have in day 2 you have the sky and the water you happen to have in day 5 birds and fish. In day 3 when you have land and vegetation in day 6 you have land animals and man and then day 7 stands by itself you have the Sabbath rest of the creator universe. Now this idea, this pattern What we are looking at is not Hebrew chronological narrative, but is figurative language. You understand that? In other words, because there's a pattern, it's figurative. Now again, we'll look at it in a little more detail next. The next question is, Or after verse 3, rather, beginning at verse 4, we have 2, verse 4, this is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth, before any herb of the field had grown, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man, the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. doesn't look exactly the same as Genesis 1. That's what the argument is. Because of that, they must both be topical and figurative, not literal. Well, there are From these observations, there have been a number of categories of different interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2. The first one, how many have heard of this? It's the framework view. How many of you have heard the word framework view of creation? A few of you have heard of it. How many of you know what it means, what it is? How many of you could describe it for me? Anyone? It's not that... I'll describe it for you. It's very, it is probably today, I would say, the most common alternate view of Genesis chapter 1, particularly within Reformed and Presbyterianism, Reformed and Presbyterian churches. This would be the most common alternate interpretation of Genesis chapter 1 and 2. Let's look at it for a minute and then let's see if we can critique it. It's called the framework view. History of this interpretation. A man in the Netherlands named Professor Noordzij of the University of Utrecht in 1924 publishes a book called God's Word and the Testimony of the Ages. It's very interesting. I am, as you might know, my heritage is in the Netherlands. And you do have great reformed heritage in the Netherlands, but then you also have very interesting theories of one of the Netherlands. For example, did you know that Arminius The father of Armenianism was also Dutch, I shouldn't tell you that. I mean, there's a whole constellation. There's some good things and there's some bad things. This one I would put under the category of not so useful. But anyway, there you go. He published this book, God's Word and the Testimony of the Ages. You can hear in the title already what he is doing. He is wrestling. his view, and the Word of God, and how we put the two together. And we can sympathize with him wrestling with this. But his solution is one that I can't agree with. But he saw the creation account not as a literal account, but rather as an illustration of the nature of who God is. In other words, and you'll see that later followers of him, it's a theological picture. It's not history. It's to help us understand who God is and in particular to understand, we'll see in a moment, that he's different than the idol gods of the world. And he said that the creative work of God is to help us just understand how powerful he is and how powerful he is not only in creation but in salvation in which he makes us a new creation. In other words, for understanding who God is, it's a picture of who God is. three days and the second three days for symbolic interpretation. So he basically argues then that it's symbolic, it should be interpreted symbolically. Now I had, there we go, yeah, it's interpreted symbolically because of these two triads. And that was his basic, he has two things, scientific, scientific testimony to long ages and then the appearance, of a symbolic set of triads, these first three days and the second three days. So the Bible is not saying that God made it in six 24-hour days. It's just to understand better who God is. Now, who has picked up on this? Probably the chief proponent of this would be a man who the Lord, I think, since has taken hold. and he has written probably his most popular work would be a book called Kingdom Prologue, where he argues a lot of these things that I'm going to say. But he picks up on what Luce has called now the framework view, he picks up on this view, he builds on this interpretation, and he further theologically. And he takes this idea of these two groups of three, and he gives them even greater importance, and now he divides those days into what he calls kingdoms and kings. The kingdoms were the light, sky and light, the first kingdom. The king was the luminary. Then they too, the kingdom was sky and water. The kings were the birds and fish, land and vegetation. The kings were land, animals, and man. And finally, the great king, the creator king, on the Sabbath day. So again, he's arguing for that pattern to be figurative. Differences in those two accounts, as we said, make it clear that Genesis is not, Genesis 1 is not literal. Now, what is, I'm gonna, how do we, I'm trying to think of how we can make this very straightforward. surrounding Israel in the days of Moses. Moses is the author of Genesis. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. That when Moses penned this account, and by the inspiration of the Spirit, that the purpose of the Genesis narrative was to demonstrate that the God of Israel was the only true God in distinction to Israel's claim that their God is the creator king and the only king, and that's all it really is intended to do. It's not intended to communicate a history, it's intended to communicate a theology of who God is. Now this is where, I don't want to get too much into Kleinel, but I'll do a little bit, I'll give you a little bit of a taste, and we won't spend too much time here because it gets rather complicated and theoretical. I don't want to be too complicated and theoretical, but bear with me for a moment. He leans particularly heavily on this construction. He is very interested in demonstrating that Israel, Moses' writings, demonstrate to the world that the God of Israel is the only true God. And he does that by comparing ancient Near Eastern literature, basically all His argument is that Moses is particularly writing in his context, his historical context, the ancient Near East, and he's writing an apologetic, again, for the one true God of the scriptures. And he uses some evidence, for example, he says this, he says, and he gives examples, I'll just give you some, in verse 16, one verse 16. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. He sent them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night. He says, now look, the names sun and moon aren't used. Because if he would have used the name sun and moon, then all the idols, that would have been the names that the idol-worshipping nations had given when they worshipped the sun and the moon. The biggest problem with Klein's whole system is this. His methodology requires you to have, his methodology requires you to have an understanding of the ancient Near East before you can come to this interpretation. You understand what I mean? In other words, if you didn't know all of the archaeological history and how the cultures were structured in Moses' day and all of these things, how they made their temples, and what their false religions were, you could never ever come to his interpretation. Which means, which for me, strikes at the heart, this is a very serious charge, the heart of the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. pick up the Word of God, and that we can read it, and that it is plain and clear as God intended it to be to us, and we don't need to know, A, some massive scientific theory, or B, all this archaeological evidence before we can understand what the Bible is teaching. So that's really the essential problem here, this construct. He argues The problem with that whole construct, and he applied it to the whole Old Testament, is that the interpretation of the scriptures now is limited to those who have the extra knowledge. Mr. Van Boris. That's exactly what, when I was in the PCA serving on the Judicial Business Commission, and we were That is God gave us hope. No. And he'd give purpose... That means clarity. Clarity of description. That they're clear when you... with the framework hypothesis, Klein will use this hermeneutic, this method of interpretation, to interpret the whole Old Testament. And it's not just creation, he'll do the same with covenant. His covenant theology requires you to understand that there was a king and he made treaties and assertions. Eastern, knowledge of ancient Near Eastern culture. Now there's two problems with this. First, if you know anything about archaeology, archaeology is as fixed in its understandings as science, which means it's not fixed at all. It is, archaeological interpretation if they're interpreting the data correctly. That's the first problem. The second problem is what I just said, that now you need this second set of data before you can understand the Bible. Now let me just say a little bit more about this. The Old Testament forms of worship and the temple, he does the same thing. All of these things are patterned in his view on ancient Near Eastern forms of treaties, of worship, of temples. They're gods. So, This is getting, again, a little bit more complicated. Does anyone remember how the tabernacle and the temple are decorated? What are some of the features in the tabernacle and temple? Israel's tabernacle and temple? The altar. The altar. How about the carvings? Anyone remember what the carvings and the walls were like? A lot of trees. A lot of, yeah. Trees, fruits. pictures of Eden. They were to be pictures of the Garden. And they were reminders to Israel of the time before when they weren't separated from God. Now, Klein will argue that all of these things are borrowed from the ancient Near East to communicate to Israel. And so even in itself, it's not necessary that it's literal for applying the framework hypothesis. It's a picture to communicate a certain theology. Now G.K. Peale, in a book called The Temple and the Church's Mission, says this about this position. why the Old Testament is the way it is. So the arrow is going from ancient Near East to the Old Testament. Now, G.K. Beale, in his book, The Temple and the Church's Mission, does something very interesting. He simply turns the arrow the other way. And he says, maybe, just maybe, the reason why ancient Near Eastern creation myths seem to And maybe, just maybe, why ancient Near Eastern temples in Moses' day had so many of the same themes as the ancient tabernacle and temple are because, not because Moses was borrowing from the culture, but because the culture was making faint patterns. I don't know why this seems to me to be so dead simple. That's an explanation of why you find these parallels. He says this. Possibly then, affinities or similarities between Eden and pagan temples, garden-like divine dwellings, were intended to indicate that God's depiction in Eden is a polemic against the similar descriptions of pagan gods. In other words, he's saying possibly the framework view is right. More precisely, I'm not trying to be too complicated here, but I think I'm getting complicated. The simple argument against the framework hypothesis is this. The Bible is the true pattern. The Bible is the original narrative. And that the fact that the ancient Near Eastern world seems to parallel this is because they are making copies of what is true with distortion. flood narratives that are found in pagan literature and the way they're compared, which one comes first. Yeah, that's exactly right. If you look at a lot of ancient cultures, they have a story of a flood. And it's often some similarities, some parts similar, some parts different. And actually, it's all over the world. I mean, South America, they have flood narratives. North America, so the question was, Whose narrative was first? The scriptures were first. And these are simply copies of what is true. Anyway. Then he goes on to say Genesis 1 and 2 apparent contradictions are used to argue that Genesis must be topically constructed because Genesis 1 is topical because Genesis 2 is topical. We won't look too much at that. Just one verse for a minute. Again, this is the framework view. And the Lord God said in Genesis 2, 18 It is not good that man should be alone, I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam. Do you see what the problem is there? Does anyone see a problem? There isn't one. There could be a problem. What might be the problem in those verses? It is not good that man should be alone, I will make him a helper comparable to him. God had just been speaking to Adam in even the verses before. But then in verse 19, we read, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast, built the field, and brought it close to the air, and brought them to Adam. What is it? It sounds like they're changing the time sequence. Yeah. Yeah. Changing the time sequence. In other words, that Adam appears to be there with the Lord God, and now God is making animals and bringing them to Adam. So what do we do? What do we do? Well, Klein says, well, that's easy. It's all figurative symbolic language. It doesn't matter which way you order it. It's not intended to communicate history. It's just intended to communicate ideas. But is there really a conflict? We're going to see later that there isn't, especially if you read the Hebrew. There's just very simple grammatical rules that there is not a conflict at all. OK, let's look at another couple of views. That was framework in a nutshell. Any questions on that before I go on? Yes? Okay, I don't know if this is just confused in my mind, but does crime come to me in six days? interpretation is still a young earth. Well, I know one or two people that take Klein's position and also believe in a young earth. In other words, they take a symbolic interpretation, but they have a young earth view of the creation. view, actually I know only one person, there's only one person I know that holds to Klein's framework hypothesis, that holds to a Younger view. So they're not mutually exclusive. The vast majority of people who take this interpretation, take it because what lies behind it, because of the You're arguing for when Moses comes and he writes Genesis and Exodus Leviticus, number of Deuteronomy, he is really the beginning of history. And history really begins with Abraham. And the reason, the emphasis on ancient Near Eastern religion and its evolutionary development is presupposed before the Bible actually comes into the world. You understand what I mean? And with that, archaeologically, people will have long ages already. Let's say 100, 200,000 years of development of religion. And then almost, well, the majority of these people will also insert evolutionary timescales into creation. In other words, once you have taken Klein's framework, there is absolutely no reason to stay with the young earth cosmology. So does everybody do that? No. But the vast majority of people, I think, really think it's irrelevant to the question. It doesn't matter. You can do whatever you want with ages. It's not talking about ages. So it doesn't bound that in any way. Again, does it mean that someone has to believe in long ages? No. But it leaves the door wide open to whatever you would like to do. So. What about Klein himself? Klein himself, well, I shouldn't speak. I shouldn't speak. I mean, in King and Prologue, he doesn't really use it to argue for an evolutionary hypothesis of creation. Any other questions? That was a good question. Again, this is somewhat less practical, perhaps, than last week, but it's useful, I think, for us to understand and defend the truth. Day-age view. Anyone know what that is? The day-age view. Next view. Yep, each day is a whole age. Again, it's a symbolic interpretation. And this type of view, there's another view called the Gap Theory. Anyone know what the Gap Theory is? Tell me what the Gap Theory is. From the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1-1 to Genesis 1-2. You just insert a gap of however many years you'd like to accomplish the evolutionary development of the Earth. Or some people to be, I mean I want to be fair to people, some people say that God was working in that period, but slowly. But again, these theories, A. A. Hodge would have held to long ages in Genesis 1, following Charles Hodge, E. B. Warfield, the same thing. A defender today of this view would be, perhaps you've heard the name R. Laird Harris. Laird Harris defends this view. And what's the impetus for this view? Why would people take this view? I'm going to just use the words of Laird Harris. James Usher was. He was late 1500s, early 1600s. He went through the genealogies in Genesis, and he came up with a date for creation. I believe he had a day, a month, and a year. But 4004 BC is what he came up with, roughly, that period. And then he says, Usher has been criticized for his of medieval rabbis who dated creation to 3760 BC. The date on the Jewish calendar is now 5759 years after creation. These dates are reasonable on a cursory reading of the genealogies, but nobody believes them. Except me, apparently, and many more people. But I mean, nobody believes them is such a strong statement. The date of the flood is especially instructive. There was not a universal flood some hundreds of years completely rejects a literal Genesis 1 to 11, just out of hand. Why? That's from the archaeological perspective. But then he goes on to say, Copernicus and Galileo were also right in their beliefs that the Bible allowed the heliocentric theory that the sun is the center of the solar system. And many theologians of that day were wrong, and that is now universally recognized. We may hold that the long So we may hold that the long day theory fits the words of Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3 without compromising the full inspiration of the Bible. Our infinite God chose words that, when rightly interpreted, would not contradict modern theories of the great age of those universes if these theories are or eventually prove to be correct. What's he doing here? What's his motivation? Clear motivation for an interpretation of Genesis 1 that's not literal. we need to take a non-literal view of Genesis 1. That's as simple as it gets. It's the desire to reconcile scientific inquiry with Scripture. This is not surprising. And he argues, for example, that science, scientists, again, Laird Harris argues that scientists have come up with the Big Bang Theory, and that seems to be fit right nicely with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That there was a beginning there, a beginning point. Scientists found a beginning point. The Bible has a beginning point. See, there's some places that it lines up. Information from archaeology and adequate scientific studies proves that Usher was wrong. Did you hear that? Very simply. Information from archaeology and adequate scientific studies proves that Usher in his 4004 BC date was wrong. If you want to read more about this, Dr. Shaw at Greenville Seminary has written his dissertation on this work, and he happens to agree with Usher. Very quickly summarized, it's another non-literal view that uses that, because of the pressure of science, argues for long ages instead of a literal reading. Gap theory, we saw that too. It simply inserts a massive gap between Genesis 1 and 1-2. Now, what do we do with all of this? And what do we do with these interpretations? And what do we do in particular with the two objections? Genesis 1 is not literal. It's figurative because of these patterns. And that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 can't be reconciled with one another. What do we do with those two things? Well, the patterns in Genesis 1, that argument, listen to E.J. Young. Again, an Old Testament professor at Westminster Seminary wrote this in his book on Genesis 1. There is not a single allusion in the Hebrew to suggest that the days are to be regarded as a form or mere manner of representation and hence of no significance for the essential knowledge of the divine creative activity. There is nothing, going back Genesis chapter 1. Concerning Exodus chapter 20 verse 11, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth. He rested the seventh day. Young asks this question, how could man be held accountable for working six days on the basis of the pattern of divine creative activity and rest if God himself had not actually worked for six days? In other words, Israel's understanding of the law was 624 hour a day. And it's clear all through the Old Testament that that's how they understood this. Now this actually turns Klein on its head. Klein says you have to get yourself into the mind of the ancient Near Eastern thinker. And once you get yourself there, and the whole cultural milieu, and once you get for an Israelite, when he receives the law, he doesn't work for six days and he rests for seven because that's what God did. And it's as simple as that to an Israelite. Very simple. You can't, if you want to put yourself in the context, that's what they did. So that was Young's answer to the patterns in Genesis 1. Relationship of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, very simply this. Genesis 2 is not, Genesis 2 is not a complete recapitulation of Genesis chapter 1. Moses is selecting summary elements from Genesis chapter 1 which are still chronological. Summary elements of the creation narrative to lay the foundation for what? He's described how God has created the world and he's doing something. He's saying In chapter 2, verse 4, he says this, and this is the history in the New King James. It's really, and these are the generations, and the phrase is all through the book of Genesis. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth. He now is beginning, having laid the foundation of how God created the heavens and the earth, to explain two things. The creation of man in more detail. God's making of a garden. In other words, he's not seeking in there to give a new creation narrative. He's simply expanding on two portions of that narrative and laying the foundation for our understanding of Genesis chapter 3. God, there we have the tree that all Now let's go back to Genesis chapter 2 verse 18 to give you an example of how simple this is in the Hebrew. The Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and brought every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. Now a straightforward reading of that. We have Genesis 1 which says the animals were created first. And then you have Adam created. A straightforward reading of that verse is very simply this. God's simply describing what God... At most, it's simply describing what God had done. God made the animals, He had formed them, and then He brought them to Adam. There's not... As a matter of fact, in the Hebrew, that is completely consistent with the text there, and it's formed in the grammatical order. literal interpretation of Genesis chapter one. And you actually have to force the text the other way to argue for a different interpretation. So, very summary of all this. Genesis one, patterns are there. Yes, no doubt about it. There's three days, and they follow three days later with, you have three realms, you could say that. There's no essential problem to see that. God made light, and then on day four, he made the illuminator. God divided the sky, the earth, and the water, and the land, which are still together. And then he, on day five, where's my pattern? He made birds and fish. But even then, for example, the pattern breaks down in a number of places. In day three, what did God make? God separated the earth from the dry land, right? And then he made vegetation. Now they don't worry about that because they say it's generally figurative, but there are some patterns. But if you look at the whole creation, you're going to see patterns and order and structure. Right down to the DNA of creatures and the division of the animal kingdom. I mean God is a God of structure. It's no surprise that there's a form here. So, no way does it support a cogent argument for a long literal view. Genesis 2, again, simply understood as laying the foundation for the Garden of the Fall, providing the details of the creation event that are required, an expansion, as it were. You know when you read a newspaper account and then it mentions something, and then there's a little sidebar which expands on that? Well, that's Genesis 2, simply an expansion on various elements of creation. that we might understand, and it's still chronological, that we might understand Genesis 3 and following. So what can we say, having said all of this, again, rather technical today, having said all of this, what conclusions can we make? What can we see about all these non-literal views? In each one, what is the basic assumption? Pardon? start outside of the Scriptures. In each case, in every case, a non-literal interpretation argues that there has to be a starting point, either a starting point, or to be fair, that's right, a starting point or an equally ultimate authority outside of the Scriptures. In other words, that you have the Bible here, and you have science and archaeology here, and that they are both equally ultimate in the fact that they convey truth. Is that right or wrong? That's a great question. Is that right or wrong? Is it right or wrong that they're equally held? Yeah, that they communicate, equally communicate truth. Where's the problem here? Where's the problem? Is the problem in the data? There we go. The problem is, the problem is in May. The creation communicates absolutely clearly and consistently with the scriptures. Truth. The problem is our limitation and inability particularly to understand natural revelation and the scriptures tell us my nature will make the wrong interpretations. I gave you the example two or three classes ago of that theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, Canada, who came to the conclusion after looking at all of her data and her mathematics pointed to the fact that there might be an external observer to the universe. And she said, since there cannot be an external observer to the universe, I'm going to posit in my equations instead because is not observed. It doesn't exist. You need an observer for it to exist. The probability is high that it doesn't exist. I don't understand all this, but her simple conclusion was, therefore we are all internal observers to the universe and we all are gods of our own universe, because there can't be a god outside. Here's theoretical physicist at one of the most advanced, Stephen Hawking, as an honorary chair, the most advanced think tanks in the world for how the world came to be. And what drives her at the end of the day? It's her philosophical worldview that drives her mathematics. That is how the natural man interprets the world. All non-literal views begin with an unclear relationship of general and special revelation. And at heart, here's the heavy charge that you should all try to take compassionately, call into question the sufficiency and authority of scripture. That's what they do. There's no way around it. whether it's your ancient Near Eastern archaeological requirements to understand the Bible, whether it's scientific hermeneutic appoggio, the day-age theory, all of these impinge on the clear teaching of Genesis 1 and 2. And that is a teaching that has been held by the Church for some 2,000 years, clearly held by all the reformers, the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms, the Puritans, the Reformation, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, the introduction of rationalism, the scientific method, and the hopes that man by his intellect would be free of the constraints of superstition. And at the end of the day, I don't see any other interpretation of these other views that can square with the scriptures. At the end of the day, it really comes down to a very simple question. Where do we start? Where's our starting authority? Is it scripture, or is it outside of scripture? like you in all of this. If I haven't been, you can ask me later. Any more questions? Feel free to ask whatever you like. Because after this, we're moving on from these days of creation. It seems to me that at the base of this is pre-suppositionalism. So there are evidentialists. The God of the Scriptures is revealed in the Scriptures. You really can't make sense of your world. The Scriptures are your starting point, your interpretive framework for understanding all of history, creation, et cetera. Evidentialism is another viewpoint that says, if you go out in the world, you can find evidence for the existence of God and for sixth day creation. And that supports the Bible. It's dangerously close. Two, evidentialism is dangerously close to these other theories because it starts to argue for an equal. It doesn't have a right priority. However, it doesn't mean that we don't use evidence. The whole world's full of evidence, I think, for a young earth. And I think we can use those liberally. And I think we can question, we question scientific paradigm and we show that evolutionary theory just doesn't work. Nothing wrong with that. But the problem is we can't rest. We've got to be careful that we're resting first on the scriptures. If we, otherwise, if someone proves our young earth evidence, some young earth evidence, I don't think you can prove it wrong, because I'm a scripture teacher, but let's say one line of evidence, and for some reason they proved that one of your steps in your science was wrong, so you're left without a theory. Now, if you were leaning on that theory for your interpretation, you'd be in every bad, badder shape as you were, understand what I mean? So we have to be careful, but we use, I love using evidence. but make sure that in your mind realize that we begin with what God has said. Very good question. Mr. Olivier. The homeschool movement was drafted saying that we're bringing up the teaching of the state nation prior to when the homeschool movement came. Basically, there was no seminary that was teaching it. How would you say that the family members of this church are having to move elsewhere when they go to a church where they don't believe in the state nation, i.e., courageously commit to try to, I guess, influence the teaching of the state nation? I heard a question. Have you found yourself in a place where this wasn't taught? Well, first of all, your comments on, here in the United States, Dr. Smith's observation of the homeschool movement. I mean, really, it's true. I feel like the homeschool movement, most homeschoolers do believe in the Younger, if not all of them. a Dutch reform background, what's interesting is that, at least in the Netherlands, this issue, long before, without any influence of Hague or the American sea, many, many people in the Netherlands held to a six-day view, and because, again, of the historic reform position. There's always been people in both Presbyterianism and Reformed churches that have held to these views. Though there has been a larger recovery, you're right, in homeschooling, perhaps you see a lot of that. But what I'm trying to say is that there always has been, both in Presbyterianism and in the Dutch Reformed background, people who have held to this view simply because the Bible taught it. That's the first thing. Second thing, what do you do in a church in that situation? I've never been in a church in that situation. It would be, I mean, you'd have to gently work and talk to your elders and talk to your pastor and see why they believe what they believe. Like any other issue that you would disagree with. I happen to think that this issue, who is it? Wayne Grudem has a paper, an article on how churches decline. Wayne Grudem is a, He's Reformed in his understanding of doctrine of salvation, Baptistic in his understanding of baptism, a little bit Pentecostal in his understanding of the work of the Spirit, but a very cogent and useful thinker in his systematics. But he has this argument for, he doesn't believe in a young earth, I don't think, but he has this argument for how But he doesn't begin with the documentary issue. He begins with sufficiency of scripture is undermined. And then there's a predictable pattern, women in office, women in office, and then finally homosexuality. There's a whole kind of cultural progression as a church departs from the Word. And it's almost the same in every way. And so I think it's a pretty serious issue how we look at Genesis chapter We're in a situation where there's churches that have individual congregations of various interpretations. I think you have to hold to what you believe the Bible says is true. I think we can work for it within the church and the presbytery gently and work to teach the truth the best we can. reason why you ought not still to argue that this is the only right view. And how you do that in a situation where you're in a local church, you have to be very careful and gentle. You're not going to try to raise trouble, but I think you still humbly stand for what you believe. Mr. Van Boris, you have something helpful. I'm not sure I heard anything you said, but what concerns me is I get the impression, after having gone away from the OVC for many years and now back, that there's a large number But I just wonder what that might mean for the future. Well, getting back to the view of the doctrine of scripture, it starts to undermine that. But one of the reasons I was just talking about our Presbyterian here is very, very solid. Everybody I've seen come before the Presbyterian in the last two years for licensure or ordination has been straight up six day. A lot of them come out of it. Greenville Seminary, I don't think. That's true. That's true. But that's true. But even most of the students come to Greenville Seminary believing that already. The seminary didn't make it. The seminary didn't. Like, for example, myself, Matthew Holtz, who we just examined, we were absolutely committed in this before we came. So the seminary probably attracts us more greatly. It's a very difficult thing. It's a difficult place to be. In the General Assembly, the OPC has sought to guard the sufficiency of scripture with a series of questions to be asked of people examined. And they're good questions. I wish they would have gone a little farther, but they're good questions. The recent controversy of Westminster It is. And if you look at the whole controversy at Westminster Seminary, it's really on topic. It started in the Old Testament department. And it began with no literal creation, no literal flood. And it ended up How should we really understand the scriptures? Do we really just take them at face value? Or is it largely figurative? We use a figure, you know. And once you begin, I don't see any way to stop. I don't know how, that interpretation starts in Genesis 1, it'll hit the flood, and then you don't have, you have no, you have changed your viewpoint on how the scripture, the authority of the scripture If not, let's pray. You can always ask me questions later, but next week we're going to be moving on, so let's pray. Our God and Father, we do thank you for your Word. We do bless you, indeed, for its sufficiency and clarity. Lord, we would also confess that when it seems to us a simple thing to take these first chapters, Genesis 1 and 2, at face value, but they are clear. We confess that so often we turn a few pages later and your word is so abundantly clear to us and we fail to obey, to believe. Lord, we pray make us humble even as we hold to these truths. Make us, indeed, firm in the faith, but give us also humility to understand that it is by your Spirit that you reveal, you illuminate your word and you reveal to us your truth. And so we bless your name. We pray that we would be according to your law, believing the gospel, and ready to bear witness for our faith in Jesus Christ. We thank you and praise you, our Creator God, for your mighty work, that in six days you made the world and all that is in them by the word of your power, or that you did it for your own glory, and that you made it all very good. Dear God, we bless you and we pray, hear us, in Jesus' name, Amen.