As old as ....

I read an article by a leading associate of Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham, and whilst I do sincerely respect AIG, I feel the article (Did Jesus Say He Created in Six Literal Days?, Ken Ham, 2007) is worthy of some rebuttal.

He opens his arguments from Mark 10:6, “But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.” That is used to argue that Adam and Eve were with God from the outset, so the creation had to be young. That is just simply not biblical. Adam and Eve were created on day 6, not on day 1. Thus Jesus had something else in mind.

What He meant, and it is confirmed as a creation theme, is that the principle of complementary genders would run right through the creation event. It meant that plants, animals, humans, insects, even bacterial life, and the basic building block of matter, the atom, would apply that principle.

I accept that the atom is not male or female in the biological sense, but its positive or negative polarity carries the same basic idea to the most fundamental level of all physics. As such, the principle also extends to the universe. So Jesus was right, but Ham is not on the money.

Then Ham refers to Jesus again in Mark 13:9, with the familiar verse, “He was slain from the foundation of the world”, which he uses to argue that the sin and the sufferings of humanity started early in the creation event and so creation could not have happened over a long period, but over the lifetime of Adam and Eve.

I am sorry, that argument is mired in error, for it implies that Jesus future death was a plan B or consequence of the fall, where in truth the creation was God’s response to sin and that dates back to the rebellion in heaven. Thus the garden used the tree of knowledge to exempt us from sin’s consequences without removing its implications.

Jesus was slain from the foundation because He underwrote the creation. He was set aside from the outset as the guarantee of a redemptive plan. God always meant His son to die, to resolve sin.

So, Ham has it wrong again. His argument neither directly nor indirectly proves the age of the universe.

He further argues that Exodus 20:11 should be read literally, when it says that God founded the earth in 6 days and rested on the seventh and that the seventh was a Sabbath day. 

Well already we are in trouble there, because Hebrew tradition recognized a Sabbath year, a Jubilee year (7 x 7 years) and then in various scriptures it uses day and eon interchangeably.

Thus, Peter taught that a “day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day”. In Daniel’s prophecy of 70 weeks we know that a week is a period of seven years. How can anyone so adamantly state that Moses spoke of 7 calendar days. That is not exegetic-ally sound.

Quoting Luke 13:14 that man should work six days and rest the seventh, is firstly incontrovertible and acceptable, biblically speaking, but secondly not presented by Jesus as confirmation of a seven day creation horizon. 

Using the argument itself to defend itself, is like recognizing a guilty man’s personal confession as a valid legal argument, when the bible clearly demands separate witnesses.

Ham then goes on to quote a series of literal events in early biblical history, like the union of Adam and Eve, the death of Abel, the flood and so on, as evidence that everything the bible says must be taken literally do you mean, as in “if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain be removed and be cast into the sea”.  

I certainly agree that the historicity of bible events is intended to be read literally, but saying that the concept “day” as used in Genesis 1 implies an “eon”, not a physical day, is also literal and is not demanded by the text.  

However, really where Ham fails to find support is that a calendar day only appeared on day 4, yet prior to that, God recognized a day as having an evening and morning even though no physical evidence of a sunrise or sunset was present until the 4^th day when the sun, moon and stars appeared.

Ham then tries some Pauline teachings, as in Colossians 1:16-17, to confirm that Jesus was the agent of creation. 

Great, I agree, so does John 1 and other scriptures, yet the bible does so without for one single moment confirming that Jesus then created it all in 6 calendar days.

One potential argument relates to how Jesus always spoke a miracle into an instant existence. Yet that is not supportable either. We see miracles throughout scripture that had time lapses. 

How quickly did the fig tree wither? The man who washed in the Jordan seven times, was not healed immediately and Elijah’s servant had to go back seven times to see a cloud the size of a man’s hand.

That said, Jesus functioned in the immediate when He was on earth. He disrupted nature deliberately, to prove a point. A miracle is defined as a disruption of nature, but creation does not even qualify as “creation” if it was a disruption of itself. As such, God said that he “formed” man from the dust of the earth, not “He waved a wand and it was suddenly so”.

Finally Ham uses a circuitous argument to make the point that Jesus spoke to the patriarchs, that He appeared to them. I am not convinced, yet accept it might have been so. In the fire of Babylon, “one like unto the son of God appeared”, but the visitors to Abraham at Mamre, were three.

Clearly an angel appeared to Mary and it is not known what Moses saw other than a burning bush, when He heard God speak. He is the only man ever known to have seen God and even then He saw the back of God.  So that creates a non-sequitur for Ham, because if it wasn’t Jesus who said the world were created in 6 days, the evidence is insupportable and goes to speculation.

Personally, there are far bigger concerns with New Earth theories, but I will tackle that next time. 

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net