>Excellent, excellent, excellent. Yes, any interpretation away from this
>"YEC" interpretation is indeed eisegetical--from Hugh Ross' concordism to
>you and Hayward's proclaimation thesis. So if you ask me what the
>intentionality of Gen 1 is, it is indeed the YEC view--in 6 days, creation
>by fiat, Adam & Eve, etc., etc. And that is exactly how I interpret
>it. Thus I am an exegete.
>
>However, despite believing that is indeed what Gen 1 both says and
>intended to say, do I believe that is what really happened (as if we
>recorded the events with a VCR [our term, "VCR history"])? My answer is
>"NO." (After all I am one of those wicked CE [compromising
>evangelical] evolutionists)
>
>Gen 1 is state-of-the-art ancient near eastern science being used as a
>vehicle under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to carry God's revelation;
>specifically, ontological/theological propositional knowledge (eg, the
>universe is a "creation," we've been created in God's image, sin is real,
>etc., etc.)
>
>God's revelation is not the "science" of Genesis, it's the theology . . .
>the "stuff" you just can't put in test tubes--ie, ontological realities.
Okay. I'm one of those guys who have been arguing that it is not the
intention of Genesis to convey the Young-earth view -- conveniently leaving
out any mention of what the writer(s) thought about the issue. It would be
interesting to know (and probably impossible to know) whether the writer(s)
made a distinction between the truth about God they were conveying and the
context they were conveying it in -- ANE views of cosmology and culture.
IOW there are two sets of intentions involved here: God's and the
writer's. The writer's intentions were the necessary result of the fact
that all messages are conditioned culturally to some extent and were not
necessarily in opposition to God's intent in inspiring the writer(s) to
produce the document.
Bill Hamilton | Chassis & Vehicle Systems
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