>
> Lloyd Eby wrote:
>
> >I do not recall reading anywhere in the Bible that one has
> >has to believe in any particular age for the earth or
> >particular mechanism -- whether naturalistic or miraculous
> > --by which the earth and the living things in it came into
> >existence in order to have salvation. People who try to
> >read this into the Scriptures are, I think, committing a
> >grave error.
>
> The paragraph above implies the conflict between the
> billions of years macro-evolution vs. the Holy literal 6 day
> Creation. I guess my question to Lloyd is, If there was no
> perfect Creation that we fell from, what need was there for
> a loving Savior to provide salvation?
>
> Dan Muller
> Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian
> "...deserving of contempt and dismissal."
I'm genuinely puzzled by your question. If I understand you correctly, you
imply that unless one believes in a Holy, 6-day Creation, then one cannot
believe in a Fall (of Adam & Eve) or Original Sin, requiring salvation.
I do not accept that dichotomy. I don't know how long it took to form the
universe, the earth, and the living things on the earth. I'm sure that it
took a very long time -- billions of years for the universe, millions of
years for living things. I believe in God and I believe that God was
behind whatever process or processes resulted in the appearance of all
these things.
I also believe that there existed a first human male (Adam) and first
human female (Eve) who were special in that they were children of God,
although they may have had humanoid ancestors. I also believer that they
committed sin in such a way that the entire human lineage coming from them
is stained by that sin. Solving the problem of that sin requires a Savior,
and Jesus came as the Savior (messiah, or christ) to solve that problem.
I see no conflict at all between believing in an old earth and a very long
process of earth-formation and living-being formation, and believing in
the fact of sin for the human race and the necessity of a Savior.
Lloyd Eby