How Should Christians Think About the Age of the Earth? The Alisa Childers Podcast #24

6/29/2018

Subscribe: iTunes | RSS

With the new movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in theaters, and a recent worship song referencing evolution, Christians are thinking about all issues pertaining to evolution, creation, and the age of the earth. How should we, as Christians, think about these topics? Are science and the Bible at odds when it comes to origins? I weigh in on how we can think intelligently and biblically on these hot button issues on today's podcast.

6 Comments

Eric G Gray link

7/2/2018 03:19:05 pm

Alisa,

Very nice summary of the three different positions on the evolution vs. creation, age of the earth debate. I like how explained that young earth or evolution was a false dichotomy, and that you can hold to an old earth and not deny the historicity of Adam and Eve, which is a key theological point. I also like how you defined micro and macro evolution. Very nice!

Just one minor point: At one point, it sounded like you equated micro evolution with natural selection. They are actually different. I got my definitions from this source: http://www.nas.edu/evolution/Definitions.html, which is pretty definitive. Just sharing this in case you want to tweak your broadcast in the future.

Thanks again for the excellent podcast!

Eric Gray
MDiv. Student,
Regent University

Alisa Childers

7/2/2018 04:29:30 pm

Hi Eric, I just listened back and you're right, I misspoke. I was actually able to make a quick little edit to fix it. Thanks for helping clarify!

Philippe

7/3/2018 09:45:15 am

Thanks for that Alisa!
Ever since the beginning of the podcast, I wanted to suggest John's book on the subject. I'm glad you ended it with that ;-) I just started reading it and John is always fascinating. I also enjoy hearing him teach and preach. One can tell he loves the Lord strongly!
Keep up the good work.

Jennifer

7/4/2018 10:36:59 pm

I don’t usually listen to podcasts, but I decided to listen to this one, and the question I’m left with is this: isn’t it possible to hold a theistic evolutionist view in terms of how all life developed, AND also still believe in a literal Adam and Eve who literally committed the first sin? In this view, one would see the story of the fall as symbolic in that the first sin may not have been eating forbidden fruit and Satan may not have been an actual snake, but Adam and Eve literally sinned by doubting God’s goodness in some way. If one held this view, then the assumption would be that God breathed life into the very first set of fully-evolved hominids, making them a special creation, and giving them a soul.

I guess the reason I ask is because scientifically, a young Earth view doesn’t seem to adequately explain some characteristics of the Earth (fossils, rock layers, etc). And an old Earth view that basically says each “day” was a long period of time, doesn’t logically make sense because you would have plants for 100’s of 1,000’s of years before you have a sun to nourish the plants. Not to mention that in Genesis 1 man was created last, and in Genesis 2 man was created before the animals, making it unlikely that the accounts are literal, since they contradict each other.

It seems the view that marries what we currently know from science and what we know needs to be taken as literal from the Bible in order to maintain the integrity of the doctrine of original sin, would be agreeing that God is the cause of all creation, that life likely evolved over a long period of time, and when God was good and ready he gave the very first fully-evolved humanoids a soul and breathed his spirit into them. They then lived in perfect harmony with God until they were tempted and sinned, losing the divine life within them, or original justice, and then we all received original sin from them.

Thoughts?

Alisa Childers

7/5/2018 12:01:04 am

Hi Jennifer, thanks for your comment. When I speak of Theistic Evolution, I am speaking of the view that tries to wed Christianity with Darwinian Evolution. Darwinism by definition is an unguided, natural, purposeless process.... which can't reconciled with Theism, in my opinion. At best, it will give you a Deistic God who started things off, but is uninvolved in the process. And if a person believes that God guided the process, I can't see how that could fit with the definition of Darwinism, because that would be more of an intelligent design theory.

My problem with the idea that God breathed life into the first set of fully-evolved humanoids is that this "Adam and Eve" would only be representative of humanity, and not our literal first parents. Without the human race actually descending from this pair, we have run right back to the problem from Romans 5 I laid out in the podcast.

Regarding the creation accounts seeming to be in contradiction, much has been written about Genesis 1 being more of a chronological treatment, and Genesis 2 focusing more on the clarification of details and focusing on the creation of humans. I recommend reading Appendix D of John Lennox's book, Seven Days That Divide the World. He explains that Hebrew has no separate pluperfect tense. In English, this would be the equivalent of saying, "he had formed." (pluperfect) vs. "he formed." If the former is the intended meaning, then the sentence isn't really talking about a sequence of events, and there is no contradiction.

Ben

7/9/2018 09:04:11 pm

It seems to me that some stories are just obviously not historical. If I tell you that I had a conversation with a snake, that should be pretty much it as far as taking me literally goes. I wouldn't even call it a lie, because I would expect my listeners to understand that the story didn't really happen, at least not literally. And if I learned that someone thought I was relating a literally true historical account, I would be utterly dismayed. I mean, a talking snake? Do I really have to add, "oh and by the way, this isn't literally true"?

Should it have been any different in antiquity?

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

apologetics theology culture worship

How Should Christians Think About the Age of the Earth? The Alisa Childers Podcast #24

Leave a Reply.

Categories