Saturday, July 11, 2009

Age of the Earth (Part 4)

A second approach that is used to account for an old earth is the long-day approach. This is the approach that I favor, because I believe it does the best job of reconciling science with Scripture. I will not say with 100% certainty that this is in fact the only approach that can be considered. For me, it best synchronizes my studies of science and Scripture. In this approach the word day (Yom in Hebrew) is to be understood as a long time period where God works by way of special creation.

There are two views of the Long-Day approach. The first is the Millennial-Day view. This view has each day lasting a thousand years. it is believed by some that the early Church fathers Ireaeus and Justin Martyr held this view. The second view is the Day-Age view. This is held by Gleason Archer and Hugh Ross. This is also the view I believe makes the most sense. Each day represents an unspecified length of time whereby God specially created everything. These two views do not hold to Darwinian evolution and should not be considered part of Theistic evolution. I will talk more in later blogs why I hold this view, but will also talk of some of the problems that exist with all these views.

* Bowman, Robert, Scripture: Outline studies in Authority, Cannon, and Criticism, P. 59

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