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Monday, July 20, 2009

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth

From a review by Paul R. Bruggink: "Since Young Earth Creationists believe that God's Word trumps God's works every time, the only approach that would have a chance of succeeding in getting YECs to consider the possibility of Old Earth Creationism would be to demonstrate that the Bible can be interpreted to support (or at least not preclude) OEC."

I recently ran across the book A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke on the internet/Amazon. I thought this sounded interesting. It purports to contain "a biblical case". And as the above reviewer notes, the only approach that would succeed in getting biblicists to consider "Old Earth Creationism would be to demonstrate that the Bible can be interpreted to support" it. But as I considered to read about it, it sounds suspect whether the book really makes "a biblical case". In her Review, Lita Cosner calls it "a pathetic case" rather than a biblical case. It sounds like Snoke's views may be driven as much or more by science than by the Bible. A very different Review by Martin LaBar.

I had originally thought this might be an interesting read, but now I don't think I'll bother. Has anybody out there read it?

2 comments:

Bro. Matt said...

Unfortunately I have not been able to read the book yet, but I have heard much the same concerns as you have. I would like to read it for a different viewpoint, but I'm not sure how biblical the book really is. But I guess I can give it a shot, however, I'm still a young earth guy for now! (Of course, if the Bible is shown to teach different...then I can change!)

R. L. Vaughn said...

I was also interested in the different viewpoint, but if the case is not made from the Bible then I'm not interested. I guess the only biblical attempts I am familiar with for an "old earth" is the gap theory, which I don't agree with, and Tony Warren's The Biblical Timeline of Creation. Tony's is probably not strictly "old earth" in the eyes of scientists who think in terms of millions and billions of years. He is speaking in terms of 13,000-14,000 years old. He arrives at this with a method of interpreting the Genesis 5 & 11 genealogies as "Patriarchal References" -- that is, the periods represent the time period of a particular Partiarch, which is then followed by the next. So basically, all the periods are added together. I don't agree with this either.