Dear Jonathan: I don’t think anyone can make a (reasonable) argument for the age of the earth from Scripture. If you find one that (a) uses a hermeneutic consistent with a God who is a loving being and doesn’t deceive people just for fun, and (b) is consistent with observations humans have made about the earth, then write me a note. Otherwise I shall continue to think you’re brainwashed. (You may continue to think the same about me. Or just that I’m closed-minded. But I was raised in that world and, once I looked at it, it made about as much sense as Santa. To me, anyway.)

(Charlie)

Charles: Brainwashed sounds a bit harsh for either side. I do believe that our presuppositions, however firmly or loosely held, are steering how we interpret Scripture. You see Scripture as man’s (for the most part, correct) opinions about God and man. That’s not what it is. It is special revelation given from loving God who stoops down to our level out of grace. And as such, our attempts to understand the world will not trump God’s revelation.

With the proper framing, we recognize that God spoke through Paul in a way he has not spoken through you and me. God spoke through Paul regarding an event in which we all died (in the person, Adam) *in direct parallel* to an event in which we are all made alive (in the person, Christ). Seeing the clear point of the passage is the symmetry, it is paramount to a forfeiture of the reality of the cross to deny a historical Fall — a point in which death, curse, and pain entered as a result of sin. A progression of evolution through cycles of death presume the curse prior to the sin; the punishment before the crime.

This is not an overly literalist view. It’s what Christians are committed to. If we didn’t actually Fall, then Christ didn’t actually accomplish anything in his death and resurrection. Christians, however, say Christ did. It is a non-Christian paradigm to reduce Scripture to man’s word backed by the life of the Church. If it is, somehow, just that, we’re just talking about human psychological phenomena and the science of general religion. Bullocks.

If man’s tendency is to repress the revelation of the very attributes of God with his own unrighteousness, how could man’s understanding trump the clear revelation of God’s unfathomable glory and wisdom?

(Jonathan)