The following is from a conversation I had with a Catholic friend I like and admire: 

You made a passing comment about the lack of uniform belief in a literal week about 6,000 years ago through church history, and of course I cannot deny this. But then, no church had a doctrine of transubstantiation for the first thousand years of church history, and most today still do not.

One must build a case for what the Bible does and does not teach by the Bible, not by popular vote.

As AiG answers this better than I could, I shall just do a little cut and paste action here to explain why this is not an argument against my position, but rather, the history behind this question is a case against the OEC position.

From AiG:

Is Genesis non-committal on the age of the earth, as Sproul and many other scholars today say? If so, why is it that throughout church history most of the church fathers came to a conclusion on how old the earth was? As early as 181 AD Theophilus of Antioch wrote, “All the years from the creation of the world [to Theophilus’s day] amount to a total of 5,698 years . . . .” Continue reading →

This is part of a conversation I had with a Catholic friend I like and admire. In his previous email, he had questioned by use of Mark 10:6 to defend the idea that Jesus believed and taught that the creation of mankind was at the beginning of Creation, as opposed to 13 billion years later. Mark 10:6 quotes Jesus who says, ““But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’” 

You call into question my use of  Mark 10:6 to prove Jesus took this literally. I believe my position still stands, and here is why.

A look into Bible commentary shows that the phrase “of the creation” is not even found in the oldest texts, so even if one chooses a hyper-literal interpretation, they have to wait until later editions to do so, because the older texts say “At the beginning God made them male and female” (and not “At the first moment of creation…”). Also, I have to simply argue with your assertion that a literal interpretation of Jesus words would have to mean “at the very moment” Creation began. Jesus doesn’t say that, even in the English versions based on later texts. He says From the beginning,or at the beginning, or from the beginning of creation.

It does not use CREATION as a verb, such as “From the beginning of creating,” or “When God Began Creating…” Creation is used as a noun. And the creation account in Genesis, which Jesus is clearly referring to, shows Adam and Eve being created at the beginning of the Creation- DURING the creation of the Creation in the first of 52 weeks, in the first of (at Jesus’s time) 4,000 years.

Creation is the heavens and the earth, the sky and sea and all that live in them. The beginning of Creation was Genesis 1. Jesus meant what he said, and it does not clash with the Young Earth position at all unless you arbitrarily FORCE the words of Jesus to mean the first ACT of creation, or the first DAY of creation, when he does not say anything like it. Once again, I merely suggest we take the text as literally as the text is meant to be taken.  Not more and not less. Continue reading →