Paul Price Seems to Miss the Obvious

One can believe 2 Peter 3:8 to Genesis 2:17 without believing creation days (the one in which they ate of the fruit wasn't one) corresponds to thousand years of subsequent history.

One can also believe both without being a Chiliastic pre-millennialist. I do.

I seem to miss something too, namely how one can be pre-millennialist without being Chiliast. Is it something obvious?

Anywhere, here is our debate.

My initial concern is that 2 Peter 3:8 both gives a literal truthfulness to Genesis 2:17 and by this application falls outside any day age views on creation days in Genesis chapter 1.

Paul Price

25 octobre 2018

Apologist Matt Walsh makes a seriously uninformed attack on biblical creationism
by Paul Price | Published: 25 October 2018
creation.com/matt-walsh-attacks-creationism

Hans-Georg Lundahl

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Did Adam and Eve literally die?

Another argument brought forth is that God promised Adam and Eve that “in the day you eat of it [the forbidden fruit] you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:17). Walsh reasons that since they didn’t literally die that day, it must refer only to spiritual, not physical death, repeating another Hugh Ross argument. But the consequences of the Curse are clearly not merely spiritual, but physical as well. God curses the very ground for our sake. He introduced pain in childbirth as well as thorns and thistles in nature. Are those spiritual thorns and thistles? What would that even mean? He displays no awareness of the fact that the literal translation of the Hebrew there should read, “dying you shall die.” God was basically saying that the penalty for sin would be the loss of immortality; that the process of death would begin at that moment—not that the process of dying would be completed in one day. Walsh also ignores the difference in grammatical construction here: “in the day,” as opposed to “day one,” “day two,” etc.

A “day with the Lord …” lasts 1000 years??

Walsh predictably trots out the well-worn misapplication of 2 Peter 3:8, “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years…” He uses this to try to imply that God does not have to mean literal days when he uses the word ‘day’. But the full reading of the verse brings us back – a thousand years are like a day. This is synonymous parallelism. Peter is merely making a point about how God is not limited in his perspective of time as man is; but that has no bearing on the debate about how the Hebrew is to be interpreted in Genesis 1.4 It’s just a red herring.

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930 years = same millennium = same day.

2 Peter 3:8 has no direct bearing on literal sense of 6 days, but definitely on Genesis 2:17.

Paul Price

You could possibly argue there is some kind of esoteric connection there, but why bring it up?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Esoteric?

It was in an answer by St Justin Martyr to Trypho the Jew.

Paul Price

Hans-Georg Lundahl, Yes, it's esoteric. Justin Martyr and other early Christians taught Chiliasm. It's an interesting notion, but speculative and nowhere clearly laid out in Scripture. It is also very dubious from what we can piece together from history, because it seems like more that 6000 years have already elapsed even under the more conservative estimates.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Justin Martyr and other early Christians taught Chiliasm."

"other" is ambiguous - all other or some other?

In fact, some other, he mentions other other who didn't.

Teaching Chiliasm doesn't make you an esoteric, or wrong about any other issue, and the word about Adam's death in same millennium is not tied to Chiliasm.

Paul Price

Actually the word about Adam's death in the same 'day' is definitely tied to Chiliasm. They believed that the days of creation were both literal and figurative, standing for 6 thousand year periods of history. I like the idea but I cannot prove it and Dr. Carter has done a study that casts serious doubt on the idea that we are under 6000 years now.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Actually the word about Adam's death in the same 'day' is definitely tied to Chiliasm."

No. See my refutation of your following argument.

"They believed that"

Here we have the kind of "scholarship" which argues "khûg definitely meant a falt circle" and why "because they believed the earth was flat".

"the days of creation were both literal and figurative, standing for 6 thousand year periods of history."

While St Justin may have believed this, he does not tie his answer to Trypho to this idea.

That is why your answer is a lot of "scholarly" second guessing on what someone may have meant but didn't say.

"I like the idea but I cannot prove it"

Which does not make it esoteric. It is also not limited to Chiliastic Fathers.

"and Dr. Carter has done a study that casts serious doubt on the idea that we are under 6000 years now."

[doubts on idea] We are under 6000 years? Fine with me.

We are in fact somewhat above 7000 years, and I can think this can be accounted for by us being "at the end of the thousand years" this meaning the Church age (note, on this view, Apocalypse 19 = certain verses in Apocalypse 20, a bit like Genesis 2 = certain verses in Genesis 1).

Why "above" rather than below? One reason could be God stretching and compressing the thousand years as He sees fit, another could be some periods of actual time don't count, like too bad times for God to keep them in the record.

So, no esotericism involved here. Also, no Chiliasm.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

My bad : "falt circle" should be "flat circle".

Paul Price

Hans-Georg Lundahl I don't follow your reasoning or what you're arguing for. The concept of Chiliasm is inherently pre-millenial, which I do happen to agree with personally. But pre-millenialism in no way depends upon the truth of chiliasm. I have no interest in debating these things on facebook, however.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK .... can we take the next turn per mail?

You see, you seem to be saying:

• 1) there is a difference between pre-millennialism and chiliasm, which I don't get;
• 2) applying David's and Peter's words to Genesis 2:17 is chiliastic (though pre-millennialism is not tainted by it),
• 3) because believing in days of creation corresponding to millennia of history is somehow Chiliastic
• 4) and because that is somehow implied when St Justin used those words about Genesis 2:17.

As you find FB little overseeable, your next turn may be to my mail, which is hgl@dr.com

Paul Price

Hans-Georg Lundahl No, I just don't feel the need to debate eschatology with you. Maybe you can explain to me what you're trying to get at. The days of creation are literal, not symbolic. Whether there is a deeper hidden meaning behind why God chose 6 days as opposed to any other number is something God never revealed to us in Scripture.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am sorry, but the initial issue was whether 2 Peter 3:8, while not relating to creation days, relates to Genesis 2:17. It was you who dragged in Creation : History, while pretending that refuted.

I really don't see why you sneer at "Chiliasm" while having a Chiliastic (also known as pre-millennialist) eschatology, nor what Chiliasm has to do with St Justin relating Genesis 2:17 to 2 Peter 3:8.

And if you go back through what we already covered, I think I already explained that.

Paul Price

Hans-Georg Lundahl The 2 Peter 3 passage does not ONLY say that "a day is like a thousand years", it also says "a thousand years are like a day." It's a symbolic/poetic way of saying that God is not limited by the bounds of time. Any deeper hidden meaning there is simply not revealed in scripture, and I don't know what the point is in even bringing up Genesis 2:17. When we say "in the day ..." it means "when ...."

Hans-Georg Lundahl

And when Adam and Eve died 930 years later, they would be agreeing with God's perspective, that their little less than thousand years had been but as a day.

Paul Price

Hans-Georg Lundahl How is that? There is no apparent connection between these two passages.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, there is a problem, how did Adam die same day, and there is a solution, he died same millennium.

Considering Genesis 2:17 was said while God was in perfect company with Adam and Eve, this sense could have been obvious to them, though not to all later readers.

When you have a problem and a solution, I think this is at least an apparent connection.

Paul Price

Hans-Georg Lundahl There is no problem because in the Hebrew it is properly understood, "in the day that you eat of it [the fruit] you will begin to die." And "in the day" is a figurative phrase that means "in the time".

https://creation.com/why-did-god-impose-the-death-penalty-for-sin

Hans-Georg Lundahl

tried to

In the day = in the time?

Vague. And was the "time" when Adam ate really the "time" when he died?

"Begin to die"?

Inaccessible for most non-Hebraists for most of the Christian era.

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