Did God really rest on the seventh day — or is Genesis 1 a poem we broke the moment we decided to read it like a science textbook?

• MK

  Morgan K.1mo ago

  I'm a geologist. Christian. Elder in a Presbyterian church. The rock record is not ambiguous. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. This is not a matter of interpretation or secular bias — it's measurement. Radioactive decay does not lie. And somehow Spurgeon, Warfield, and B.B. Hodge managed to hold that alongside full confidence in Scripture. Young-earth creationism is not the historic position of the church. It's a 20th century American innovation. That's just true.

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• M_

  Maya _x1mo ago

  If the days aren't literal 24-hour days, then death didn't enter through Adam's sin, which means the cross makes no sense. You can't just yank out a piece of the foundation and act like the building stands. Literal six days isn't stubbornness — it's theological consistency.

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• SK

  Sam K.1mo ago

  My grandmother never went to seminary. Never heard of the framework hypothesis. She read Genesis 1 every Sunday morning and believed every word of it was from God and she lived with more genuine peace and Christlikeness than most theologians I know. I'm not sure 'which reading is correct' is the most important question we could be arguing about.

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• J

  Jordan1mo ago

  okay so genuine question, not trying to start a fight: if the sun wasn't created until day four, what exactly was a 'day' measured by on days one through three? like the earth rotating around what? im just asking what the text actually says

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• M

  Marco1mo ago

  i grew up hearing 'the bible says it i believe it that settles it' and now i have a PhD in molecular biology. these two things have been the hardest to hold together of anything in my life. not because i think God didn't create. i believe he absolutely did. but because the mechanism looks nothing like six calendar days. i'm not embarrassed by faith. i'm just tired of being told i have to be embarrassed by evidence.

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• M9

  Morgan 921mo ago

  I spent 22 years as a young-earth creationist. Homeschooled my kids with Answers in Genesis curriculum. Then my oldest went to college, took geology, and came home asking questions I had no answer for. We didn't lose our faith. But we had to completely rebuild how we read Genesis. The framework hypothesis saved our family's Christianity, not destroyed it.

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• LL

  Leo L.1mo ago

  What frustrates me is that this whole debate is treated like THE hill to die on when meanwhile people in our churches are lonely, addicted, divorcing, and hurting. I believe Genesis is true and authoritative and I honestly don't know if the days are literal. Jesus never told me I had to figure that out to follow him.

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• TB

  Taylor B.1mo ago

  I read Genesis 1 as poetry and I want to be clear: I believe it is COMPLETELY TRUE. Poetry can be true. The Psalms are true. The Song of Solomon is true. Calling it poetry doesn't make it fiction. It means God chose a form that communicates something deeper than a date stamp. The obsession with making it a science document has actually WEAKENED our theology, not strengthened it.

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• M

  Maya1mo ago

  Ancient Near Eastern literature. Look it up. When Genesis was written, the surrounding cultures ALL had creation accounts. Enuma Elish. Atrahasis. Genesis is clearly engaging with those traditions — not writing a biology textbook. The original audience would have heard it as cosmic temple inauguration theology, not a chronological diary of divine manufacturing. If you ignore that context you're not reading the Bible, you're reading a translation of a translation stripped of everything that would have made sense to the first people who heard it.

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• Y

  Yuki1mo ago

  And most old-earth Christians I know aren't old-earth because of rigorous exegesis either. They're old-earth because they're embarrassed to say they believe in six literal days in front of their educated friends. That sword cuts both ways, friend.

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• K

  Kofi1mo ago

  Origen. Augustine. Aquinas. None of them were strict literalists on Genesis 1. The young-earth movement as we know it basically started with George McCready Price in the early 1900s and got picked up by Whitcomb and Morris in 1961. If you think you're defending the ancient faith by going young-earth, you should check your history.

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• Y

  Yuki1mo ago

  I was taught that evolution was a satanic conspiracy and that anyone who believed in an old earth wasn't a real Christian. Then I went to Bible college and my OT professor — one of the most devout men I have ever met — walked us through Genesis 1 in the Hebrew and showed us that 'yom' with an ordinal number in the ancient world was almost certainly not meant to be read as a strict 24-hour period. I didn't lose my faith that day. I lost my fear.

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• I

  Iris1mo ago

  Here's what I can't get past: Exodus 20:11 says 'in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth.' That's the Ten Commandments. Moses is using the creation week as the direct model for the Sabbath law. If the days are poetic or metaphorical, then what exactly is Israel supposed to be imitating? A metaphor? The text itself interprets the text.

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• NM

  Noah M.1mo ago

  There's a version of this debate that's intellectually serious and a version that's just people wanting to fit in at dinner parties. I've seen both. Lord have mercy on all of us because none of us have this fully figured out and we act like we do.

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• R9

  Reese 921mo ago

  The framework hypothesis, the day-age theory, theistic evolution — these are all just ways of saying 'I trust the secular academy more than I trust the plain reading of Scripture.' At least be honest about what you're doing.

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• RL

  Ravi L.1mo ago

  Can we just be real for a second. Most young-earth people I know aren't young earth because of rigorous exegesis. They're young-earth because that's what their pastor taught, their parents believed, and questioning it feels like betraying the tribe. That's not faith. That's cultural pressure wearing a Bible verse as a costume.

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• T

  Theo1mo ago

  No, genre analysis is what responsible readers of ANY text do. You read a newspaper differently than a poem differently than a legal contract differently than a love letter — even if all four are 100% true. The same skill applies to the Bible. Refusing to use it doesn't make you more faithful, it makes you a worse reader.

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• E

  Elena1mo ago

  Brother or sister with the PhD — curious, genuinely: what do you do with death before the fall? If creatures were dying for billions of years before Adam, where does Paul's 'through one man sin entered the world and death through sin' land for you? Not gotcha, real question.

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• D_

  Diego _x1mo ago

  Augustine also said he was troubled by young earth readings even in the 4th century because six days seemed too hasty for God. This isn't a new debate. People keep acting like theistic evolution is a modern capitulation to Darwin. It's not. The tension was there before Darwin was born.

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• MS

  Morgan S.1mo ago

  That's exactly it. It's a proxy battle for biblical authority. If Genesis isn't history, then is the virgin birth? Is the resurrection? That's the actual fear and it's not irrational. The question is whether the fear is being answered correctly.

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• ZB

  Zara B.1mo ago

  Jesus actually DID reference creation events as historical fact. Matthew 19, Mark 10. 'From the beginning of creation he made them male and female.' That's a straight citation of Genesis 1 treated as history by the Son of God himself. If you're okay with Jesus being wrong about that, fine, but say so.

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• MK

  Marco K.1mo ago

  Exactly. The question Genesis 1 answers is not 'how long did this take' but 'who holds all of this and why does it matter.' The ancient audience wasn't asking about geological epochs. They were asking whether Marduk or Yahweh ran the show. Genesis answers that thunderously.

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• CB

  Casey B.1mo ago

  Psalm 104 is exactly where I always send people who want to see how the Bible itself reflects on creation poetically. It's breathtaking and it has zero interest in answering the questions Ken Ham asks. Different questions. Same God. Come at me.

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• O9

  Omar 921mo ago

  Cosmic temple inauguration theology. bro people say stuff like that and wonder why regular Christians think seminaries are the enemy

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• J

  Jamie1mo ago

  ^ That's actually the strongest young-earth argument I've seen in this thread and I say that as someone who doesn't hold that view. It deserves a real answer, not dismissal.

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• NR

  Nina R.1mo ago

  What I actually want to know is: WHY does it matter so much to people? Like what is the real fear underneath the young earth position? Because it doesn't seem to be purely about exegesis. It feels like if the first chapter wobbles, everything wobbles. I get that. I just think the wobble is already there and pretending it isn't hasn't worked.

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• KR

  Kofi R.1mo ago

  That's actually a good question and it deserves a better answer than 'you're compromising.' The death Paul refers to in Romans 5 is almost certainly spiritual death — separation from God. Animal death before the fall doesn't require theological gymnastics to accommodate. Augustine himself said 'we don't know' on some of these questions.

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  Leo1mo ago

  I love how every time someone brings up actual science in a Bible discussion they get the 'but the assumptions' response. Yes, all knowledge involves assumptions. That's not a defeater. The question is whether the assumptions are reasonable, testable, and converging with multiple independent lines of evidence. For radiometric dating: yes on all three. This isn't a close call.

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• A

  Avery1mo ago

  The resurrection is a different category. Paul himself stakes everything on it in 1 Corinthians 15 and calls it historically verifiable. Genesis 1 was never written in that register. Different genre. Different evidentiary stakes. The slippery slope argument only works if you refuse to do genre analysis.

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• K

  Kofi1mo ago

  quoting Jesus referencing genesis doesnt prove the days are literal. it proves genesis is real and matters. those are different claims.

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• F

  Feli1mo ago

  it doesnt imply that at all lol. galileo read the bible differently than people before him on cosmology and we dont say he called them naive. context changes. knowledge grows. thats not arrogance thats how learning works

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• IL

  Iris L.1mo ago

  Because 2 Peter 3:8 is a poetic statement about God's patience, not a conversion formula for Genesis days. You can't just drop that into Genesis 1 like a math substitution and think you've solved anything. That's not exegesis, that's retrofitting.

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• H

  Hana1mo ago

  The answer to Exodus 20:11 is that the PATTERN is what's being imitated, not the duration. God works, then rests. We work, then rest. The theological point doesn't require the days to be exactly 24 hours any more than 'I was born a worm' in Job 25:6 requires Job to have actually been an invertebrate.

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• A

  Alex1mo ago

  Nobody said they did. The point is they didn't unanimously read Genesis 1 as strict 24-hour literalism. That's a specific and documented historical claim. Disagreeing with Origen on other things doesn't make that claim false.

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• LK

  Liam K.1mo ago

  Okay so the Hebrew professor says 'yom' isn't necessarily 24 hours. Fine. But 2 Peter 3:8 says a day is like a thousand years to the Lord. So even within Scripture there's acknowledgment that divine time doesn't map to human time. Why is accepting that suddenly compromising?

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• ML

  Marco L.1mo ago

  ^ Fair. Genuinely fair.

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• Y

  Yuki1mo ago

  Of course the geologist shows up lol. Bro the same dating methods that tell you the earth is 4.5 billion years old have given wildly different readings on rocks formed from known volcanic events. The methods are only as reliable as the assumptions baked into them. That's not conspiracy, that's science philosophy 101.

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• M

  Morgan1mo ago

  Every time someone references Origen I want to scream. The man believed in the preexistence of souls and that the devil would eventually be saved. Yes, the early church fathers disagreed on some things. That doesn't mean they all checked out on the authority of Scripture.

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• Z

  Zara1mo ago

  This thread has 41 comments incoming and most of us still follow Jesus regardless of where we land. Maybe that tells us something. Or maybe we're all just too comfortable with unresolved tension. Either way I'm going to go read Psalm 104 which is basically Genesis 1 set to music and somehow nobody fights about that one.

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• J

  Jamie1mo ago

  If you disagree with six literal days, explain why you're okay telling the billions of Christians across history who DID read it literally that they were intellectually naive. Because that's what 'it's a poem' implies.

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• Q

  Quinn1mo ago

  Genre analysis. That's what we're calling 'I don't like what the text says' now. Got it.

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