A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy

Rating:
Summary: An outsider's view
Review: This book ended up mysteriously on the desk of a colleague of mine, an X-ray astronomer. Knowing that I was a Christian - though scarcely any of the reviewers here would agree with that assessment, since I have no doubt that Darwin was right, a criterion that seems to matter more these days than relying on the blood of Christ for salvation - he passed it along to me.

Ross didn't change my mind about anything. He has a good grasp of astronomy, and explains it pretty well, but I would suggest he's out of his depth in those rare passages when he argues directly against evolution. I'm not his intended audience, obviously. He wants to speak to those who adhere to young-earth creationism, or to those who are wavering in their faith because they have been told you that you can't be a Christian and also believe the universe is more than a few thousand years old.

Nevertheless, he won me over. This is someone I would be proud to worship with: he approaches his subject, and his adversaries (be they secular or young-earth creationists) with civility, "gentleness, meekness, self-control". Attributes not uncommon in my experience among biblical inerrantists, but rarely on display from any side when creationism is the topic.

Ross's central concern is what the Bible has to say about creation. Of his 23 chapters, only four deal with the astronomical evidence for an old universe. One of those, and a couple of others, deal with arguments for intelligent design drawn from astronomy (and as one who's delved deeply into both astronomy and biology, I think those are the most solid ID arguments at the moment.) Most, however, deal with general issues of biblical interpretation, and with the biblical evidence for an old universe. This is a man who is serious about placing his trust in the Bible.

That the book displays the fruits of the Spirit is the most important reason for my 4 stars. But it also displays considerable freshness of insight. Since I take all of Genesis 1 to be metaphorical, I have no dog in the "day-age/ 24 hour day" fight. It seems to me both sides have pretty good knock-'em-down prooftexts, which would lead to a draw if it weren't for the fact that a certain spirit of conformity in the church makes people prefer to go with the crowd rather than to play Berean and dig deep. But Ross offers a raft of biblical arguments for day-age that I hadn't seen before, as well as new links between 20th century cosmology and the language of the Bible. (For example, the passage about God "stretching the heavens like a tent" has been a trifle embarrassing to biblical literalists, since it seems to suggest the stars and planets sit in a two-dimensional sheet over the earth. But as Ross points out, something very like this is an analogy frequently used to explain the Big Bang: the 3-dimensional universe expands as the surface of a 4-dimensional sphere, and students are often encouraged to picture a stretching 2-dimensional sheet as a guide to understanding the theory.)

Ross's chief motivation - other than a respect for truth, and a desire to set forth the truth as he understands it - is evangelical. Many millions of people, having been exposed to and convinced by the overwhelming physical evidence for the great age of the universe, will think of Christianity as just a pack of irrelevant nonsense, if they are told that one must reject essentially all of science in order to accept Christ. There is an offense of the Cross - but this isn't it. If the day-age interpretation of Genesis is correct, then rather than the offence of the Cross, this is just a fence around the Cross, placed there by Christians too stubborn to distinguish tithes and cummin from "the weightier things of the law"; and Ross fears its effect will be to keep sinners from crossing over into life. ("Too stubborn" is my phrasing; I think Ross would find a kinder way to say it.)

In my own judgment, the insistence on discarding the theory of evolution is another such fence. Most of those who can't get past the "six literal days" fence won't be able to get past that one either. But many may; and this makes Ross's contribution a valuable one.

One final word of my own. Those who insist that the Bible "plainly" speaks of 24-hour days in Genesis (and for that matter, those who insist that it "plainly" speaks of age-long days, or that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are "plainly" to be taken as literal history) are not merely reading what's in front of them. They are accepting what other men have told them about how the Bible "must" be read. Whenever you hear someone say: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," what they are actually saying is, "I say God said it, I believe it, and I say that settles it." It may masquerade as humility before "God's word", but it is more often pride, or a fearful conformity to churchified traditions of men.

Everyone who picks up the Bible and reads is placing an interpretation on what he sees. The only protection against mistaking one's own, or one's congregation's, ideas for "what God says" is prayerful humility before God, and a loving openness to what fellow Christians everywhere find when they look in His word, and when they look into the new hearts He has given them. That's what I found in this book, and that's why I can heartily recommend it to creationists of all stripes.

Rating:
Summary: Makes a Mockery of Genesis As Written
Review: Very few good points to edify. What Augustine thought is of little consequence if it's not what Moses thought to convey. Everyone can find a favorite historical hero to hitch their interpretive wagon to and rationalize reinterpreting Genesis' plain words. As for gaps in genealogies, even allowing for multiple generations between begetter and begotten, we're still in the thousands of years of history from Adam to Christ. By artificially inserting 'pre-hominids' or Darwinian family tree speculation only begets the absurdity of millions of years, which Moses never intended, nor did Matthew or Luke in their genealogies in New Testament. Try Ken Ham's website Answers in Genesis for BIBLICAL answers to your questions. Mr. Ross is unable to resolve creation controversy by making a mockery of its plain-text wording. He only adds to the controversy and the burden of proof is on him for departing so severely from Genesis in situ. Genesis speaks plainly for itself. It doesn't require 'interpretation' or 'insertion' or 'revisionism' or fudging biblical genealogies. Would you tolerate fudging of other biblical texts to make them fit what the world is proposing as an alternative truth? If not, why here???

Rating:
Summary: Evolutionist's endorsement clinches the farce
Review: When an outsider Darwinian evolutionist embraces this book as agreeing with his metaphorical spin on God's non-metaphorical Genesis 1-11, the endorsement is telling! Matter of Days mongrelizes the Lord's documentation of what He did and when/how He did it. Whatever a Darwinianist thinks of Day 4 - long or short - Genesis clearly documents that's when sun, moon and stars were MADE, not just appeared as the clouds cleared. However, bigbangers like the author can't accept that version, so have sun, moon,stars evolving over billions of years along the standard evolutionary cosmythological scenario of Carl Sagan and cohorts. Secular astrophysics dictates, defines and determines how God intended to communicate His documentary! God Himself in His Own plaintext recording of events is dismissed or subject to secular revisionism to cater to scientific rationale. How best to handle the Bible? NOT 'God said it, I believe I know what He meant and that settles my slant on it' as Darwinianism or metaphorianism choose to spin it. Rather, 'God documented it in plain Hebrew through Moses the Prophet, that settles it for those taking God at His Word unvarnished and unredefined for modern consumption, I choose to believe the Original Literal Version over the metaphorical perversion.'

That this farce would appeal to Bible-alterers,however sincere, held intellectually captive to modern science philosophism is tantamount to disendorsement for the serious Bible-accepter-at-face-value.

Rating:
Summary: shredding scripture
Review: when science tells the bible what to say,
it shreds the christian faith to ground filet.