What does the Bible say God did when He created the heavens and the earth? The
study begins by investigating genres of creation texts and stating hermeneutical principles.
The claims of ten creation theories are evaluated by Bible creation texts. The ten creation
theories investigated are: pre-creation chaos, initial chaos, title or summary, young earth
scientific creationism, theistic big bang, old earth day-age progressive creation, literary
framework, creation revealed in six days, gap or ruin-restoration, and historical land
(Eden/Promised Land) creationism. The most exegetically supported claims of the ten
theories suggest a combined eleventh theory. Four diagnostic questions sort all eleven
theories into groups. The questions are: Does the Genesis 1 text indicate the days were six
daylight-evening-nighttime-morning-cycle days, or six long day-age geologic eras? Did God
create orderly cosmos and unfinished earth during the beginning, or was there chaos God
transformed into cosmos in the six days? Were the stated life kinds created once, or twice?
Did God create the heavens and earth in the beginning, or in the six days? The eleven
theories are evaluated by Bible creation texts related to the question, and theories with claims
counter to the creation texts are progressively eliminated. Only the eleventh combined theory
emerges. Finally the most exegetically supported claims of the ten theories are correlated into
a fully described eleventh combined creation theoryâtwo-stage Biblical creation (2SBC).
Stage one: In the beginning time (rÄ'shît inherently means a time period) God created the
heavens and the earth; but at the end of that time, earth was declared uninhabitable,
uninhabited, and darkened. The perspective of the apparent Narrator of stage two was
established. Stage two: By eight command units involving six day-night-cycle workdays God
made planet earth lighted, habitable, and inhabited. (The Bible neither explicitly affirms nor
explicitly denies time passage between the days, so caution is urged with Payneâs proposal.)
The tôledôt (colophon?) in Genesis 2:4a ends the two-part narrative. Since the length of the
beginning time is unstated by the Bible, two-stage Biblical creation claims a Biblically
undated universe and earth creation (UEC).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-03152012-100307 |
| Date | 15 March 2012 |
| Creators | Arnold, Thomas Patrick |
| Contributors | Prof SJPK Riekert, Prof P Verster |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-03152012-100307/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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