There are many things that disturb me about this. But one that jumped out at me in the Wyoming District resolution was their rejection of this statement: "[W]e must not present the appearance that the age of the earth is a ‘litmus test’ for
orthodoxy” (p. 73). They go further and state, "these words of Dr. Jurchen contradict the Holy Scriptures, deny their clarity, and are not to be tolerated in the Church of God, much less excused or defended."
Before I go on, does anyone disagree with me that these words are stating that the age of the earth should be (or is) "a 'litmus test for orthodoxy"?
If the age of the earth is a litmus test for orthodoxy, then I want a definitive, exact, answer about how old the earth is. I want to know what the 'litmus test' is.
Is there any wiggle room within that litmus test? What if I think the earth is 5,000 years older? 25,000? 50,000? 156,297 years?
I reject young earth creationism. And I triple dog dare any professional church worker in the LCMS to charge me with false doctrine for rejecting it.
If someone wishes to charge me with false doctrine, among the questions I will ask are these:
1) Show me where Scripture definitively states an age of the earth. Not, as some have argued, that by implication the Scriptures require a young earth. I want to know where Scripture says that definitively. One person, in reply to my objection to YCE, asked me, "How do you know Jesus is present in the supper?" I replied, "He clearly says, 'This is my body. This is my blood.' I want something equally definitive."
2) Show me where the Confessions teach a young earth.
3) Aside from the Brief Statement, which does not give a date for creation (and was written by a geocentrist) show me where the LCMS in convention has passed a resolution requiring a YCE viewpoint. (As an aside, I was quite amazed at reading the BJS comments where a pastor was told that LCMS pastors are required to hold to YCE. I do not hold that position. I never have. I was never told that I had to hold to that position.)
4) In Genesis 5, Moses says that Adam was 130 years old when Seth was born. Was that 130 years from the date of his creation? If so, how was time reckoned prior to the Fall? Did they have seasons? Or could it be argued that his "age" was reckoned from the time of the Fall?
5) How many years where there between Adam's creation and the fall?
6) Genesis 1 lists four rivers. Two are the Tigris and Euphrates. What happened to the other two?
While I accept a six day creation (and I affirm a literal Adam and Eve and a literal garden and fall), I do not know how many years ago the world was created nor do I think it is wise to bind the consciences of pastors or members. I have people who have come to the congregations I have served from Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches that have required Young Earth Creationism and are glad to have been freed from it.
I just want to say again, I think you are right about not binding consciences on this matter. I have no interest in charging heresy against anyone. But instead of getting in a twist, let me try and answer your questions roughly as I was taught and how I think someone who does want to charge heresy would answer them.
1) Genesis 1 says everything went from formless and void to humans in the garden in 6 days. That is pretty definitive. If you follow Bishop Ussher's counting through the rest of the bible counting up literal years in genealogies you get ~6000 years. We can agree that there are some gap points, how long Adam and Eve lived pre-fall, maybe some telescoping of genealogies, but those gaps if conceded are not Billions of years. Compared to any evolutionary theory, the bible if you read it naively would lead you to a young earth. And this is the big step, if you can't acknowledge that it is akin to Zwingli not understanding "is". As much as you think they aren't reading, they think you are gaslighting them.
2) The confession are silent on this, but that is largely an argument for "the dog that didn't bark". It was only with the age of Darwin that the age of the earth became a modern question. The church fathers confronted this question when replying to cyclical theories of the universe and it can be shown from some of them that they averred answering or held to slightly different time schedules, but as paganism died out they converged on the simple understanding of genesis. Hence, when the small catechism confesses that "god has made me and all creatures" the assumed time frame is short. It was a settled issue.
3) The brief statement only doesn't give a date if you both: a) reject the simple reading of the Gen 1, because it does cite "six days" and b) reject that this was not a question. The brief statements' concluding sentence on this asserts that both scripture and the confessions in the small catechism teach six days from nothing to humans. If you want to say 25,000 years, fine. But any simple reading can't come up with billions. As far as others, they were not necessary because the brief statement was present, surprisingly early for the LCMS. And if you were not taught this, that just goes to prove how deep the rot went in many places.
4) The simple way to understand this is from the time of creation, but you are right. It could be reckoned from the fall. It could be reckoned from the death of Abel. Go ahead and add 10,000 years. But you are breaking what words mean if you slip in a Billion. And questioning "how time was reckoned" is a tricky little step that assumes God's inspiration was unable to express himself clearly. You can question what words mean, but when you head down that path, where do you stop? The answer of modern times is that you don't. And you end up in a place where words are meaningless. The only thing that has meaning is power.
5) We don't know. The rabbis hold almost no time at all. The simple understanding would be a small time. But sure, add 10,000 years in a blessed state. Maybe that is how all those other people seem to be present. But adding a billion doesn't make sense. It wouldn't take long for a human race in perfect health and deathless to fill the globe. Run the geometric growth calculation.
6) The flood changed a whole bunch of topology.
That is roughly what I was taught. And I was taught that as a reasonable middle ground. Personally I think we would be better off not having any dogmatic statement on the age of the earth. The test of orthodoxy is "did God create it" not an unknowable timetable. (And those who are convinced would scream at me for that unknowable because they would say, "but you can, it is right there in scripture".) But there is a clear pattern in modernity of a) dissent, b) asking for dialog, c) spending time in dialog while assuming positions of power, d) when enough power is assumed shutting down dialog and and shooting survivors. So common is it that it is captured in Neuhaus' law, "in any institution not dedicated to orthodoxy, orthodoxy will eventually be disallowed". If we were being honest, we wouldn't just reject a negative motion, we would advance one that make a positive statement of this is what we believe and teach. That statement could simply be that the age of the earth is unknowable, hence we don't dogmatically bind consciences on this question. That way we could have real concord either in bring our teaching in line with the statement or in no longer walking together because the lack of concord has been revealed. But no, we are gutless, we put forward negative charges, we deny the plain meaning of past statements and words, we rally politically to beat the rap, we counter rally to get a scalp or two in our regions, and the fight goes on.
