Читать книгу The Modern Creation Trilogy - Dr. Henry M. Morris - Страница 5
ОглавлениеChapter 3
Attempts to Compromise on Creation
The biblical record of creation, fall, and Flood is so clear and straightforward, and so obviously written as a simple record of actual events, that it is amazing that large groups of influential Christians have tried to make it say something else. There seems to be no rationale for these efforts except the fear of ridicule and rejection by those of their colleagues who are committed to the evolutionary world view. Such Christians seem either ignorant or unconcerned about the fact that the evolutionary world view involves long ages of random evolutionary meandering, struggle, suffering, and death, culminating supposedly in the emergence of man.
Many of these compromising Christians profess allegiance to Christ and the Scriptures, and perhaps are quite sincere in thinking theirs is the only way that Christians can be intellectually reputable. Nevertheless, they are also quite wrong. The Bible is God’s Word, verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit, free of error (God cannot lie!), and God the Holy Spirit means exactly what He says. The foundational nature of the doctrine of creation makes it supremely important for the Scriptures to be plain and clear on this subject, of all subjects! In fact, they could hardly be more clear than they are, just as they stand.
However, since so many professed Christians have been tempted to compromise on the subject of creation, we shall in this chapter summarize the reasons that such compromises are invalid and harmful. We shall try to avoid any ad hominem remarks, however, since we are more concerned to refute these harmful theories than to criticize their advocates.
Theistic Evolution
According to Scripture, all things were specially created by God in six days. Is it possible that God’s method of “creation” might really have been what the modern evolutionist means by “evolution”? (The question as to the exact length or nature of these days of creation will be discussed later.) A popular cliché of neo-orthodox and liberal writers is to the effect that God has revealed in Scripture the fact of creation, but has left the method of creation to be worked out by scientists. This is merely a circuitous way of saying that the fact of evolution should be accepted in the hope that the scientists will allow the belief that God is the one controlling the process.
There are various forms of theistic evolution, and different terms that have been used. These include “orthogenesis” (goal-directed evolution), “nomogenesis” (evolution according to fixed law), “emergent evolution,” “creative evolution,” and others. None of these concepts are accepted among modern leaders of evolutionary thought, for they are all quite atheistic. The evolutionary scheme that is least objectionable to Christians is, of course, simply the idea that Jehovah used the method of evolution to accomplish His purpose in creation, as described in Genesis. This theory might be called “biblical evolution.” Any sound approach to Bible exegesis, however, precludes this interpretation.
1. Creation of Distinct Kinds Precludes Transmutations between Kinds
The Scriptures are very clear in their teaching that God created all things as He wanted them to be, each “kind” with its own particular structure, according to His own sovereign purposes. The account of creation in Genesis 1, for example, indicates that at least ten major categories of organic life were specially created, each “after his kind.” These categories are, in the plant kingdom: (1) grass, (2) herbs, (3) fruit trees. In the animal kingdom the specific categories mentioned are these: (1) sea monsters, (2) other marine animals, (3) birds, (4) beasts of the earth, (5) cattle, (6) crawling animals. Finally, man “kind” was created as another completely separate category. The phrase “after his kind” or its equivalent occurs ten times in this first chapter of Genesis.
Even though there may be uncertainty as to what is meant by “kind” (Hebrew min), it is obvious that the word does have a definite and fixed meaning. One “kind” could not transform itself into another “kind.” There is certainly no thought here of an evolutionary continuity of all forms of life, but rather one of definite and distinct categories! Furthermore, the sense of the passage is that a great many different kinds were created in each of the nine major groups (excluding man) that are specifically listed. There is certainly room for variations within each kind, as is obvious from the fact that all the different tribes and nations of men, with all their wide variety of physical characteristics, are within the human “kind.” The same must be true for the other kinds. Many different varieties can emerge within the basic framework of each kind, but at the same time such variations can never extend beyond that framework.
Remember that evolution teaches that all “kinds” of life descended from other “kinds,” ultimately all descending from a common ancestor. The creation of plants and animals “after their kind” implies that the omniscient God knew what form each should take, and in His omnipotence created them that way from the start. Note that each “kind” was not commanded to reproduce “after their kind,” even though we know from genetics that there are natural limits to variation. But what this phrase specifically says, repeated ten times in one chapter, is that plants and animal categories did not evolve from any other category. Evolutionary change was not involved in their origin.
This clear teaching of the creation chapter is accepted and confirmed in other parts of the Bible. For example, consider 1 Corinthians 15:38–39: “God giveth . . . to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”
Not only is such distinctiveness true in the organic realm of plants and animals, but also in the inorganic realm. “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another” (1 Cor. 15:40). That is, the earth is quite different from the stars and the other planets (as has been abundantly confirmed in this age of space exploration), and therefore must have been the object of a distinct creative act by God. It was, in fact, created by God on the first day (Gen. 1:1–5), whereas the heavenly bodies were not made until the fourth day (Gen. 1:14–19).
Furthermore, even the stars (and this term in the Bible includes all celestial objects except the sun and moon), were each created with its own particular structure. “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41). The tremendous variety of heavenly bodies revealed by modern astronomy — planets, comets, meteors, white dwarfs, red giants, variable stars, star clusters, binary stars, dark nebulae, interstellar dust, radio stars, quasars, neutron stars, etc. — also confirms this statement. No two stars, out of the innumerable host of heaven, are exactly alike, even though they look alike superficially, as mere points of light. Each was created with its own structure and purpose (though these matters are presently beyond our knowledge, perhaps awaiting exploration and utilization in the eternal ages to come). Although there are many theories to explain how the many “species” of stars and galaxies may have evolved from one into another, there is no observational evidence whatsoever of such imagined evolution.
Perhaps the most striking biblical statement of the absolute uniqueness of each of the foregoing created entities is found in 1 Corinthians 15:42–44: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. . . . There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” That is, the radical difference in kind between man’s natural body and his glorified resurrection body (And obviously the one does not by natural processes evolve into the other!) is taken as analogous to the unbridgeable gaps between the created kinds of things in the present universe.
Numerous other passages in the Bible also clearly prove special creation, but those discussed above should be adequate to demonstrate that so-called “biblical evolution” is a semantic confusion, about like “inorganic metabolism” or “Christian atheism.” The Bible simply does not permit evolution in its hermeneutical system.
2. Evolution Contradicts the Bible Record of a Finished Creation
The fundamental premise of evolutionary philosophy is that the origin and development of all things can be understood in terms of basic natural laws and processes that can be studied in operation right now. This assumption flatly contradicts the biblical statement that “He rested from all his work which God created and made” (Gen. 2:3) after the six days of creation. “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” (Exod. 31:17). “The works were finished from the foundation of the world” (Heb. 4:3). Scientifically, this scriptural statement of the completion of the creative process anticipated by thousands of years the discovery of the law of conservation of mass/energy. It is also significant that whenever the verb “created” is used in connection with the heavens and the earth, it is always in the past tense. Creation was a completed event of the past; it is not continuing in the present.
3. Evolution Contradicts the Universal Principle of Decay
Ever since God said “Cursed is the ground” (Gen. 3:17), the “creation itself” has been waiting to “be delivered from the bondage of corruption” (Rom. 8:21). “All flesh is grass . . . the grass withereth, the flower fadeth” (Isa. 40:6–7). “The earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner” (Isa. 51:6). There is in effect a universal principle of disintegration and death, both in the physical creation (“earth shall wax old”) and in the living world (“all flesh is grass”). This is nothing less than the curse, pronounced by God on man’s entire dominion because of man’s sin, reflected in the scientific realm by the universal law of increasing entropy. It is obvious that the evolutionary concept of a universal process of order increasing from molecule to man is incompatible with the universal process of decay and decreasing order.
4. Evolution Is Incompatible with Christian Ethics
The essence of the evolutionary process is survival, because obviously no organism can contribute to evolution unless it survives and reproduces. The concept of natural selection entails a struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. The weak and misfits are exterminated; the strong and fertile survive. If God had anything to do with the evolutionary process, it does seem strange that He would utilize a method which squarely contradicts the system of ethics He established for the man He created by this process. Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:38–39). The chief good of evolution is struggle and survival, but the essence of Christianity is sacrifice and death, as demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Theological Contradictions Apart from Scripture
Many people believe in God without any strong commitment to the Bible as His Word. Therefore, the fact that the teachings of the Bible cannot be harmonized with evolution is of no particular concern to them, since they accept the inspiration of Scripture only in a very loose and generalized way, if at all. To them the Bible is merely a valuable book in terms of religious insights and ethical values, but not in matters of science and history.
However, even apart from Scripture, there are still a number of serious contradictions in theistic evolution (assuming that the God who supposedly created things by this process is really a personal, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, gracious, loving, purposive God). Most theistic evolutionists (not considering pantheistic evolution) would probably agree with such a concept of God, and, of course, that is the type of God revealed in the Bible. But if God is like that, it seems completely incongruous that He would use evolution as His method of creation, for the following reasons:
1 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s omnipotence. Since He has all power, He is capable of creating the universe in an instant, rather than having to stretch out His creating over eons of time.
2 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s personality. If man in His own image was the goal of the evolutionary process, surely God should not have waited until the very tail end of geologic time before creating personalities. No personal fellowship was possible with the rocks and seas, or even with the dinosaurs and gliptodons.
3 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s omniscience. The history of evolution, as interpreted by evolutionary geologists from the fossil record, is filled with extinctions, misfits, evolutionary cul-de-sacs, and other like evidences of very poor planning. The very essence of evolution, in fact, is random mutation, not scientific progress.
4 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s nature of love. The supposed fact of evolution is best evinced by the fossils, which eloquently speak of a harsh world, filled with storm and upheaval, disease and famine, struggle for existence and violent death. The accepted mechanism for inducing evolution is overpopulation and a natural selection through extermination of the weak and unfit. A loving God would surely have been more considerate of His creatures than this. “One (sparrow) shall not fall on the ground without your Father” (Matt. 10:29), said Jesus.
5 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s purposiveness. If God’s purpose was the creation and redemption of man, as theistic evolutionists presumably believe, it seems incomprehensible that He would waste billions of years in aimless evolutionary meandering before getting to the point. What semblance of purpose could there have been in the hundred-million-year reign and eventual extinction of the dinosaurs, for example? “Let all things be done decently and in order,” the Bible commands (1 Cor. 14:40).
6 Evolution is inconsistent with the grace of God. Evolution, with its theology of struggle for survival in the physical world, fits perfectly with the humanistic theory of works for salvation in the spiritual world. The Christian concept of the grace of God, providing life and salvation in response to faith alone on the basis of the willing sacrifice of himself for the unfit and unworthy, is diametrically opposite to the evolutionary concept (see Eph. 2:8–9).
Progressive Creation
A large group of evangelicals, sensitive to the traditional opposition to evolution in their own constituencies, have tried to circumvent this opposition while at the same time embracing the essential framework of the evolutionary system through what they call “progressive creation.”
A similar concept is called “threshold evolution.” Other labels have been suggested for these general concepts, but they are all semantic variants of the fundamental system of theistic evolution.
The idea in the progressive-creation approach is to suppose that, while life was developing over the vast span of geologic time the way evolutionists have imagined it, God intervened on various occasions to create something new that the evolutionary process could not accomplish unaided. Thus, the “progressive creationists” give a sort of “nod to God” every now and then, and they consider this an adequate accommodation to Scripture.
For example, early in the Tertiary period, God presumably stepped in to create Eohippus, the small three-toed “dawn horse.” He then withdrew to let subsequent horse evolution continue through the stages of Mesohippus, Parahippus, etc., until finally they developed into the modern Equus. Similarly, a long succession of humanoid forms developed from their unknown apelike ancestor until, at the right moment, God intervened and placed an eternal soul in one (or two) of them by special creative power.
Details vary considerably in the exposition of the progressive creation concept by various writers, with greater or lesser numbers of creative acts interspersed in the evolutionary process according to the taste of the writer. All, however, accept the basic framework of the evolutionary geological ages and visualize progressive creation as taking place over billions of years instead of six normal, 24-hour days.
A few such accommodationists even suggest that every new species was a special “mini-creation,” introduced by God at the appropriate point in earth history. They call this “creationism,” but, obviously, it is essentially the same as theistic evolution.
It is difficult to see any biblical or theological advantage that the progressive-creation idea has over a straightforward system of theistic evolution. Exactly the same theological problems as outlined in the preceding section still apply, whether the process is called theistic evolution, progressive creation, old-earth creationism or anything else.
In fact, if one were forced to choose between the two, theistic evolution seems less unreasonable and inconsistent with God than progressive creation. It involves one consistent process, always the same, established by God at the beginning and maintained continually thereafter. Progressive creation, on the other hand, implies that God’s creative forethought was not adequate for the entire evolutionary process at the beginning. He, therefore, frequently interfered in the process, setting it back in the right direction and providing enough creative energy to keep it going a while longer until He could get back later for another shot-in-the-evolutionary-arm.
Theistic evolution is creation by continuous evolutionary processes initiated by God. Progressive creation is creation by discontinuous evolutionary processes initiated by God, but having to be shored up by sporadic injections of non-evolutionary processes. Of the two, theistic evolution is less inconsistent with God’s character. However, progressive creation may sound less offensive to college boards of trustees, contributing alumni, and supporting churches. Its purpose seems to be to permit Christian academics to say they believe in “creation,” for the sake of their constituents, without incurring opposition and derision from their non-Christian evolutionist colleagues.
The Day-Age Theory
Theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists have argued that the geological ages have been so firmly established by science that it would be folly to question them and, therefore, some means of accommodating Genesis to geology must be devised. The most obvious way of attempting this is to interpret the Genesis account of creation in such a way that the ages of geology correspond to the history of creation. Since the latter is given in terms of six “days” of creative work by God, the creation week must somehow be expanded to incorporate all of earth history from its primeval beginning up to and including man’s arrival. Hence, the “days” must correspond more or less to the geological “ages.”
In fact, some writers have even built what they feel is a case for the divine origin of the Genesis account on the basis of an assumed “concordance” between the order of creation in Genesis 1 and the order of the development of the earth and its various forms of life as represented by the geological ages. That is, in both Genesis and geology, first comes the inorganic universe, then simple forms of life, then more complex forms of life, and finally man.
However, such a proposed concordance cannot be pressed successfully for more details than that. Theories about the early history of the earth and the universe are still quite varied and indefinite. The general order noted above is only what must be postulated for either creation or evolution and, therefore, proves nothing at all. That is, if the evolutionary ages really occurred, the necessary order must be from simple to complex. Similarly, if God employed a six-literal-day week of special creation, as the Bible indicates, again the order must logically be from simple to complex, with the inorganic world first prepared for plant growth, which was then created for animal life, which was then created to serve man, who was finally created in God’s image. Since the same order is clearly to be expected in both cases, the fact that it thus occurs in both cases has no apologetic value either way.
The day-age theory is normally accompanied by either the theory of theistic evolution or the theory of progressive creation. In the previous sections it was seen that neither theistic evolution nor progressive creation is tenable biblically or theologically. Therefore, the day-age theory must likewise be rejected. Nevertheless, in this section the day-age theory specifically will be considered, showing that it is quite unacceptable on both exegetical and scientific grounds.
1. The Proper Meaning of “Day” and “Days”
The main argument for the day-age theory, other than the desire to obtain a framework corresponding to geological theory, is the fact that the Hebrew word yom does not have to mean a literal day, but can be interpreted as “a very long time.” Specific biblical warrant for such an interpretation is presumably found in 2 Peter 3:8, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years.”
There is no doubt that yom can be used to express time in a general sense. In fact, it is actually translated as “time” in the King James translation 65 times. On the other hand, it is translated as “day” almost 1,200 times! In addition, its plural form yamim is translated as “days” approximately 700 times. It is obvious, therefore, that the normal meanings of yom and yamim are “day” and “days,” respectively. If a parabolic or metaphorical meaning is intended, it is always made obvious in the context. In approximately 95 percent of its occurrences, the literal meaning is clearly indicated.
Even in those cases where a general meaning is permitted in the context, it is always indefinite as to duration, such as the “time of adversity” or the “day of prosperity.” In fact, it would be very difficult to find even a single occurrence of yom that could not be interpreted to mean a literal solar day, and would have to mean a long period of time. (Moses never used it this way.) Whenever other biblical writers really intended to convey the idea of a very long duration of time, they normally used some such word as olam (meaning “age” or “long time”) or else attached to yom an adjective such as rab (meaning “long”), so that the two words together, yom rab, then meant “a long time.” But yom by itself can apparently never be proved, in one single case, to require the meaning of a long period of time, and certainly no usage that would suggest a geological age.
It might still be contended that, even though yom never requires the meaning of a long age, it might possibly permit it. However, the writer of the first chapter of Genesis has very carefully guarded against such a notion, both by modifying the noun by a numerical adjective (“first day,” “second day,” etc.), and also by indicating the boundaries of the time period in each case as “evening and morning.” Either one of these devices would suffice to limit the meaning of yom to that of a solar day, and when both are used, there could be no better or surer way possible for the writer to convey the intended meaning of a literal solar day.
To prove this, it is noted that whenever a limiting numeral or ordinal is attached to “day” in the Old Testament (and there are over 200 such instances), the meaning is always that of a literal day. Similarly, the words “evening” and “morning,” each occurring more than a hundred times in the Hebrew, never are used to mean anything but a literal evening and a literal morning, ending and beginning a literal day.
As added proof, the word yom is clearly defined the first time it is used. God defines His terms! “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5). The word yom is defined here as the light period in the regular succession of light and darkness, which, as the earth rotates on its axis, has continued ever since. This definition obviously precludes any possible interpretation as a geological age.
The objection is sometimes raised that the first three days were not days as they are today, since the sun was not created until day four. One could, of course, turn this objection against those who raise it. The longer the first three days, the more catastrophic it would be for the sun not to be functioning if indeed the sun is the only possible source of light for the earth. The vegetation created on the third day might endure for a few hours without sunlight, but hardly for a geological age!
Regardless of the precise length of the first three days, there must have been some source of light available to separate light and darkness, evening and morning. It was apparently not the sun as it is now known, but, of course, God is not limited to the sun as a source of light.1 Whatever it may have been, the earth was evidently rotating on its axis, since evenings and mornings were occurring regularly for those three days. The placing of the two great “light-bearers” in the heavens need have no great effect on the rate of this rotation, so that the duration of day four and those following was most probably the same as that of days one through three.
It is interesting also that Genesis 1:14–19 further clarifies the meaning of “day” and “days”: “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years . . . the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night . . . and the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” It would certainly seem that there could be no possible doubt as to the meaning and duration of day after at least this fourth day.
In view of all the above considerations, it seems impossible to accept the day-age theory, regardless of the number of eminent scientists and theologians who have advocated it. The writer of Genesis 1 clearly intended to describe a creation accomplished in six literal days. He could not possibly have expressed such a meaning any more clearly and emphatically than in the words and sentences which are actually used.
Not only is a six-literal-day creation taught in Genesis, but also in Exodus within the Ten Commandments. The Fourth Commandment says: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, and hallowed it” (Exod. 20:8–11).
It is quite clear that the six work days of God are identical in duration to the six days of man’s work week. The basis for this very precise commandment is trivial and vacuous otherwise. The observance of seven-day weeks, all through history, and all over the world, with no astronomical basis, is further evidence.
Furthermore, the plural yamim is used here for the six work “days” of God. This word is used more than 700 times in the Old Testament. In none of these occurrences can it be proved to have any meaning except that of literal days.
Two or three secondary arguments relating to the word “day” need to be mentioned. It is frequently urged that since it is not used in a strict literal sense in Genesis 2:4, which says, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,” it is proper also to interpret it that way in Genesis 1.
At the most, of course, the interpretation could be rendered “in the time that the Lord God” and this has been already recognized as a proper use of yom when the context so justifies. The context does not so justify in Genesis 1, as has been seen. On the other hand, this verse (Gen. 2:4) seems primarily to refer to the first day of creation when, as stated in Genesis 1:1, “God created the heavens and the earth.” But even if the context identifies the entire creation week, that was only six solar days. There is no victory here for those who would advocate long ages.
Another argument has been that since God is still “resting” from His work of creation, and since the seventh day is not concluded by the phrase “evening and morning,” the seventh day is still continuing. Then, if the seventh day has a duration of at least 6,000 years, the other six days also may have been long periods. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ denomination, in fact, teaches this, maintaining that since the seventh day is 7,000 years in length (including the coming millennium), each of the days is 7,000 years, so that God’s work week was 42,000 years long! Theistic evolutionists or progressive creationists would, on the same basis, have to say that God’s rest day has been at least a million years long since the appearance of man on earth.
Such exegesis is strained, to say the least. The verse does not say, “God is resting on the seventh day,” but rather, “God rested on the seventh day.” Exodus 31:17 even says, “. . . in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” It is recorded that God “blessed” and “sanctified” the seventh day (Gen. 2:3), but such a beatitude can hardly apply to this present evil age. God’s rest was soon to be interrupted by the entrance of sin “into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. 5:12), so that He had to set about the work of redeeming and restoring His groaning creation. As Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). Were it not for the weekly rest day, recalling God’s all-too-brief rest after creation, and now also commemorating His victory over death and the grave, “All the works that are done under the sun . . . [are] vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccles. 1:14).
Similarly, the verse 2 Peter 3:8, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” has been badly misapplied when used to teach the day-age theory. In its biblical context, it teaches exactly the opposite, and one should remember that “a text without a context is a pretext.” Peter is dealing here with the conflict between uniformitarianism and creationism prophesied in the last days. He is saying that, despite man’s naturalistic scoffings, God can do in one day what, on uniformitarian premises, might seem to require a thousand years. God does not require eons of time to accomplish His work of creating and redeeming all things. It is even interesting that using the above equation — one day for a thousand years or 365,000 days — the actual duration of God’s work with the earth and man — say about 7,000 years — becomes about two and a half billion years, which is at least on the order of magnitude of the “apparent age” of the world as calculated by uniformitarianism!
2. Contradictions between Genesis and the Geological Ages
Even if it were possible to understand “day” in Genesis as referring to something like a geological age (and it is not hermeneutically possible, as just seen), it still would not help any in regard to the concordist motivation. The vague general concordance between the order of creation in Genesis and the order of evolutionary development in geology (and as noted earlier such a vague concordance is to be expected in the nature of the case and thus proves nothing) becomes a morass of contradictions when we progress to an examination of details.
At least 25 such contradictions exist. Note just a few of them:
| Uniformitarianism | Bible |
| Matter existed in the beginning | Matter created by God in the beginning |
| Sun and stars before the earth | Earth before the sun and stars |
| Land before the oceans | Oceans before the land |
| Sun, earth’s first light | Light before the sun |
| Contiguous atmosphere and hydrosphere | Atmosphere between two hydrospheres |
| Marine organisms, first forms of life | Land plants, first life forms created |
| Fishes before fruit trees | Fruit trees before fishes |
| Insects before birds | Birds before insects (“creeping things”) |
| Sun before land plants | Land vegetation before the sun |
| Reptiles before birds | Birds before reptiles (“creeping things”) |
| Woman before man (by genetics) | Man before woman (by creation) |
| Rain before man | Man before rain |
| Creative processes still continuing | Creation completed |
| Struggle and death necessary atecedents of man | Man, the cause of struggle and death |
The previous very sketchy tabulation shows conclusively that it is impossible to speak convincingly of a concordance (harmony) between the geological ages and Genesis. As with the question of evolution or creation, the Genesis record is stubbornly intransigent and will not accommodate the standard system of geological ages. A decision must be made for one or the other — one cannot logically accept both!
3. Identification of the Geological Ages with Evolutionary Suffering
The most serious fallacy in the day-age theory is that it impugns the character of God. It provides the basic exegetical framework for either so-called biblical evolutionism or for progressive creationism. These concepts have been discussed and rejected in the preceding section on this very basis. The God described in the Bible (personal, omnipotent, omniscient, purposeful, gracious, orderly, loving) simply could not use such a process of creation as envisaged by leading evolutionists, with all its randomness, wastefulness, and cruelty.
But Christians must also realize that the geological ages are actually synonymous with evolution! When they accept the geological ages, they are implicitly accepting the evolutionary system (though many do not realize it, and would even deny it).
The geological ages obviously provide the necessary framework of time for evolution. If the universe began only several thousand years ago, then evolution is impossible. It requires billions of years to have even a semblance of plausibility.
Conversely, the only real assurance men have of the geological ages is the assumption of evolution. That is, since evolution “must” be true (the only alternative is creation!), therefore, it is “known” that life, the earth, and the universe must be extremely old. The various geological systems and epochs are identified, and even named (e.g., Paleozoic — meaning “ancient” life — and Mesozoic — meaning “middle” life) on the basis of the fossils found in the rocks, interpreted and dated on the basis of the supposed “stage-of-evolution” of the corresponding faunas. Whenever any other identification or dating technique (lithology, radiometry, etc.) conflicts with this approach (as is often the case), these paleontologic criteria always govern.
Thus, evolution is the basis for interpreting the fossil record, and the fossil record is the basis for establishing and identifying the geological ages. The geological ages, with their fossil sequences, provide the basic framework and the only evidence of any consequence for evolution. Here is one of the most classic and subtle examples of pseudo-scientific circular reasoning in all the complex history of metaphysical opposition to biblical creationism. The Bible-honoring Christian needs to realize that the geological ages are merely one component in the whole evolutionary package. If one wants to have the framework (geologic time), the glue that keeps it together (evolution) must also be accepted.
Again, however, even if one deliberately rejects or ignores the evolutionary implications of the geological ages, one must still face the massive problem of why God chose to use five billion years of chance variations, mutation, natural selection, geological upheavals, storm, disease, extinctions, struggle, suffering, and death as an inscrutable (but seemingly savage) prelude to His creation of man right at the very tail-end of geologic time. “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33). Yet, He is said to have surveyed the whole monstrous spectacle and pronounced it all “very good” (Gen. 1:31). The Bible is quite explicit in teaching that there was no suffering and no death of sentient life on the earth before man brought sin into the world (Gen. 3:14–19; Rom. 5:12; 8:20–23; 1 Cor. 15:21–22; Rev. 21:4–5; etc.). But if the rocks of the earth’s crust were already filled with fossilized remains of billions of animals, and even of hominid forms that looked like men, then God himself is directly responsible for creating suffering and death, not in judgment upon rebellion, but as an integral factor of His work of creation and sovereign rule. And this is theological chaos!
4. Variants of the Day-Age Theory
Some expositors, acknowledging that exegetical honesty compels recognition of the “days” of Genesis as literal days, have tried two other devices for harmonizing the geological ages with literal days. One method is to suggest that the literal creative days were each separated by vast spans of geologic time. The other is that the six days were six days of revelation, rather than creation.
As to the first theory, it should be noted that the six widely separated days of creation included creation of the earth, heaven, the stars, sun and moon, oceans, lands, plants, fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals (all of them), and man. Nothing much is left for the vast spans of time between the days, so why are they needed? (This theory is essentially the same as the “progressive-creation theory,” which has already been discussed.)
As for the revelatory-day theory, there is not a single word in the entire record that suggests such a thing. Visions and revelations of the Lord are frequently encountered in Scripture, but the writer always says so, when it is so. In refuting such an extraneous idea, God himself said, “In six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day” (Exod. 20:11). (Why should He wish to rest on the seventh day, if all His actual work on each of the previous days consisted of about one minute of speaking to some unidentified vision-recipient?)
In addition, all the previously mentioned scientific contradictions and theological fallacies apply in exactly the same way to the isolated-day and the revelatory-day theories as they do to the standard day-age theory. The conclusion is, therefore, that the day-age theory in any form is unacceptable biblically, scientifically, and theologically.
The Gap Theory
The Christian who desires to accommodate the geologic-age system in his theology must somehow fit it into the creation record of Genesis 1. Since the first chapter of Genesis covers the creation of all forms of life, including man, it is obvious that the geological ages could not have occurred after the creation week. In the preceding section, dealing with the day-age theory, it was shown conclusively that the ages of geology did not occur during the creation week. The only other possibility, if they occurred at all, is that they took place before the creation week. This latter theory is popularly known as the “gap theory,” since it places the geological ages in a supposed gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.
There are a variety of views on the gap theory, but in its usual form it assumes primeval creation as stated in Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This creation, coming directly from the creative hand of God, is supposed to have been complete and beautiful in every respect. Genesis 1:2 is then said to describe a different condition of the earth, many eons after the primeval creation. It is argued that the connective word, waw, at the beginning of verse 2, can be translated as either “and” or “but,” and that the verb, hayetha, can be translated as “became,” instead of “was.” Furthermore, the phrase “without form and void” (tohu va bohu) is translated by some as “ruined and empty.” Putting all this together, Genesis 1:1–2 becomes: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; but the earth became ruined and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
The geological ages are then placed in the interval after the primeval creation and before the ruined condition of the earth described in verse 2. It is usually held that some gigantic cataclysm terminated the geological ages, leaving the earth shattered and uninhabited and surrounded by darkness.
Then, according to this theory, God proceeded to “re-create” or “re-make” the earth in the six literal days described in Genesis 1:3–31. Those who advocate the gap theory are, of course, anti-evolutionists and believe that God created all things in the present world by special creation in the six-day creation week. However, they do not hold to a recent creation of the earth itself, since it dates from Genesis 1:1, the date of which presumably could be any number of billions of years in the past. A rather common cliché among these fundamentalists has been to this effect: “Let the geologists have all the time they want; the Bible does not give the date of the earth’s creation. All the vast expanses of geologic time are irrelevant to the biblical record, since they occurred before Genesis 1:2.”
Many holding this theory, though not all, have found it convenient to place the fossils of dinosaurs and “ape-men” and other extinct forms of life in this great gap, hoping thereby to avoid having to explain them in the context of God’s present creation. Others have tended to postulate only a partial pre-Adamic cataclysm, allowing plant seeds from the pre-world to survive, and even certain pre-Adamite hominids to survive in order to provide a wife for Cain (Gen. 4:17) and mothers for the “giants” (Gen. 6:4). For the most part, however, expositors advocating the gap theory believe the cataclysm to have devastated the whole world, leaving it completely waste and empty.
1. Death before Sin
This interpretation does seem superficially to provide an easy solution to the problem of the geological ages. The difficulty is that it is much too superficial. It solves the problem by ignoring it.
The geological-age problem is more complex than merely accounting for five billion years of time. Much more important is what took place during those years. Five billion years of geological ages means four billion years of organic evolution, accompanied by universal suffering, struggle, and death. As already pointed out, the very existence of the geological ages is based on evolution, and the identification of their various subdivisions depends on the supposed stage-of-evolution of the fossils found in the corresponding sedimentary rocks. Furthermore, whatever the fossils really say about evolution, one thing is sure, they speak of death — and violent, sudden death at that!
If the geological ages are real, then the evolutionary succession of life on earth that identifies those ages is also real. The gap theory does not settle the evolution problem for the fundamentalist; it merely inserts it in the gap before Genesis 1:2, and indeed makes it even worse. Not only is the entire evolutionary system still intact, but the added problem exists as to why God suddenly terminated the evolutionary process and then began again with six days of special creation — especially since the plants and animals and men that He created all had their counterparts in the world He had just destroyed.
There seems no way of avoiding the conclusion — if the geological ages really occurred before Genesis 1:2, that is — that God was using the same processes which exist in the present world to develop the pre-Adamic world. Sedimentation, volcanism, and the other present geological processes are clearly evident throughout the geological column. So are disease, decay, and death! And yet, this was supposedly ages before man brought sin into the world, and death by sin. Is God actually the author of evil and death, as the gap theory suggests?
2. The Fall of Satan after the Geological Ages
The great pre-Adamic cataclysm, which is basic to the gap theory, also needs explanation. It needs scientific explanation, for one thing, but more importantly it needs theological explanation. Why would the Creator spend billions of years developing a world and then suddenly reduce it to chaos in a shattering cataclysm? Or why would He allow it to develop on its own, then destroy it and re-create the same plant and animal types that had evolved?
The explanation commonly offered is that the cataclysm was caused by Satan’s rebellion and fall as described in Isaiah 14:12–15 and Ezekiel 28:11–17. Lucifer — the highest of all God’s angelic hierarchy, the anointed cherub who covered the very throne of God — is presumed to have rebelled against God and tried to usurp His dominion. As a result, God expelled him from heaven, and he became Satan, the great adversary.
Satan’s sin and fall, however, were in heaven on the “holy mountain of God,” not on earth. There is, in fact, not a word in Scripture to connect Satan with the earth prior to his rebellion. On the other hand, when he sinned, he was expelled from heaven to the earth. The account in Ezekiel says: “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee . . . therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground [or ‘earth,’ the same word in Hebrew]” (Ezek. 28:15–17).
There is, therefore, no scriptural reason to connect Satan’s fall in heaven with a cataclysm on earth. He was banished to the earth as a defeated foe. It seems much more probable that his expulsion to the earth was directly connected with man’s presence on earth. It seems plausible that Satan first became resentful and envious because of God’s great plan for man, and that this was a major factor leading to his rebellion. God cast him to the earth, where he was permitted to test man’s faithfulness to his Creator, to see whether he, too, would desire to “be as gods.”
That Satan was not on earth, at least not as a wicked rebel against God, prior to Adam’s creation is quite definite from Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and . . . it was very good.” As a matter of fact, the next verse indicates that this observation included “the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them,” so that everything was good in heaven! Therefore, Satan’s sin must have occurred after man’s creation.
It has occasionally been suggested that man’s creation was God’s response to Satan’s rebellion. The idea is that God is teaching a great object lesson to Satan and his angels; since they had not kept their first estate, God created man in Satan’s place. Then, when Satan brought about man’s fall also, God decided to redeem man in order to demonstrate His power and grace before the watching angels.
There is no doubt that the angels are intensely interested in God’s great work of salvation (1 Cor. 4:9, 6:3; Eph. 3:10; 1 Pet. 1:12), but this is not because it was an afterthought on God’s part. Rather, it is because their very purpose in being created was to participate in God’s plan for man: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). Throughout all the Scriptures, they are always thus seen as ministering in some way to man, particularly in relation to man’s salvation and growth in grace.
Since the angels were created specifically for service to man, there is no reason to suppose that they were created much earlier than man. They were present to “shout for joy” when God “laid the foundations of the earth” (Job 38:7; Ps. 104:4–5). However, this erection of the lands upon foundations, when they had previously been “without form,” probably refers to the work of the third day of creation, when the dry land was made to separate out of the waters: “and God called the dry land Earth” (Gen. 1:10).
In any case, the angelic rebellion in heaven could have had no effect on the earth and its supposed previous geological ages. Even if, for the sake of argument, it is assumed that Satan’s sin did cause a pre-Adamic cataclysm on earth, that still would not account for the geological ages, with their evolutionary succession of identifying fossils, that had occurred prior to the cataclysm. The whole problem of eons of suffering and death has still not been resolved, for all this occurred not only before Adam sinned, but even, according to the gap theory, before Satan sinned!
3. Scientific Problems with the Gap Theory
The pre-Adamic cataclysm supposedly left the earth completely desolate and uninhabited, submerged in a universal ocean and universal darkness (“waste and void, with darkness upon the face of the deep”). There was no light of the sun, no land surfaces, no vegetation, no animal life, even in the seas. Yet, in the fossil-bearing rocks, there seem to be clear evidences that a great abundance of plant and animal life existed all over the pre-world, on the land and in the sea.
Such a sudden transition from a world teeming with life and activity to one that was utterly ruined and empty, buried in water and darkness, must have required a geological cataclysm of overwhelming magnitude! The whole earth must have literally exploded, perhaps in a great nuclear or volcanic holocaust, destroying all life, causing all land surfaces to slide into the ocean, and filling the skies with such clouds of smoke and debris as to actually blot out the sun.
The problem is this: the pre-Adamic cataclysm has been postulated mainly as a means of reconciling the Bible with geology, but there is not the slightest evidence in the orthodox system of historical geology for such a cataclysm! No geologist accepts the gap theory for this very reason.
The whole system of modern geology has been built upon the dogma of uniformitarianism, not catastrophism. And it is the resulting system of geological ages that the gap theory attempts to pigeonhole between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. One cannot have his cake and also eat it! The geological strata can be explained in terms either of global catastrophism or of uniformitarianism, but not of both together. If the strata were formed by a universal pre-Adamic cataclysm, then there remains no evidence for the geological ages, and , therefore, no need for the gap theory as far as the antiquity of the earth is concerned. One cannot harmonize the geological ages with the Bible by eliminating them!
It should be emphasized as strongly as possible that orthodox geology has no place for worldwide cataclysms. The strata are supposed to be explained by uniformity, by continuity of the processes of the past with those of the present. A worldwide cataclysm that could lead to the condition described in Genesis 1:2 simply does not exist in the standard system of geological ages, and it is unrealistic to identify the ice age or any other such local or regional geological feature with a cataclysm of such universal scope. Such a destructive cataclysm would have completely devastated and disintegrated the sedimentary strata and the fossils that are used as the evidence proving the geological ages.
If, for the sake of argument, it is supposed that there was such a cataclysm but that by some miracle it left the previously deposited strata intact and undisturbed, one still faces the formidable problem of the relation between the fossil world and the present world. That is, the animals and plants preserved as fossils from the world before the cataclysm are in many cases practically identical with those in the present world. In fact, most of the kinds of organisms found in the world today have also been found in the fossils (often larger and more highly developed than their modern counterparts, but nevertheless of the same basic kinds). This is true even of human fossils, and of the various hominid forms suggested as possible precursors of man. This is one reason that various writers on the gap theory have postulated the existence of pre-Adamite men.
The problem is to explain why God would allow a cataclysm to destroy all life on the earth and then proceed to restock it with the same basic forms of life He had just destroyed. The God of the Bible is not capricious.
There is a great worldwide cataclysm described in the Bible, and that, of course, is the flood of Noah. This cataclysm is described in considerable detail and is frequently mentioned in later parts of the Bible, whereas the supposed pre-Adamic cataclysm is never described at all. The reasons, causes, and effects of the Flood are given. The Flood of water provides a satisfying explanation for the water-deposited sedimentary rocks and fossils and, therefore, eliminates any real scientific need for the geological ages. Thus, consistent advocates of the gap theory always downplay the flood of Noah’s day as either local or of little global consequence.
Catastrophism does provide the key to the geological ages, not an imagined cataclysm before Genesis 1:2 that supposedly allows us to retain the geological age system, but, rather, the very real Noachian cataclysm which destroys it.
4. Biblical Problems with the Gap Theory
The biblical problems that the gap theory entails are no less damaging than the scientific difficulties. The summary statement of Genesis 2:1–3 seems clearly to include the whole universe: “The heavens and the earth . . . all the host of them . . . all his work which God created and made.” Or at least it comprehends the same universe as Genesis 1:1: “The heavens and the earth. . . .” In fact, no reference to the creation of the heavens occurs in the entire chapter except in Genesis 1:1, which therefore is included in the summary of Genesis 2:1.
This fact is made even clearer in Exodus 20:11: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” If this verse means what it says, then the creation of the heaven and the earth was included within the work of the six days. Therefore, the initial creative act of Genesis 1:1 was a part of God’s work on Day One, and there is no time for any significant “gap” before Genesis 1:2.
If anyone is impressed by the fact that “made” (Hebrew asah) is used in Exodus 20:11 instead of “created” (Hebrew bara), the phrase “all that in them is” should make it plain that the whole earth structure — not just the earth’s surface — is included in the entities that were “made” in the six days. The gap theory, on the other hand, attributes most of the earth’s crust, including the sedimentary rocks and their fossil contents, to the pre-world, and assumes that they remained in place during the great cataclysm and the subsequent six-day period of “re-creation.” This view obviously contradicts the comprehensive statement of Exodus 20:11, regardless of whether asah is used in this verse (as it often is when God is the subject) to express essentially the same meaning as bara. In any case, it does not mean “re-made,” as the gap theory requires.
Similarly, God’s evaluation of “all that he had made” as “very good” (Gen. 1:31) is strange and grotesque if the sedimentary rocks under the feet of Adam and Eve were at the same time filled with the fossilized remains of billions of years of suffering and death, so that almost everywhere man would look on the earth, he would encounter this vast graveyard. It could hardly look “very good” to men; how could it be pronounced “very good” by God?
The exegesis required by the gap theory for the six days’ work of Genesis 1 is also strained and forced, rather than natural and normal. Thus, “Let there be light,” in verse 3 must be interpreted as “Let light pierce through the atmospheric debris following the cataclysm and again reach the earth’s surface.” Similarly, the simple statement of verse 16, “And God made two great lights . . . the stars also,” must be understood as saying, “God removed all the cloud contamination still remaining from the cataclysm so that now the sun, moon, and stars could be seen again on earth.” Similar strained translations are needed for other passages.
Furthermore, the translation required by the gap theory for Genesis 1:2 — “The earth became [instead of ‘was’] waste and void” — is itself highly questionable. There is admittedly a difference of opinion among Hebrew scholars about whether this is a permissible translation, but it should be noted that practically all the generally recognized and standard Old Testament translations render the verb “was” instead of “became.” It is the regular Hebrew verb of being (hayetha), instead of the verb that is normally used to denote a change of state (haphak). Although hayetha can, under some circumstances, be translated as “became” instead of “was,” such a meaning must be clearly required by the context. In at least 98 percent of its occurrences in the Pentateuch it is properly translated as “was.” The question then is whether the internal context in Genesis 1:1–5 requires or justifies this unusual translation. Advocates of the gap theory have not yet shown this to be the case. In fact, the use of the connective “and” (waw) between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 seems to imply that the state described in the second verse followed immediately upon the action described in the first verse. Verse 2 clearly consists of an explanation as to how the earth was at creation, not how it became later.
Actually, every verse in Genesis 1 (except the first) begins with “and” (Hebrew waw), implying continuous action. Many times a verse amplifies the meaning of the verse prior to it; thus there is no time implied at all. There seems to be no legitimate justification for allowing a gap between verses one and two. The entire chapter is one long run-on sentence!
It is recognized that a few Hebrew scholars argue vigorously that “became” should be used in verse 2. When experts and specialists disagree, it should perhaps be left an open question. Even if there is such a “gap” between the two verses, there is no contextual justification for understanding it as a gap of long duration. It could just as well have been, say, a minute or an hour, as five billion years.
Similarly, there is nothing in verse 2 to imply a great cataclysmic judgment from God. The initial aspect of creation as described in that verse was not “perfect,” in the sense that it was “complete,” until God pronounced it complete and “very good” at the end of the six days of His creative work. But it was perfect for His immediate purpose.
One would be justified in concluding, therefore, that the “gap” exegesis of Genesis 1:1–2 is very tenuous.
5. Critique of Proof-Texts for the Gap Theory
Although Genesis 1:1–2 does not lend itself well to the gap theory in its immediate context, there are several suggested proof-texts for the theory that have been adduced from other parts of the Bible. These must now be examined. Regardless of these proof-texts, one should not forget the overwhelming scientific and theological difficulties inherent in the idea that the geological ages occurred between the two verses, and that these ages terminated in a global cataclysm. This theory should not be used to explain the geological ages or to justify a great age for the earth. The gap theory creates many serious scientific problems and solves none.
With this warning in mind, let us see whether the proof-texts really do require a gap interpretation. The first of these is Genesis 1:28, where God commands Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” The verb translated as “replenish” is the Hebrew male, which means simply “fill” or “be filled” or a similar expression. It is so translated in all the many other places where it is used, with only a few very questionable exceptions.
Jeremiah 4:23 is also frequently cited: “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.” This is quoted in a context of divine judgment, and so it is said that Genesis 1:2 likewise reflects such a judgment. It is quite certain, however, that the divine judgment described in Jeremiah 4:23 has nothing to do with Genesis, except that it uses similar expressions. It is a prophecy of a coming judgment on the land of Israel (see Jer. 4:14, 22, 31), not a history of past judgment on the earth. The words “earth” and “land” are the same in Hebrew. One can translate the verse correctly as follows: “I beheld the land, and lo it was waste and empty, and the sky, and it had no light.” This prophecy was to be fulfilled during the coming “day of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:7).
Another proof-text advanced is Isaiah 24:1: “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.” Again, in the context, this verse is quite obviously a prophecy of the coming judgment upon the land and the people of Israel, not upon a hypothetical race of pre-Adamites.
Their most important proof-text is Isaiah 45:18: “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain [the phrase ‘in vain’ is the Hebrew tohu, the same as ‘without form’ in Genesis 1:2], he formed it to be inhabited.”
The argument goes that, since the above verse says that God created not the earth tohu, and since the earth of Genesis 1:2 was tohu, therefore, the latter could not have been the earth as it was created in Genesis 1:1. The inference is that the earth became tohu by the pre-Adamic cataclysm.
Again, this interpretation requires lifting the verse out of its context. The verses before and after indicate that the subject at hand is Israel and God’s purposes and promises to His people. That is, just as the Lord had a purpose in creating the earth, so He has a purpose for Israel. In Isaiah 45:17, the preceding verse, He says, “Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.”
In support of this tremendous promise, God reminds the Israelites of His mighty creation itself, which was not without purpose. He “formed it to be inhabited,” and He accomplished that purpose, creating and redeeming (in Christ) a race of men in His own image. Just so, He will accomplish His purpose for His special people, Israel.
The fact that His full purpose in creation was not completed on the first day of creation is irrelevant. He “created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited,” and He accomplished that purpose. The word tohu has several shades of meaning, depending on context. It occurs 20 times and is translated 10 different ways in the King James translation. The context in Isaiah 45:18 justifies the translation “in vain” or “without purpose.” The context in Genesis 1:2 warrants “without form” or “structureless.”
There is no conflict, therefore, between Isaiah 45:18 and the statement of an initial formless aspect to the created earth in Genesis 1:2. The former can properly be understood as follows: “God created it not [to be forever] without form; he formed it to be inhabited.” As described in Genesis 1, He proceeded to bring beauty and structure to the formless elements, and then inhabitants to the waiting lands.
It should be remembered that Isaiah 45:18 was written many hundreds of years after Genesis 1:2, and that its context deals with Israel, not a pre-Adamic cataclysm. Such an isolated and incidental verse, which is easily capable of an alternate interpretation, is hardly an adequate base on which to build a theory of such tremendous import as that of a presumed primeval cataclysm.
Two verses in the New Testament have occasionally been used to support the gap theory. One is 2 Corinthians 4:6: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts.” The darkness in the heart results from sin and is illuminated by the entrance of Christ. Just so, it is said, the primeval darkness must also have been a result of sin.
The analogy breaks down, however. The gap theory postulates a perfect world in the beginning, plunged into darkness, and then illuminated again when God commanded the light to shine out of darkness. A soul in darkness, however, is born in darkness. The true analogy would be with a world that was also born in darkness. Darkness is not evil in itself, since it was created by God. “I form the light, and create darkness” (Isa. 45:7). Perhaps this analogy even suggests the reason that God first created the world in darkness, so that the work of creation might serve as a pattern and type of the work of the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) created by the Holy Spirit in the receptive heart.
The other verse is 2 Peter 3:6: “The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” Although some have taken this as a reference to a pre-Adamic cataclysm, it is obvious that it refers instead to the flood of Noah. The very word “overflowed” indicates this. It is the Greek word kataklusmos. In its noun form, it occurs four times (Matt. 24:38–39; Luke 17:27; and 2 Pet. 2:5), referring always to the flood of Noah. There has been only one global cataclysm in earth history, not two, and that was the great Flood described in Genesis 6–9.
One other interesting argument has been advanced. The phrase “foundation of the world” (Matt. 13:35 and nine other places) can be translated “casting-down [Greek katabole] of the world,” and the suggested idea is that it may refer to a primeval cataclysm. A foundation is “cast down” or “laid down,” so the word is used properly to mean “foundation,” as Greek scholars uniformly agree. There is nothing in the context of any of the ten occurrences to suggest such a novel interpretation as that of a primeval cataclysm. The phrase simply means “foundation of the world” and nothing more.
The lack of any clear biblical evidence for the gap theory, along with the highly equivocal nature of all its supposed proof-texts — in the context of its scientific fallacies and its serious theological problems — is adequate justification for rejecting it altogether. God does not speak in uncertain sounds (see 1 Cor. 14:8).
6. The Pre-Genesis Gap Theory
Dr. Merrill F. Unger and others have proposed a modified gap theory. Convinced that the Hebrew construction of Genesis 1:1–2 precludes a gap between these two verses, Unger suggests placing the angelic sin and pre-Adamic cataclysm before Genesis 1:1. In this view, the statement, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” refers to a re-creation, following the geological ages.
There is no biblical basis for this view. Unger was frank in saying that its basis was the necessity to accommodate the geological ages.
However, all the same scientific and theological objections to the gap theory that have already been presented apply with equal force to Unger’s modification of the theory. The geological ages that the theory tries to adopt are based upon the system of evolutionary uniformitarianism that Unger professed to reject. There is no room at all for the imaginary pre-Adamic cataclysm in the standard concept of geological ages.
Similarly, the existence of evil, suffering, and death in the world prior to the six days of creation week, and even prior to Satan’s rebellion — as required by the very concept of geological ages — seems explicitly precluded by the nature of God as a God of order, purpose, efficiency and love, as well as by such Scriptures as Genesis 1:31 (“very good”) and Romans 5:12 (“death by sin”).
The Framework Hypothesis
It has been seen that the geological ages cannot be placed before the six days of creation (gap theory), during the six days of creation (day-age theory), or after the six days (which, since they antedate man, no one suggests at all). The only remaining possibility is that either the six days or the geological ages had no existence in the first place.
To someone who is firmly committed to the geological ages (and therefore to evolution), there is no alternative but to give up belief in Genesis as an actual historical record of the events of creation. This is what all liberal theologians have done long ago, and what increasing numbers of evangelicals are tragically doing today.
Many of these latter wish to retain some kind of confidence in the divine inspiration of Genesis, rather than to reject it completely. Accordingly, they have tried to consider the creation story as some kind of literary device, rather than actual history. The “framework hypothesis” of Genesis 1–11 views these chapters as essentially a rhetorical framework within which are developed the grand spiritual themes of “creation” (the divine source and meaning of reality), of man’s “fall” (man’s ever-recurring experience of spiritual and moral inadequacy), and of “reconciliation” (the broad currents in history through which man is seeking to understand and appropriate spiritual meaning in life).
The particular “framework” in which these ideas are developed varies according to the particular expositor. Some speak of Genesis as “allegorical,” others as “liturgical,” others as “poetic,” others as “supra-historical.” All agree, however, in rejecting it as “scientific” or “historical.” They concur that Genesis teaches the fact of “creation” and the “fall,” but deny that it has anything to say concerning the method. They hope to retain whatever theological significance Genesis may have, while at the same time avoiding scientific embarrassment.
This type of biblical exegesis is out of the question for any real believer in the Bible. It is the method of so-called “neo-orthodoxy,” though such idealistic humanism is neither new nor orthodox. It undercuts the foundation of the entire biblical system of truth when it expunges Genesis 1–11. The events of these chapters are recorded in simple narrative form, as though the writer or writers fully intended to record a series of straightforward historical facts; there is certainly no internal or exegetical reason for taking these chapters in any other way.
Each chapter of Genesis 1–11 leads naturally into the next chapter. In the same way, Genesis 11, which gives the genealogy of the Messianic line down to Abraham, is followed logically by Genesis 12, which presents the first recorded events in the life of Abraham. The latter events are within the period of recorded history, and are now almost universally accepted as factual. The life of Abraham, as the founder of the chosen nation Israel and the ancestor of Jesus Christ, is suspended without background or foundation if Genesis 1–11 is only an allegory.
Furthermore, the later writers of Scripture refer again and again to these early chapters of Genesis, always accepting them as both factual history and authoritative doctrine. Moses refers to the six-literal-day creation in Exodus 31:17 and to the division of the nations at Babel in Deuteronomy 32:8. Joshua 24:2 accepts the account in Genesis 11 of Abraham’s ancestors. Although the later historical books are naturally more occupied with the histories of their own times, they occasionally refer back to earlier times. Hezekiah speaks of the creation (2 Kings 19:15) and 1 Chronicles 1:1–28 repeats the genealogies of Genesis 5, 10, and 11. After the captivity, Nehemiah likewise refers to the creation (Neh. 9:6). Job several times refers to both creation and the Flood (Job 9:5–9; 12:15; 26:7–13; 31:33; 38:4–7; etc.).
The Book of Psalms abounds in references to the creation. Psalm 8:3–8 speaks of God giving dominion over the earth to man. Psalm 33:6–9 emphasizes the instantaneous creative acts of God in the beginning. Psalm 90:2–3 speaks of creation and the fall of man. Psalm 148:1–5 tells of the creative acts of God. There are many other such references. Psalms 29 and 104 describe graphically the events during and following the great Flood. Even Proverbs 8:22–31 refers to the creation.
The prophetical books likewise refer often to the early chapters of Genesis. Isaiah refers both to the creation (40:26; 45:18) and to the Flood (54:9). Jeremiah 10:11–13, 31:35, and 51:15–16 all refer to different aspects of the creation. Ezekiel refers to Noah in 14:14, 20, and Amos also mentions the Flood, in both 5:8 and 9:6. Micah 5:6 refers to the “land of Nimrod,” as does Zechariah 5:11, who speaks of the “land of Shinar,” both passages obviously referring to Genesis 10:10.
But it is the New Testament that contains the clearest and most numerous references to Genesis 1–11. The apostle Paul mentions Adam and Eve several times in a manner demonstrating that he regarded them as real people, the first man and first woman on earth. Note the important discussions in Romans 5:12–19; 1 Corinthians 11:7–12, 15:21–22, 35–41, 45–47; 2 Corinthians 11:3; and 1 Timothy 2:13–15. The effects of the great curse on the earth are discussed in a classic passage in Romans 8:18–25.
The Book of Hebrews contains an important passage dealing with the completeness of the creation and God’s seventh-day rest (Heb. 4:1–11). Abel, Enoch, and Noah are listed as the first three of the great heroes of faith in chapter 11. Abel is again mentioned in 12:24.
The apostle Peter places great emphasis on the Flood (1 Pet. 3:20; 2 Pet. 2:4–5; and 2 Pet. 3:5–6). John refers to Cain and Abel (1 John 3:12). Jude also refers to Cain (verse 11), as well as to the sinning angels of Genesis 6:1–4 (verse 6), and to Enoch, as the seventh in the line of patriarchs from Adam listed in Genesis 5 (verse 14).
Most significantly of all, the Lord Jesus Christ himself frequently cited these early verses of Genesis in support of some of His most important teachings. His doctrine of marriage was based explicitly on a combined quotation from the first two (supposedly contradictory!) chapters of Genesis (Matt. 19:3–6; Mark 10:2–9; compare with Gen. 1:27 and 2:24). He compared the days of Noah, just before the universal flood, with the last days before His own return in worldwide judgment (Matt. 24:37–42; Luke 17:26–27). He even referred to Abel as the first martyr and first prophet (Matt. 23:35; Luke 11:51). He mentioned “the beginning of the creation which God created” (Mark 13:19). He called Satan the father of liars, no doubt referring to the devil’s lie to Eve in the Garden of Eden (John 8:44).
Likewise, the preaching of the gospel by the Early Church in the Book of Acts included references to these first Scriptures. Stephen (Acts 7:2–4) mentions Abraham’s background as given in Genesis 11:26–32. Paul preached from the witness given by the creation in Acts 14:15 and 17:24, mentioning also the first establishment of the nations in 17:26.
The fullest references to the beginning of things are found in the Book of Revelation, which describes the restoration and consummation of all things. In the letter to the apostate church at Laodicea, Jesus Christ reminds them that He is “the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 3:14). Frequent emphasis is placed on God as the Creator of all things (Rev. 4:11; 10:6; 14:7). In Revelation 14:6–7, the “everlasting gospel” is said to include recognition of Him “that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”
The great protevangelic promise of Genesis 3:15 is expanded and expounded in Revelation 12, which also includes reference to Satan as the serpent (verse 9) who had deceived all men. The prophecy of the development and fall of the final Babylon (chapters 17 and 18) undoubtedly is built upon the foundation furnished by the first Babylon of Genesis 10 and 11.
The last two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22, describe the creation of the new heavens and new earth, just as Genesis 1 and 2 describe the creation of the first heavens and earth. In these last two chapters of the Bible — as in the first two — reference is made to the Bride; the personal presence of God; the curse, in its fourfold aspect; the end of death; the removal of the curse; the ending of darkness; and the restoration of the tree of life and the river flowing out of the midst of Paradise.
Advocates of the framework hypothesis justify their view by pointing to the literary or poetic nature of Genesis 1–11. They reason that if a passage is poetic or contains some literary form, it need not be understood as actual history. It is true that such literary forms are contained in these beautiful passages. But where is it written that use of such beauty in writing means that the passage contains fallacious historical or scientific content?
This same technique that could supposedly be used to invalidate the creation, fall, Flood, and tower of Babel records, could also be applied to the virgin birth, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. In fact, many liberal theologians and philosophers do that very thing. But surely true Christian evangelicals have not yet abandoned those vital Christian doctrines.
Modern theologians who would eliminate the first 11 chapters of Genesis from the realm of true history are guilty of removing the foundation of all future history. They, in effect, reject the teachings of Peter and Paul and all the other biblical writers as naive superstition, and the teachings of the infallible Christ as deceptive accommodationism. Furthermore, their technique of interpretation would, if applied consistently to all of Scripture, invalidate all of Christianity. The “framework hypothesis” of Genesis, in any of its diverse forms, is nothing but neo-orthodox sophistry and inevitably leads eventually to complete apostasy. It must be unequivocally rejected and opposed by all Bible-believing Christians.
1 In fact, as noted before, it may well be that the light source for the first three days was the stream of light waves formed directly by God as if already in transit from the light source which would be formed to generate them beginning on the fourth day.
