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Chapter 6

Supposed Biblical Difficulties with Recent Creationism

Most of the objections that have been lodged against the biblical doctrines of the young earth and Flood geology are scientific in nature. These are beyond the scope of this book, but are discussed and refuted in Volume 2 of this Trilogy on creation.

In the meantime, when scientific objections to literal creationism are raised, it is always helpful to keep one important fact in mind, a fact that will keep this whole issue in clear perspective. That is, there are no written records of any historical events prior to about 2500 B.C. Everything beyond that is speculation. In fact, the historical chronology that extends back the farthest is in the Bible itself! Even allowing for possible uncertainties in the biblical manuscripts and possible gaps in the genealogical lists in the Bible, the Genesis records cannot feasibly be stretched back to more than, say, about 10,000 B.C. at most.

The traditional Ussher date of 4004 B.C. for creation week actually fits the biblical data better, although the evidence is sufficiently ambiguous to permit many other dates to be suggested by various scholars all working with the same biblical premises as Ussher (about 300 different dates have been published at one time or another, all of them, nevertheless, agreeing that the creation took place only several thousand years ago).

The Calculations of Bishop Ussher

It is important to remember that the widely ridiculed Archbishop James Ussher was not a Bible-thumping backwoods preacher, but rather a scholar of great ability. His calculations on chronology incorporated all the biblical and extra-biblical historical data known in the 17th century. His greatest work on this subject, proposing 4004 B.C. as the beginning of history, was published in 1654, not long before his death in 1656.

The noted archaeologist and historian Colin Renfrew, recognized as one of the world’s leading students of ancient history, has commented on this subject as follows:

Nor was this belief restricted to the credulous or the excessively devout. No less a thinker than Sir Isaac Newton accepted it implicitly, and in his detailed study of the whole question of dating, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, took the ancient Egyptians severely to task, since they had set the origins of the monarchy before 5000 BC . . . and “out of vanity have made this monarchy some thousands of years older than the world.” This criticism was meant literally; for an educated man in the seventeenth or even eighteenth century, any suggestion that the human past extended back further than 6,000 years was a vain and foolish speculation.1

Isaac Newton, of course, who lived in the generation following that of Ussher, was one of the greatest scientists of all time, and he was familiar with the ancient pagan speculations concerning the evolution and great antiquity of the world, but he rejected all that in favor of what was, in his day, the scientific view that the world was young. He was thus not only a convinced scientific creationist, but also a believer in recent creation.

It is interesting that one of the leading evolutionists of our own day, Stephen Jay Gould, has also recognized the scholarly stature of Bishop Ussher.

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology.2

In thus defending Ussher, Gould particularly was referring to an important article3 by another modern writer, the well-known Old Testament scholar, James Barr. Barr, like Gould, is a liberal and an evolutionist, rejecting the concept of biblical inerrancy and divine authority. Nevertheless, he has pointed out that all Old Testament Hebrew authorities, liberal or otherwise, acknowledge that the intent of the biblical writers was to teach a literal six-day creation and a worldwide flood (even though he himself doesn’t believe in them!).

Then Gould makes the following important point, showing why Ussher’s work, regardless of its scholarship, was rejected:

Today we rightly reject a cardinal premise of that methodology — belief in biblical inerrancy — and we recognize that this false assumption allowed such a great error in estimating the age of the earth.4

This is the real reason that people today reject the biblical date for the age of the earth. The Bible clearly and unequivocally teaches a recent creation, but men no longer believe the Bible. They have rejected the infallible Word of the eternal Creator God in favor of the opinions of fallible scientists who insist that “we will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). Why, then, do so many Christians who say they do believe in biblical inerrancy and authority also reject the plain statements of Scripture in favor of the opinions of Christ-rejecting unbelievers? Is it because “they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:43)?

In any case, they have labored hard to find some biblical justification for rejecting the biblical record of recent creation, and we do need to look at a few of these attempts.

Adam and the Animals

Several objections that have been raised deal with the relation between the “two accounts” of creation — that is, the supposed discrepancies between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 — and the relations there stipulated between man and the animals.

When God created the first man and woman, He told them to exercise “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28). This divinely endowed stewardship of mankind over the animal kingdom, under its Creator, involves many responsibilities, and it has never been withdrawn.

Before discussing this stewardship, however, we must answer two other objections that have been lodged against the biblical account of the animal creation and its relation to mankind. The first is the charge of skeptics that the two accounts of creation (Gen. 1 and 2) contradict each other, the main “proof” of this charge being the implication in Genesis 2 that Adam was created before the animals, whereas the order of events in Genesis 1 clearly indicates that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, after all the animals had been created. The controversial passage reads as follows:

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof (Gen. 2:19).

If there were a real contradiction here as to when the animals were created, it is strange that their Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, seemed unaware of it! In answering a question about the permanence of marriage, He quoted from both Genesis 1 and 2 together, with no intimation that the accounts were not perfectly complementary.

He which made them at the beginning made them male and female [quoting Gen. 1:27], and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: And they twain shall be one flesh [quoting Gen. 2:24] (Matt. 19:4–5).

In the more detailed account of the forming of man and woman in Genesis 2, there was no need to mention the animals at all until they were brought before Adam to be “introduced” to him, as it were, and then named by him. The superficial and apparent contradiction is removed simply by noting that there is no distinction in Hebrew between the past tense and the past perfect or pluperfect tense, the context determining which to use. By replacing the past tense (“formed”) by the pluperfect (“had formed”) in Genesis 2:19, one would read the verse as follows: “And out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field.”

Some commentators have argued against this translation, but its legitimacy is verified by Dr. H. C. Leupold, professor of Old Testament Exegesis at the Capital University Seminary (Lutheran) in Columbus, Ohio, in his masterful two-volume commentary on Genesis.

It would not, in our estimation, be wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect in this instance: “He had molded.” The insistence of the critics upon a plain past is partly the result of the attempt to make chapters one and two clash at as many points as possible.5

The two accounts, therefore, are complementary, not contradictory!

But then, say the skeptics, it is absurd to think that Adam could name all the animals in part of a single day. This argument is also used by those Christians and Jews who believe the Bible in a general way, but who insist that “science” requires us to believe that the days of creation week were long ages instead of literal days.

It cannot be “absurd,” however, since God has made it quite plain that the “days” were literal days (note, especially, Gen. 1:5 and Exod. 20:8–11). This particular criticism ignores two very important facts: (1) Adam was much more intelligent than we can even imagine today; and (2) He did not have to name every species of animal, but only the distinct “kinds” of animals that were of immediate interest and access in his daily activities.

Adam had been created in the very “image” of the omniscient God, and that image had not yet been damaged by sin and the curse. Scientists today recognize that modern man actually uses only a very small part of his brain’s potential, but Adam, with his mental capacity just then created by a purposeful, wise, loving Creator, perhaps could have used it all! He could surely have recognized, almost instantly, the distinctive qualities of each pair of animals as the different kinds passed before him, and then given them appropriate names. For that matter, just as God had created Adam as an already grown man, so He also could have created in Adam’s brain an instinctive and instantaneous awareness of the many different animal kinds.

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him (Gen. 2:20).

Note that the animals herein named included only the cattle, the birds, and the field animals. Not included were the “beasts of the earth,” the “creeping things” and the “fish of the sea” (Gen. 1:24, 26). Thus, the vast multitudes of marine animals and insects, as well as reptiles and amphibians, were excluded. The cattle evidently were the domesticable animals (horses, sheep, cows, etc.), and the “beasts of the field” were animals that would live in the wild in the Garden of Eden and its nearby fields. The “beasts of the earth” were presumably to live throughout the earth and would have only infrequent contact with man, so they were not among those to be viewed by Adam at this time. Nor were the “creeping things,” those animals built low to the ground, which, while necessary to a functioning ecology, were not of direct, personal importance to human life.

In the context, the purpose of this assignment to Adam by God was both to acquaint him with the animals likely to be associated directly with his normal activities, and also to show him that, while he was to have dominion over them, none were qualified to be a “helper like him.” Only a woman, also made in God’s image, could qualify for this role.

Furthermore, Adam did not have to name all the species of even this limited number of animals, but only the kinds — which is a much broader term, possibly comparable, in many cases, to our modern taxonomic “family” (for example, there are some 600 “species” of hummingbird, with only slight differences in that “family”). Although we may not be able to determine the actual number of animals involved, it was not inordinately large, and Adam, with his vast innate mental abilities, still unimpaired by sin, could surely have named them all in a reasonable part of one day’s time.

Creation and Ecology

It is often charged that the “dominion mandate” given by God to mankind over the animal and plant kingdoms and over the earth as a whole implies man’s right to plunder the earth. Typical of this unwarranted conclusion is that expressed by Prince Charles of England.

The Prince says that one of the underlying reasons why Western man has dominated nature, rather than lived in harmony with it, can be found in Genesis 1, which records that: “God said unto man, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” The prince argues that this passage, accompanied by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, has given us an “overbearing attitude towards God’s creation.” This, he says, has contributed to “a feeling that the world is somehow entirely man’s to dispose of” — as income, rather than a capital asset which needs husbanding. “By contrast,” adds the prince, “the Koran specifically mentions the fact that the natural world is loaned from God.”6

Prince Charles has quoted Genesis 1:28 correctly, but he has grossly misapplied it. However, his opinion is, sadly, rather typical of those promoting the so-called environmental movement today. The fact is, however, that evolutionary thinking — pantheistic evolutionism in the ancient world and social Darwinism in the modern world — is the real cause of the misuse of the earth’s plant and animal resources! This problem is discussed more fully in Volume 3 of this Trilogy.

As far as animals are concerned, they were indeed placed under man’s dominion, and they have definite purposes in the divine economy, but they are to be used, not mis-used. God does care for each of them, and so should we.

The animals were created for various purposes. Some would serve for transportation (e.g., horses), some for labor (e.g., oxen), some as house pets (e.g., dogs), and for various other uses. We can derive various spiritual lessons and analogies from all of them (note Prov. 30:24–31 and Job 12:7–8). God also foresaw the entrance of sin, of course, and therefore the future use of some animals for clothing (e.g., sheep, for their wool). Eventually, after the great Flood, God even allowed men and women to eat “every moving thing that liveth” as long as it was not “flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof” (Gen. 9:3–4; note also 1 Tim. 4:4).

Initially, however, human beings were to have lived strictly on “every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed,” and land animals were to have lived on “every green herb” (Gen. 1:29–30). Even animals that are now carnivores were originally herbivores (for that matter, they can still survive on a herbivorous diet, if necessary — as can people!). The sharp teeth and other structures that are now used in eating flesh seem to be “horizontal” variants, or mutants, or structures originally used in gnawing bark, tough roots, and the like. It may even be that God performed genetic engineering on the animals to forever remind Adam and Eve of the awful consequences of sin, as suggested also by the introduction of “thorns and thistles” as a part of the curse (Gen. 3:17–18).

Note that, while people were permitted by God to eat the flesh of animals after the Flood (and thus, by extension, to use them also for clothing or research or other worthwhile purposes in the service of mankind, under God), animals were not given permission to kill people (note e.g., Gen. 9:6; Exod. 21:28). Although animals are objects of God’s loving concern and care (Job 39; Luke 12:6), they are not related to man by evolution, as most present-day animal-rights activists allege. The divine rejection of this age-long heresy of the “great chain of being,” of evolutionary continuity with the animals, is perhaps one additional reason that God has made such a clear distinction as this between animals and human beings.

An additional very significant use of certain animals — defined as “clean” animals — was for sacrifice. The shedding of the blood (representing the life) of an animal upon a sacrificial altar, when presented in faith by its owner as a substitute dying for his personal sins, was accepted by God as an “atonement” (that is, as a temporary “covering” until Christ would come as the “Lamb of God to take away the sin of the whole world”) for his own soul (see Lev. 17:11).

The efficacy of such atoning sacrifices depended implicitly upon the recognition that death was God’s judgment upon sin. The death of any of God’s creatures containing the “breath of life” and the “living soul” (Gen. 1:21; 7:22) — and this includes at least all the higher land animals — was therefore not God’s natural order in His “very good” original created world (Gen. 1:31). Animal death, as well as human death, entered the world only when man brought sin into the world (Rom. 5:12). This is one very cogent reason that Bible-believing Christians should reject the concept of long geological ages with unnumbered billions of animals (even presumed human-like creatures) suffering and dying in the process of evolution, struggling for their existence and seeking to be among the fittest who would survive. For, if death preceded sin, death is then not the penalty for sin, and Christ’s death paid no penalty for sin and was without purpose.

Now, although man indeed is still to exercise dominion over the animal kingdom, and though he does indeed have the right to use animals for food and other needed purposes, even when it involves their death, God still cares for the animals, and so should we. This is made especially clear in the divine monologue at the climax of the Book of Job, when God — instead of dealing with the mystery of human suffering as debated throughout the preceding chapters of the book by Job and his friends — dealt exclusively with the evidences of His creation and His providential care of all His creatures. He “causeth it to rain on the earth, where no man is” and “provideth for the raven his food” (Job 38:26, 41). He has “given the horse strength” and enabled the eagle to “make her nest on high” (Job 39:19, 27). Christians have no business participating in animal or nature worship, but, likewise, they have a clear command to wisely use and manage nature and animal kind.

Finally, of the great Kingdom age yet to come, God says:

In that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely (Hos. 2:18).

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord (Isa. 65:25).

In any case, the biblical dominion mandate, giving man dominion over the animals, is far more of a problem for old-earth creationists than for young-earth creationists. If animals (even modern animals) have been living and dying on the earth for millions of years before man was created, the very concept of human dominion over them becomes essentially trivial, if not ridiculous. What would be the point of man’s exercising stewardship over the animals for a few thousand years when they had gotten along very well without him for a hundred million years!

The Length of the Seventh Day

Many progressive creationists make what they think is a major point against the “literal day” teaching of Genesis 1 by noting that the account of the seventh day does not end with the usual formula (e.g., “the evening and the morning were the sixth day”). This, they argue, shows that the seventh “day” never ended, and has, therefore, been going on for several thousand years, as God continues to “rest” from His work on the first six days. Then they go on to infer that, therefore, the first six days were likewise periods of long duration.

This is specious reasoning. We have already shown in some detail that God has defined each “day” (Hebrew yom) of creation week to mean precisely what we mean when we use the word “day” in ordinary conversation (see especially Gen. 1:5 and Exod. 20:8, 11), and this very nebulous argument cannot obviate such normal and unambiguous meanings as God has recorded throughout the Scriptures.

Furthermore, the text clearly says that God “rested” (past tense), not “is resting.” The fact that “He rested on the seventh day” (Gen. 2:2) says nothing about what He did or did not do on the eighth day or ninth day. His “seventh-day rest” is mentioned specifically because every seventh day was henceforth to be kept as a memorial of the completion of His work of creating and making all things, not because He is now forever resting.

As a matter of fact, He is not resting. As soon as His work of creation was complete, He began His work of conservation, “upholding all things by the Word of his power” (Heb. 1:3; see also Col. 1:17; 2 Pet. 3:7; etc.). In addition, as soon as sin entered the world and God pronounced His curse on “the whole creation” (Gen. 3:19; Rom. 8:20–22), He also began His wondrous work of redeeming, restoring, and reconciling all things. No wonder the Lord Jesus Christ said: “My father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17).

There is one other important fallacy in this long-day argument. It contradicts its own premise. In order to put the geological ages of the evolutionist into the six days of creation, the old-earth “creationists” must assume that the seventh day of creation week is still going on. Yet the Bible says that on that day God rested from all His work of creating and making all things. That is, the process of creation and manufacture, which God had used during the six days, is no longer in operation.

The problem, however, is that the very existence of these supposed geological ages is based on the premise of uniformitarianism — that is, that there is full continuity of the natural processes of the present world with those of the prehistoric world and that “creative” (read “evolutionary”) episodes are still occurring. Both the sequences and also the duration of the geological ages are based on uniformitarianism, which is an invalid premise if God is really resting in this age from His processes of creating and making all things during the “six ages” of the creation “week.”

It is one thing simply and honestly to reject the Genesis record as non-historical, as the out-and-out evolutionists do. It is another thing altogether to profess to believe in the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible, and then to so distort its meaning as to make it say something its divine Author was at specific pains not to say! The apostle Peter issues a severe warning against those who would “wrest” the Scriptures for their own purposes (2 Pet. 3:16).

Theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists have written book after book attempting to find ways of explaining away the clear teaching of God’s Word that all things were created only several thousand years ago. This is nothing new; it has been going on for hundreds of years. One can force the Bible to say that black is white and up is down, if he changes the meaning of its words to suit his fancy.

The fact remains that, if the Bible is allowed to speak for itself, it teaches that God made everything in heaven and earth in six solar days several thousand years ago. It would be impossible to say this any more clearly and explicitly, assuming that was the intended meaning, than in the words and sentences actually used. When every passage in the Bible dealing with early earth history is carefully examined, it will be found that the whole Bible, with no exception, teaches this truth. There is no hint anywhere in Scripture of evolution or long ages. Those who teach these ideas read them into the Bible, not in the Bible.

1 Colin Renfrew, Before Civilization (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf Publ., 1973), p. 21.

2 Stephen Jay Gould. “Fall in the House of Ussher,” Natural History (Nov. 1991), p. 16.

3 James Barr. “Why the World was Created in 4004 BC: Archbishop Ussher and Biblical Chronology,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester (Volume 67), pp. 575–608.

4 Gould, “Fall in the House of Ussher,” p. 16.

5 H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1950), p. 130.

6 Charles, Prince of Wales, as cited in the Foreword to the book Save the Earth. Edited by Jonathan Porritt in England in 1991.