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The Major Views and Basic Arguments

Details of the various views on origins can get quite confusing. For a brief outline see Christian Views on Origins, a booklet in the FastTracts series from Energion Publications.

Young Earth or Young Age3 Creationism4

While I am pretty well known to be a theistic evolutionist, I have argued that this is just one way of viewing the biblical and the scientific evidence on origins. I believe that intelligent people hold all of these different positions. That doesn’t mean that I think they are all equally well supported by the evidence, either biblical or scientific. Though I will respond with vigor to the arguments of positions with which I disagree, that doesn’t mean I think the people who advance them are stupid.

Here are three key elements of a literal view of scripture. A person who accepts all three elements listed below will almost always also accept a young earth and stick with that position.5

1 The Bible is to be taken literally where possible (this is a common conservative position, though not all conservative Biblical scholars adopt it.6 Gleason Archer, to whom I will refer in my discussion of old earth creationism, is a strong advocate of inerrancy and would be considered a conservative evangelical, yet takes a quite different approach. Biblical inerrancy and biblical literalism are not the same thing.7The Bible is the decisive source of knowledge whenever it comments on a topic, including science. There can be some variation in what an individual takes as a “biblical comment on a topic.” Not all literalists are literally the same.

2 The obvious literary form of the Genesis prehistory is narrative history. (Compare Tim LaHaye’s view, in which it is to be taken literally if it can be taken literally. One’s ability to take something literally may vary considerably.)

Note that those are my restatements of the issue, and not quoted from any particular source. Accept those three things and you will be (or become as you study the Bible) a young earth creationist. Reject them, and you have many other options, but you are unlikely to accept a 6,000 year old earth created in one literal week.

There are those who believe in young earth creationism who will not accept what I have stated here, and will argue that there is good scientific support for their position. But I believe I am being fair, and that the issue does primarily depend on one’s view of the nature of the Bible.

Young earth creationists have criticisms of evolution, but the only thing that ties the position together is the Biblical material. The problem is that they lack a complete scientific model explaining the scientific evidence in the context of a 6,000 year total history of planet earth.

The fundamental point that must be addressed in a debate between young earth/age creationists and any of the other groups is the view of what scripture is. The question is not how powerfully inspired a passage of scripture is, but the way in which it is inspired, and the nature of the content.

Now let’s look at the basic evidence, taken literally.

 The Bible says the earth was created in one week.

Taken literally and as narrative history, and if one has a bias in favor of the literal reading, this one is pretty clear. Other creation stories, such as Psalm 104, will be read as more general descriptions and the “history” label will be granted to Genesis 1 & 2. Between Genesis 1 & 2, priority will be given to a reconciliation of the accounts.

The idea, for example, that Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-24 have potential contradictions which must be reconciled starts with an assumption that they are narrating a story in some kind of order, that is, attempting to convey the process of creation over a period of time.

When the New International Version employs the translation “had formed” in Genesis 2:19, breaking up a sequence of narrative verbs in Hebrew, the reason is that they want the order of creation to match. Genesis 1 has the land animals created first on the sixth day, and human beings afterward. Genesis 2 would have this process reversed without this questionable change in tense.

 The Bible provides genealogies in Genesis 5 & 11 that provide complete chronological data.

Again, assuming both literal and narrative history, these genealogies provide a very specific answer to questions about the age of the earth. Those YEC advocates who allow up to 10,000 years rather than sticking with 6,000 years depart slightly from the basic interpretive approach by allowing gaps in genealogies that have each person’s age at their first son’s birth specified, and the number of years they lived after that, but the person specified might be a grandson or great-grandson.

Yet many people make arguments based on the ages of the patriarchs, such as that Noah would have known Methuselah. If the genealogies have gaps in them, this might well not be the case. Thus there is a strong tendency to argue against gaps if one holds a young age position. Having restricted the age of the earth to 10,000 years, it is a minor step to go on and just hold it to 6000 years.

 The Bible provides a narrative of the flood.

I find it odd that some young earth creationists try to develop their model with the flood and related geology separated. If there was a worldwide flood, if the Genesis narrative describes it essentially as history, then it should become an integral part of the theory. An event such as described in Genesis, especially in the priestly account,8 would definitely leave a mark on the geological record, and one that could be predicted.

Here, again, one’s beliefs regarding the sources is often determinative. Do you assume that the flood is history and therefore interpret all evidence in such a way as to support this belief, or do you believe that geological evidence is reliable and primary in determining the history of the planet, and thus interpret Genesis 6-9 in a way that accords with the scientific data?

There is a continuum here, but most young earth/age creationists put almost all the weight on scripture. Science must be conformed to scripture to be true science. For them, no matter what sort of mass of evidence that archeologists, anthropologists, geologists, and others gather showing that there are major problems with this chronology, this clear reading of the Biblical record must be decisive.

I would suggest that in discussing this issue, those who disagree should start with where they stand on the three issues of biblical interpretation I listed earlier. Without an agreement on those issues, agreement on derived issues is unlikely.

Old Earth Creationism9

Old earth creationists differ from young earth creationists primarily on the age of the earth. There is good reason for this. The physical evidence that the earth is more than 6,000 years old is overwhelming. While there may be debates on speciation and on many details of biological evolution, lines of evidence from many different branches of science converge to demonstrate that the earth is old.

But the change in the age of the earth is not so simple. It has an impact on many other aspects of how the Genesis account is to be read.

It’s important to understand the vast difference between the “young” and “old” in terms of the age of the earth. Young earth creationists suggest 6-10 thousand years. Old earth creationists accept the age generally accepted in scientific circles, 4.5 billion years. Taking the most common time frame of 6,000 years, that’s a ratio of about 1:750,000. Often young earth creationists point to errors in various dating method as evidence that the earth really could be young, but it is important to note that these errors are generally very small compared to the difference between the two time lines. It would be necessary for the errors to be proportionally much greater to suggest that much of a difference.

The key elements of the old earth creationist view are:

 Each day in Genesis 1 represents an indefinite period of time

 God was active in creation throughout that time

 Though there may be considerable variation, and thus evolution, within groups of creatures, major groups are products of creation

 As a corollary to this, physical death does occur before the fall, i.e. creatures created on the fifth and sixth days would die

 Humanity is a special creation of God

 The fall changed humanity’s spiritual nature, but was not responsible for introducing physical death into the environment

In my discussion of young earth creationism, I mentioned three points regarding the Bible that are accepted by young earth creationists. If one accepts these three points, one must accept a young earth. Old earth creationists hold a modified view of the first and third of these points. They believe that one must determine whether something in the Bible is to be taken literally starting from a neutral position. Gleason Archer, for example, indicates that it is equally wrong to take something figurative literally as it would be to take something figuratively that was intended literally. In his words, “We grievously err in our interpretation when we interpret figurative language literally; we likewise err when we interpret literal language figuratively.”10

Archer is, of course, no liberal, and in fact is one of the most prominent advocates of inerrancy. The issue here is not the authority or accuracy of the Bible, but rather what the Bible is actually saying. Thus when young earth creationists criticize old earthers for abandoning the Bible, in fact the problem is that the old earthers have abandoned the young earthers’ view of the Bible. The debate should be about that approach to reading, as without settling that issue, there can be no resolution.

This difference extends to the third point, in that old earth creationists don’t view the Genesis story as narrative history. They do, however, view it as containing and assuming certain historical elements. They will provide explanations for the time taken when Adam names the creatures, and also look at how the earth existed under the conditions described in each of the creation days. In other words, while it is not a simple narrative, the Genesis narrative does describe natural history in figurative language.

Most importantly, old earth creationists generally accept the second point, that when the Bible speaks about science it does have priority. They would simply maintain that the Bible makes less statements, and less precise statements, about science.

While old earth creationists generally believe that physical death occurred prior to the fall, they do see the fall of humanity (Genesis 3) as an incident in historical time. Humanity chose to disobey and as a result was separated from God, and made subject to mortality.

Finally, old earth creationists generally hold that the flood (Genesis 6-9) was a local event, not a global one. With the geological record explained by an old earth, there would be little room in the evidence for a worldwide flood.

3 Many who believe in a young earth object to being called young earth creationists and prefer to be called just "creationists" but I maintain the distinction. “Young age” emphasizes that the entire universe is young, not just this planet and solar system.

4 Amongst many others, major representatives of this view include Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Gary Parker of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR, http://www.icr.org). Parker and Morris are the authors of What is Creation Science?

5 Since I’m summarizing, let me also recommend reading the presentation of these elements by Dr. Kurt Wise in Faith, Form, and Time, Section 1, pages 3-39. I strongly recommend Dr. Wise’s book as the one book to read on young earth creationism–if you’re only going to read one, make it this one.

6 But note that acceptance of biblical inerrancy doesn’t lead directly to a belief that Genesis 1 & 2 are narrative history. An Old Earth Creationist or Theistic Evolutionist can accept the doctrine of inerrancy, and many do. The key is believing that the text is written as narrative history.

7 A good example of a scholar who holds this position is Tim LaHaye, who in his book How to Study the Bible for Yourself, chapter 11, page 159, makes it his first rule of hermeneutics.)

8 Henry Neufeld, The Creation and Flood Stories, Gonzalez, Florida: Energion Publications, 2020, pp. 7-12.

9 Some key representatives of this view include Dr. Gleason Archer, and Dr. Hugh Ross (Reasons to Believe, http://www.reasons.org).

10 “The Witness of the Bible to its Own Inerrancy,” quoted from http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_witness_archer.html [last accessed 09/23/2019].