Christians and Creation: My Take

I abandoned this little series I had planned on "Christians and Creation" quite a while ago. When I did, I deleted this post. But, since I later found out that quite a few people had been reading, interested in, and enjoying it, I've decided to go ahead and let this one entry stay up on the blog.

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A couple things have made the creation issue a popular one right now.  On February 4, famous creationist, Ken Ham, had a public and widely watched debate against Bill Nye the Science Guy.  You can watch the debate here, though this post is not necessarily responding to stuff that happened in the debate.  Quite a lot of discussion popped up after that, with virtually every news outlet, Christian magazine or ministry, and internet message board having something to say about it.  Also, on March 8, Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Connelly, and Emma Watson will be starring in a movie called "Noah," an account of the Genesis story of a catastrophic worldwide flood.  For the record, I think the movie looks great and have every intention of seeing it.  I suspect even more discussion on these issues will pop up upon the movie's release.

As I discussed the debate on Facebook and pondered putting my views on my blog, I thought back to my time as a believer in Young-Earth Creationism (also known as Fiat Creationism, but hereafter, simply "YEC") during my high school and early college years.  I was quite staunch.  I argued with my science teachers in high school, watched all kinds of videos, and read books by guys like Duane Gish, Henry and John Morris, Ken Ham, and Kent Hovind.  Over time I realized I was wrong for a lot of reasons, some of which will be discussed below.  I've come to the conclusion that the two biggest factors in my staunchness with regards to that belief were (a) an inability or unwillingness to think critically about or to criticize those Christians who had persuaded me of their/my views, and (b) an inability or unwillingness to research and understand, in their strongest forms, the views of other Christians offered in opposition to mine.  I really want to emphasize "in their strongest forms."  At least with me, when I believed YEC I was only familiar with opposing arguments by way of second-hand knowledge.  That is, I was familiar with caricatures of opposing arguments as presented by people who disagree with them (whichever creationist teacher that happened to be).  Here you're getting the views of a Christian who has a high view of scripture's authority who believes in a universe that is about 14 billion years old and an earth that is about 4.6 billion years old.

With this in mind, I would ask that if you believe in YEC you would do two things.  First, I would greatly appreciate it if you read all the posts I make on this topic.  I know it'll be very long by the end, though, so I won't fault you too much if you don't.  Please be willing to think critically about both your own views and the views I present.  Second, I would ask that as you read you do not take any preconceptions about my views with you into reading the arguments.  

So why address the topic?  As I watched that debate, it was quite obvious to me that the men debating were so far apart on the issues that they had nothing to say to each other.  Ham's views are based on his interpretation of scripture first, then he fits his understanding of science to meet his interpretation of scripture.  Nye, on the other hand, made it quite clear that he has a very low view of scripture.  I really think that the opposition to Ham on the stage should have been from a Christian who views scripture (and science) differently from him.  Then there are things to talk about!  In this debate, Ham got to use Genesis however he wanted, with Nye unable to respond (and uninterested in doing so, anyway).  Those of us who deny both YEC and naturalism had no representation.  I'd like to represent, as best I can, the views of those of us who are somewhere in-between.

Initially I wanted to do kind of a "what strategy Christians should take when approaching creation issues" type of post.  Then I realized that would be worthless and would benefit no one (not that this will be any different).  I may as well actually give real thoughts and conclusions instead of wasting everyone's time saying nothing and taking essentially a neutral stance.  The reality is that I'm not neutral, so I may as well tell people why.  I think this post is of benefit to two or three groups.  First, the young earther, by giving her insight into the mind of a non-YEC Christian.  Second, the non-Christian, by giving her real reasons not to think all Christians who are honest about the Christian faith tradition are or should be young earthers.  Finally, perhaps there are a couple non-YEC Christians out there who aren't familiar with the theological arguments against YEC.  This is a good opportunity for all parties who aren't already familiar with these issues to familiarize themselves.

There are a lot of Christians who believe in an old universe who nevertheless deny the theory of evolution, endorsing a view of Old Earth Creationism.  Others endorse macro-evolution, but claim that God guided it in order to produce his end goal of creating humans (theistic evolution).  I'm not going to defend macro-evolution, nor am I going to argue against it, though as a bonus I may say a word about it at the end.  My primary concern here will be with the Genesis account and with universe/earth age.  In what follows, I'm only defending the idea that Christians should prefer the universe and earth age estimates of modern science  (14 billion and 4.6 billion yrs respectively) to those of Young Earth Creationists (6000-10,000 yrs) for both theological and scientific reasons.  

I've decided that if I want to do the issue justice I can't fit it all into one post.  What I'm going to post is a list of the ten best reasons Christians should opt for an old-age view of the universe both for theological and scientific reasons.  I will break these reasons up into ten different posts, which I will post a few days apart for several weeks.  I'll just add each subsequent point on to the end of this same post, so at the end it will just be one post which will compete for the longest in the history of the internet.  This is a blog, so I won't be posting detailed footnotes or a bibliography.  Where possible, though, I will include links from the great interweb.  If you're really curious, you're more than welcome to ask me about good, non-internet sources and I'll be happy to provide them.

Since I know the theological aspect of this debate takes priority for most Christians, my first six reasons will all be theological, my next three will be scientific, and my final one will be kind of a combination of the two.  It also makes more sense for me to do it in this order because I have no expertise in any scientific field, while I do have at least some in theology.  So with that all said, here are what I believe to be the top ten reasons Christians should not be young-earth creationists.

1. Many great thinkers with high views of scripture who are almost universally respected by modern Christians, denied a literal interpretation of Genesis even before the advent of modern science.

A common retort from Creationists on this is that these people are simply accommodating modern science, and are making a mockery of the Bible by doing so. This is simply false. This article from ICR claims that the first mentions in science of an ancient earth are from 1779.  I'm no historian of science, so I'll just take their dates for the present purposes.  If it can be shown that Bible believers denied a literal interpretation of Genesis prior to 1779, it should be considered good evidence against the idea that the only reason to interpret Genesis in this way is to twist it to conform to modern science.

First, what did Jewish thinkers have to say?  Surely they had an extraordinarily high view of the Hebrew Bible in general and the Torah in particular.  One should even say that their view of the Torah was considerably higher than the view of it taken by early Christians.  Well, first let's consider Philo of Alexandria, who was a 1st century Jewish philosopher, and held views similar to those of Augustine a few centuries later. He said, "we must think of God as doing all things simultaneously, remembering that 'all' includes with the commands which he issues the thought behind them.  Six days are mentioned because for the things coming into existence there was need for order." (quoted in Hugh Ross, "A Matter of Days")  Philo even cites other examples from antiquity where writers (Hippocrates and Solon) use sequences of seven as a means to communicate entirety and completeness rather than an exact, literal number of events.

Of course, Philo isn't the only important Jewish thinker to deny that this aspect of Torah should be taken literally. In fact two of the three most important rabbis of the medieval period, Maimonides and Nahmanides, agreed that the narrative should not be read as a literal account (the other being Rashi, who apparently interpreted it exclusively literally).  Maimonides preferred the view that the purpose of the creation story was as cosmology rather than cosmogony (that is an explanation for creation rather than a story about how creation happened).  Nahmanides is often even cited as having drawn Big Bang cosmology from the Hebrew text around 800 years ago.  Based on grammatical differences he noticed between the description of the first day and each subsequent day, he said:

"At the briefest instant following creation, all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard.  The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance.  It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter.  From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so.  As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred.  This initially thin, non-corporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it.  From this initial act of creation, from this ethereally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed." (Ramban [Nahmanides] on Genesis 1 as quoted by Gerald Schroeder in "Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible")

Again, in case you missed it above - this is from an extraordinarily famous orthodox Jewish rabbi, extrapolating from the grammar of Genesis 1, roughly 800 years ago.  Feel free to read that again.

Incidentally, there were also some rabbis from the Talmud who recognized the grammatical difference in Genesis 1 between the first day (Hebrew literally: "Day one" [yom echad]) and each subsequent day (Hebrew literally: "an x day").  In Genesis Rabbah XII.4, R. Nehemiah claims that all things were created simultaneously on the first day.  He also uses Gen. 2:4 to bolster this claim, since it says, "these are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven." (From Cohen's "Everyman's Talmud")

I'm sure some of you have no interest in Jewish theologians, though, so let's move on to what pre-scientific Christians had to say on the matter.  Let's start with Origen, one of the ante-Nicene church fathers, who lived in the late 2nd to early 3rd centuries. Speaking of the creation days and the God/Adam narrative in the garden, he claimed, “I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.”  Similarly, St. Irenaeus, the great 2nd century church father, said that Adam's having died on the same day in which he was born made sense because he lived less than 1000 years and to God "a day is to 1000 years as 1000 years is to a day."  St. Justin agreed in his "Dialogue with Trypho" that the "day" could mean an "epoch."  Clement of Alexandria wrote that he agreed with Philo that the purpose of the seven day week was to establish an order and priority within creation, not to communicate an actual duration of time.  Other fathers like Eusebius, St. Basil, and St. Ambrose all agreed. (Again, Hugh Ross discusses these in more length in "A Matter of Days")

More importantly, though, we move on to St. Augustine who, in the 400's AD, was

committed to the view that God created everything with one creative act.  In "The City of God," Augustine says, "what kind of days these were is extremely difficult, if not impossible for us to conceive."  In his work, "On the Literal Meaning of Genesis," he notes that separating the single creative act into six distinct pieces made no sense for God to have done since God is timeless and all his actions happen at once.  This led him to say, “at least we know that it is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar.”  He even cites St. Paul in defense of his position that the days are allegorical, since Paul points to the fact that the two becoming one flesh should be seen as an allegory for Christ's relationship with the church.  Further, Augustine proposes that it was not God specifically who spoke the words, "let there be light."  Instead he says that since by this time God had already "created the heavens," and heavenly beings were likely considered part of the heavens, God must have used a created being to utter the words (this was part of Augustine's effort to uphold his philosophy of time and God's relationship to it.  If God had uttered the words himself, they would have been said in time and thus "subject to change."  But God's words are unchangeable, so he must have had a heavenly creature do the talking).

Next is probably the most important thinker in Christian history – St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 13th century. In his Summa Theologica  he says:

“On the day on which God created the heaven and the earth, He created also every plant of the field, not, indeed, actually, but 'before it sprung up in the earth,' that is, potentially...All things were not distinguished and adorned together, not from a want of power on God's part, as requiring time in which to work, but that due order might be observed in the instituting of the world.”  

He remarked that Augustine's view that all creation was simultaneous is, "more conformed to reason and better adapted to preserve Sacred Scripture from the mockery of infidels," and that Augustine's view, though in the minority, had his preference.

I think, then, that it is quite clear that it did not take some desire to conform theology to meet scientific opinion in order to lead one to a non-literal reading of Genesis.  But anyway, let's move on to the modern world. I've yet to meet a Christian who doesn't possess a healthy respect and even love for C.S. Lewis. We love to quote Lewis and it often seems that any opinion of his is given reverence just shy of scripture. Apparently, though, not when it comes to creation issues.  Lewis certainly would have disagreed with the likes if ICR and AiG in regards to both the nature of creation and the issue's importance among the various Christian doctrines. He makes it clear in  “The Problem of Pain,” “Miracles,” and a number of other works that he has no problem with an ancient universe and doesn't indicate that he sees a problem with it being juxtaposed with his Christian faith. In “The Problem of Pain,” for instance, he says, “the origin of animal suffering could be traced, by earlier generations, to the fall of man – the whole world was infected by the uncreating rebellion of Adam. This is now impossible, for we have good reason to believe that animals existed long before men.” Again in "The Problem of Pain," he says:

"that man physically descended from animals, I have no objection...For centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself...The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man...[I]n the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism...a new kind of consciousness which could say 'I' and 'me,'...which knew God...[and] could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness..."

In “Miracles” when Lewis is discussing our ability to reason and infer certain facts from data, he casually mentions that “all sorts of special trains of inference lead us to more detailed conclusions. We infer evolution from fossils: we infer the existence of our own brains from what we find inside the skulls of other creatures like ourselves in the dissecting room.” So Lewis clearly had no problem with modern science's claims about the age of the universe.

Many of the heroes of Evangelicals like Billy Graham, Carl F.H. Henry, Francis

Schaeffer, G.K. Chesterton, B.B. Warfield, Bill Bright, Walter Kaiser, Chuck Colson, Chuck Swindoll, James Dobson, Ravi Zacharias, and R.C. Sproul have all openly admitted that they see no need for a literal interpretation of Genesis. Other Christians - theologians, pastors, and leaders like Alister McGrath, Bernard Ramm, N.T. Wright, J.I. Packer, Tim Keller, John Piper, John R.W.Stott, Lee Strobel, Jack Hayford, Hank Hannegraff, Pat Robertson, and Dinesh D'Souza all agree as well. Almost every Evangelical leader (nevermind Catholic, Orthodox, or mainline protestant, which are even more univocal on this) you can think of (that isn't a member of a creationist ministry or named John MacArthur or Josh McDowell) denies the necessity of interpreting the Genesis days literally (here's a list of a few more). There are many, many that I simply don't have the time to list.  I love theology of all kinds, but the variety I'm most familiar with is philosophical theology.  I will say that while it is possible that a few Christian philosophers believe YEC, I'm not familiar with any of them and they are few and far enough in-between as to say that the community is virtually unanimous in its rejection of YEC.

Am I saying that all the people above are right simply because they all agree? No. I'm saying that the average creationist has read or listened to a sermon by at least one (but probably many) of the above.  They probably even agreed with it and respect whoever it was. With that in mind, I hope it should inspire any creationist reading this to approach points 2-10 with an open mind.

2. The early chapters of Genesis should be interpreted as poetic literature rather than historical narrative.

Why does this matter? When approaching any piece of literature, essential to understanding the text is reading it in the way it was meant by its author to be read. If I pick up “Jurassic Park” by Michael Crichton and read it an historical narrative, I will not be impressed by how riddled with historical inaccuracy it is (such a park does not, after all, exist). Similarly, if I pick up an historical text like, say, Shirer's “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” and read it as poetry, I'll be disappointed by how emotionally unmoved I remain (not to mention the complete lack of rhyme or meter). All literature needs to read as the genre the author intended. The YEC camp has been quite consistent in its claim that the early chapters of Genesis should be read as history. I believe this is mistaken.  If I am right, then it should be read as poetry.  This would give the reader no need to draw scientific conclusions from the text and would leave allegory as a possible alternative.

Poetic literature has a few defining characteristics, some of which we are all familiar with, such as identifiable stanzas or repetition of words or phrases for emphasis.  Ancient poetry, though, had some more unique defining characteristics, the most common of which is called parallelism, where there is a repetition of phrases, sentences, or paragraphs that give the same meaning but say it in different ways (Proverbs is riddled with this, probably the most famous being “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”). Some creationists have bewilderingly claimed that none of these aspects are present in the narrative of Genesis 1. For instance, James J.S. Johnson, writing for ICR, says:

“There is no poetic parallelism anywhere in Genesis 4, with the possible exception of the wicked 'song' of Lamech the polygamist recorded in Genesis 4:23-24. Nor is there any poetic parallelism in Genesis 1, 2, 3, or any other chapter in Genesis. Why? Because Genesis is history. Virtually all of Genesis illustrates what we expect from historical narrative: careful attention to sequenced events (this occurred, then this occurred, then this occurred, etc.), as well as inclusion of time-and-space context information (when such is relevant to the narrative) and a noticeable absence of Hebrew parallelism.”

Well, it's one thing to simply assert this, but a casual look at the text tells you immediately just how false this claim is. How immediately? Well, Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Immediately in v.3 God begins creating...again. Didn't he just create the heavens and the earth in v.1? Why is the next chapter simply a more detailed repetition of v.1 if not serving the purpose of parallelism? Moving on, Genesis 2:4 begins yet a third account of how God created the world. V.5-7 are a complete recounting of everything that had been made in ch.1 (twice). If this doesn't count as parallelism, I don't know what would.

But traditional poetic forms are also present in the narrative. Many works of poetry, both ancient and modern, use the repetition of phrases as a poetic tool. Here are a few examples from other biblical poetry: Psalm 4, repeats the question “How long will you...” back to back. Isaiah 24:16, “I pine away, I pine away...treacherous betray...treacherous betray.” Isaiah 51:9, “awake, awake...awake”. Song of Solomon 1:15, “Behold, how beautiful...behold, how beautiful...” It should be no surprise, then, that Genesis 1 possesses this very characteristic. Each stanza of creation begins with, “and God said, 'Let...” Each stanza of creation ends with “and there was evening and there was morning, the Xth day.”

Verse 27 has the most obvious poetic form of the chapter. “So God created mankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”

This verse very clearly demonstrates two distinct poetic tools. First, the repetition is quite apparent with the phrases “God created...he created them...he created them” back-to-back-to-back. The second is a tool called “chiasmus.” Chiasmus is the reversal of the order of words or phrases in parallel literary structures. A couple examples are Psalm 22:9 and Psalm 19:1:

1 “Indeed, you are the one who drew me from the belly;

2 you made me secure on my mother's breasts.

3 I was cast on you from the womb;

4 from the belly of my mother you have been my God.”

1 “The Heavens declare the glory of God;

2 and proclaims his handiwork, the firmament.”

In 22:9 above, notice line 1 has the form of “you” (speaking of God) then “from the belly.” Line 2 has an “on” phrase. This is exactly reversed in the second half of the stanza. Line 3 has an “on” phrase, then line 4 has “from the belly” followed by “you.”

Similarly, in 19:1 line 1 has “The Heavens” followed by “the glory of God.” This is reversed in line 2 by starting with the glory of God, this time called “his handiwork,” then ending with the heaven, this time referred to as “the firmament.”

You get the point. Again, this is a common poetic structure found in the Bible. Now let's look at Genesis 1:27.

1 So God created mankind in His image,

2 in the image of God He created them

Here we have line 1 beginning with “God created” followed by “in His image.” Line 2 then reverses this by beginning with “the image of God,” followed by “He created them.” This is an obvious chiastic structure within Genesis 1.

I think the case for Genesis 1 being poetic in nature, then, is fairly clear. But for a moment, let's suppose it is not, in fact, poetic (after all, the case for ch.2 being poetic is not nearly as strong). I think there can be so much discussion on what genre the creation narrative fits into that a very obvious question can be missed: suppose Genesis 1 is standard historical narrative. Would the YEC interpretation be obviously correct in this case? My answer is no. Many places in ancient near eastern literature (including the Bible) statements are made in historical narratives that are not intended by the author to be interpreted literally. I'll give a couple examples of this, then explain why I think Genesis 1 would qualify as such a narrative even if one does not accept the poetry arguments above.

The book of Joshua is certainly historical narrative. But we see statements that are clearly in the context of historical narrative that are obviously not meant to be interpreted exactly literally. Speaking the destruction of the Canaanites, Joshua 10:40 says:

“So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded.”

But even within the same book we can see that the literal interpretation of this text is not intended, rather Joshua was speaking in hyperbole. Thus Joshua goes on in 23:7 to warn the Israelites against bowing down to the gods of the Canaanites who still dwell among them. Above it says, “Joshua subdued the whole region,” but in 18:3 Joshua asks, “how long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the LORD...has given you?” How could this question be asked if 10:40 was a literal historical statement?

The same situation can be seen in the story of Israel's destruction of the Amalekites. 1

Sam. 15 tells us that Saul's army completely destroyed the Amalekites (with the exception of king Agag) according to God's command. But 1 Sam. 27:8 shows David doing battle against none other than the Amalekites again. How could this happen if they were made extinct via Saul's genocide?

Should we call the texts claiming obliteration wrong? Are they contradictions? Of course not – remember, the verses showing us they aren't meant literally are from within the same books and written by the same authors from which we get the initial accounts. The author, though writing history, never intended for the statements to be read literally and it was expected that the readers in that day would recognize that this was intentional exaggeration used to convey victory.

So “historical” does not automatically guarantee “literal.” There may be other factors (cultural or otherwise) that indicate that a non-literal interpretation of an historical text should be preferred.  The rest of the data should tell us which way the text is to be read. That “rest of the data” includes both what Aquinas called “special revelation” (that is exegesis of the text itself and other biblical texts) and “general revelation” (that is truths God reveals to us through reason and the senses; science). The next three points will concern special revelation and the final five will concern general revelation.

Scheduled for next week: discussions of translating “yom” in Genesis 1 and antediluvian death.

***I will be adding each successive point on to the end of this same post over the next couple weeks.  Please check back or watch for updates on Facebook for the rest!