I’ve been thinking a lot about creation/science issues lately, so I read Doug Wilson’s recent piece on the interpretation of Genesis 1 with great interest. I wasn’t planning on writing anything more in this area, but you know how it goes when you start thinking about something, and then you start jotting down your thoughts, and then before you realize it you’re ready to hit “publish.” This is not a thorough response, just a couple of particular thoughts generated by Wilson’s piece, and here or there they may be more informed by the larger discussion than Wilson directly. These are in the spirit of “friendly reminders” or “friendly appeals” to my young-earth creationist friends, in the interests of keeping up good, sharpening dialogue about these important issues, particularly in a few areas where I think young-earth creationism is itself not so clearly removed from the ambiguities it typically ascribes to old-earth creationism.
1) Let’s be careful not to give the impression that it’s “young-earth” versus “evolution”
I am sure Wilson knows that you can reject a 24-day, sequential reading of Genesis 1 without affirming a strictly evolutionary account of the origins of life generally or humanity specifically. There is a huge swath of evangelicalism that goes this route, as well as a number of heavy-hitting modern theologians like Warfield and Hodge and McCosh at Old Princeton. But there is a tendency among young-earth creationists to obscure from visibility this middle-ground, intermediate position, such that the interpretative choice looks more starkly like a stand off between Ken Ham and Charles Darwin. (There is a powerful rhetorical thrust to this appeal: which do you believe, God’s thought’s or man’s thoughts?)
Wilson does much better than other young-earth creationists in this regard. But may I gently suggest it is not so helpful for him to write, after referencing Mark 10:6-7, “now this makes good sense if Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day of creation, but it makes no sense if Adam and Eve emerged from a group of hominids billions of years after the first act of creation.” The words “from a group of hominids” in this sentence expand the scope of the discussion from the timing of humanity’s creation (the original point in question) to the mechanism of humanity’s creation (a separate issue on which old-earth creationists disagree). Blurring together the “when” and the “how” is confusing and potentially prejudicial for readers.
The emotions and ambiguities involved in the word “evolution” make it all the more important to make these distinctions. That unhappy English noun “evolution” has been freighted with a host of different meanings, ranging from general change/adaptation in biological life over time, on the one hand, to a naturalistic worldview that accounts for all reality in terms of ruthless progression (what C.S. Lewis called “developmentalism”), on the other hand. Even the most Bible-thumping fundamentalist in the world believes in the evolution in the first sense (for instance, how else do you explain different races of human beings?); while evolution in the second sense must make any thoughtful theist shudder. And of course there are shades of meaning between these two extremes.
Because the word evolution is used differently in different contexts, and because different old-earth creationists accept different kinds of evolution (and some very little), arguing for young-earth creationism by arguing against “evolution” is like arguing for a memorialist/Zwinglian view of the Lord’s Supper by arguing against transubstantiation, or arguing for congregationalism by arguing against the Papacy, or arguing for communism by arguing against fascism, or arguing that baseball is the best sport by arguing against golf. It obscures the other options.
I wish more young-earth people would not just begrudgingly acknowledge the full spectrum of creation views, but make it visible in their language and argumentation. I think that would sharpen our dialogue.
2) Remember that “death before the fall” is a problem for us all
Wilson’s lengthy final point pertains to Romans 5:12-13 and the problem of death before the fall. I grant this is a challenging issue, one to which I have devoted some sustained thought and research. But I am not sure that adopting young-earth creationism resolves the difficulties. After all, while a few young-earth creationists maintain that the second law of thermodynamics came into existence with Genesis 3 and there was no death of any kind beforehand, most admit that some kinds of death (plant death, bacterial death, cell death, etc.) are necessary for the world to be sustainable, even while Adam and Eve were still in the garden.
The real challenge is not whether we admit “death before the fall,” but where we draw the lines. If you press the point, many young-earth creationists will resort to “plant death is morally neutral, but animal death is evil.” This sounds initially promising, but upon some probing is revealed to be inexact. First of all, we have not yet identified non-plant and non-animal life like fungi or protists. Secondly the word “animal” typically includes invertebrates like insects, jellyfish, molluscs, worms, sponges, leeches, spiders, crabs, etc.—creatures that most young-earth creationists affirm died before the fall, or are at least affirm could have died. (This is a reasonable concession for young-earth creationists to make, because a world without insect death would very rapidly become uninhabitable, and it is not very intuitive to insist that mosquito death or starfish death is “evil.”)
So the distinction for the young-earth creationist is typically not between plant death vs. animal death, but between death among all lower forms of organic life (bacteria, protist, fungi, plant, invertebrate animals, etc.) vs. death among vertebrate animals. But it feels a bit arbitrary to draw the line here: why should lobster death be okay but rat death not be? Upon what basis do we determine that God is justified to create a world containing shrimp death but not a world containing toad death? Entertaining these questions may sound silly, but they underscore the fact that all creation views have to deal with the problem of death before the fall; the only difference is how much, and what kind.
With the complexity of the words “life” and “death” in view, we are in better position to observe that virtually no one interprets “death” in Romans 5:12 (or I Corinthians 15:21) as death indiscriminately. For most old-earth creationists, it means human death; for most young-earth creationists, it means human and vertebrate animal death; but in neither case is Paul’s horizon of concern in this passage absolutely universal, or the word “death” without qualification. Personally, I think Paul’s concern in Romans 5:12 and I Corinthians 15:21 is specifically with human death, given the larger context of the Adam-Christ typology running throughout both passages, and the parallel construction in I Corinthians 15:22 to denote human resurrection: “for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (no one sees animal animal resurrection in view here).
Young-earth creationists should also be aware of what they are asking us to believe when it comes to the transformation of vertebrate animal life at the fall. According to most young-earth creationists, all animals were herbivores until Genesis 3. This makes one wonder: before the fall, did saber-toothed cats use their saber-teeth to eat fruits and vegetables, or were they purely decorative? Did moray eels have their lightning reflexes to hunt seaweed? Did eagles and falcons have their far-reaching eyesight to swoop down and pounce on plants and shrubs?
Obviously this seems absurd. But if not—if carnivorous teeth/digestion and predatory behavior began at the human fall—then we must envision a massive structural overhaul of creation in Genesis 3 (implanting saber teeth to the cats, hunting reflexes to the eels, new eyesight to the birds, and so forth). There is no evidence of this in the text. The “curses” given there to the man and woman primarily concern human (female) childbearing and (male) labor, and the statement “cursed is the ground” comes in the context of the latter. Many people have the impression that young-earth creationism is a simpler and “cleaner” view than old-earth creationism, and in some respects I think that is true; but we should recognize that all the various views on creation out there have “gaps” and blind spots that tend to generate speculation and head-scratching.
In my forthcoming article for Evangelical Quarterly, I suggest that in order to account for natural evil we must remember that Genesis 3 is not the origin of evil in God’s creation, but rather the extension of evil from one part of creation (fallen angels) to another (humanity). Christians have always believed that evil predates humanity, and that evil has a corruptive, corrosive influence on nature (think of the way demons are presented in the gospels). It seems to me that the best hypothesis for the problem of pre-human natural evil lies here: that natural evil began when evil began: that nature fell when angels fell: that creation became infected with disarray and disorder when her first creatures rebelled against the Creator’s design.
I unpack this view more thoroughly in the article. Of course, it is just a hypothesis. But it explains a lot and fits with what we have already believed about demons. And while it is somewhat speculative and uncertain, my broader point here is that hypothesis and creative speculation are impossible to avoid in this area.
3) It’s important to work hard after the Bible’s intended meaning
One of the strengths of Wilson’s piece is that he deals with texts other than Genesis 1, particularly Mark 10:6-7, Romans 1:20, and Exodus 20:11, 31:17. I appreciated this aspect of his piece and thought he made some interesting points. So I here I want to interact a little with these texts, but first it might be helpful to lay some hermeneutical groundwork.
After all, the general impression in creation discussions is often that young-earth creationism is the result of a “literal” reading of the Bible, whereas old-earth people play fast and loose with the text. Wilson doesn’t give this impression, but his use of these various texts provides the occasion to reflect on this concern, and in particular the slipperiness of that word “literal.” I fear that too often Christians equate “literal” with “how it initially strikes me.” Justin Taylor recently put up a helpful blog post on this topic, showing that the word “literal” actually has a range of meanings.
Let’s start with an imaginary scenario to try to gain some sympathy for the point: suppose you have a friend who believes in a three-tiered universe in which the earth is flat and stationary, heaven is above the sky, and hell (the underworld) is below the ground. They argue that such a view is the “clear teaching of the Bible” because it is what Philippians 2:10 and Revelation 5:3 “literally” say. If you deny the existence of these three realms (“heaven and earth and under the earth”), they insist, then you are compromising and choosing “man’s science” over “God’s truth.”
How would you respond? Obviously this is a provocative example, but it needs to be so to make the point clearly: what establishes the Bible’s authoritative meaning is always what the original author intended to communicate to the original audience. If an emphasis on reading the Bible “literally” encourages us towards interpretations that the biblical authors did not mean for us to draw, then it is the so-called “literal” hermeneutic that is actually playing fast and loose with the text, because it is transporting the Bible into our domain of concerns before it has situated the Bible within its own. This means we cannot shrug off the hard exegetical labor of, for instance, doing word studies, analyzing the historical setting, comparing parallel texts, identifying particularities of language that reflect ancient idiom or metaphor, and so forth. The driving concern is always, “how does the Bible want itself to be read?”
So when Jesus says that God made humanity male and female “from the beginning of creation” in Mark 10:6, and Paul says that God’s nature has been seen “ever since the creation of the world” in Romans 1:20, what did Jesus and Paul intend to communicate? Were they concerned with their hearers/readers properly ordering the relative sequence of the creation of humanity in relation to the rest of the cosmos? I would say it is more natural to take these statements in terms of the normal idiom of human language, asserting that marriage and general revelation have been continuous since creation but not intending to delineate their exact relation to other creation events. In the same way, I might say,
- “Fathers have felt protective about their daughters since the dawn of time;”
- “people have pondered the meaning of time since the world was made;”
- “God has been in the business of redemption for as long as the earth has been spinning.”
When I make those statements, I am not intending to denote a precise timeline. The idea is simply that the activity in question is perennial and continuous. If you took each of these three statements in a hyper-literal fashion, you have conclude that statement 1 occurred before statement 2 (since time is older than the world), and statement 2 occurred before statement 3 (since the world was made before earth started spinning). But obviously this cuts against the intended meaning of the statements.
There are two reasons why I favor such a view of Mark 10 and Romans 1:20. In the first place, if in Mark 10:6 Jesus is intending to locate the timing of the creation of the humanity within the broader sequence of creation, then you would expect the creation of humanity on Day 1. That would seem to be a more “literal” reading of the words “from the beginning of creation.” What Wilson really interprets this phrase to mean is something more like “close to the beginning of the creation” or (better) “towards the end of a very short creation process.” And similarly with Romans 1:20: if exact sequence is in view with the phrase “since the creation of the world,” you would expect humanity at the start of the process, not on Day 6 as the apex and pinnacle of creation. After all, for the young-earth creationists God still reveals his glory to an “empty auditorium” for over 85% of the creation week. This cuts against a supposed “literal” reading of Romans 1:20 as much any old-earth reading.
The second reason is that phrases like “since/at the creation of the world” occur in other texts where it does not seem that the author is intending to give us an exact date. For example:
- In the parable of the sheep and goats Jesus commends the sheep by saying, “come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).
- Matthew 13:35 comments that Jesus fulfilled Psalm 78:2 by teaching with parables: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”
- Revelation 17:8 references names “written in the book of life from the creation of the world.”
Are these texts intending to tell us that the events in question (preparing, hiding, writing) “literally” took place within the first creation week? I doubt it. I think they are communicating more idiomatically in the sense of my sentences above, and it looks likely to me that the first and third are actually denoting activities better conceived as prior to creation.
What about Exodus 20:11 and 31:17, and the word “day” (yom) in Genesis 1? Wilson argues that “day” must equal 24 hours here based on its usage elsewhere: “when the Hebrew word yom is used elsewhere in Scripture, and is associated with evening and morning, it always means twenty-four hour day.” He also argues that the later commentary on the creation week in Sabbath regulations specifies that God’s work of creation involved 6 24-periods.
A framework reading of Genesis 1, however, affirms that the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hours periods within the context of the literary device being employed. In this view, the author is employing a literary device depicting God’s work of creation in terms of an ancient Hebrew workweek (an image that would have been readily meaningful to the original recipient of this text, a first or second generation Israelite about to enter the promised land). Whether the creation week actually happened within 144 hours does not just hang upon the meaning of the word yom, but on how the passage works as an entire literary unit.
Another scenario to make the point: imagine that your friend is insisting to you upon a “literal” reading of Genesis 11:7 in which God, when when he confuses languages after the Tower of Babel, geographically relocates from a place in the sky down onto the surface of planet earth. They pound their Bible with conviction and quote emphatically, “let us go down and confuse their language!” Then, when you will not concede the point, they proceed to offer you a lengthy word study of the Hebrew word yarad, “go down” or “descend.” Not once, they insist, in the entire Hebrew Bible is this word ever used for any direction other than down.
The reason this method of interpreting Genesis 11:7 misses the point is not that their lexical data is wrong, but because the word can function “literally” but still within the context of a metaphor. Old Testament narrative sometimes compares divine activity to human activity in what is called anthropomorphism, and an appeal to the literal meaning of yarad is not an argument against the presence of an anthropomorphism in Genesis 11. Neither does an appeal to the literal meaning of yom as 24 hours argue against the presence of a literary framework in Genesis 1.
Nor do Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 exclude the possibility of such a literary device in Genesis 1. For instance, if I reference the parable of the prodigal son in a non-parable context (like a sermon), saying something like, “we must come home to God after we have sinned, just as the prodigal son came home to his father”—I am not thereby suggesting that Luke 15:11-32 is not a parable but in fact true history. I am simply referencing the story’s meaning by repeating its content. Similarly, the repetition of the workweek image in later passages like Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 does not mean it is not a literary framework. You can use the framework image in other contexts without it ceasing to be a framework. Actually, that would be expected in the context of Sabbath regulations, since the whole purpose of the framework is to draw a comparison between God’s work of creation and a Hebrew workweek.
4) Let’s get specific with the scientific evidence
Wilson concludes his article thus:
If you are going to listen to an unbelieving interpretation of rocks over against a faithful exposition of Scripture, you have a problem. We have fossils of thorns and thistles that antedate man by 300-400 million years — provided you always believe those who say the science is settled. But the science is always settled until somebody unsettles it.
In my opinion, one step that will greatly help the dialogue about creation in the church is for young-earth creationists to pay more attention to the specifics and particulars of the evidence for an older earth and universe. Maybe Wilson has done that and simply didn’t go into it here, but on the whole his conclusion feels too carefree. It is not abstract “science” that says the universe is old: it is a wide range of phenomena in the realm of general revelation that in many cases are open for examination by non-scientists and scientists alike.
It becomes more difficult to summarily reject this huge body of evidence when the discussion gets focused on the specifics: for instance, star light, coral growth, ice layering, river erosion (as with the formation of the Grand Canyon), permafrost formation, layered craters on the moons of Jupiter, stalactites forming in caves, layers of cooled molten lava, petrified wood, crystal formation, the fossil order (for instance, dinosaurs), layers of sedimentation beneath the earth’s surface, and so forth. Everywhere we look in the universe, whether to the stars above or ground beneath, we find what looks like a very, very long history.
Now, to be fair, this does not absolutely demand an older universe, because it always remains theoretically possible for God to create an object with the recent past but give it the “appearance of age” (like the body of Adam). But the abundance and mutual convergence of all this data makes it somewhat arbitrary to imagine God doing this with the entire universe. Why would God go to such lengths, for instance, to create so many impact craters on the moons of Jupiter? Why would he give us a false history of annual temperature and irradiation in ice cores, or create so many layers of plankton fossils on the floor of the ocean? It is one thing to create Adam with a 21 year-old body; it is another to fill his mind with 21 years of false memories. If the appearance of age all around us is fundamentally deceptive, can we trust anything we learn from general revelation?
Think of it like this. If you cut down a tree and counted 75 rings, you would probably not think twice to conclude that it was 75 years old. Of course, God could have made the tree 25 years ago and supernaturally added 50 rings, or for that matter 10 hours ago and added all 75. But you generally need a compelling reason to posit such a fictitious history. (By the way, there are individual trees still alive today that are older than young-earth creationists date the flood of Noah.)
With the evidence for an older universe, such as star light, do we have a compelling reason to posit fictitious history? Young-earth creationists often argue that God created star light “on route” to us. But think what this would involve! Robert Newman makes this point well:
“When we look at our sun, we see what was happening on the sun (movement, rotation rate, sunspots, flares, etc.) as it was about 8 minutes ago when the light we see left the sun. When we look at the next nearest star, we see what was happening about 4 years ago, when the light we see left that star. When we look at a star 8,000 light-years away, we see what it was doing 8,000 years ago. But when we look at a star (say) 12,000 light-years away, we do not see what it was doing 12,000 years ago, because (by this argument) the star didn’t exist. Instead we see what it would have been doing if it had existed, but it didn’t—fictitious history! Not just “appearance of age,” but a full, complex history of events that never happened. And not just for a few isolated objects, but for the vast majority of stars and star-clusters, and for all the galaxies and galaxy-clusters in the universe…. In harmonizing the revelation God has provided us in his Word, the Bible, and in his world, the universe, it seems to me that it is much preferable to spend our efforts on models that do not require us to believe that God has given us fictitious history.”
In short, if young-earth creationists want to suggest that the scientific evidence for an older universe could be so easily “unsettled,” I suggest they deal with the specifics of what this would involve. Otherwise their claim feels like a bit of a broadside.
Conclusion
I submit these thoughts to my young-earth creationist friends in hopes of furthering our dialogue. Please remember that many of us old-earth people don’t believe in full-scale evolution, and are trying to read the Bible “literally.” Please remember that young-earth creationism is not so neatly removed from the problem of animal death, and that there is a lot of specific data for an older earth and universe that needs to be engaged. And if there are areas where old-earth creationists like myself need to listen more carefully to your point of view, don’t hesitate to write back and point them out! Its good to maintain and further this dialogue “until we all attain to the unity of the faith” (Ephesians 4:13).
Responses
Just a short note about the article – The word “life” is a translation of two Hebrew words there: nephesh chayyah. Nephesh is the word usually translated “soul” or “creature” depending on context, and chayyah is the noun form of the verb “to live.” Nephesh or nephesh chayyah is never used to describe plants in the Old Testament. They only describe people and animals. Just as plants are not “alive” in the same sense as animals and man are, so also they do not “die” in the same sense. In only one place does the Old Testament use the Hebrew word for “die” (mut) when referring to plants, and in that passage (Job 14:7–12) it is very clear that the death of a plant (tree) is categorically different from the death of a man. So when animals and people ate plants in the world before sin, it did not involve death, because plants do not “die” in the sense that man and animals do.
Gen 1:29-30 coupled with 9:3 is key in this issue. Why does God bring up this point at all?
Finally, I don’t believe Mr. Ortlund has really looked into the science much himself. There are very good answers, from reputable scientists, to every scientific issue he raised at creation.com and answersingenesis.org etc.
Thanks for the comment, ICM. I’m not sure if you read my point about death before the fall carefully, but I was not dealing with how the Old Testament defines life, but Romans 5:12, as well as the broader issue outside the Bible, which does concern animal death among the invertebrates.
I will have to respond some other time on Genesis 1:29-30 to give a sufficient answer, but in brief I think we should be careful not to draw a universal negative indicative from a specific positive imperative.
I’ve looked into the young-earth arguments at places like answersingenesis, but unfortunately I don’t find them very compelling.
Gavin,
Is there a reason you don’t find it compelling? There are top level scientists in every field that are saying the same thing. It is clear that OE doesn’t have all the science here – and in fact whatever we find will always and only be historical science, not observational science – the kind we really need to have anything more than a theory. So, I do not find other historical science very compelling, especially as most of it is based squarely on secular evolutionary theory.
Unless you doubt the worldwide flood there is no reason to see the fossil record as anything less than a massive extinction by water all over the world, starting with creatures in the seas.
Thanks ICM. I think this issue is too complicated to hash out in a blog comment, especially as we do apparently see this quite differently, and each sentence of your comment I would disagree with. Maybe we can talk in another context sometime. Thanks for the interaction nonetheless.
[…] want to begin by thanking Gavin Ortland for his friendly rejoinder to my recent piece on young earth creation. In the spirit of encouraging all such friendly […]
[…] follows is my response to Gavin Ortlund‘s response to Douglas Wilson. Check them out for context on this conversation that plunges […]
Reblogged this on ?????????????: living the crucified life and commented:
There’s some good stuff here if you have interest in the ongoing discussion on the creation narrative in Genesis 1.
Great post!!
Gavin,
I can appreciate the point about plant and insect death before the Fall, but I agree with the commenter who notes that that type of death isn’t presented as the same kind of issue in the Bible. Death is a matter of humans and soul-ish animals, those with the breath of life. Thus, mentioning mollusks and fungi and such doesn’t really create a problem for YEC, since categorizing those creatures as living animals is a modern categorization and not necessarily one that is shared with the biblical authors. However, the biblical authors do explicitly link beasts of the field and livestock with man as animals having the breath of life. What’s more, the violence among living / soulish animals is given as one of the reasons for the flood, in the same way that human violence is (thus the destruction of all flesh on the earth, including soulish animals). Violence among animals is something that calls down God’s curse, just as that curse will be lifted when the lion lies down with the ox. Since Paul is building on the early chapters of Genesis in his argument in Romans 5, it seems biblically warranted to restrict “death” to the “living beings” of those same chapters. Thus, the death of beasts and livestock entered upon the fall and not before.
In sum, I don’t think plant death, mollusk death, or insect death is a problem for YEC or OEC, because it’s not a problem in the Bible. What does seem to be a problem is grouping cows and dogs with plants and bugs (as OEC must), rather than with man (as Wilson and other YEC do).
Cheers
Joe
That is a fair point, Joe. Thanks. I think my point is that it is still very difficult to define “living being.” For instance, would you include crustaceans within this terminology?
I don’t think so. My OT colleague, Jason DeRouchie, argues that all sea creatures would be likely excluded from this category (and thus, fish death may be included with plant and insect death as non-problematic from a biblical vantage point). Sea mammals are trickier, since they breathe air but live in water. I’m content to leave them with a big question mark.
Hmmm. That is an interesting view. I wonder how he interprets Genesis 1:20, “Let the water teem with living creatures.”
Also if you’re interested in a good look at the scientific issues that you mentioned from a YEC perspective that’s not cranky, check out “The New Creationism” by Paul Garner. He does a great job surveying in a short book the various theories and hypotheses of the things that you mention in your scientific list: http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Creationism-Scientific-Foundation/dp/0852346921
Regarding the “appearance of age”: While I commend you for seeing it as a theoretical possibility, you seem to reject it based on a misunderstanding of what proponents of such a theory would put forward. Though I am unaware of any type of organized body that promotes it (I’m sure there is one out there, I’ve just never seen it), I feel that the term ‘appearance of age’ is just bad from the get go. You (and seemingly every other opponent of this theory) equate ‘appearance of age’ with God playing tricks, or God pulling a fast one or that He is involved in some kind of deceitfulness. For example, in your Tree ring illustration, God creates a tree and then supernaturally inserts extra tree rings. Or giving Adam 21 years of false memories, etc. You say it is ‘fundamentally deceptive’ and ‘fictitious history’.
But if I may, would you claim that Jesus was fundamentally deceptive when he turned water into wine? I’m not referring to his motives, but to his miracle. Did the water actually turn into wine? Was it real wine or fictitious wine? Did Jesus just give the wine the appearance of age? If a scientist were to analyze the residue from this wine, what would his conclusion be? No doubt he could date the age of the wine, and likely pinpoint the grape and season it was produced.
Now if you agree that the wine Jesus created at Cana was real, actual wine, with no trickery or deceitfulness involved, then why would we think that a Creator God, who creates a mature creation, is tricking us? Could it be that God created a mature creation, not to look mature, but to be actually mature? The wine Jesus made in an instant was aged. It appeared aged because it was aged. So the light we see doesn’t appear aged. There is no trickery. It is aged because God made it that way. So to take your example, the tree that God made 10 hours ago with 75 rings really is a 75 year old tree.
Another word on deceitfulness, or at least the perception of deceitfulness. Earlier, when I was speaking about Jesus making wine, I said I was referring to the miracle (ie. was the wine really wine) rather than the motives. I want to look at the motives now. If God really did create a mature creation, we should be a bit more careful how we phrase things. Calling a mature creation purposefully deceitful isn’t an objection against mature creation, it is an objection against the God of a mature creation. I’ll be the first to say, yeah, this is a theory. I wasn’t there. We have science and we have Scripture and this is what I think might have happened. But I think many get zealous to defend their position and in their zealousness they cast a shadow over the character of the Creator. Because we have reason to believe that God actually could create in maturity (ie. water into wine), then it holds that it is reasonable to believe God could have done so for the whole of Creation. It is a valid, orthodox, theory, consistent with Scripture, and yet so many old-earth theorists are quick to malign the character of God within this theory. I’m not saying it is done on purpose, but I do think they should re-examine how to address/oppose this theory.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful article.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Rich. I hear your concern about casting aspersions on God’s character, and I did avoid the word “deceitfulness” and instead opted for “deceptive.”
I think Jesus turning water into wine is different from a “mature” creation because it is one particular miraculous event in which the “appearance of age” (I take your point about this terminology) is necessary for the miracle to occur. A fully “mature” creation involves a huge convergence of things all looking old, many of which that are not necessary for the universe to exist as “mature.” This is more than just “maturity” because it seems to make God go out of his way to give an appearance that is contrary to fact (hence the comparison of Adam having not just an old body but old memories as well).
In other words: if you miraculously create wine, it has to look like wine. If you create a universe from nothing, you don’t have to put so many impact craters on the moons of Jupiter, or plankton fossils on the bottom of the ocean.
Gavin, ‘deceitfulness/deceptive’ kind of rings tomato/tom-ah-to to me, but I truly don’t believe your intention was to undermine God’s character, so I’m content to leave it.
On one level, I fail to see the difference between the wine in Cana and Creation, that is, when it comes to maturity (vs appearance). I do recognize that Christ created wine from water rather than nothing (though, there certainly was no fruit to work with…), and so the difference between the two events on that level is enormously stark. However, you are still using the phrase “looking old”. The point is that the wine (and starlight, etc) doesn’t just ‘look old’ it *is* old. It was made old. Not made to look old. But actually old. Just as the wine was aged in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t make sense to us because we cannot make anything old. As finite beings we can only make new things that become old, or we can make new things with the appearance of being old. God, in all of His infinitesimal power, can make new things old. Like wine. Now, because water is not wine, and because he turned water into wine, was Christ going out of his way to give an appearance that is contrary to fact?
(As an aside, while I understand what you are driving at in your last paragraph, I have to pause for a second. When you say, ‘if you miraculously create wine, it has to look like wine.’ It makes me raise left my eyebrow. Huh? No, if you miraculously create wine, it has to not only look like wine, it has to *be* wine. I only point this out because, when you continue on, the insinuation is that craters and fossils, in this theory, are only given to create an aura of an old earth.)
But if we’re going to speak about Creation and its being made out of nothing, why do you assume what was necessary and what wasn’t necessary, and what are you using to help determine that? In other words, unless revealed to us by God, what is informing us that X in a mature creation is unnecessary, or that Y is necessary? When we begin to assume that we know what is and isn’t necessary for Creation out of nothing we are crossing a line:
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
I don’t say this to shut down opposition or to take my ball and go home, but rather to frame this conversation in a healthy context. Namely, to frame it in a way that God would have it to be framed. If science, Christian, young earth, old earth, atheist, or otherwise, goes beyond this frame, then God is mocking. So on one hand, how do we know that God didn’t create Jupiter with craters? Or do we know enough information to actually determine how old the craters are? That’s the freedom that this kind of theory offers. If science pigeon-holes me into saying, “God couldn’t have done it this way”, this theory gives me a reasonable and orthodox way to say, “Of course He could have”.
To be honest with you, I will not be able to tackle every opposition against this theory. For instance I don’t think fossils of, say, dinosaurs, are millions of years old, and I don’t think God “planted” them, and yet science says they are old. I don’t have a slam-the-door response to folks who throw it at me. But this theory allows me the freedom to wait on the science to catch up rather than forcing me to fiddle with Scripture at the drop of every new discovery.
Somehow the word “Infinite” was change to “infinitesimal” in the above text. Horribly hilarious.
That’s a funny autocorrect, Rich. I receive your comments and appreciate your thoughtful interaction here. I do think we must agree to disagree at some point, as I remain perplexed at what it means for wine created recently to *be* old, and I think the question of why God would put all those craters on the moons of Jupiter is a reasonable and natural one, not warranting Job’s warning. But we see the science differently because we see the Scripture differently. My appeal is, if the science never does “catch up,” be willing to reconsider whether its really “fiddling” with Scripture to go the route of so many others like BB Warfield. In the meantime, blessings and thanks for the dialogue.
I think the bigger problem with the claim that God created the cosmos with the appearance of age is an epistemological one. If, in our numerous and diverse observations, we see that the the cosmos is a certain age, but we can’t accept that because Scripture teaches us otherwise, we are saying that our sense can’t be trusted. But we trust our senses when we read Scripture and when we listen to the teaching of Godly men. How do we know that our senses are trustworthy when we are reading Scripture, but not trustworthy when we are examining the physical universe?
Again, I think the trouble here is born out of the word “appearance”. The word automatically causes us to think we are being misled. But as I have already perplexed Gavin regarding aged wine actually being aged wine regardless of when it was created, I will assume any further attempt to explain will only lead to banging the same gong.
I have read and reread many articles, papers and books on this and there are a few issues that do come up that are really problematic. First, when we begin to question God’s miraculous and supernatural intervention in creation, don’t we have to do that with other miraculous events? At what point do we accept that science is flawed and often driven by research grants predisposed toward certain outcomes? Evolutionary theory is full of fraud, misrepresentations and failed theories. Why push so hard and wiggle through what may be tiny little areas of subjective interpretation just to be able to say the Bible fits with science. After all, the resurrection isn’t scientific, nor the parting of seas or living in a belly of a fish/whale.
Secondly and from the scientific side. What do OEers do with the recent finds of soft tissue in Dinosaur bones? It is “scientifically” impossible for them to be as old as claimed. I recommend the Institute for Creation Research as a companion site to AiG. It is more scientifically based.
I do appreciate the discussion and I do value the faith of brothers and sisters on the spectrum of beliefs.
We walk by faith…not by ___________.
;O)
Gavin,
I just wanted to say thank you for the post. I’ve never seen your blog until now. I came over from Doug Wilson’s which I often frequent. I’ve always leaned YEC primarily because all the explanations I’ve heard that interpret yom in Genesis 1 as anything but evening/morning just didn’t sit well with me exegetically and contextually. I’m guessing this framework/anthropomorphism theory has been around, but truth be told, I’ve never heard it before and found it refreshingly convincing. I am honestly on the fence about the science, and so any dogmatism for me really came down to Scripture. This has put any old-earth-non-human-evolution theories on the table for me.
so glad you found it helpful brother.
3 comments: 1) regarding animal life and mortality prior to the fall. I have not seen any discussion on animal life and potential immortality ever discussed in relation to the tree of life. In 3:22 God casts Adam and Eve out of the garden so that they cannot eat of the tree of life and live forever. If that is the source of man’s immortality (and this verse is a strong implication that it is) why should we expect it to be different for animals? A whale or lion living outside of the garden would not have had access to the tree of life so death is to be expected.
2) Why do “goodness” and “death” have to be mutually exclusive things. Is it not possible that God intended for lions to hunt gazelles and in that it is good? The death that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought was first and foremost spiritual. It was the spiritual death that was immediate and the physical death that came later.
3) I see no problem with animal death prior to the fall for the same reason that there was pain prior to the fall. The curse placed on Eve in 3:16 was not the creation of pain during childbirth, but an increase in the pain. If pain could exist in God’s good creation (which presents a problem for those who argue that the law of entropy started at the fall) then couldn’t animal death also exist?
good thoughts Andy! I think your first point about the tree of life is especially important.
Gavin, I did really want an answer from you concerning my main and only question. I am sincerely curious as to how you would answer it: Is there a reason you don’t find the science behind a YE compelling? – Blessings in Christ, Mark
“for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (no one sees animal animal resurrection in view here).
Actually somewhere on YouTube there is a most surprising video of Doug’s saying precisely that & thus we might well see our resurrected pets in heaven!
An excellent article. I especially like the observation on the age/distance of stars. The YEC believer must posit the idea that when he looks into the night sky he is seeing some stars that have a real history whilst others right beside them have only an apparent one. A difficult concept.
[…] Ortlund regarding Creation and Earth history. Doug started with this post, to which Gavin responded here with 4 points. Wilson then responded here, to all but Gavin’s 4th point. Wilson wisely left […]
[…] regarding Creation and Earth history. Doug started with this post, to which Gavin responded here with 4 points. Wilson then responded here, to all but Gavin’s 4th point. Wilson wisely left […]
As you point out, the idea of “death before the fall” is a tricky one for everyone. If God created two fruit flies at creation, and if all the progeny survived, then at two weeks there would be 502 flies. Using the two-week reproduction cycle, within four months there could be as many as 4 x 10^21 flies on earth. Assuming a 1 mm radius per fly, that’s enough flies to cover the earth’s land surfaces more than 80 times. There are lots of ways around this problem, but as a problem it needs to be addressed by everyone, not simply old-earth folks.
Right on, Nick. Good thoughts.
[…] https://truthunites.org/2015/02/08/furthering-the-dialogue-on-creation-some-thoughts-on-doug-wilsons… […]
[…] about that water into wine comparison that Rev. Buchanan mentioned, check out this blog: Furthering the Dialogue on Creation: Some Thoughts on Doug Wilson’s Piece | Soliloquium The post itself is actually a critique of this position (omphalos hypothesis), but if you scroll […]
I have come to similar conclusions over the past couple of years, after being soundly in the young-earth camp most of my life. (Hugh Ross was fairly instrumental in this.) I even graduated from the college co-founded by Dr. Henry Morris. It is, as you say, of great importance to try to understand what the Scripture is affirming in any given passage, and therefore what it is not affirming, and then to trust and hold fast to its intended message.
It was about 15 years ago that I began an earlier spiritual and intellectual journey that resulted in my submitting to the Biblical teaching of Calvinism, and eventually becoming more thoroughly Reformed (Baptist). Thus, I too have a lot of respect for Doug Wilson. But I appreciated your thoughts on his defense of YEC, especially because they reflect my new way of understanding this issue.
P.S., Out of fairness, I would note that YEC astronomers who believe in some variation of White Hole cosmology do not resort to the light-in-transit explanation of visible distant star light, and do indeed believe that what we observe is real history. In the past, I was pretty excited about this theory myself.
[…] https://truthunites.org/2015/02/08/furthering-the-dialogue-on-creation-some-thoughts-on-doug-wilsons… […]
[…] Furthering the Dialogue on Creation: Some Thoughts on Doug Wilson’s Piece […]
Hello Dr. Ortlund,
I was curious as to what your position is concerning the origin of thorns, or your explanation for the mention of thorns in Genesis 3. Young-Earth Creationists generally seem to agree that they came into existence at the Fall as part of the Curse. How can we interpret this passage if we hold to an old earth?
Thanks,
Brayden
Hi Brayden, it seems to me that the curse of Genesis 3 to the man is given with reference to frustration with his work, especially outside the Garden, and not aiming to depict the origins of all thorns as such. Augustine took this view in the early church — speaking of the thorn, he wrote, “many uses can be found for seeds of this kind too, and so they could have had their place without any penal inconvenience to the man.” As I see it, seeing the origin of all vertebrate animal death here, as some YEC do, is milking the passage for more than its worth, so to speak. I also take note that “increasing” the woman’s pain in childbearing (Gen. 3:16) seems to require that the world was not completely devoid of pain before this event. Hope this helps.
Yes sir, thanks for clarifying.
I’m not a theological scholar, so my comments will be simple. I watch these debates and I wonder, “Why do good Christian people spend so much time on this particular subject?” Personally, I’m convicted of the view by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey in his book, “God’s Pattern for Creation,” yet many people will slam that view.
Sometimes I think we need to remember Deut. 29:29 – the secret things belong to the Lord. This topic is not one for which we will have a complete answer. It seems to me that the Christian world is in much greater need of having sound theology taught to them so they can even understand the gospel well. Evangelicalism has not done a good job of this. over the past few decades I’m thankful I left evangelicalism for the real Reformed faith (not Doug Wilson’s version, which has many aberrations). Being able to have that solid foundation of Covenant Theology has totally changed my life as a Christian. People need THIS message, not speculation on creation. It’s hard to believe any theologian would take Doug Wilson seriously since he has NO seminary degree at all and seems to bring in aberrancy every way he can.
Would knowing exactly how God made the world, in what order, and in how many days change how we are to live our lives as Christians of faith? I don’t think so. I suppose it is fun to consider all the various possibilities, but in the end, it is time wasted. Dr. Godfrey’s book made great sense to me and I wish more people would read it.
“To each his own” is what my dad always used to say. That’s a good way to leave it. I do think time management matters in an age where lives are so busy, busy, busy. Go hug your kids today — play in the back yard with them — teach them the foundation of the gospel message rather than have them hear things of supposition which will make them question their faith, should God be merciful towards them. That’s the best advice this old lady can give…..