Why I’m Still a Young-Earth Creationist, Even Though It’s Getting Increasingly Lonely over Here
As noted in the last post, I’m starting with the demonstrated premise that the Bible is a supernatural book—the Word of God—and therefore authoritative. Further, it should be interpreted based on genre, like any other literature. In narratives, it should be read at face value unless the text itself give us reason to do otherwise. And once we’ve extracted its meaning, we shouldn’t torque it around unless we have a stronger reason to do so than “a whole bunch of people believe something else, and they’ll make fun of me if I don’t come around.”
It makes sense, then, to start our investigation into the age of the earth by taking a look at what the Bible actually says about the topic.
To begin with, the Creation narrative and the genealogies of the human race are clearly narrative, not poetry, as old-earth proponents used to suggest. The clearest indication of this is the style of the text itself; perhaps the most reliable predictor of Hebrew narrative is the waw consecutive, which is simply the use of and to connect verb clauses in a string. This form dominates Genesis 1; here’s a copy of the text with the waw-consecutive verbs highlighted in red. By contrast, a poetic description of the same Creation event appears in Psalm 104, and there’s hardly any red in it at all.
It’s no surprise, then, that a leading expert on Hebrew literature, Robert Alter, identifies the first poetic passage of the Bible as Adam’s description of his wife all the way at the end of Genesis 2.
Some old-earth proponents, facing this clear evidence that Genesis 1 is not poetry, have suggested that it is “exalted, semi-poetic prose.” I’ll observe that there’s no such genre recognized by Hebrew scholars. This is a whole new level of category error—ascribing a phenomenon to a category that not only is incorrect, but simply does not exist.
So Genesis 1 is narrative, not poetry. That means we’re going to take it straightforwardly, barring evidence in the text itself that the author intends us to read it otherwise. So what does it say?
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- There is a Creator, named Elohim, who is the subject of most of the verbs. He speaks throughout the passage, and he thinks through a planned action (Gen 1.26-27). This means that he has intellect and will. And since he evaluates his work throughout the process, calling it “good” repeatedly (e.g. Gen 1.4)., he appears to have emotions as well. He’s a full-orbed person, not merely a natural force of some kind.
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- His creative work takes place in stages. He begins by creating the heavens and the earth (Gen 1.1)—or perhaps this is a summary statement that encompasses the description that follows. Then he brings material objects into being by simply speaking, with no source material mentioned. Specifically, he speaks to create light (Gen 1.3); a “firmament” (Gen 1.6-7 KJV), which separates upper waters from surface waters; the sun and the moon (Gen 1.16); and marine and avian life (Gen 1.20).
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- He apparently creates some things out of existing material; for example, perhaps land animals come from the dirt (Gen 1.24; note the verb “bring forth” here), and man certainly is fashioned from clay (Gen 2.7), while the woman is fashioned from one of the man’s ribs (Gen 2.22). It appears that the waters already exist in Gen 1.6 (does this mean that Gen 1.1 is not a summary statement after all?) and that dirt exists in Gen 1.9, before it appears after a gathering of the waters.
- The periods during which Elohim performs these actions are described as “days,” with “evenings” and “mornings.” This language would lead us to assume diurnal, quotidian days, though we can’t be sure that all 6 creation days were precisely the same length, given that the sun does not exist until day 4. (I note, however, that the text gives no hint of a significant difference in length between day 3 and day 4. It seems obvious that there is a source of light for the first 3 days that would provide a definitional function similar to the sun. Note that the Bible ends with a new creation in which there is no sun, just as was the case in the very beginning. In that half of the inclusio, John reports that “the glory of God” and “the Lamb” are the light [Rev 21.23], and “the Lord God gives them light” [Rev 22.5]).
What we’re left with from a natural reading of the narrative, then, is that a supernatural rational being created the material universe from nothing originally, over a period of 6 days of roughly 24 hours each. Nothing in the text itself leads to any other conclusion. If another narrative requires a very long period of time, then reading that back into this text is going to call for an extraordinary level of evidence.
Before we can begin to evaluate that evidence, however, we need to answer one more question: how long ago did these Creation “days” occur? We’ll consider the evidence for that in the next post.
Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
Amos says
Great point about the source of light, and the fact that the sun will one day revert back to where things were in the past!
It has long been a fascination with me that God wastes no time teaching all creation to count morning and evening, the signs, and seasons, and days, and years by the planets… something that is totally ignored in the “Christian Calendar.” We seem to be more focused on Caesars than seasons!
By contrast, observant Jews have managed to ignore the Christian calendar, and to this day still order their months and their lives by the moon and sun.
J says
Genesis 2:4 says Yahweh formed “the heavens and the earth” in just a single Yom. It even uses the same formative root word Bara. How would you deal with that? Would the chosen semantic range of this word be so radically changed from a 24-hour period to something else when the usages are so close to each other? And wouldn’t that automatically be allowing interpretive breathing room on how to apply Yom to the Creation narratives?
Dan Olinger says
Excellent question; thanks for bringing it up.
No one would dispute that the word “day”–like pretty much every word in every language–has more than one definition or use (nuance). (Incidentally, it appears to me that you have used the term “semantic range” inaccurately here. SR is the entire spectrum of nuance in a given word; you seem to be using it to refer to a single nuance in a specific context.) We recognize this range of nuance instinctively, and we make judgments about that in real time in spoken conversation. For example, if I say, “As the sun set over my chess set, my wife set her hair,” any listener–at least any native speaker of English–would quickly discern that I was using the word “set” with 3 completely distinct nuances (i.e. 1) v.i. to go down; 2) n. collection of objects; 3) v.t. to harden). That’s a common phenomenon in language, though my example is admittedly unlikely to appear in normal conversation.
The key to recognizing this phenomenon is context. The listener watches for contextual cues to a change in nuance. In my example, the words “sun,” “chess,” and “hair” constitute those cues.
In Gen 2.4, which is the first sentence after an extended creation account built around a series of “days,” it’s safe to assume that the author is not an idiot, and that he has in fact noticed that he’s used the word “day” to describe something that he’s just said took 6 “days.” If we were to read that in some text other than the Bible, we wouldn’t have any difficulty discerning that he was using the word “day” here to refer to a longer period of time, something that the Bible itself, including Moses, does elsewhere (e.g. Dt 31.17; Isa 4.1). That’s an eminently reasonable reading of the text.
So why not read the occurrences of “day” in Gen 1 as longer periods? Again, because of the contextual cues, namely the repeated refrain “evening and morning.” There is nothing in a presumed longer era that should stimulate the author to use that expression repeatedly, as if for emphasis.
Again, the impetus to find a longer period in the text comes not from a normal reading based on contextual cues, but on an externally imposed “need” to find more years in there somehow.
Travis Pelletier says
First off, I’m loving this series. But I do have point of contention to bring out:
“Again, the impetus to find a longer period in the text comes not from a normal reading based on contextual cues, but on an externally imposed “need” to find more years in there somehow.”
You’ve made this statement several times, and I simply don’t think it’s accurate. Most of the people that I’ve read who defend different interpretations of Genesis don’t do so for scientific reasons – they do so because they believe that the text itself indicates that it should not be read in what they call a “wooden” literalism. Whether it’s Walter Kaiser, B.B. Warfield, or Charles Hodge, these authors arguments are mainly textual arguments – not scientific arguments.
The textual arguments, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, include the fact that in the very Genesis creation account the word “day” is used three ways, two of which we KNOW are not literal, and the third doesn’t push a literal interpretation, since “evening and morning” doesn’t have a clear implication and isn’t even applied to the seventh day. I don’t see how the refrain tells us anything at all about the meaning of the word “day”. Also, God only creates lights to set the times of the days and seasons on Day four, so unless you read into the text that God or something else had taken on the function of the sun and stars to mark the days and the seasons, the text itself here implies – again – that we shouldn’t be pressing the word day for a wooden literality. Furthermore, God says “let the earth bring forth grass . . . the herb . . . the fruit tree,” God did not create these things instantly as mature things, rather he had the earth bring these things forth and they were bearing fruit and yielding seeds. Now we know how long it takes for trees to grow and bear fruit, so unless we think the author of Genesis had in his mind the idea of a tree growing in some sort of time lapse, we will be forced to admit that these “days” were never intended to be pressed for wooden literality. Also, the text itself leaves gaping holes where no time at all is given. “In the beginning God created” – no date or time given. “And the earth was without form and void” – how long was it in this state? Once again, no date or time given. “And God said let there be light, and there was light” once again, no time given. Who knows how long it was in this state. Finally, contrary to most YEC arguments, the text of Genesis is not uncontroversially straightforward narrative. I’m not a Hebrew scholar so I have to go based on what I’ve read from others here. The impression I’ve gotten is that Genesis is really unique. What I’ve read on the passage indicates that there is nothing like the first chapters of Genesis anywhere else in Hebrew literature. It is a narrative, but a highly stylized narrative. What does this mean about how to interpret it? I have no idea, but I definitely couldn’t confidently assert that it’s obviously talking about 24hr days.
Now I’m actually a young earth creationist, but I am one because I find all the OTHER interpretations of Genesis to have far more problems than the straightforward, literal one. When the OECs confront me, I have to admit that there are signs in the text which point to a non-literal interpretation. But the question for me is whether they have an interpretation is actually better. And in my opinion, they don’t.
My main point in all this is that most OEC’s that I’ve talked to don’t argue that “well science has proven the earth is old, so we have to reinterpret the Bible”. They argue from the text, so it behooves me to argue against them from the text rather than start attacking their motives by implying that they only disagree with me because they trust science more than scripture. This sort of argumentation implies that I’m a YEC because I take the Bible more seriously than they do, which is false. I know from my personal interactions with these believers that they are every bit as committed to scripture as I am. Also, for me it takes an enormous level of arrogance to say that, simply because they don’t agree with my interpretation, J.I. Packer, Norm Geisler, R.C. Sproul, Ravi Zacharias, Charles Hodge, Francis Schaeffer, B.B. Warfield, and Augustine must have been less serious about properly interpreting God’s word than I am. Now obviously I could say that these men are all wrong; men are indeed fallible. But judging the supposed motives behind their arguments is not helpful.
Dan Olinger says
Travis,
Thanks for the comment. It’s not my intent to be virtue signaling; I apologize if my words came across that way.
That said, I do maintain that if there were no secular pressure to believe that the universe is billions of years old, the evangelical accommodations would never have been imagined. Most of the textual issues you’ve raised I’ve already addressed, and I think your dismissal of the significance of “evening and morning” is unfounded. As to the appearance of plant life, there’s no indication that the life the earth brought forth did not immediately have the appearance of age, especially since animals and man clearly did.
My concern is that we not devise a new hermeneutic when the standard one makes sense, and especially in response to secular attempts to devise a system without need for an authoritative Creator.