Center for Biblical Theology and Eschatology
How Many Years In A Day?
The Reinterpretation of Genesis 1-11
by David C.C. Watson
The duration of the creation days of Genesis 1 is an increasingly debated issue in these last days. As Satan seeks to undermine the truths of Scripture ("Yea, Hath God said...?"), especially in terms of creation and redemption, we can expect to see an expanding number of evangelical seminaries and publishing houses endorsing the notion of a billion year old earth with creation days of age-long duration as being the only academically respectable opinion. A literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is gradually being eclipsed as an untenable and intellectually defunct dogma. Not only is Chapter 1 of the First Book of Moses under attack, but the whole of the first eleven chapters are being buried under a confusing sea of alleged symbolism prescribed by influential scholastics and scientists who profess to be Evangelicals.
In this article, David C.C. Watson shows why this re-interpretation of Genesis constitutes a serious departure from reason, from Scripture and, above all, from the mind of God.David C.C. Watson has been active in the field of Creationism for many years. A former Director of the Midwest Institute for Creation Research in the U.S., he is the author of numerous articles and books on the subjects of creationism and the veracity of the Scriptures.
"Tracing the future of the Universe from the present onward is not nearly as hard as tracing the past: we do not need any new way of looking at the world. All that we really need to plot out the future are a few good measurements". James Trefil, Smithsonian Magazine, June 1983.
INTRODUCTION
This quote represents a typical challenge from the secular humanist camp. Do you see what has happened? Completely self-assured about their "Big-Bang" theory of the world's beginning, they now assert with equal intrepidity their predictions about the world's end. God is not invited or involved - even as a spectator! But at least they are logical and consistent: the godless overture is matched with a godless finale. A much stranger phenomenon today is Christians who profess to believe what God says about the end of the world (Last Judgement, Heaven, etc.), but at the same time refuse to accept what He has said about its beginning.
To an educated Christian, the early chapters of Genesis present a harder intellectual problem than any other part of the Bible. Here he finds an account of the world totally different from what he has been taught at school and university, where the immense age of the earth and stars, and the Theory of Evolution, are assumed to be facts as undeniable as H2O = water or 2 times 2 equals 4.
Firstly, if he consults the Encyclopaedia Britannica he will find these words:
"That the records of prehistoric ages in Genesis 1-11 are at complete variance with modern science and archaeological research, is unquestionable."
Secondly, Genesis 3:17-19 appears to teach that some drastic change came over the earth as a punishment for man's disobedience. In this place, John Calvin comments:
"The inclemency of the air, frost, thunders, unseasonable rains, drought, hail, and whatever is disorderly in the world, are the fruits of sin".
But Science teaches that death, disease, famine and drought, thorns and thistles, and "Nature red in tooth and claw" have prevailed on this planet for scores of millions of years. The doctrine of the Curse has simply dropped out of the thinking of modern philosophers because no fossils have been discovered of straw-eating lions or vegetarian wolves. Once again there seems to be a head-on collision with the Bible.
Thirdly, Genesis 6 – 9 appears to teach that there was once a year-long Flood covering the whole globe; but in the Encyclopaedia Britannica we find this flatly denied:
"External evidence (i.e. geology) recognises no universal deluge.....Genesis preserves not literal history but popular traditions of the past.....many of the stories (other nations besides the Jews have Flood traditions) may arise from the inundations caused by the far-reaching tidal-waves that accompany earthquakes.....Whenever flood-traditions appear to describe vast changes on the surface of the globe, these traditions are probably not the record of contemporary witnesses, but the speculation of much later thinkers".
With this agrees the dictum of G.E. Wright in his "Biblical Archaeology" (1962): "The Flood is an exaggeration of local inundation".
To sum up the issue: in Genesis 1-11 we are faced with three facts which the Bible appears very clearly to affirm, and which science equally clearly denies:
1. The creation of the universe in six days of 24 hours.
2. The Curse on the Earth.
3. The universal Flood.
In this brief article we will concentrate especially on the first of these mighty facts – examining the reasons why there is no intellectual discrepancy in a faithful adherence to the literal interpretation of early Genesis.
I. HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS
It may be well first to remind ourselves that the re-interpretation of Scripture is an old game:
"You hold the tradition of men.....all too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.....making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down". (Mark 7:8-13).
We find this attitude of Christ to the Old Testament uniformly consistent throughout His ministry - in His answers to the devil, to enquirers about divorce, about the Sabbath, about eternal life, and on a dozen other occasions. He never re-interpreted Scripture. He simply quoted the words as being in themselves perspicuous, intelligible and meaningful, in the plain sense of common speech. Why did this offend the Pharisees? They were certainly fundamentalists. They believed in an inerrant Book. But they had re-interpreted the words to suit their own life-style.
As we move on through the New Testament we find again and again a similar resistance to new truth - or, rather, to old truths rediscovered: "O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken". Notice that the Lord did not blame them for failing to understand dark and difficult passages. He did blame them for failing to believe prophecies like Isaiah 53 where the sufferings of Christ are clearly foretold. Once again, Bible-believers were blind to Bible truth because of current philosophy - in this case expectation of a conquering Messiah.
We can follow the same theme through church history. As has often been pointed out, the Pope believed 95% of what Martin Luther believed, including the plenary inspiration and authority of the Bible, and "the just shall live by faith". But the schoolmen had re-interpreted St. Paul's words to fit in with the medieval ecclesiastical system. It was 'all a matter of interpretation'.
So it was in the days of John Wesley. Anglican prelates disapproved of open-air preaching, in spite of obvious precedents in the Acts of the Apostles. Baptist elders tried to discourage Carey: "God can take care of the heathen without your help, Master William!" - in spite of Mark 16:15. They re-interpreted Christ's command to suit the laissez-faire philosophy of 18th century England.
When George Muller and Hudson Taylor affirmed that it was possible for Christian work to be supported "by prayer alone to God alone", Christian businessmen laughed them to scorn. The promises had always been there, in Matthew 6, but "little faith" had re-interpreted them as being contrary to experience.
So we see that pioneers of spiritual truth are often ridiculed in their own generation. Uncomfortable doctrines are jettisoned to prevent them rocking the boat. Outward profession of conformity to Scripture is retained even when practice and teaching differ widely from its pattern. And not infrequently there is heavy reliance on tradition: "Old So-and-So was a great man of God and he believed this...so it must be OK for us too!" We are reminded of Kipling's brilliant satire, "The Disciple":
"He that hath a gospel
For all earth to own–
Though he etch it on the steel,
Or carve it on the stone–
Not to be misdoubted
Through the after-days–
It is his disciple
Shall read it many ways."The Fourth Commandment was indeed carved on stone:"Six days shalt thou labour...for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth...". But 20th .C. disciples have "read it many ways".
II. DOES THE BIBLE TEACH A LITERAL SIX-DAY CREATION?
Obviously there is no point in defending a doctrine which God has not revealed, and many evangelical scholars would answer "NO" to the above question. Later, we shall examine some of their theories. But first let us look at the positive arguments for believing that the right answer is "YES".
1. The Demands of the Context.
The first reason for believing that the Bible teaches a literal six-day creation is this: the context demands it. The word for "day" in Hebrew (yom), as in many other languages, is used with a variety of meanings; but in nearly every case it is obvious from the context what is meant. In Genesis 1:5 the word is used to mean, first, daylight, and secondly to include the hours of light and darkness. It seems very probable, therefore, that a 24-hour day is intended.
It has often been objected that, since the sun was not 'made' until the fourth day, the first three days at least cannot have been solar days. To this Calvin supplies the answer:
"It did not happen by accident that the light preceded the sun and the moon. To nothing are we more prone than to tie down the power of God to those instruments, the power of which He employs. The sun and the moon supply us with light: and according to our notions we so include this power to give light in them, that if they were taken away from the world it would seem impossible for any light to remain. Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that He holds in His hand the light, which He is able to impart to us without the sun and moon".
Only faith can perceive this.
2. The Use of the Word "Day".
Secondly in nearly every other Old Testament passage where "days" is used with a numeral (e.g. first day), it means literal days of 24 hours. The only possible exceptions are Daniel 8:14 and 12:11,12; but these chapters are visions, a type of literature entirely different from Genesis One, which bears all the marks of being "sober history" (E.J. Young).
There is an interesting parallel to Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 in Numbers 7, where we read that "the princes offered for the dedication of the altar in the day that it was anointed". We might have thought that all offered on the same day, had not the narrative gone on to inform us that they offered on twelve separate days. We have "the first day...second day...etc." exactly as in Genesis 1; and common sense tells us that the word "day" is used in Numbers 7:10 with a comprehensive meaning, while in the rest of the chapter it is used literally to denote a period of 24 hours. Similarly common sense tells us that in Genesis 2:4, the word "day" is used with a comprehensive meaning, summing up the six individual and literal days of the previous chapter.
3. The Fourth Commandment.
Thirdly, God's commentary in Exodus 20 states that God's working week and man's working week are exactly parallel: "Six days shalt thou labour...for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is...".
E.J. Young comments: "The Fourth Commandment actually refutes the non-chronological interpretation of Genesis One". Let us remember, too, that there is no possibility of the Ten Commandments being man's interpretation of God's word. If any part of the Bible is verbally inspired, this must be, since we are told it was the writing of God written with the finger of God on tablets which were the work of God (Exodus 31:18; 32:16). Dr. Marcus Dods (1900) wrote: "If the word 'day' in this chapter (Gen.1) does not mean a period of 24 hours, the interpretation of Scripture is hopeless".
For at least two generations this commandment has caused acute embarrassment to the friends of Christianity, and glee to her foes. Thousands of Bible readers have dismissed all ten commandments as an antiquated tribal code unfit for 20th century man, because of this "totally unscientific concept" annexed to the Fourth.
How very "unwise" of God to set all morality at risk by thrusting such a bald, bold, ridiculous statement in the middle of His otherwise reasonable table of laws – ridiculous, that is, unless after all it is true!
4. The Interpretation of Older Commentators .
The fourth reason for believing that the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour days is this: the vast majority of Jewish and Christian scholars down the ages have believed them to be so. Origen, it is true, thought they might represent ages; but since there is nothing whatever in the text of Scripture to support this idea, it died a natural death.
We have already quoted Calvin. We can also quote confessions and creeds of the Christian church. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1644) reads:
"Q. What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is God's making all things of nothing, by the word of His power, in the space of six days, and all very good".Scott's Commentary (1780) usually mentions varying interpretations where they exist, but he says nothing about any possibility of the "days" being other than 24 hour days. Only since the middle of the 19th century, when geologists began dogmatically to assert the immense antiquity of the earth, have Christians begun to doubt. Thus Keil and Deilitzsh (1875) know of other views, but emphatically reject them:
"If the days of creation are regulated by the interchange of light and darkness, they must be regarded not as periods of time of incalculable duration, or of thousands of years, but as simple earthly days".
Professor S.R. Driver examines and refutes all the attempts to reconcile Genesis 1 with the dogmas of science, and concludes:
"Verses 14-18 cannot be legitimately interpreted except as implying that, in the conception of the writer luminaries had not previously existed; and that they were 'made' and 'set' in their places in the heavens AFTER the separation of sea and land...".
Finally, the German scholar Gerhard von Rad in his monumental Commentary on Genesis (1960) writes as follows: "Unquestionably the days are to be regarded as literal days of 24 hours". What is interesting here is that both Driver and von Rad would explain the Six-Day Creation as a mistaken and primitive idea: we call on them only as acknowledged linguistic experts to tell us what the original writer really MEANT.
5. The Failure of Modern Commentators.
The fifth reason for believing that the days of Genesis 1 are literal days is this: all attempts to explain the early chapters of Genesis as anything other than "sober history" have, sooner or later, been proved inconsistent, incoherent or erroneous. The explanation often poses more problems than it solves.
III. ORIGINS OF THE NON-LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS
Lord Macaulay writes of John Milton:
"His attacks were directed against those deeply-seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded: the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation".
One of the "eminent men" most often quoted by writers of the "God-Worked-Through-Evolution" school is the great N. African Bishop, Augustine of Hippo. So, one reads concerning him:
"...the ancient theologian Augustine argued that the Biblical author structured the passage (Genesis 1) as a literary device..."
The picture here presented to the unwary layman is of a learned Bishop sitting down to write his commentary on Genesis just as Calvin and Luther did twelve centuries later, and 'arguing' that his own interpretation is correct. This picture is wholly imaginary.
In his Confessions (Bks.XI, XII and XIII, where Augustine deals with Genesis 1, he is not arguing with anyone. Rather, he is meditating; in fact the whole passage is an extended prayer to God. In no sense is he setting out his own view as opposed to someone else's. Nor does the word 'structure' or the phrase 'literary device' appear. What he does is allegorize the chapter, discovering esoteric meanings that (perhaps) no one else ever thought of.
Consider the following equations:
Object Allegory firmament angels clouds preachers sea unbelievers dry land believers bringing forth fruit works of mercy stars saints (in various grades of light!) fishes sacraments whales miracles
Luther comments, concerning this allegorising, "Augustine resorts to extraordinary trifling in his treatment of the six days". Also Augustine knew hardly a word of Hebrew and was no Greek scholar. As anchorman in the non-literal team, he is hopelessly lightweight.
For those who would render Augustine as supporting the non-literal viewpoint of the six day creation, consider the following particulars about Augustine's views on Genesis:
* In direct contrast to Christian evolutionists who wish to stretch out the Six Days into four and a half billion years, Augustine thought six days an unnecessarily long time for Almighty God to take. So he resorted to Ecclesiasticus 18:1 (Greek) as his proof text, misunderstood the word koinei, and came up with the wrong translation: "He created all things simultaneously (Latin simul)". He then tried to squeeze the Six Days into 'no time', with a host of philosophical reasons. *Augustine certainly accepted Adam and Eve as literal history: no question of God breathing 'spiritual' life into some kind of animal. *He argues exactly as modern creationists do, that the God who turned water into wine, and Moses' rod into a serpent, instantaneously, does not need time to make a man or any other creature. *Turning to his "City of God", we find that he accepted Noah's flood as universal and a fact (XV.27), and the heading to XII.10 is: "OF THE FALSENESS OF THE HISTORY WHICH ALLOTS MANY THOUSAND YEARS TO THE WORLD'S PAST.
He continues: "Let us omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race.....they are deceived by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not six thousand years have yet passed".*Augustine insists that the ages of the Patriarchs are literally true (C.O.G. XV.9-15) and constitute a chronology. *Admittedly he did believe that thorns and thistles were part of the original creation, and evolutionists can extract a crumb of comfort from this. But, by and large, there is no doubt that Augustine was a "literalist" and a Young Earth Creationist. Benjamin Warfield is another "eminent man" whose words have hardened into an evangelical tradition over the last one hundred years. He wrote:
"The question of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance.....the Bible does not assign a brief span to human history".
What Warfield seems to have overlooked is that the veracity of God is a matter of profound theological significance. Theologically speaking it is a matter of entire indifference whether Christ rose from the dead on the third day or the thirty-third day or after three years. Even if it were three years, not one word of Paul's letter to the Romans would have to be changed. But God chose to do it on the third (literal) day, and every reference in the Gospels to Christ's resurrection includes the phrase "after three days" or "on the third day", or occasionally specifies that only one day, the Sabbath, intervened between His death and rising again. Why? Because God knows that we require every possible assurance and reassurance to faith, and details of time and place are what makes a story interesting and memorable.
It is the same with the creation history and genealogies. Theologically it may be of no significance whether Adam was created six thousand years ago or six million, whether the universe was made in six days or sixty billion years, but the veracity of God cannot be so easily dismissed – and by all the laws of language it is certain that Genesis tells of a six-day creation some six thousand years ago. There is as little reason to doubt the six days of Genesis as to doubt the Three Days of the Gospels.
A third "eminent" scholar to propound the non-literal interpretation is the Anglican scholar Derek Kidner, whose commentary – somewhat ironically – bears the illustrious name of 'Tyndale'. He writes:
"Our present knowledge of civilisation, e.g. at Jericho, goes back to at least 7000 BC, and of man himself very much further.... the chapter (Gen.5) neither adds its figures together nor gives the impression that the men it names overlapped each other to any usual extent.....note the three fourteens in Matthew 1".
Three points here invite comment:
i) Kidner dignifies with the name of "knowledge" the notorious uncertainty and fluidity which surrounds all archeological dating. Fifty years ago the Great Pyramid was dated at 4800 BC; now it is supposed to be 2600 BC.
ii) Impressions are highly subjective. A totally different impression was made on Sir Isaac Newton (who worked for years on O.T. chronology) and on almost every commentator before Darwin. S.R. Driver wrote:
"If the language of Genesis 5 had been simply that A begat B, and B begat C. etc., it might be conceivable, as in Matthew 1, that links were omitted; but when the age of each patriarch at the birth of his firstborn is expressly stated, such a supposition is manifestly out of the question". (Driver's emphasis).
Thus much for impressions.
iii) As for the addition, why should Moses do for us what we can do for ourselves? Note that in Chap.11 he does not add up the total life-span of each patriarch, as he did in Chapter 5. Does that mean that (e.g.) Shela did not live to be 433? Obviously he did; but Moses does not need to tell us the obvious, because the principle of addition had already been established in Chap.5.
Also, Moses does not tell us the age of Jacob at the birth of Joseph, but he very neatly works it into the story (41:46; 45:6; 47:9) so that by simple addition and subtraction we find it to be 91. We are left to do the sums ourselves.
There is no reason to doubt that Moses was working on exactly the same principle when he left the grand totals un-added in chapters 5 and 11. In the Bible long dates (Exodus 12, 1 Kgs.6) are given only when there is no other way of checking the spans. So we may safely conclude with H.C. Leupold (1972 Commentary, Baker):
"The claim that the Scriptures do not give a complete and accurate chronology for the whole period of the Old Testament.....is utterly wrong, dangerous and mischievous".
This is a definitive judgement on neo-evangelical scholasticism.
Our last "eminent" advocate of the Non-Literal Theory is Douglas Spanner, Professor Emeritus of Biophysics. His book (1987) is a desperate attempt to squeeze Genesis 1-11 into the parameters of Science. Here we consider just two points:
i) The Creation of Eve. Spanner contends that this was only a dream, in which God told Adam how Eve was to be treated, but not how she was to be made. The objections to this theory are obvious: (a) Genesis records seven famous dreams; why on earth did Moses not call this a dream, if indeed it was? (b) Spanner ignores Mark 10, 1 Cor.11 and 1 Tim.2, all of which confirm that Eve was physically made from Adam. The God of the Bible is a God of miracles!
ii) The Flood. Spanner advances another Local Flood Theory which, unlike its many predecessors, is not supported by one shred of evidence – historical, geographical or geological.
It is fair to say that if Genesis 6-9 had been written in any other book than the Bible, no one would have doubted that the writer meant to convey the idea of a world-wide deluge. For example, compare the Latin poet Ovid's account of the same event:
"...'Wherever old Ocean roars around the earth, I must destroy the race of men...', says Jupiter. He preferred to destroy the human race beneath the waves.....and now the sea and the land have no distinction. All is sea, and a sea without a shore.....Here (on Mount Parnassus, 8000ft.) Deucalion and his wife had come to land – for the sea had covered all things else. Deucalion addresses his wife: 'O, only woman left on earth.....we two are the only survivors; the sea holds all the rest'".
(Metamorphoses I.260ff.)
Any scholar who dared to suggest that Ovid did not intend to depict a universal flood would be laughed out of court. Now, the language of Genesis 6-9 is at least as clear and comprehensive as Ovid's, but Spanner calls it "the sort of impressionistic language the reader is expected to take in his stride".! He completely ignores God's promise in Gen.8:21 (repeated eight times in chapter 9) never again to destroy ALL flesh, and fails to expound 2 Pet.3:5,6, which unquestionably refers to the whole globe.
It is his Disciple
Who shall tell us how
Much the Master would have scrapped
Had he lived till now.....
Amplify distinctions,
Rationalize the claim;
Preaching that the Master
Would have done the same.Referring again to Macaulay, we may note how "deep-seated" is that error which compels Christian scholars and scientists to turn the Bible upside-down rather than abandon all notions of evolution.
We shall now call witnesses to show that the literal interpretation has been the view of the greatest scholars, ancient and modern, for nineteen hundred years.
IV. SUPPORTERS OF THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION
These can be divided into both earlier and later writers.
1. Earlier Writers
Flavius Josephus, a Jew of the first century AD, was reckoned by Scaliger, the great Reformation scholar, to be a better historian than all the Greek and Roman writers put together. He certainly had unequalled opportunities of investigating and understanding the culture and traditions of his own people. How does he handle the early chapters of Genesis? In one place, Josephus writes:
"Moses says that in just six days the world and all that is therein was made.....Moreover, Moses, after the seventh day was over, begins to talk philosophically...". (Antiquities I.i.2)
In other words, Josephus is saying that chapter 2 may be a bit mysterious, but in chapter 1 there is no hint of any mystery at all. He obviously takes the days as literal. In another place, he states: "The sacred books contain the history of five thousand years" (Op. Cit., Preface, 3). This is conclusive proof that the Jews of Josephus' day added up the figures in Genesis 5 and 11 to make a chronology. He later states: "...this flood began 2656 years from the first man, Adam". (Both these computations are based on the LXX text).
What C.S. Lewis has so trenchantly written about critics of the New Testament surely applies no less to re-interpreters of the Old:
"The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages is, in my opinion, preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance". (Fern-Seed & Elephants, p.112)
In other words, it seems unlikely that Englishmen of the twentieth century will understand Moses better than a Hebrew and Greek speaking Jew of the first century AD.
St. Ambrose (d.397 AD) was no more infallible than other Church Fathers, but his treatment of Genesis 1 is grammatical and objective:
"In notable fashion has Scripture spoken of 'one day', not 'the first day'.....Scripture established a law that twenty-four hours, including both day and night, should be given the name of 'day' only, as if one were to say that the length of one day is twenty-four hours in extent".
Nobody disputes that the great Reformers accepted Genesis as literal truth, but two brief quotations are memorable. First, Calvin:
"God Himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accomodating His works to the capacity of men".
Another comes from the pen of Martin Luther:
"We know from Moses that the world was not in existence before six thousand years ago".
Thus we have the views of some earlier writers.
2. Later Writers
It is interesting that James Barr, Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in Oxford University, ridicules the non-literal interpretation espoused by the Inter-Varsity Press:
"...the biblical material is twisted to fit the various theories that can bring it into accord with science. In fact the only natural exegesis (of Genesis 1) is a literal one, in the sense that this is what the author meant.....he was deeply interested in chronology and calendar".
Samuel Driver, former Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, published his commentary on Genesis in 1904, and it is still a standard work of reference. He writes:
"There is little doubt that the writer meant 'days' in the literal sense, and that Pearson was right when he inferred.....that the world was created '6000 or at farthest 7000 years' from the 17th century AD".
The same interpretation is maintained by Keil and Delitzsch, Gerhard von Rad, Herbert Leupold, and by almost every major commentary on Genesis. In fact we have never heard of any Professor of Hebrew in any of the world's great universities who believes that the original writer did not intend his words to be taken literally. Let "The Interpreter's Commentary" speak for them all:
"There can be no question but that by DAY the author meant just what we mean – the time required for one revolution of the earth on its axis. Had he meant aeon he would certainly, in view of his fondness for great numbers, have stated the number of millenia each period embraced".
V. UNNECESSARY COMPLICATION
One final objection to the Non-Literal Theory is that it is far too complicated. Every teacher knows that one begins with the simple and moves on to the complex. This principle can clearly be seen in the Bible, also.
Prose in the historical books leads on to poetry in the Psalms, philosophy in Eccesiastes, prophecy in Isaiah, and finally the difficult 'visions' in Ezekiel and Daniel. But the non-literal school would have us believe that right at the beginning of His revelation God has placed a conundrum as hard to solve as any in the whole Bible. Listen to this comment on Genesis:
"The writer has given us a masterly elaboration of a fitting, restrained anthropomorphic vision, in order to convey a whole complex of deeply-meditated ideas" (Henri Blocher, "In the Beginning", 1984).
Anyone who has tried to teach the elements of Christianity to uneducated people will recognise the utter impossibility of explaining to them why God's first words should be that gobbledegook, rather than plain statements of fact easily intelligible in every language to all nations – as the pioneer missionaries believed.
The so-called "Literary Framework Hypothesis" is a house of cards carefully constructed by academics in the airless atmosphere and artificial light of a theological library. We need to open the windows and allow a good strong blast of common sense to blow it down.
And what about children? Of all books in the Bible, Genesis is pre-eminently the children's book. Who can doubt that these fascinating stories were designed by God to allure the sweet innocence of childhood and lead us gently to faith in Christ? ("From a babe you have known the Holy Scriptures", writes Paul to Timothy). But now, inevitably, questions will be asked: "Dad, did God really make everything in six days?", or "Mum, did the Ark really hold every kind of animal?" – and all those parents who follow the Non-Literal Theory, with one accord, begin to make excuse: "Er, well, no, not really, darling. You see, the scientists say....."
In view of Christ's solemn words about causing little ones to stumble, I would not like to stand in the shoes of anyone who teaches a child that in the ABC book of religion, God does not mean what He says.
VI. DARWINISM TODAY
Of all the crooked 'parallels' adduced to justify re-interpreting Genesis, the Galileo/Darwin equation is the worst. One hundred and twenty-nine years after Galileo, what was the status of the Copernican system? Answer: every astronomer in the civilized world accepted it as a fact. It fitted every observation; it clashed with none. Predictions made on a heliocentric basis were found to be true. What about Darwin? Today, 129 years after "The Origin of Species", Sir Karl Popper's statement still stands:
"Neither Darwin, nor any Darwinian, has so far given an actual causal explanation of any single organism or any single organ".
The whole theory is falling apart; as Michael Denton (who does not claim to be a Christian) has so clearly demonstrated in his book "Evolution, A Theory in Crisis" (1985).
One of the 'signs of the times' is Darwin's dogmatic pronouncement:
"We may feel certain that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length.....". (Origin of Species, last page)
Another is the Times Atlas of the Bible (1987) which does not show Mount Ararat on any map! The religious publishing world has decided to expunge every trace of that uncomfortable story which thunders God's wrath against sin. The apostle Peter predicted just such a time:
"That there shall come in the last days scoffers,...for this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished" (2 Pet.3:5)
I suggest the way to help such people is to warn them, not to divert them along paths which promise an easy miracle-free route to heaven.
CONCLUSION
Martin Luther's challenge is right up to date:
"If I profess with the loudest voice every Bible doctrine except that one truth which Satan is attacking today, I am no soldier of Jesus Christ".
You do not have to be a reader of the Smithsonian to know that today's target for ridicule is Noah's Ark, Ussher's chronology and the six-day creation. That is why God is calling for real disciples who will not "amplify distinctions" or "rationalize the claim", but who will stand up and tell the world that He means just what He says in Genesis 1-11.
The scientific establishment will never take seriously the Christian doctrine of the Last Things until they see that Christians take seriously the Bible doctrine of First Things. Unbelievers will recognise their dreams of the future as wholly delusive only when they are shown that their picture of the past is completely chimerical.
Here are two of the "good measurements" that James Trefil is looking for in our quote at the beginning of this article:
".....we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump....." (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Macro-mutation at last – in no time!
| This article by David C.C. Watson first appeared on the wbsite Diakrisis in December of 2000. Alan Morrison is the founder and director of the website, Diakrisis. He converted to Christianity in 1985. The corruption of so many churches with pseudo-Christianity and the widespread abuse of their members (spiritual, psychological and emotional) has led to a vast number of hurt and bewildered souls in the world today. The founding of Diakrisis is a concerned and practical response to these developments. He is a graduate of the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh, and author of the book "The Serpent & the Cross", which is now into it's second printing. Having spent more than seven years as a pastor in the U.K. and the Netherlands, he now lives in France pursuing further research, writing, public speaking and other aspects of the work of Diakrisis. Alan is married to Catherine and they have four children. |