HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION That hasn’t always been the case though. “The history of biblical interpretation until the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century overwhelmingly supports a young-earth view,” writes William Dembski, an old-earth creationist, in his 2009 book “The End of Christianity” (B&H). “Young-earth creationism was the dominant position of Christians from the Church Fathers through the Reformers.” The second-century Christian apologist Theophilus of Antioch and the third-century Christian historian Julius Africanus, for example, both calculated from the Bible’s genealogies that God created the world about 5500 B.C. In the medieval and Reformation periods, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin likewise held to a young earth, Dembski writes. Still, there have long been Christians who believed the “days” in Genesis 1 to be symbolic rather than literal. Among them were Augustine, Origen, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria. None of these believed the earth was more than several thousand years old, but modern oldearth creationists cite them as a theological precedent for interpreting the days of Genesis 1 as something other than 24-hour periods. In 1859, when Charles Darwin published “The Origin of Species,” some theologians drew from the tradition of Augustine and company to explain how Scripture allowed for a very old earth. Theological liberals in Europe and America especially began to accept Darwin’s theory. One early proponent of evolution, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Crawford Toy, was fired from his teaching post in 1879 for an unorthodox view of Scripture’s inspiration. Increasingly, believers accommodated evolution and an old earth into their theological systems. Even such stalwarts of orthodoxy as Princeton’s B.B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen argued that Genesis could be interpreted to accommodate evolution and an old earth. By the late 20th
century, Christians professing inerrancy held a span of beliefs from young-earth creationism to old-earth creationism to theistic evolution. A YOUNG EARTH Eric Mitchell, associate professor of Old Testament and archaeology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, calls young-earth creationism a “faith position” that makes the best sense of both science and the Bible. Among the reasons Mitchell believes Scripture teaches young-earth creationism: The Hebrew word for day (yom) can refer to an indefinite period of time. But Genesis 1 specifies that the six days of creation each included evening and morning, indicating a 24-hour period is in view. The darkness of the first day begins at verse 1, and the morning of day one begins in verse 3. “Evening and morning constitute a day to the Hebrews,” Mitchell said. “This is the case even today.” Some argue that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, depicting a period billions of years long when the earth was “without form and void”—a gap between God’s initial act of creating and his ordering of the universe. However, the Hebrew grammar rules out such a “gap theory,” Mitchell said, noting that verse 2 is not a continuation of verse 1 but an elaboration of the state of affairs at the time of verse 1. Taking each day to represent thousands of years is also implausible, Mitchell said. If each day represents millennia, man would have been created at the end of the sixth “day” and fallen during the seventh “day”— since the Bible depicts the fall as occurring relatively soon after man’s creation. But a fall on the day of God’s rest doesn’t seem to be what Scripture indicates, he said. If each day represents thousands of years, “you would also have animals dying for millions of years before God creates man and there would be disease as well,” Mitchell said. “The fossil record shows tumors and disease in animals, animals eating each
William Dembski
Eric Mitchell
“YOU WOULD ALSO HAVE ANIMALS DYING FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS BEFORE GOD CREATES MAN AND THERE WOULD BE DISEASE AS WELL. THE FOSSIL RECORD SHOWS TUMORS AND DISEASE IN ANIMALS, ANIMALS EATING EACH OTHER, ETC. HOW CAN THIS ALL BE DECLARED BY GOD ‘VERY GOOD,’ IN 1:31 IF THIS IS THE CASE BEFORE THE FALL OF MAN?” —Eric Mitchell, associate professor of Old Testament and archaeology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
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