On the Historicity of Creation

One of the most contentious issues in theology, affecting science, history, and debates between theists and atheists is the historicity of creation. How and when did God create the world? How does Genesis 1 affect our understanding of history, science, humanity and the world around us? These are significant questions over which much ink has been spilt, and many groups have been divided over the ages, but it should be remembered that this is not a salvation issue – a Christian can be wrong about Genesis 1 and still be saved. The underlying issue is the doctrine of scripture; many feel that their interpretation is so obviously correct that anyone who disagrees with them must not take the Bible seriously. However, it’s only when we stop listening to other people’s exegesis of Genesis 1 that our theology is taking precedence over the Bible. If we want to claim a high view of scripture, then scripture has to shape our theology, not the other way around.

A lot of people think that there’s two views on the six days of Genesis 1, but there’s actually three: the literal six-day creation view (normal 24 hour days), the day-age view (longer periods of time), and the literary framework view (a literary device rather than sequential days/periods of time). Since Blocher’s book In the Beginning, many evangelical scholars, theologians and pastors have been gravitating towards the literary framework view, but I remain unconvinced, both for exegetical and theological reasons. Exegetically, Genesis 1 is formally structured as a narrative, it’s not a poem or a song. There are poems and songs in the Old Testament, but they don’t use the verb forms (Hebrew wayyiqtol verbs) which are used in narratives (including Genesis 1). ‘And God said... and it was so...’ denotes a sequence of events (narrative), not a juxtaposition of images (poetry). Further, where narratives and songs about the events are found togther in the Old Testament, the song follows the narrative (e.g. Exodus 14 & 15; Judges 4 & 5), the narrative of the events doesn’t come after the song about those events (as is sometimes argued for Genesis 1 & 2).

Theologically, I’m convinced that one of the major burdens of Genesis 1 is to demonstrate God’s orderliness of creation; the first three days form the world, the last three days fill the world; the first day of the triads form and fill the sky, the second form and fill the oceans, the third form and fill the land. If these six days are a literary framework rather than a historical sequential order, then the literary account of Genesis 1 is orderly, but God’s actual creation of the world is not necessarily orderly. Those who hold the literary framework view often then find another purpose for Genesis 1; for Blocher, it’s a theology of the Sabbath rather than a theology of creation; for Walton it’s the functionality of creation rather than the orderliness of creation. While I have a lot of respect for my teachers and peers who hold the literary framework view, while researching the interpretations of Genesis 1, I developed a lot of respect for literal six-day creationists who recognise this issue, and resolve to let the Bible shape their understanding of creation, rather than adopting a more liberal view of the historicity and purpose of Genesis 1.

However, I’m not quite convinced of the literal six-day creation view either, again for exegetical and theological reasons. Exegetically, the word day (both in Hebrew and English) does not necessarily refer to a period of 24 hours. In fact, it means something other than 24 hours in its very first occurrence in Genesis 1: ‘God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night” (Genesis 1:5). Moreover, apart from the contested ‘and there was evening and morning – the nth “day”,’ (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), every occurrence of the word day in the singular in Genesis 1 refers to something other than a period of 24 hours (Genesis 1:14, 16, 18). Further, in Genesis 2:4, the words ‘when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens’ is literally ‘in the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens’ – the word ‘day’ in the singular is used to refer to the whole six days of creation. This is not reading the word ‘day’ as a metaphor, but in the context of Genesis 1. Finally, many commentators have noticed that the seventh day doesn’t end (unlike the first six), and have concluded that we are still in the seventh day of God’s rest from his work of creation since ‘his works have been finished since the creation of the world’ (Hebrews 4:3). God is certainly powerful enough to create the universe in six days (or in six milliseconds for that matter), but different uses of the word day in Genesis 1, and the open ended seventh day, imply that God is not necessarily communicating the exact time frame that he used to create the universe.

Theologically, I’m hesitant to pit God’s special revelation (the Bible) against God’s general revelation (creation). One of the primary hermeneutics that Christians use to understand the Bible is to read it without drawing dichotomies within it. God’s word is not self-referentially incoherent, and so we cannot interpret parts of it in ways that contradict other parts. If God’s divine nature may also be seen creation (Romans 1:19-20), then this hermeneutical principle must also include his general revelation. As Packer suggests: ‘Our attitude must be determined by the principle that, since the same God is the author both of nature and of scripture, true science and right interpretation of scripture cannot conflict’ (Fundamentalism and the Word of God, p135). Our understandings of general revelation (science) and special revelation (theology) should not be pitted against each other, but used to qualify and inform our interpretation of the other. In order for doctrine to be consistent with reality, it must be informed by and consistent with scientific observations. Christians affirm that the Bible is true, but seek to understand how it is true, and this is where science can inform our understanding. Before we realised that the earth is round, people used to think that Bible’s description of the pillars of the earth (Job 9:6; Psalm 75:3) meant our world rested on actual pillars, but science has since informed our understanding. Christians affirm that the Bible is true, but science can help us understand how it is true.

Both the universe and the earth have several ‘wrinkles’ that show their age, one of the oldest being the scientific observation of stars up to 13 billion light-years away. Some have suggested that the speed of light has slowed down, however the speed of light is a ‘fine-tuned’ constant in physics required to be fixed for life to exist. Light would have had to have travelled 13 billion light-years in three days and then slowed down by a factor of 1.5 trillion. Alternatively, light could have been created en-route to earth, which is surely possible given God’s omnipotence. However this would mean that God, who gave us Genesis 1 to show us how orderly he was in his creation, was disorderly in the first thing he created. This argument is strictly irrefutable, just like the argument that all of us were created five minutes ago, including all our memories. In this case, however, one can hardly fault someone for working under the assumption that things are as they appear. Scientific evidence for an old earth (not just an old universe) is found in the carbon dating of rocks and fossils. Scientifically qualified and credible six-day creationists concede that the earth ‘appears’ old from the fossil record, and postulate an historical accelerated nuclear decay. Again, this is certainly possible for an omnipotent creator, but it would mean that the creation of the world was significantly disorderly, despite the orderliness of Genesis 1.

One of the motivations that six-day creationists have for challenging science and evolution in particular is in defending the historicity of Adam and the theological necessity of sin to precede death. Defending these biblical truths is admirable, but we need not quarrel when science agrees with our understanding of the Bible. In fact, our understandings of the two can and should be harmonised. Just as the big bang theory supports the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, so too the theory of evolution supports an historical Adam and Eve (unless you think that humanity evolved twice). The only points of tension are in how they were created. As Stott suggests: being formed from the dust of the ground could easily be the biblical way of saying that he created out of an already existing hominid (The Message of Romans, p164). This view is often referred to as theistic evolution: that God created by a process of evolution which he was sovereign over, climaxing in creatures that are in his image. This is not a denial of intelligent design, but of instantaneous intelligent design. If our exegesis of the creation account gives us the freedom to interpret creation as a process, then theistic evolution can give us the explanatory power required to make sense of the fossil records and our genetic likenesses to Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis. The issue is the exegesis of the biblical literature, for this is what drives Christians to (mis)interpret scientific evidence to support their position. While many in the past have interpreted Genesis 1 as a text that refutes evolution because God created all things, Warfield points out that the Bible’s creation account does not refute evolution, but rather the ‘the doctrine of self-creation’ (Evolution, Science and Scripture, p159-160). Genesis clearly reveals God as the creator, but it does not specify the super-naturalness of every act of creation.

Theistic evolution and the theory of an old earth has been seriously challenged by the theological necessity of sin to precede death, for ‘sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). The theories of evolution and an old earth are then found to be false because evolution requires death. However, Paul writes that through sin death came to all men, not to all life. The death of plants and animals is not required to come after the fall. God gave every green plant for food, though most vegetables cannot be eaten without killing the plant. Moreover, if there was no death before the fall, then God must have re-created all carnivores (and their prey with defensive features) after Adam sinned. However, the fatal consequence of sin is expressed in being cut off from the tree of life. It is not as though the human body (and all creation) was immortal before the fall, but rather that we were able to ‘take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever’ (Genesis 3:2). Sin has profound effects on creation: the ground is cursed (Genesis 3:17-18), and creation is subjected to frustration and bondage to decay (Romans 8:20-21). Frustration and decay, however, is not the same as death. As Lennox suggests: ‘One may reasonably argue that Romans 8:20-21 is carefully written to refer to decay and corruption as distinct from death’ (Seven Days that Divide the World, p80).

Finally, even if the Bible’s account of creation can be reconciled with scientific observations that point to an old earth, six-day creationists often point out the difficulty in reconciling the genealogies in Genesis that indicate that humanity is approximately 6000 years old, with the scientific observations that suggest that humanity is between one and two hundred thousand years old. If the genealogies in Genesis are closed genealogies (without any gaps) then this would certainly suggest that humanity is less than 6000 years old, but this is not demanded by the text. The NIV footnote on Genesis 5:6 helpfully points out that the genealogical formula ‘he became the father of...’ can be translated ‘he became the ancestor of...’ allowing for open genealogies, rather than exhaustive ones. Indeed, every single instance of the word ancestor in the Old Testament is a translation of the Hebrew word for father. In Jewish thought they are one and the same (they don’t have different words for ancestor and father), and so the Jews of Jesus’ day can say “Abraham is our father” (John 8:39). Reading the biblical genealogies as open genealogies also makes sense of the differences between the genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3.

Genesis 1 and modern science both attest to the universe having a beginning, and beginning as a primordial ‘blob’, which is now formed and filled. While science speaks of the expansion of the universe, the Bible describes it as the Lord stretching out the heavens. As an unbeliever, Dr. Andrew Parker wrote a scientific account of the Cambrian explosion: In the Blink of an Eye, only to discover ‘a whole series of parallels between Genesis 1 and the modern, scientific account of life’s history’. He has subsequently reconciled Genesis with the scientific history of the earth in The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is Scientifically Accurate. This is exactly what we should expect if we assume a coherence between God’s general revelation and his special revelation, exegetically we can quite properly talk about a history of creation, the account of creation is the account of a history in temporal sequence. When the scientific account of the beginnings of the universe is compared to Genesis 1, we see so many parallels that a natural synthesis is almost hard to avoid.

The findings of modern science should not be denied or seen as contrary to the Bible’s account of creation, nor should they force us to abandon the historicity of the narrative in Genesis 1. Both revelations (general and special) are from God and should be interpreted as such. Modern science does, however, necessitate fresh understandings of the aspects of how the universe was created (as it does for ‘the pillars of the earth’), but not to the extent of necessitating a reading of Genesis 1 as nothing more than a literary-framework of God’s creation process. The most important aspects of a Christian doctrine of creation, namely the nature of the creator as omnipotent, benevolent and triune, creating the universe through and for the person Jesus Christ, remain unaffected by modern science, as does our primary application of the doctrine of creation: to worship God as our creator, and relate to him as his creatures.