Last weekend, I was privileged to go on a road trip to the Creation Museum with several brothers and sisters from CBC. For those who don't know, the Creation Museum is a museum made by "Answers in Genesis"/Ken Ham that provides scientific and biblical evidence of a literal 6-day creation. It was such a great time of fellowship, as well as very educational and inspiring. I am completely humbled and awestruck by the greatness of our God and all that He has done. Prior to this trip, I did a lot of research and drafted some questions by the prompting of some theistic evolutionist friends of mine. Being raised a creationist, I decided I needed to open up my eyes to other ideas such as theistic evolution, the gap theory, etc. While I firmly believed in a literal six-day creation through God's spoken word, I understood that there were several Christians/theologians supporting the other views as well. I decided that I should listen to what they have to say and determine whether those views have merit. One such person is Francis Collins, a Christian geneticist. He presented his case of why theistic evolution is supported by the evidence and why a literal creation would be almost impossible to support scientifically (more on him later). Unfortunately, there were no seminars or talks the day that we went to the museum, so there was no expert I could bombard with all my questions. However, based on the exhibits I looked at, the books I got at the museum, the Francis Collins Veritas talk, RC Sproul's blog (about how to interpret science vs Scripture), other random resources, and my own thoughts, I have enough to say that I am still very much a literal 6-day creationist. I haven't read close to all of the resources about the issue (that would take years, plus probably a better understanding of science in general...political science doesn't count), but I'm going to briefly present why I still believe in 6-day creationism based on what I've got, both from a biblical perspective (this post) and also a scientific one.
R.C.
Sproul stated in his blog
that all truth is God's truth, meaning that God reveals Himself through both
special revelation and general revelation.
What does that mean? Special
revelation is what He directly revealed to us through His Word, the Bible (and
is the means through which we learn of the redemptive work of Christ). General revelation is what God reveals to us
through His creation (namely, His existence, power, and glory). Since God is truth and in Him there is no
falsehood, God's revelations are always infallible. The issue, then, is interpretation of these revelations. As fallible human beings, we can misinterpret
infallible general revelation, and we can also misinterpret infallible special
revelation. When scientific
theories/discoveries conflict with Scripture, one of the interpretations is
wrong. An example of this is the Church
believing that the earth was at the center and that everything revolved around
it. But our scientific understanding has
helped us to see that those passages about the sun rising/setting are just told
from the perspective of the writer (and are terms we still use today). However, when there's an unmistakable
teaching of Scripture, we Christians can
rest assured that the scientific theory is wrong due to the infallibility of God's holy Word - Scripture is
our highest authority. While God has
given us reasoning capabilities and we need to use them, we cannot
independently determine truth apart from special revelation. A lot of times with science, the same
evidence can lead to very different conclusions based on the inherent assumptions
or worldviews. Christians should
interpret the evidence with a biblical worldview as our starting point.
First,
I'll start by saying that while many point out the fact that creationism is
relatively new (and a reaction to evolutionism), the idea of a literal 6-day
creation was not disputed until the 16th Century, so it's something that's been
around a very long time.[i] It is creationism science that is new. As
people started to reject God's Word as the ultimate authority, Christians
realized that they needed to give a reason for their hope (1 Pet. 3:15). Some have tried to find a compromise between
the theory of evolution and the 6-day creation ("days" = millions of
years, or God guided the evolutionary process, e.g.). Others, like the people at Answers in
Genesis, seek to show people that 6-day creation and science don't conflict and
so there's no need to compromise. The reason
why the 6-day creation doctrine has been around so long is because based on a
straightforward reading of the passage, along with other parts of Scripture
referring to creation (e.g. Exodus 20:11), one would come to the conclusion
that God created the earth in six literal days out of nothing. And according to the Reformation hermeneutic,
the first choice is to follow the plain meaning of the text.[ii] As theologian R.C. Sproul stated in his blog,
"one must do a great deal of hermeneutical gymnastics to escape the plain
meaning of Genesis 1-2". Gymnastics
- good for the Olympics but not for biblical interpretation.
Based
on the core of our faith being rooted in Genesis 1-11 and all the references
back to Genesis in other places of the Bible, I am confident that this is a
literal, historical event rather than a symbolic allegory. Examples:
- Ex. 20:11: "For in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the
seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day and made it holy."
- Ex. 31:17: "It is a sign forever
between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed."
- Jesus responding to the Pharisees
about divorce: Matt. 19:4-5: "He answered, 'Have you not read that He who
created them [people] from the beginning
made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father
and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh?'" This is where we get our concept of marriage, from the creation
of Adam and Eve and God joining them together.
Eve was literally created by God, who took a rib out of Adam and formed
her. This is why Adam exclaimed that Eve
was the bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. God saw that Adam was alone and so He created
the suitable helper for him.
- 1 Tim. 2:13 - "For Adam was
formed first, then Eve"
- 1 Cor. 11:12 - "As woman came
from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things come from
God."
- Acts 7:50 - "Did not my hand make
all these things?"
In
all these passages, we see our Creator God as One very personal and involved in
creation, forming man out of dust and making him in His image. It is clear that the Israelites understood
the Genesis creation account as a literal story that happened before, not some
metaphor. Throughout Scripture, God is
portrayed as very involved in everything that He has made. He knows how many hairs are on our heads, He
knows when a single sparrow falls, He directs every lightning bolt, etc. I really don't think it makes sense to say
that God simply set everything in motion or guided the evolutionary process.
Perhaps
the most compelling point that convinced me about a literal Genesis account is
the issue of a "very good" creation before the fall of man (Gen.
1:31). The whole creation was beautiful
and orderly, reflecting the beauty and order of our Creator. God walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve
and they had fellowship with Him. There
was no death or suffering or anything like that. Everyone, including the animals, was
vegetarian: "And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the
heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the
breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." (Gen.
1:30). After Adam and Eve's act of
rebellion against God, however, sin entered into the world, and as a result,
the whole creation was cursed and chaotic (Genesis 3). The ground was cursed with thorns and
thistles. Man would have to work the
ground in sweat and pain in order to have food to eat. Women would have much pain in
childbearing. There would be a desire
for women to rebel against men and control them, and a desire for men to be
domineering and abusive toward women. God
allowed men to eat meat just as He originally gave them vegetation to eat (Gen
9:3 - "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave
you the green plants, I now give you everything."). And God foretold of His coming Son, our Savior,
who would crush Satan's oppression at the cross after years of enmity between
man and Satan (Gen. 3:15). For this
reason, our Lord Jesus had to come down and die on the cross in order to defeat
sin and remove the curse once for all.
In
the fossil record, we can see cancerous tumors and thorns, dated millions of
years old. And this is where the problem
lies. How can we have thorns and cancer
before the original sin of Adam? Thorns
are part of the curse of sin, and as Pastor Chuck at Knox preached, Jesus wore
the crown of thorns as a symbol of his triumph over the curse of sin, and a
symbol of his redemption of all of creation.
Nobody can say that thorns, cancer, disease, suffering, and death are good,
let alone "very good" as God said.
How can we have millions of years of animals ripping each other apart,
being diseased, and dying, if all of creation was beautiful, orderly, and very
good? And why would Jesus have to come
and die if there was already all of this chaos and rottenness in the
world? Adam and Eve's sin is the very
reason why we have mass shootings, terrorist attacks, natural disasters,
suffering, and death today. In Romans we
read that "creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption
and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been
groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we
ourselves..." (Rom. 8:21-22). God
promises us that He will redeem all of creation in the future. For now, we are all groaning in pain as we
await that day.
An
essential part of the Christian faith is that just as sin and death came
through one man, so also through one man life and redemption come.
- 1 Cor. 15:22 - "For as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."
- 1 Cor. 15:45 - "Thus it is
written, 'the first man Adam became a living being'; the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit.'"
We are all descended from one man and
one woman, and that is where we got our sin from.
I
look forward to the day when all of creation will be redeemed and "very
good" as it was in the beginning.
Isaiah 11:6-8 gives us a glimpse of the beauty that God will restore: "The
wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young
goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little
child shall lead them. The cow and the
bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat
straw like the ox. The nursing child
shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand
on the adder's den. They shall not hurt
or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." In that day, He will wipe away every tear,
and death will be no more. There will be
no more mourning, crying, or pain, because all these things will have passed
away (Rev. 21:4). This is how it should
be, how it will be, and how it was at the beginning, according to God's good
design. For now, we live in the fallen
state of the world as the result of Adam's sin, but we can look forward to the
day when He restores it all.
*edit* School and everything happened so quickly and all of a sudden things just kept piling up. I hope to revisit this topic once I get more time...after finals in December!
*edit* School and everything happened so quickly and all of a sudden things just kept piling up. I hope to revisit this topic once I get more time...after finals in December!
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