Scripture in The Hands of Geologists (By Davis Young and John Byl)

Reformed Academic, 16 March 2012
ReformedAcademic.blogspot.com
Scripture in the Hands of Geologists (1987) and Scripture and Geologists (1989) Davis A. Young & John Byl an exchange in Westminster Theological Journal
In the pages that follow, we republish with permission from the editor of Westminster Theological Journal the following articles. Until now, these articles have been legitimately available only through subscription, although some versions of them have been found on the internet.
Davis A. Young, Scripture in the Hands of Geologists (Part One), Westminster Theological Journal, v. 49 (1987), pp. 1-34.
Davis A. Young, Scripture in the Hands of Geologists (Part Two), Westminster Theological Journal, v. 49 (1987), pp. 257-304.
John Byl, Scripture and Geologists, Westminster Theological Journal, v. 51 (1989), pp. 143-152.
Davis A. Young, Scripture and Geologists: A Reply to John Byl, Westminster Theological Journal, v. 51 (1989), pp. 377-387.
Westminster Theological Journal can be found online at www.wts.edu/resources/wtj.html .
WTJ 49 (1987) 1-34
SCRIPTURE IN THE HANDS OF GEOLOGISTS (PART ONE)*

DAVIS A. YOUNG
I. The Problem 1. Introduction HE evangelical community is still mired in a swamp in its attempt to understand the proper relationship between biblical interpretation and scientific endeavor. Evangelical scientists are anxious to know how biblical data and principles affect the data and theories of geology, cosmology, biology, and anthropology. Can we scientists pursue our work with integrity and faithfulness to the inerrant Word of God if we draw from Scripture only generalized statements and principles about the interrelationships among God, man, and the created world? Or does submission to biblical authority also bind us to an interpretation of the details of the text that provides us not only with controls on the scope and character of scientific theories in general, but also with detailed data that are directly relevant to the content of specific theories? As scientists we hope for a clear word from the biblical scholars about how to deal with the biblical text, but instead we are confronted with exegetical and hermeneutical cacophony. We still wait for satisfying answers. In turn, exegetes wonder about the relevance of extrabiblical data to the interpretation of portions of the Bible widely regarded to bear on questions of scientific interest. Should the exegete be immersed in the text alone and completely ignore thefindingsof geology and archeology? Or should the
* This paper was written during my tenure as a fellow in the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship during the 1984-85 academic year. For their invaluable comments throughout the year I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues in the center: Robert Snow, Howard Van Till, John Stek, George Marsden, Clarence Menninga, and John Suk.
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exegete take into account scientific data and use them to establish or suggest constraints on exegesis? Exegetes face the mirror-image of the problem of the scientists, for those who want to take extrabiblical data into account are also confronted with confusion of voices. Scientific creationists, atheistic naturalists, theistic evolutionists, and progressive creationistsl present conflicting views about current scientific data and theory. To whom should exegetes listen? Exegetes may have favored certain biblical interpretations because they think there is validity either to the "origins model" of scientific creationism or to the standard scientific models of cosmic and terrestrial history. To exacerbate an already confused situation, proponents of the various approaches to the relationship between scientific work and biblical interpretation often cling to those
1 Scientific creationists generally believe that creation took place in a succession of miraculous divine fiats spanning six 24-hour days. This creation is believed to have occurred only a few thousand years ago. Scientific creationists also believe that most fossil-bearing stratified rocks were deposited during a global deluge at the time of Noah. Prominent scientific creationists include Henry Morris, Duane Gish, and Thomas Barnes. Institutions such as the Creation Research Society, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Bible-Science Association represent the interests of scientific creationists. Atheistic naturalists generally accept the notion that matter is eternal and that the universe is self-existent and autonomous. The universe is not dependent on divine creation or providence and may therefore be understood in terms of autonomous natural law. Carl Sagan is representative of this viewpoint. Atheistic naturalism is common in popular literature on science and appears in such journals as The Humanist. Theistic evolutionists generally accept an ancient universe and earth as well as complete biological evolution including man. However, they would regard such evolution as God's method of creation and providence. Among theistic evolutionists are heterodox Christians like Teilhard de Chardin and orthodox Christians such as V. Elving Anderson. Progressive creationists also accept an ancient universe and earth, but they see a more limited role for biological evolution. The typical progressive creationist believes that God may have miraculously intervened to create life, major groups of animals and plants, and particularly man. Bernard Ramm and Russell Maatman might be considered progressive creationists. Both theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists find a home in the American Scientific Affiliation. In my judgment, the terms scientific creationist, theistic evolutionist, and progressive creationist are all terribly misleading and have helped to perpetuate much of the confusion about how to relate Christian faith and scientific work. The terms ought to be abandoned.
SCRIPTURE IN THE HANDS OF GEOLOGISTS
approaches so tenaciously that those who disagree run the risk of calling down upon themselves a variety of epithets. Those of us mired in the swamp seem to be more interested in name-calling and blaming one another than in getting out of the swamp and onto more suitable terrain for more effective cooperation in God's kingdom. I suggest that to get out of the swamp we must retrace our steps and see how we got there in thefirstplace. This retracing involves an immense historical task, so I will describe only aspects of the path we have followed. Here I will review the past 300 years of interpretation of the Bible in relationship to questions solely of geological interest. Specifically I will explore how Christians have related the Bible to an understanding of earth history. The great majority of those whose interpretations are surveyed here were/are either Christian naturalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or practicing Christian geologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Virtually all of these naturalists/geologists were/ are in the mainstream of geological thinking of their times and well represent the opinions of working Christian scientists. To supplement the interpretations of these Christian naturalists and geologists, I also consider the views of some scientific creationists, Christian astrophysicists, and theologians as they relate to the history of the Earth. Because theologians, pastors, and exegetes who read the Journal may confine their study of biblical texts to the Bible study tools written by other theologians, pastors, and exegetes, most readers are probably not familiar with the material presented here. Thus they will likely have little sense of the extreme variation of interpretation of biblical details relevant to scientific questions. I suggest that only if the history of these interpretations is grasped can the evangelical community make any serious headway in arriving at a satisfactory solution to the issues of theology and science. 2. Summary of Interpretive Traditions There have, of course, been many ways of relating the Bible and the results of scientific endeavor, but among evangelical Christians there have been two major traditions. On the one
hand is a long tradition that I term literalism. Literalism has insisted that the early chapters of Genesis are literal narratives that report in succinct, quasi-photographic manner a succession of historical events, the physical artifacts of which are potentially discoverable. In addition, Genesis 1-11, the wisdom literature, and other relevant texts are also seen as containing information of high precision that must be incorporated into any scientific reconstruction of terrestrial history or theorizing about the earth's physical structure. To the extent that a scientific reconstruction of terrestrial or cosmic history is at variance with th^ biblical text, literally interpreted, to that extent is the reconstruction in error. The great Christian naturalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were predominantly literalists who used the Bible as a framework for their hypotheses about earth history. They tried to fit the limited available empirical data and information from classical history into a literalistic biblical framework. Though differing from seventeenth century naturalists, scientific creationists are today's literalists.2 They have taken a negative stance toward the results of contemporary scientific investigation unlike the seventeenth century literalists. Modern literalism is opposed to the ideas of evolution and a lengthy terrestrial history, and it is disturbed by the inability of modern science to verify the occurrence of a global flood. Scientific creationism calls for a complete rejection of many major themes of modern science and for a total restructuring of science within the theoretical framework established by biblical principles and data, literally understood. The second major tradition, concordismi which developed toward the close of the eighteenth century, has been much
2 For a representative sample of scientific creationism, the reader should consult such works as H. M. Morris and G. E. Parker, What is Creation Science? (San Diego: Master Book, 1982) or H. M. Morris, Scientific Creationism (San Diego: Creation-Life, 1974). 3 Concordism, as I use the term, is an approach or set of approaches for harmonizing the results of science with the biblical data. Concordism is generally comfortable with most of the broad conclusions of science and therefore tends to adopt nonliteral interpretations of relevant biblical texts. Concordism includes the gap, day-age, intermittent-day and revelation day theories of Genesis 1. The approach that I adopted in myfirstbook Creation
more positive than literalism toward the conclusions of the scientific enterprise. Concordists have generally been comfortable with the ideas that the earth has had a long, dynamic history, that biological evolution is a valid theory, and that the flood was not a global catastrophe. While concordism has also treated Genesis 1-11 as historical narrative, it has seen that literal interpretations of some biblical texts conflict with the results of science. Thus concordism has harmonized scientificfindingswith Genesis by adopting a variety of figurative, symbolic, or broad interpretations of the text. The days of Genesis 1 have been treated as long periods of time, the genealogies of Genesis 5 were said to omit names, and the universal language of the flood story was said to be universal from the point of view of one going through the flood. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the majority of evangelical scientists have adopted concordistic methods. While literalism today is represented by the Creation Research Society, concordism is commonplace within the American Scientific Affiliation. Both literalism and concordism regard Genesis 1-11 as historical reports, and they have assumed that there is an intended correspondence between the sequence of events as narrated in Genesis and the sequence of historical events that can potentially be reconstructed by science. The difference lies in their understanding of the specific contents of the sequence of events in Genesis and geology. I suggest that the long succession of literalist and concordist efforts, many of which were well-founded at the time, has led us into the swamp from which we now seek to extricate ourselves. I suggest that both traditions have ultimately failed, for evangelicals are no closer now to identifying the supposed geological and cosane the Flood was distinctly concordist in character.
One could perhaps properly consider both literalism and concordism as I am using them in this paper as concordistic in the sense that both points of view believe that a correspondence or concordance between biblical data and historical data is possible. We could distinguish between narrow concordism (literalism) and broad concordism (concordism), but I have chosen to make a distinction between literalism and corcordism simply because the term concordism has most often been used of such theories as the gap theory and day-age theory rather than the kinds of views put forward by today's scientific creationists.
mological products of the supposed sequence of biblical events than they were 300 years ago. I further suggest that both literalism and concordism have outlived their usefulness, and that these approaches should be abandoned for a newer approach that does not try to answer technical scientific questions with biblical data.4 Below, I trace the development of the literalistic and concordistic traditions and their responses to empirical and theoretical advances in geology. Both traditions have perpetrated so many variations on their basic themes as to become amusing. The long series of variations on the literalist theme from the seventeenth century to scientific creationism presents us with conflicting accounts of a supposedly " biblical" earth, all of which fail to deal adequately with what we know about our planet. In literalism, empirical data have been distorted to "agree" with "biblical" conclusions so that literalism today undermines honest, Christian scientific endeavor. In contrast, all of the variations on the concordist theme give us a Bible that is constantly held hostage to the latest scientific theorizing. Texts are twisted, pulled, poked, stretched, and prodded to "agree" with scientific conclusions so that concordism today undermines honest, Christian exegesis. Evangelicals need a new approach in which both exegesis and science are aware of and benefit from one another, and in which biblical exegesis and science are both free to be carried out with integrity on their own terms. II. Literalism 1. Seventeenth-Century British Diluvialism Our survey of the history of interpretation begins with the diluvialist tradition of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Britain. In diluvialism Scripture provided the main
4 This statement must not be construed to mean that the Bible has no relevance for science. For example, the Bible provides the foundation for scientific activity with its teaching of divine creation and faithful governance of the world. But I suggest that we do not find earthquake mechanisms, theories of volcanism, or data about stellar structure in the Bible. The Bible does not provide the results of geological or astronomical investigations. By contrast, it may well be that for some disciplines such1 as archeology and history, the Bible does provide some information which is relevant to our
outline of terrestrial history. The writings of classical historians and scattered empirical evidence from the earth provided secondary sources of information that helped fill in the detail and were believed to corroborate the biblical accounts. The biblical scheme of creation, fall, flood, andfinalconsummation provided the main events in earth history, and the biblical materials relating to these events were typically understood in literal terms. The creation was assumed to be a recent creation in six ordinary days, and the flood was assumed to be global. Typically, the Noachic flood was the centerpiece around which the various speculative theories of the earth were constructed. Thefirstmajor diluvialist work was Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth,* originally published in 1681. Burnet believed that the present globe could not be like the original earth of paradise, for mountains and ocean basins were evidences of a disordered and imperfect world. The mountains were "great ruines," and of the ocean he mused, "When I present this great Gulf to my imagination, emptied of all its waters, naked and gaping at the Sun, stretching its jaws from one end of the Earth to another, it appears to me the most ghastly thing in Nature."6 The channel of the sea must be a "secondary" work. With this view of the present world, Burnet developed a theory of the primeval earth and of how it came to look as it does today. The key to the transformation from order to disorder lay in the deluge. But what was the source of the deluge? Previous attempts to find an adequate source in terms of rational, secondary causes had failed, and it would not do to avoid the problem by falling back on the notion that God had ad hoc created and then annihilated the flood waters. The answer lay in a great subterranean abyss of waters that was incorporated into the
contemporary technical questions. Clearly, Scripture has already yielded data of great value to archeologists. But it has not done so for geology, astronomy, or the other physical sciences. 5 Thomas Burnet, The Sacred Theory of the Earth (London: Centaur Press, 1965). 6 Ibid., 102.
original earth and overflowed the surface at the time of the flood. The original globe, said Burnet, developed into a layered structure from the "chaos" of Gen 1:2, a chaos that was "a fluid, dark, confus'd mass, without distinction of Elements; made up of all variety of parts, but without Order, or any determinate Form."7 Following Descartes' Prindples of Philosophy, Burnet suggested that the chaos underwent a differentiation process in which "the heaviest and grossest parts would sink down towards the middle of it . . . and the rest would float above."8 The interior of the globe, rich in subterranean water, coalesced prior to the exterior. Gen 1:2 referred to this early phase of development when it said that "darkness was upon the face of the Abysse, or of the Deep, as we render it; there the Abysse was open, or cover'd with darkness only, namely before the exteriour Earth was form'd. " 9 As the differentiation process finished, the abyss was covered by a solid crust. The completed earth was such that "the face of the Earth before the Deluge was smooth, regular, and uniform; without Mountains, and without a Sea."10 This primitive earth from top to bottom consisted of an atmosphere, solid crust, subterranean abyss of waters, and interior earth. Burnet was convinced that there are "places of Scripture that seem manifestly to describe this same form of the Abysse with the Earth above it."11 He appealed to Ps 24:2, "He founded the Earth upon the Seas, and established it upon the Floods" and to Ps 136:6, "He stretched out the Earth above the Waters," as proof texts, for "this Foundation of the Earth upon the Waters, or extension of it above the Waters, doth most aptly agree to that structure and situation of the Abysse and the Ante-diluvian Earth, which we have assigned them. "12 Burnet also appealed to Ps 33:7: "He gathereth the Waters of the Sea as in a Bag, he layeth up the Abysses in storehouses.
Ibid., 49. Ibid., 54. 9 Ibid., 73. 10 Ibid., 53. 11 Ibid., 75. 12 Ibid., 75-76.
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This answers very fitly and naturally to the place and disposition of the Abysse which it had before the Deluge, inclos'd within the vault of the Earth."13 The heat of the sun continuously penetrated the earth's interior, causing expansion. The pressure of the abyss on the underside of the solid crust producedfissureswithin the crust. The expansion and Assuring process came to a climax as the earth's crust was disrupted, and an enormous volunte of waters was released from the subterranean abyss completely overflowing the earth's surface. Job 38:8-10 provided the biblical support for this cataclysm:
Or who shut up the Sea with doors when it brake forth, as if it had issu'd out of a womb? Who can doubt but this was at the breaking open of the Fountains of the Abysse, Gen. 7:11 when the waters gusht out, as out of the great womb of Nature; and by reason of that confusion and perturbation of Air and Water that rise upon it, a thick mist and darkness was round the Earth, and all things as in a second Chaos, When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swadling band for it, and brake up for it my decreed place, and made bars and doors. Namely . . . the present Chanel of the Sea was made when the Abysse was broke up, and at the same time were made the shory Rocks and Mountains which are the bars and boundaries of the Sea.14
The beginning and ending of the deluge, said Burnet, were marked by going and coming, that is, by many repeated "fluctuations and reciprocations" of waves. At the conclusion of the flood, the waters returned to the newly opened sea and ultimately to the subterranean abyss which was connected to the ocean floor by channelways. The "violent commotion" of the abyss during and after the flood was noted in Ps 104:9:
The Waters went up by the Mountains, came down by the Valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. I know some interpret that passage of the state of the waters in the beginning, when they cover'd the face of the whole Earth, Gen. 1:2 but that cannot be, because of what follows in the next Verse; Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the Earth.I5
The verse obviously does not apply to the original creation,

Ibid., 76. Ibid., 77-78. 15 Ibid., 72-73.
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claimed Burnet, for the waters did overflow the earth after its creation. The proposed interpretations of the biblical texts seemed obvious to Burnet, but subsequent writers, equally committed to global diluvialism, did not agree that Scripture said what Burnet thought. Among the more irenic of Burnet's critics was the great scientist Robert Hooke. Like many of his contemporaries, Hooke tried to provide a meaningful explanation for the location of organic remains in mountains far from the sea. Many naturalists regarded fossils as genuine organic remains that had been deposited during the flood. Hooke, however, thought that Burnet's version of the flood was inadequate to account for fossils and rock strata. The main difficulty was that the flood did not last long enough to produce the effects claimed for it:
That space of time will not be found of duration long enough to produce de novo such multitudes of those Creatures, and to such Magnitudes and Ages of growth as many of them seem to have had, and it will be difficult to be imagined, that such Creatures as do not swim in the Water, should, by the Effects ofthat Deluge, be taken from their Residences in the bottom of the Sea and carried to the top of the Mountains, or to places so far remote from those Residences.l6
Instead, Hooke attributed the location of fossils to upheaval of the seabed by successive earthquakes. Hooke did, however, propose one way in which Noah's flood might account for the present position of fossils. The only way to save the Noahic deluge as an agent of fossilization and stratification was to recognize that fossiliferous rocks were former seabottom that had been elevated to form land. Said Hooke, " Unless we supposed that there were thereby a change wrought of the superficial Parts of the Globe, and that those Parts which before the Flood were dry Land became Sea, and the Parts which were before covered by the Sea after the said Deluge, became the dry Land, it seems to me, that these appearances cannot be solved by Noah's Flood."17 Hooke suggested that God created a twofold separation that led to twofirmaments.A separation in the middle of the
16 Robert Hooke, Lectures and Discourses of Earthquakes and Subterraneous Eruptions (London: 1705) 412. This work was reprinted by Arno Press in 1978. 17 Ibid.
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light formed the firmament of heaven, identified with the atmosphere. A separation in the middle of the darkness that covered the watery abyss above the central earth formed the firmament between the waters. The firmament between the waters was the solid, hard spherical shell of the earth placed between the ocean above and an abyss of waters below. Hooke's picture of the primordial structure of the earth resembled Burnet's. The order, from the interior outward, was a central earth or great abyss enclosed in darkness by a shell of water that lay beneath thefirmament.Thefirmament,that is, the rocky shell of the earth, lay above the subterranean waters. Above the rocky shell was more water upon which the Spirit was said to move. Thus the original globe was covered by water. Hooke proposed that the sphericalfirmamentor shell "was in some places raised or forced outwards, and some other parts were pressed downwards or inwards, and sunk lower, when in the ninth Verse, God commanded the Waters under the Heaven to be gathered together to one place, and the dry Land to appear. "18 Thus the rocky shell was deformed into bulges and depressions and "in this State the Earth seems to remain till the time of the Flood. "19 At that time the fountains of the great deep were "pulled up."
What I understand by the great Deep, I shewed before; that is, the sinkings inward of the Firmament in the middle of the Waters; and the forcing up of the Fountains of the great Deep, I conceive to signify the raising again of those parts that were before sunk to receive the Sea; and a Consequent of that would necessarily be a sinking of that which was the dry Land, and a Consequent of that, flowing and increasing of the Sea from out of that which was the great Deep, and a prevailing and increasing upon that which was a sinking Earth . . . the sinking parts went as much below the Level, as before they were above, and the rising parts by degrees ascended as much above as they had been below, and that which had been the bottom of the Sea under the Water, became the dry Land, and that which had been before the dry Land, now became the bottom of the Sea, whether the Waters retreatedfromoff these parts which were raised when the Flood was finished.20
For Hooke it was the present-day ocean bottom that was

Ibid., 414. Ibid. 20 Ibid., 415.
19 18
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flooded and had subsequently sunk. By contrast, the present land surface was elevated during the flood, so that the fossils in rocks were produced on the seabed prior to the flood rather than by burial of animals and plants during the flood. A more vigorous critic of Burnet was Erasmus Warren, rector of Worlington in Suffolk. In 1690, Warren issued a devastating broadside against the Sacred Theory entitled Geologia.21 Although Burnet believed in a literal creation, paradise, fall, and universal deluge, Warren felt that Burnet had not been literal enough. He claimed that the Sacred Theory "does strike at Religion, and assault it . . . in the very Foundation of it . . . For in several things . . . it contradicts Scripture. *'22 Warren claimed that Burnet's chaos was too formless; it "was no Earth, nor had it any specific or distinct Earth in it."2S Rather Gen 1:2 indicated the desolate character of the original globe: "The Earth (in its original imperfection and nakedness) was a Chaos: an incultivate and uninhabited lump, rude and confused beyond all imagination, as having neither good form nor furniture in it. But then at the same time it was an Earth too; and so not such a Chaos as the Theory speaks it,"24 Warren insisted that the original earth had mountains and seas. Moreover, the great deep was no subterranean abyss, because Burnet misinterpreted the texts that he claimed established the existence of the subterranean abyss. Warren proposed that Ps 24:2 and 136:6 spoke not of superposition of land on water but ofjuxtaposition of land by the sea: "And so, He founded it by the seas, and established it by the Floods. Which David might the rather note, because so much of Palestine (where he lived) lay along by the Mediterranean. Though when our Learned Translators turned the word upon;
21 Erasmus Warren, Geologia (London: B. Chiswell, 1690). The work was reprinted by Arno Press in 1978. The full tide of Warren's work is Geologia: or, a Discourse concerning the Earth before the Deluge. Wherein the Form and Properties ascribed to it, in a book intituled The Theory of the Earth, are excepted against: and it is made appear, That the Dissolution ofthat Earth was not the Cause of the Universal Flood. Aho, a New Explication of that Flood is attempted. 22 Ibid., in preface, "To the Reader," pages unnumbered. 2S Ibid., 90. 24 Ibid.
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they made it speak most true English. For where land lies by the Sea, we commonly say, it lies upon it. "25 Of Ps 33:7 Warren commented,
He gathered the waters of the Sea as in a Bag, He layeth up the Abysses in Storehouses. Which, says the Theory, answers very fitly and naturally to the place and disposition of the Abyss which it had before the Deluge, inclosed within the Vault of the Earth, as in a Bagg or in a Storehouse. But I say it sutes the present form of the Earth as well as it does the first: only this difference. Hie Bagg and Storehouses, supposed to be in the first Earth, were shut; but in this, they are open. Yet, it sutes it much better upon two accounts. For in the Earth as it is now, there are . . . many Treasuries or Storehouses of Waters (according to the Text) which has the word in the Plural Number. Whereas in thefirstEarth, there could be but one, before the disruption.26
He further insisted that "heap" is a better translation in Ps 33:7 than "bag." Warren did agree with Burnet that God had not specially created waters just for the flood. Creation was a finished act. Besides, God mentioned the agents used for the floodrain and the deep. But Warren believed that Burnet had greatly overestimated the amount of water needed for the flood. The deluge could not have involved total dissolution of the world, for the rivers of the garden of Eden would have been completely obliterated. Why would Moses have bothered to mention the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known to readers of his own day? Gen 7:20 had been misinterpreted. Burnet wanted to cover the summits of all the mountains produced during the deluge with at least 15 cubits of water. Surprisingly, Warren was less literalistic than Burnet:
We shall find there a great mistake in the common Hypothesis touching their Depth. For whereas they have been supposed, to be fifteen Cubits higher than the highest Mountains; they were indeed but fifteen Cubits high in all, above the surface of the Earth. Not that the Waters were no where higher than just fifteen Cubits above the Ground: they might in most places be thirty, forty, orfiftyCubits high or higher... This therefore we lay down as the Foundation of our Hypothesis, that the highest parts of the Earth, that is, of the common surface of it, were under Water but fifteen Cubits in depth.27
25 26
Ibid., 137. Ibid., 138-39. 27 Ibid., 300-301.
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The result was that mountain peaks could project well above the surface of the flood whereas the lower flanks would be covered. Only the regional land surface, excepting local excess elevations, would be covered to a depth of 15 cubits. Because the flood was not as deep as Burnet thought, there was no need for a subterranean abyss. In place of the issuing of waters through fractures leading to the subterranean abyss, Warren proposed a more familiar sourcecaves: "The breaking up of the Fountains of Tehom Rabbah, or the great Deep, (which the Theory insists so much upon) was no more than the breaking up of such Caverns."28 Appealing to Ps 78:15, "He clave the rocks and gave them drink in the great deeps," Warren asserted, "That is, he gave them that for drink, which was in those great Deeps till he fetcht it out of them. And what great Deeps could they be, but great deep Caverns in the Rocks?"29 These caves were located high in the mountains so that during the flood the waters would run down from above: "But though these Caverns be called Deeps, we must not take them for profound places that went down into the Earth below the common surface of it: on the contrary, they were situate above it. And therefore the Waters issuing out of them, came running down. So we find in the next verse of the same Psalm . . . He caused them to run down."30 Of great significance in British diluvialism was An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth51 issued in 1695 by John Woodward, Professor of Physick in Gresham College. Woodward, one of the most prominent naturalists of the latter seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, was far more familiar with the character of the earth than either Burnet or Warren. He wanted to put terrestrial history on a sounder observational basis, and he stressed that rock strata and their
Ibid., 303. Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 John Woodward, An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth (London: R. Wilkin, 1695). This work was reprinted by Arno Press in 1978. The full title of Woodward's work is An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth: and Terrestrial Bodies, especially Minerals: as abo of the Sea, Rivers, and Springs. With an Account of the Universal Deluge: and of the Effects that it had upon the Earth.
29 28
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contained fossils may be satisfactorily explained by the biblical universal deluge. Woodward devoted little attention to the source of floodwaters. Without developing an elaborate cosmogony or mechanism for release offloodwaters,Woodward assumed that the flood was caused by overflow of the subterranean abyss. Woodward's main concern was with the effects of the flood rather than its mechanism. According to Woodward, the surface of the earth was "dissolved" by the surging waters. By "dissolved" he meant that rock and soil were broken down into fine constituent particles or "corpuscles." Because of this "dissolution" the flood consisted of a mixture of water, fine particles of rock and mineral matter, and suspended organic remains. As the waters returned to the abyss, suspended matter settled out in order of specific gravity. Consequently the post-diluvian surface of the earth was characterized by pronounced stratification of sandstones, limestones, coal, and similar rock types. Because the suspended particles were deposited in order of specific gravity, Woodward claimed that those strata toward the bottom of a pile of stratified rocks were those of the highest density and those strata higher up in a pile were characterized by lower density. The remains of dead plants and animals were also incorporated into the accumulating strata, presumably in order of specific gravity, to become fossils. To Woodward, the flood was "the most horrible and portentous Catastrophe that Nature ever yet saw: an elegant, orderly, and habitable Earth quite unhinged, shattered all to pieces, and turned into an heap of ruins."32 Nonetheless behind this catastrophe was a "steady Hand, producing good out of evil: the most consummate and absolute Order and Beauty, out of the highest Confusion and Deformity: acting with the most exquisite Contrivance and Wisdom."33 The flood was not sent solely to punish mankind for his well deserved sins; rather the intention was "principally against the Earth that then was; with design to destroy and alter that Constitution of it, which was apparently calculated and con92 M
Ibid., 82. Ibid., 83.
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trived for a state of Innocence: to fashion it afresh, and give it a Constitution more nearly accommodated to the present Frailties of its Inhabitants."34 In 1694, Edmond Halley gave a lecture before the Royal Society of London that was later published in 1724.35 Halley judged that the flood was universal as evidenced by fossil remains "far and above the Sea." He rejected the idea of a special creation and annihilation of waters claiming that this was "by much the most difficult Hypothesis that can be thought of to effect it."36 Halley thought that the almighty generally made "use of Natural Means to bring about his Will."37 As ordinary rain falling for even 40 days could not begin to cover the earth, the language of Genesis must mean some extraordinary fall of water "not as Rain, but in one great Body; as if the Firmament, supposed by Moses to sustain a Supra-aerial Sea, had been broken in, and at the same Time that the Ocean did flow in upon the Land, so as to cover all with Water."38 Halley proposed that the shock of a comet passing by the earth would lead to overflow of the ocean onto land. With the passing of the comet, the axis of the earth would be altered. The shock would be so great that the sea would run violently towards
that Part of the Globe where the Blow was received; and that with Force sufficient to rake with it the whole Bottom of the Ocean, and to carry it upon the Land; heaping up into Mountains those earthy Parts it had born away with i t . . . And again, the Recoil of this Heap of Waters would return towards the opposite Parts of the Earth, with a lesser Impetus than the first, and so reciprocating many times, would at last come to settle in such Ibid., 84. Edmond Halley, "Some Considerations about the Cause of the Universal Deluge, " and " Some Farther Thoughts upon the Same Subject, " Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 33 (1724) 118-25. In his paper, Halley commented that the reason he delayed publication for so long was that he was "apprehensive least by some unguarded Expression he might incur the Censure of the Sacred Order." Moreover, even in 1724 he had reservations about publication and had to be persuaded to publish his views at the urging of the Secretary of the Royal Society. 36 Ibid., 120. 37 Ibid., 121. 38 Ibid., 120.
35 34
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a Manner as we now observe in the Structure of the superficial Parts of the Globe. 39
The shock of the comet "would also occasion a differing Length of the Day and Year, and change the Axis of the Globe, according to the Obliquity of the Incidence of the Stroak, and the Direction thereof, in relation to the former Axis."40 Thus for Halley the "great deep" meant the ocean which overflowed the land during the flood by virtue of cometary action. Strongly influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's physics, Edmond Halley's work on comets, and John Woodward's studies of strata and fossils, William Whiston, Newton's successor in mathematics at Cambridge, published A New Theory of the Earth41 in 1696. Whiston placed the global deluge within a framework of the latest sound physics. Impressed by Halley's studies, he emphasized the major role that comets were thought to play in terrestrial history at the birth of the planet, at the time of the fall, and later during the deluge. Whiston suggested that the earth formed from a large comet, identified with the deep and chaos of Gen 1:2. Given the dense, cloudy nature of Whiston's comet, one would expect darkness upon the face of the deep. The comet's atmosphere was, according to Whiston, hundreds of miles thick, and "if this be not sufficient to account for this thick Darkness on the Face of the Abyss, 'twill, I imagine be difficult to solve it better. "42 Eventually the Spirit of God went to work on this comet:
We may justly understand thereby his impressing, exciting, or producing such Motions, Agitations, and Fermentations of the several Parts; such particular Powers of Attraction or Avoidance (besides the general one of Gravity) of Concord or Enmity, of Union or Separation; and all these in such certain Quantities, on such certain Conditions of Bodies, and in such certain distinct Parts and Regions of the Chaos, as were proper and necIbid., 122. Ibid. 41 William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (London: R. Roberts, 1696). This work was reprinted by Arno Press in 1978. The full title of Whiston's work is A New Theory of the Earth, from its Original, to the Consummation of all Things. Wherein the Creation of the World in Six Days, the Universal Deluge, and the General Conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scripture, are shewn to be perfectly agreeable to Reason and Philosophy. 42 Ibid., 72.
40 39
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essary for that particular Course and Disposition of Nature which it seem'd good to the Divine Spirit to introduce, and on which this future frame of things here below was ever after to depend.43
The comet, said to be about 7000-8000 miles in diameter, differentiated so that heavier particles sank toward the center of a coagulating earth and lighter particles settled more slowly. The result of this process was a primitive Burnetian earth with a central core, subterranean abyss, rocky shell, and atmosphere. Whiston's earth, too, did not have a large primitive ocean but only small surficial bodies of water. As the atmosphere developed, the air cleared and light appeared in keeping with Gen 1:3-5. On the second day of creation differentiation continued as vapors of the air were elevated and inferior waters were "enclosed in the Pores, Interstices and Bowels of the Earth, or lay upon the Surface thereof."44 Whiston's primitive earth rotated on an upright axis annually. Whiston claimed that the six days of creation were each one year long. To provide biblical support for that claim Whiston engaged in impressive exegetical gymnastics. His approach was to illustrate from several texts the equation of days and years, as, for example, Gen 5:4-5, "The days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died"; 2 Sam 2:11, "The number of Days that David was King in Hebron, over the house of Judah, was seven Years and six months. The Days that David reigned over Israel were forty years"; the combination of Deut 14:28, "Bring your Tyths after three Years," and Amos 4:4, "Bring your Tyths after three Days"; and also Num 14:33-34 and Daniel 9 with its seventy "weeks" of years.45 Whiston also pointed out the difficulties in interpreting the six days of creation as ordinary 24-hour days. He thought that the events of days three and six could not have taken place within 24 hours. Of day three he said,
On the former part of this Day the Waters of the Globe were to be drain'd off all the dry Lands into the Seas; and on the same Day afterward, all the Plants and Vegetables were to spring out of the Earth. Now the Velocity
4S 44 45
Ibid., 226. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 82-84.
19
of running Waters is not so great, as in a part of one of our short Days, to descendfromthe middle Regions of the dry Land into the Seas adjoyning to them; nor if it were, could the Land be dry enough in an instant for the Production of all those Plants and Vegetables, which yet we are assur'd appeared the same Day upon the face of it; which Difficulties vanish, if we allow the primitive Days to have been Years also.46
Whiston also argued that on the "day" of their creation Adam and Eve had far more to do than could be accomplished in an ordinary day. The original conditions of earth were irreversibly destroyed on Thursday, November 27, the 17th day of the second month from the autumnal equinox, when the earth passed through the atmosphere and tail of a great comet for a period of" about 10 or 12 hours." The "floodgates of heaven" were tremendous downpours of rain from the comet's atmosphere. "A great part of ( the Vapours ) being in a very Rare and Expanded condition, after their Primary Fall, would be immediately mounted upward into the Air, and afterward descend in violent and outrageous Rains upon the Face of the Earth."47 By its passage, the comet distorted the earth from spherical to elliptical, and enormous tides were created in both the subterranean abyss and the rocky shell. Because of its far greaterrigidity,the rocky shell was unable to deform as much as the waters of the abyss. Severe stresses led to extensive Assuring of the rocks, and the rocky shell locally pushed downward onto the abyss forcing the waters upward through the fractured rock onto the surface. The combination of torrential cometary rains and outflowing of the abyss redistributed surface features and led to the formation of strata and fossils in essentially Woodwardian fashion. John Ray was another great naturalist of the era. In his major work, Three Physico-Theological Discourses,48 Ray pondered at length the creation and the flood. He believed that the original earth was under water as indicated by Gen 1:2 and corroborated by Ps 104:6-9. Although he fully accepted the idea of a subterranean abyss, he did not think that the sepIbid., 89. Ibid., 302. 48 John Ray, Three Physico-Theological Discourses (3rd ed.; London: Innys, 1713).
47 46
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aration of water from dry land in Gen 1:9-10 had anything to do with the abyss. "And that this Gathering together of Waters was not into any subterraneous Abyss, seems likewise clear from the Text: For it is said, That GOD called this Collection of Waters Seas, as if it had been on purpose to prevent such a Mistake."49 Much of Ray's work dealt with the flood. Ray was not convinced that a flood of only one year's duration could account for the observed distribution of fossil remains in mountains far from the sea, but he firmly believed in the flood and concerned himself about its causes. The sources of water were twofold: rain and the great deep. These two sources contributed about equally to the flood because the work of separation of waters on day two of creation suggested that the amount of water above the firmament was probably about equal to that below. * The rain came through the " windows of heaven " and "By the Opening of the Windows of Heaven, is . . . to be understood the Causing of all the Water that was suspended in the Air to descend down in Rain upon the Earth. "51 The "fountains of the great deep" were the "subterraneous Waters, which do and must necessarily communicate with the Sea."52 Ray proposed two hypotheses for bringing the abyssal waters onto the surface. One hypothesis entailed "a violent Depression of the Surface of the Ocean, and a Forcing the Waters up from the subterraneous Abyss through the Channels of the Fountains that were then broken up and opened."53 Just how the ocean's surface would be depressed he did not know; he was content to say that " the Divine Power might at that time, by the Instrumentality of some natural Agent, to us at present unknown, so depress the Surface of the Ocean, as to force the Waters of the Abyss through the forementioned Channels and Apertures, and so make them a partial and concurrent Cause of the Deluge."54
Ibid., Ibid., 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 5S Ibid., 54 Ibid.,
50 49
9. 73. 75. 72-73. 119.
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The view that Ray favored most, however, involved realignment of the center of the Earth. In this view
the Center of the Earth being at that time changed, and set nearer to the Center or Middle of our Continent, whereupon the Atlantick and Pafick Oceans must needs press upon the subterraneous Abyss, and so by Mediation thereof, force the Water upward, and at last compel it to run out at those wide Mouths and Apertures made by the Divine Power breaking up the Fountains of the great Deep . . . These Waters thus poured out from the Orifices of the Fountains upon the Earth, the Declivity being changed by the Removal of the Center, could not flow down to the Sea again, but must needs stagnate upon the Earth, and overflow it; and afterwards the Earth returning to its old Center, return also to their former Receptacles.55
The advantage of this hypothesis lay in deliverance from the "insuperable Difficulty of finding eight, nay, twenty two Oceans of Water to effect it."56 The problem was that the flood would have been "topical" and confined to "our Continent." Although diluvialism was dying throughout the mid-eighteenth century,57 one of the most creative British diluvialist treatments was Alexander Catcott's A Treatise on the Deluge,58 published in 1761. The strength of Catcott's diluvialism lay in the fact that he was an excellent field worker who made careful observations of fossils, strata, landforms, and particularly surficial gravel and boulder deposits. Catcott's field studies were all done for the glory of God and with a desire to provide physical evidence for the veracity of the history of Moses. Like many other diluvialists, Catcott accepted that a subterranean abyss of waters was responsible for the flood. He suggested that the spirit of God in Gen 1:2 referred to the movements of "airs" during the earth's primitive chaotic
Ibid., 117-18. Ibid., 118. 57 One important early eighteenth century diluvialist was the German scholar, J. J. Scheuchzer. For a study of eighteenth century diluvialism see Rhoda Rappaport, "Geology and Orthodoxy: the Case of Noah's Flood in Eighteenth-Century Thought, " Britishfournalfor the History of Science 11 ( 1978) 1-18. 58 Alexander Catcott, A Treatise on the Deluge (2nd ed. London: E. Allen, 1768).
56 55
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state. These air movements helped to transform the earth into a spherical ball consisting of concentric shells. The developing earth gradually developed two expanses orfirmaments.Outside the surface of the earth was the upper air. Motions within the upper air led to separation of the oceans from the atmosphere. Catcott referred to the upper air as an exterior expanse. But there was also an interior expanse, a large volume of airs beneath the surface of the earth. In the beginning this interiorfirmamentalso expanded so that watery particles were pressed upward above the airs. Both expanses also exerted pressure on solid particles which coagulated into a spherical rocky shell that separated the waters of the ocean from the interior waters. Catcott's drawings show an earth which includes a central solid nucleus, an interior expanse, an orb of water (subterranean abyss), the solid shell of the earth, an orb of water (oceans), and the exterior expanse.59 The waters under the firmament were the waters above the solid shell and below the atmosphere. The waters beneath the solid shell and above the interior expanse were the waters above the firmament. Hence, in Catcott's primitive earth we have a bizarre situation in which the waters below the firmament were located physically above the waters above the firmament! As the sun's heating action continued, expansive pressure of the interiorfirmamentfinallyproduced fracturing and Assuring of the solid shell of the earth. Ultimately the subterranean abyss overflowed the surface of the earth causing the Noachian deluge. Catcott, too, interpreted the "fountains of the great deep" as the subterranean abyss, but in the expression "the windows of heaven" he saw another reference to the abyss. The windows of heaven were openings into the interior expanse or "heaven" and were identified with the fractures and fissures in the solid shell through which the subterranean abyss had come flooding onto the surface. At the conclusion of the flood, sediments that were suspended in the floodwaters settled in Woodwardian manner to form a set of smooth, concentric, stratified spheres around the globe producing an onion-like structure. From these
"Ibid., 57.
23
smooth strata the mountains were carved as the floodwaters rushed off the face of the earth (>ack into the oceans and ultimately down into the abyss. For Catcott mountains were purely erosional forms.
2. The Collapse of Diluvialism Diluvialism was not the aberrant theory of a fringe group; it was mainstream natural history and was espoused by some of the ablest naturalists of the time. But diluvialism ultimately crumbled. Over the course of the eighteenth century, most students of the earth concluded that global diluvialism no longer provided a fruitful framework for further research. On the one hand, there was no consensus regarding mechanisms of the flood or interpretations of relevant biblical texts. There were so many proposals about the nature of the flood and of the great deep that about all that was agreed on was that there had been a global flood. Such diversity of interpretation called into question the use of the biblical story as a source of information about the flood as a geological event. On the other hand, advances in understanding about the nature and distribution of strata and fossils placed great strains on diluvialism as a suitable theoretical framework. Almost as soon as it was published, Woodward's thesis of gravity stratification was discredited by the recognition of numerous instances in which lower density strata occurred below higher density strata.60 Careful mapping and description of successions of European strata throughout the eighteenth century led naturalists to recognize that sedimentary rock piles were thousands to tens of thousands of meters thick. These vast thicknesses consisted of hundreds to thousands of variably thick individual layers occurring in unvarying order and traceable for tens to hundreds of kilometers over the countryside. Even very thin layers only a few centimeters thick could be traced for long distances. Could a single-year flood, even a catastrophic one, account for the enormous thicknesses of
Fettiplace Bellers, "A Description of the several Strata of Earth, Stone, Coal, etc. found in a Coal-Pit at the West End of Dudley in Staffordshire, " Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 27 (1710) 541-44.
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strata, for the orderly successions of strata, and for very thin yet extensive layers? Certain rock types could not be reconciled with diluvialism. Catcott's field notebooks indicate his puzzlement over conglomerate. The rounded pebbles in conglomerates came from previously existing consolidated rocks such as limestone or sandstone that were supposedly deposited as soft sediments by the flood. But how could the flood deposit soft sands and lime muds which would be solidified, then torn off and reincorporated as worn pebbles into a newer soft deposit of gravel while the entire globe was under water? By the early nineteenth century diluvialism was even less credible. Detailed stratigraphie studies in the 1790s through 1810s disclosed systematic relationships between strata and their contained fossils. William Smith in Great Britain and Cuvier and Brongniart in France independently discovered that successive superposed strata were characterized by distinctive organic remains. Moreover, successively higher strata contained increasingly complex fossils. Layers containing marine fossils were commonly found interstratified with layers containing continental remains. Why would a turbulent flood produce such striking regularities of fossil distribution as well as alternations of thinly layered marine and continental sediments? The geological community had also begun to recognize the significance of angular unconformities61 in the stratigraphie record. James Hutton recognized several localities in Scotland where nearly horizontal strata overlay the truncated edges of steeply tilted layers. To account for these uptilted strata, Hutton postulated that an older, originally horizontal pile of solidified strata experienced an episode of tilting and uplift. To explain the unconformable contact he proposed that the uplifted strata experienced erosion. The unconformable contact therefore represented an old erosional land surface. Later the uptilted and eroded strata were submerged and covered by newer deposits. By 1820, numerous examples of such unconformities had been discovered, and it was recognized that
61
The term "angular unconformity" refers to a buried erosional surface.
25
they were buried erosional surfaces that would be hard to explain by diluvialism. For late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Christian geologists, the flood failed to explain a growing wealth of geological features. Those who wanted to maintain a literalist approach to the biblical texts increasingly found themselves on the outside of the geological community. Throughout the nineteenth century there was no lack of writing within a literalist framework, but the books of writers like Granville Penn or George Fairholme,62 despite some acquaintance with geology, overlooked many important details of geology. The views of literalists no longer carried weight with Christians thoroughly trained in geology. 3. Scientific Creationism Despite widening separation from the geological community, diluvialistic literalism has continued into the twentieth century. Twentieth century diluvialists have included George McCready Price, Byron Nelson, Harold Clark, and Alfred Rehwinkel.63 Their modern descendants are the scientific creationists (creation scientists). The scientific creationism movement in North America is dominated by engineers, chemists, physicists, and biologists, and includes few individuals with substantial geological training. The major theoreticians of scientific creationism are not geologists. The "flood geology" espoused by scientific creationists is not regarded as a viable option within the geological community any more than were the ideas of Penn or Fairholme; that community recognizes that global diluvialism was rendered untenable even by the limited evidence available to early nineteenth
See Granville Penn, A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Cosmologies (London; 1822) and George Fairholme, New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations both of the Fact and Period of the Mosaic Deluge ( London: J. Ridgway,
62
1837).
For his most comprehensive treatment of flood geology see George M. Price, The New Geology (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1923). See Byron Nelson, The Deluge Story in Stone (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1968). The work was originally published in 1931. See also Harold W. Clark, The New Diluvialism (Angwin, CA: Science Publications, 1946), and Alfred M. Rehwinkel, The Flood (St. Louis: Concordia, 1951).
6S
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century geologists. Today the geological evidence is far more devastating to flood geology than it was in the early nineteenth century.64 When we consider the views of scientific creationists we are no longer looking at Scripture in the hands of geologists. Nevertheless, because of the vast popular appeal that the movement has among evangelical Christians, and because scientific creationists make numerous geological claims, we note some of the biblical interpretations that have been made by scientific creationists to correlate the Bible with knowledge about the earth. The leading spokesman for scientific creationism is Henry Morris, a prolific writer, speaker, debater, and administrator. Just as the scientific creationist movement is characterized by thoroughgoing biblical literalism, so Morris in his voluminous writings has consistently stressed the necessity for literal interpretation of Scripture. A representative sample of his views of Scripture as applied to science may be found in his "scientific and devotional commentary, " TL Genesis Record.65 Biblical creation is assumed to be instantaneous creation out of nothing without the use of means or materials. Such true creation is to be distinguished from making and forming. True creation involves the creation of an appearance of age.66 Surprisingly Morris, the supreme literalist, suggested that in Gen 1:1-2 the term "earth" "refers to the component of matter in the universe."67 Since "the earth itself originally had no form to i t . . . this verse must speak essentially of the creation of the basic elements of matter, which thereafter were
A summary of the evidence is beyond the scope of the paper, but includes radiometric dating, facies analysis which shows that the sedimentary rock column was deposited by a succession of varying environments through time, metamorphism, kinetics of mineral formation, heatflowfrom cooling igneous rocks, and folding of sedimentary rocks. A small sampling of the evidence can be found in my Creation and the Flood (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977) and Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982). 65 Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record (San Diego: Creation Life, 1976). 66 In recent years, Morris seems to be shifting from the idea that the earth looks old but is actually young toward the idea that the earth even looks young. He can do so because of the development of the so-called scientific evidences for a young earth by Gentry and Barnes. 67 Ibid., 41.
64
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to be organized into the structured earth and later into other material bodies."68 Morris paraphrased the first two verses as follows: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [or space and matter], and the matter so created was at first unformed and uninhabited."69 The deep of Gen 1:2 could not refer to the oceans, because the earth had no form as yet, so "the picture presented is one of all the basic material elements sustained in a pervasive watery matrix throughout the darkness of space."70 The activity of the spirit of God led to an energizing of the unorganized universe, and "as the outflowing energy from God's omnipresent Spirit began to flow outward and to permeate the cosmos, gravitational forces were activated and water and earth particles came together to form a great sphere moving through space."71 For the creation of light Morris noted that
setting the electromagnetic forces into operation in effect completed the energizing of the physical cosmos Though no doubt oversimplified, this tremendous creative act of the Godhead might be summarized by saying that the nuclear forces maintaining the integrity of matter were activated by the Father when He created the elements of the space-masstime continuum, the gravitational forces were activated by the Spirit when He brought form and motion to the initially static and formless matter, and the electromagnetic forces were activated by the Word when He called light into existence out of the darkness.72
Events of the second day set the stage for the flood. Morris suggested that "the firmament referred to in this particular passage is obviously the atmosphere."73 Thefirmamentseparated two bodies of water, one a shoreless ocean, the other a "vapor canopy." The waters above thefirmamentprobably
constituted a vast blanket of water vapor above the troposphere and possibly above the stratosphere as well, in the high-temperature region now known as the ionosphere, and extending far into space. They could not have been the clouds of water droplets which nowfloatin the atmosphere, because the Scripture says they were * above thefirmament.' Furthermore,
69
Ibid. Ibid., 50. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., 52. 72 Ibid., 56. 73 Ibid., 58.
68
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there was no 'rain upon the earth* in those days (Genesis 2:5), nor any 4 bow in the cloud' (Genesis 9:13), both of which must have been present if these upper waters represented merely the regime of clouds which functions in the present hydrologie economy.74
The vapor canopy provided a greenhouse effect so that the prediluvian world was springlike and free of violent storms. Ultimately, the antediluvian vapor canopy was destroyed when the sluicegates of heaven were opened. The collapse of the canopy was the major cause of the flood.75 He suggested that the "fountains of the great deep" probably referred to the oceans and to various subterraneous sources of water. Another scenario for the flood in creationist terms was put forward by Donald Patten in TL Biblical Flood and tL Ice Epoch. 76 Patten identified the "fountains of the great deep" with the ocean, and he envisioned great tides sweeping back and forth across continental landmasses. The cause of the flood was attributed to a "gravitational conflict" within the earthmoon system.77 An "astral visitor," some kind of asteroidlike body, closely approached the earth, and because of the great gravitational forces, the oceans experienced gigantic tides and flooded the land. The astral visitor also contained a great deal of ice that was dumped on the polar regions of earth to form the glacial ice sheets. Physicist D. Russell Humphreys recently addressed the identity of the great deep of Gen 1:2.78 He sought to show that the great deep is the earth's outer fluid core. Rather than being composed of molten iron and nickel as espoused by the majority of geophysicists, the outer core was said to be water under extremely high pressure. Humphreys claimed that his idea was not "mere conjecture. Rather, it stems from what the Bible says about the Earth's interior. Creationists regard the Bible as a scientifically accurate account given by
Ibid., 59. The vapor canopy hypothesis has been developed extensively by Joseph Dillow, The Waters Above (Chicago: Moody, 1981). 76 Donald W. Patten, The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch (Seattle: Pacific Meridian, 1966). 77 Ibid., 62-65, 137-63. 78 D. Russell Humphreys, "Is the Earth's Core Water?" Creation Research Society (Quarterly 15 (1978) 141-47.
75 74
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the God who created the earth. "79 He felt that what the Bible said about the earth's physical structure should be regarded as "data of the highest reliability. "80 Gen 1:2 and 2 Pet 3:5-6 both indicated the great importance of water in the initial creation. Since Peter said that the earth was formed out of water and by water, Humphreys proposed that "this means God formed the nuclei of silicon, iron, and other elements out of water by banding together the various combinations of neutrons and protons from the nuclei of hydrogen and oxygen atoms of water (nuclear reactions)."81 With the earth being formed out of so much water, there may still be a lot of water left over, even in excess of the oceans. To demonstrate the existence of the excess water, Humphreys appealed to Gen 2:5-6 with its watering of the face of the earth by a "mist". A simple mist or fog would not be adequate to take care of the water needs of the earth's vegetation. According to Humphreys the word "mist" occurs elsewhere only in Job 36:27 where it refers "to the water vapor or droplets in clouds which condense into raindrops."82 Thus , the "mist" could be a cloud of water in the air, but a cloud that ascended from the earth. Geysers are one mechanism for producing clouds from the ground. Thus Humphreys suggested that Gen 2:5-6 and Prov 8:24-28 spoke of gigantic geysers spraying water thousands of feet into the air and forming large clouds of mist that watered the vegetation as well as any rain cloud today. In addition, the four rivers of the Garden of Eden did not have rain or snow for their sources in view of the constraints of the biblical text. Therefore, Humphreys believed, a large-scale subterranean source such as supergeysers was necessary to feed the four rivers. The geysers erupted spectacularly at the time of the flood inasmuch as the fountains of the deep were said to burst open. Tremendously high pressures forced the waters of the deep upward from the core to the surface.
79 80
Ibid., 141. Ibid. 81 Ibid., 142. 82 Ibid.
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Glenn R. Morton challenged the vapor canopy hypothesis on physical grounds.83 According to Morton, if the waters of Gen 1:7 do not refer to a vapor canopy or to liquid or vaporous water in any form, then the verse must refer to water in the form of ice. Morton ruled out a solid ice canopy because it would be mechanically unstable. The only alternative was that "the Earth before the flood had a set of rings like Saturn's or Jupiter's, only made up of ice particles."84 The ring of ice particles was identified with the waters above the firmament and was one source of the flood. David W. Unfred attempted to show that the flood was caused by asteroidal impact on earth's surface.85 He suggested that impacting of a swarm of asteroids from outer space affected a permanent tilt in the earth's axis leading to displacement of the ocean with attendant massive sedimentation and erosion.86 Ice and rock debris certainly exist in the solar system, and Scripture teaches the existence of waters above the atmosphere. Unfred suggested
Scripture supports the concept of waters above the atmosphere being responsible for the 40 days of continuous rain. However, the nature of the waters above the atmosphere may be more than a vapor canopy and/or ice rings. After separation of the primordial ocean, the composition of the water below the atmosphere was such that dry land appeared. On what exegetical basis would we assume that the waters above thefirmamentare compositionally different from the waters below? The implication is that the mineralogical potential of the waters above the atmosphere were (sic) the same as the ocean from which dry land was formed. This assumes the primordial ocean was a homogeneous mixture before division by the atmosphere. The waters above the atmosphere could then be expected to contain mixtures of ice and rock. It is possible that the comets, asteroids, meteorites, and outer planetary moon (and planets?), excluding the uniquely created Earth and Moon, are remnants, a reminder, of the preFlood 'waters above.'87
The original waters were not pure water but a mixture of

Glenn R. Morton, " Can the Canopy Hold Water? " Creation Research Society Quarterly 16 (1979) 164-69. 84 Ibid., 169. 85 David W. Unfred, "Asteroidal Impacts and the Flood-Judgment," Creation Research Society Quarterly 21 (1984) 82-87. 86 Ibid., 85. 87 Ibid., 86.
83
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water and rocky materials that subsequently differentiated as indicated by Gen 1:6-10. The speculations of modern creationism, like those of seventeenth century diluvialism, know no bounds. While seventeenth and eighteenth century cosmogonists can be pardoned as children of their times who had little empirical data to constrain the bounds of speculation, current scientific creationist ideas are puzzling in view of the abundance of empirical data that invalidate them. Although today's literalism presents a semblance of scientific sophistication, it has largely ignored the vast wealth of empirical geological data that have come to light during the past 300 years that rule out a global deluge and a recent creation. There is no way that the literalistic approach to Genesis 1-11 can be sustained without appealing to miracle at every point at which scientific data conflict with a literal rendering of the biblical text. Table I summarizes the views of literalists .They have interpreted the "chaos" or "deep" of Gen 1:2 as a shapeless fluid mass, an uninhabited earth, a comet with a thick atmosphere, the earth under water, and the core of the earth. The events of the second day of creation have included one firmament and twofirmaments,and thefirmamenthas been interpreted as the sky, the rocky shell of the earth, and an airy interior of the earth. On the second day either the atmosphere and ocean, or a vapor canopy, or an outer space of rocky asteroids and meteorites was created. The mechanism of the flood has included the eruption of a subterranean abyss, caves in mountains, oceanic tides caused by comets, rain from a comet, realignment of the earth's center, depression of the abyss by the ocean floor, collapse of a vapor canopy, collapse of an icy asteroid on earth's surface, eruption of supergeysers from the earth's core, collapse of a ring of icy particles, and tilting of the earth's axis by bombardment of asteroids with subsequent displacement of its oceans. The extreme range of suggestions for interpretation of these and other details of the biblical text indicates that literalism has not yielded reliable answers about how to relate the biblical text to matters of scientific interest. Following a literal approach the Christian geologist still does not know from God's Word what happened on the second day of creation or how the flood occurred.
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WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL TABLE I Summary of Literalist Interpretations of Key Texts in Genesis Gen 1:2 Gen 1:6-8 Gen 7:11 Subterranean abyss breaks out Forcing of subterranean abyss into underside of firmament causes ocean to overflow
Burnet Hooke
Fluid, dark, confused mass Watery abyss
Two firmaments; firmament between waters is rocky shell of earth separating ocean from subterranean abyss
Warren Ray
Incultivate and uninhabited lump Earth under water Amount of water above firmament equals amount below; clouds and subterranean abyss
Caverns in mountains Realignment of center of earth thus pressing on abyss
Halley Whiston Comet with thick, dark atmosphere Elevation of vapors, draining of waters into pores, bowels, of earth
Comet causes great oceanic tides Rain from comet's atmosphere; cometary tides fracture crust of earth allowing outflow of subterranean abyss Floodgates are fissures in crust leading to internal heaven releasing the subterranean abyss
Catcott
Spirit of God= movement of airs
Morris
Component of ' matter in universe in a watery matrix
Two firmaments; internal and external expanse; waters are ocean and subterranean abyss; waters above firmament are above waters below firmament Formation of vapor canopy and ocean
Draining of vapor canopy Ocean overflows land as ice is dumped on poles from astral visitor
Patten
33
TABLE I (Continued) Summary of Literalist Interpretations of Key Texts in Genesis Gen 1:2 Humphreys Earth made by fusion of oxygen and hydrogen atoms; the deep=watery inner core of earth Formation of ring of ice particles Waters above atmosphere are mixtures of ice and rock Gen 1:6-8 Gen 7:11 Super geysers emanate from outer
Morton Unfred
Collapse of ring of ice particles Bombardment of earth by meteorites tilts earth's axis and displaces oceans
How then can we say that the Bible gives us high quality scientific data? Moreover, literalist proposals seem increasingly bizarre, speculative, and divorced from the reality of the earth as known through scientific study. Almost all modern literalist speculations fail when viewed in the light of available data, and literalism continued will undermine any effort to do serious Christian science. A danger that faces exegetes who are unaware of the history of literalism and are under the false impression that scientific creationism makes valid geological claims, is the desire to make suggestions about the mechanism of the flood or the events of the second day. It was, of course, understandable and acceptable in centuries gone by that exegetes would approach Genesis 1 or 7 as literal historical reports. Calvin, for example, assumed that the days of Genesis 1 were ordinary days, but he lived when extrabiblical data did not force him to struggle with the text as thoroughly as he would today. Many fine exegetes adopted literalistic views in part because they did not sense the force of geological data and thus assumed an ultimate compatibility of geology with a recent creation and global flood. C. F. Keil assumed such compatibility and insisted on six ordinary days of creation and a universal
34
deluge.88 Valentine Hepp also strongly urged acceptance of a recent creation and a geographically universal flood, partly because he knew little enough about geology to think that George McCready Price was espousing a responsible alternative to early twentieth century mainstream geology.89 Similarly, J. J. Davis suggested that the flood was geographically universal and appealed to the work of Whitcomb and Morris as giving some basis for that view.90 I suggest that the evangelical community would be well served if commentators would familiarize themselves with the history of literalistic speculations, realize that literalism has not worked, and understand that literalistic interpretations of details have not meshed with the discoveries about our planet. I further suggest that we have been mistaken in assuming that the Bible teaches scientifically verifiable mechanisms of the flood or that it presents the rudiments of a physical model of the universe on the second day of creation. Given that all literalistic attempts to identify the great deep or the mechanism of the flood have failed in light of empirical data, I suggest that we not put much credence in the next literalist speculation, especially if it is presented as the "clear and plain" teaching of the Bible. (to be continued) Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship Calvin College Grand Rapids, Michigan 49506
See Keil's commentary on Genesis in C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Vol. 1. The Pentateuch. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, n.d.). 89 Valentine Hepp, Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1930) 185. 90 John J. Davis, Paradise to Prison (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975) 124-26.
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W7749987) 257-304
SCRIPTURE IN THE HANDS OF GEOLOGISTS (PART TWO)*

DAVIS A. YOUNG
III. Concordism 1. Neptunism E next trace the history of the concordisi tradition. In general, concordists were more empirically minded W than literalists and were willing to adopt more flexible interpretations of Scripture in order to harmonize with a developing scientific picture of terrestrial history. The concordisi tradition began with neptunism and came into full flower in the nineteenth century. Although diluvialism diminished by the end of the eighteenth century, other geological theories existed that could also be harmonized with Scripture. During the eighteenth and earliest nineteenth centuries one widely held theory, developed primarily in France and Germany and later transported to the British Isles,91 was neptunism. For many continental naturalists the neptunist approach was the best way to explain the features in rocks. Where efforts were made to correlate neptunism with biblical data, the writers often showed little conviction regarding the truth of Scripture. Interpretations of biblical texts were generally far less literalistic than those of British diluvialists and were put forward in order to maintain peace with the theologians. When transported into Great Britain, however, neptunism was defended on biblical grounds
* [Part One, which appeared in WTJ49 ( 1987) 1-34, surveyed the history of literalism in the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis by Christian geologists. Part Two, focusing on the concordist tradition, concludes Dr. Young's essay.Ed. ] 91 Some British neptunists, for example, Robert Jameson, learned their neptunism at the feet of the German scholar, Abraham Werner.
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with the same zeal evident among earlier diluvialists. For British neptunists, neptunism was obviously what the Bible taught. The major tenet of neptunism was that the original earth had been completely covered by the sea. As time elapsed, the sea diminished and landmasses emerged. Life gained a foothold on the landmasses and in shallow marine areas. The emerged landmasses were eroded, and the erosion products, including the remains of organisms, accumulated as fossiliferous sediment layers on the seabottom and on the flanks on the landmasses. To neptunists the observation that clearly marine stratified rocks rested on older primitive mountains was striking evidence that the world had emerged from a universal ocean. In a refined, late eighteenth to early nineteenth century version of neptunism developed by the great German geologist, Abraham G. Werner,92 the universal ocean was an aqueous solvent saturated with dissolved chemicals. As the ocean diminished the chemicals precipitated. Thus many layered and crystalline rocks were interpreted as chemical precipitates from the primeval ocean. We examine here the harmonizations of two neptunists, Benoit de Maillet and Richard Kirwan. Benoit de Maillet was the French ambassador to Egypt, well acquainted with Arab culture.93 During his wide travels he observed European geology and concluded that rock strata had formed during gradual diminution of the ocean. He also concluded that the diminution had continued for an incredibly long time, perhaps as much as two billion years.94 He believed that the human race had existed for at least 500,000 years, that men had originated in the sea, and that mermaids were creatures that hadn't quite made the transition to human status.95 These views were couched within a Cartesian cosmology that favored the eternity of matter. Recognizing that such views would not
Werner was a brilliant teacher and approached geology in a very systematic fashion so that he provided what appeared to be a logical way of ordering the disparate facts then known to geology. Through the brilliance of his teaching, Werner attracted able students to the mining academy of Freiberg who then spread Wernerian neptunism across Europe. "Benoit de Maillet, Telliamed (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1968). This edition is an English translation with notes by A. V. Carozzi. 94 Ibid., 181. 95 Ibid., 158, 192-200.
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be popular with the Roman Catholic Church in France, de Maillet presented his views as conversations between a French missionary and an Indian philosopher, Telliamed (de Maillet spelled backwards), who espoused the diminution of the sea. The work was published anonymously as Telliamed in the early eighteenth century.96 To gain acceptability, de Maillet, through the mouth of Telliamed, claimed that long-continued diminution of the ocean was compatible with Scripture. Because of his commitment to an extremely old earth and the possibility of the eternity of matter, de Maillet argued ,
that the sentence, 'In the beginning God created the Heavens and Earth,' is a very improper translation of the Hebrew, that the words used in that language signify only 'formed the Heavens and the Earth.' Furthermore, the word 'create' is a new term, invented only a few centuries ago to express a new idea; therefore your Bible assumed the prexistence of matter when God formed the heavens and the earth.97
Even the diminution of the ocean accorded with the creation account. Said de Maillet, speaking through the French missionary pondering Telliamed's ideas:
God could indeed have used such means for the creation of the earth and the formation of the mountains through the action of the waters of the sea. The separation of the waters from the earth, as mentioned in Genesis, is even in favor of such an opinion. The void which first occurred on the earth and the uselessness of the latter at the beginning correspond to the same conditions postulated by our author for the initial stage of the globe. It is obvious, if not unquestionable, that the waters of the sea have built the mountains and uncovered through their diminution what they had formed during thefirstchaos of matter. This emergence led to the growth of grass and plants on the rocks; the vegetation in turn led to the creation of animals for which they represent the food supply; andfinallythe animals led to the creation of man who depends on them, as the last work of the hands of God.98
The sequence of earth history seemed compatible with Scripture, but what of the problem of days if one were to postulate that the earth was approximately two billion years old? Telliamed was ready for this difficulty:
96 See the editor's introduction (ibid., 1-53) for a discussion of early manuscripts of Telliamed. 97 Ibid., 161. 98 Ibid., 234.
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The expression 'six days' mentioned in your sacred books for the completion of all these works is metaphorical, as you may easily imagine. It cannot even represent the time mentioned by Moses during which the earth rotates on itself six times in its annual orbit around the sun, since according to these same books, the sun was not created until the fourth day. Besides, do they not state that a thousand of your years represent no more than one day for God? Therefore, we must conclude that the six days employed by the Divinity to complete creation indicate a length of time much longer than the measure corresponding to our ordinary days.99
Unlike de Maillet, Richard Kirwan, an Irish chemist and mineralogist, was a devout, orthodox Christian. For Kirwan, geology was the handmaiden of true religion, and he repeatedly expressed alarm at systems of geology that struck him as favorable to atheism. In 1797, Kirwan set forth his conception of biblical geology.100 In typical Wernerian fashion, Kirwan believed that the earth at creation was covered by an "immense quantity" of aqueous fluid heated enough to dissolve enormous quantities of chemicals. As the ocean retreated from earth's surface, crystallization of minerals took place, and a tremendous amount of heat was released, triggering "an enormous and universal evaporation."101 The intensity of the heat increased until much of the primordial chemical precipitate burst into flames. Volcanic eruptions occurred on the "bosom of the deep." The teaching of Gen 1:2 that the original earth was without form and void meant "that the earth was partly in a chaotic state, and partly full of empty cavities, which is exactly the state . . . I have shewn to have been necessarily its primordial state."102 The deep or abyss "properly denotes an immense depth of water, but here it signifies . . . the mixed or chaotic mass of earth and water."10S The spirit of God moving on the face of the waters referred to "an invisible elastic fluid, viz. the great evaporation that took place soon after the creation, as soon as the solids began to crystallize."104 Kirwan appealed
"Ibid., 231. 100 Richard Kirwan, "On the Primitive State of the Globe and its Subsequent Catastrophe," Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 6 (1797) 233-308. 101 Ibid., 245. 102 Ibid., 265. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid., 266.
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to Psalm 104 where the standing of the mountains above the waters alluded to the emergence of the primitive mountains above the receding neptunist ocean. The reference in Ps 104:5 to God's "fixing the earth on its basis, from which it shall not be removed for ever" denoted "the deposition of the solids contained in the chaotic waters, on the solid kernel of the globe, from whence they should never be removed nor indeed have they ever since."105 After this episode, light was created, and the "production of light . . . probably denotes the flames of volcanic eruptions." 106 The firmament of the second day of creation was the atmosphere, formed by the evaporation of the waters of the deep. Lastly, the creation of fish and other organisms occurred only after the great deep had receded, precipitated its chemicals, and cooled. Neptunists maintained that fossil remains occurred almost exclusively in mechanically deposited rocks that were clearly superimposed on top of chemically precipitated rocks. Kirwan believed that surficial gravels, erratic boulders, and many cave deposits were the result of the flood. The major source of floodwater was from caverns in the earth that had gradually filled during retreat of the primeval ocean. During the flood the waters "were miraculously educed out of those caverns."107 Since the universal ocean had once covered all the mountains of the earth, there would be sufficient water in the caverns to cover the mountains once more. Kirwan specified that the floodwaters surged out of the south and overflowed the northern continents, for it was on the northern continents that the vast deposits of surficial gravels, erratic boulders, and bone-filled cave deposits were recognized.108 2. Nineteenth Century ConcordismGenesis 1 By about 1830, both diluvialism and neptunism had been rejected by the practicing geological community. Numerous discoveries pointed toward a long, complex, dynamic earth
105
ibid. Ibid., 267. 107 Ibid., 279. 108 Ibid., 280.

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history that was totally incompatible with a global flood, and newer studies in the early nineteenth century indicated that rocks formerly interpreted as chemical precipitates from a universal ocean had cooled from intensely hot liquids injected into the overlying fossil-bearing strata.109 Stratigraphie evidence also made it clear that the ocean had repeatedly advanced on and retreated from the landmasses: it had not simply retreated uniformly. Moreover, successive advances and retreats had been accompanied by significant extinctions of large quadrupeds. Neptunism, like diluvialism, rightly fell by the wayside. Although both diluvialism and neptunism had temporarily provided useful frameworks for integrating theories of earth history with the meager data available at the time and had served as stimuli to further geological research, the time had come for them to be discarded. Diluvialism and neptunism could no longer adequately account for the wealth of geological data that were known by the early nineteenth century. The recognition of the earth's vast antiquity caused little alarm among leading British and American Christian geologists of the early nineteenth century. Many of the great geologists of that era were devout and enthusiastic Christian believers who were fully committed to the infallibility of Scripture. Thus, even though Scripture played a diminishing role in professional technical geology, many geologists developed popular treatments of ways in which the results of geology could be related to biblical teaching. Many of these geologists sought to demonstrate how Scripture was folly compatible with the latest discoveries of geology. The golden age of concordism had arrived. Two major schemes of harmonization were developed and refined during the nineteenth century: these were the gap and day-age interpretation of Genesis 1. The modern version of the gap theory was probablyfirstadvocated by the great Scottish minister and amateur devotee of science, Thomas Chal109 Of particular importance here was the work ofJames Hutton as spelled out in his Theory ofthe Earth (Edinburgh: Creech, 1795) as well as the discovery that numerous layers of basalt, a rock that neptunists claimed had been precipitated from the ocean, could be traced to several extinct volcanic cones in central France.
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mers.110 Following his lead, several prominent Christian geologists, including Englishmen William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick and American Edward Hitchcock, espoused the gap theory as the preferred method for correlating Genesis and geology. There was relatively little difference among these geologists in their use of that theory. The major point in common was the interpretation of Gen 1:2. For the first time the "chaos" of that verse was not regarded as a primordial chaos of any kind but as a chaos that developed long after the initial creation of the planet. William Buckland attempted a synthesis between geology and Genesis in his inaugural lecture at Oxford.111 He expressed the opinion that "the word 'beginning, ' as applied to Moses in thefirstverse of the book of Genesis,... [expresses] an undefined period of time, which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants; during which period a long series of operations and revolutions may have been going on."112 Later in his career, Buckland stated that "it is nowhere affirmed that God created the heaven and the earth in thefirstday, but in the beginning; this beginning may have been an epoch at an unmeasured distance, followed by periods of undefined duration, during which all the physical operations disclosed by Geology were going on. , , l l s In support of this notion Buckland appealed to several church fathers who maintained that the work of the six days of creation did not begin until Gen 1:3. He further suggested that "millions of millions of years may have occupied the indefinite interval, between the beginning in which God created the heaven and the earth, and the evening or commencement of the first day of the Mosaic narrative."114 This long period of time between verses one and two was the supposed gap of
For the original quotation from Thomas Chalmers, see Hugh Miller, The Testimony of the Rocks (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1857) 141. 111 William Buckland, Vindiciae geologicae (Oxford: University Press, 1820). 112 William Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (London: Wm. Pickering, 1837). Buckland's work is the sixth of the Bridgewater Treatises. 115 Ibid., 21. 114 Ibid., 21-22.
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the gap theory. Of the second verse of Genesis 1 Buckland commented:

we have in this second verse, a distinct mention of earth and waters, as already existing, and involved in darkness; their condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness, (tohu bohu), words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term, "chaos," and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate point of time, the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series of events commenced, and the work of thefirstmorning of this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary darkness, which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth.115
This new creation, following upon the great catastrophe, was described in the work of the six days. The new creation brought the earth into its present condition and could therefore properly be described as a re-creation or reconstruction of the earth. Thus the gap theory also became known as the ruin-reconstruction theory. The days of Genesis 1 were assumed to be ordinary 24-hour days, although Buckland was not opposed to thinking of them as longer stretches of time. To avoid having the entire world immersed in total darkness, devoid of vegetation, and devoid of animals at the conclusion of the catastrophe, some proponents of the theory, notably John Pye Smith,116 suggested that the ruin and reconstruction were localized in the middle eastern area that was the birthplace of modern humanity. As geology developed during the nineteenth century, Christian geologists became less enthusiastic about the ability of the gap theory to achieve a satisfactory harmony with Scripture. Increasingly they turned to the day-age theory. The idea that the days of creation could be interpreted as periods of time was not new. De Maillet had long since suggested that the days were metaphorical. His suggestion had been adopted by the great French naturalist Buffon and by many early nineteenth century geologists such as James Parkinson, Robert Jameson, and Benjamin Silliman. It was not until mid-nineIbid., 24-26. John Pye Smith, The Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some Parts of Geological Science (5th ed.; London: H. G. Bohn, 1854).
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teenth century, however, that day-age concordism became a fine art and achieved a high degree of refinement and subtlety. The most eloquent of the great day-age concordists was the Scottish ecclesiastical journalist, onetime stonemason, and amateur paleontologist-geologist, Hugh Miller. Miller's mature thought on the relationship of geology to the Bible is spelled out in his great work The Testimony of the Rocks.111 Miller completely rejected the gap theory on the basis of its total incompatibility with geology. Geology had made it plain that there was no "age of general chaos, darkness, and death" separating the modern era from past geological ages.118 Indeed, "all the evidence runs counter to the supposition that immediately before the appearance of man upon earth, there existed a chaotic period which separated the previous from the present creation."119 Miller contended that the drama of creation had probably been revealed to Moses in a series of visions in much the same way that God had revealed the pattern of the tabernacle on the mount. Moses saw "by vision the pattern of those successive pre-Adamic creations, animal and vegetable, through which our world was fitted up as a place of human habitation."120 This series of visions revealed "successive scenes of a great air-drawn panorama."121 These visions were then described by Moses optically. In other words, "the inspired writer seized on but those salient points that, like the two great lights of the day and night, would have arrested most powerfully, during these periods, a human eye."122 The visions were described and presented in the format of the six days. Unlike others who also held to the vision hypothesis, Miller did not remove the days from the province of chronology by restricting them to the province of prophetic vision. Instead, he maintained,
we must also hold, however, that in the character of symbolic days they were as truly representative of the lapse of foregone periods of creation Hugh Miller, Testimony. Ibid., 155. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 190. 121 Ibid., 196. 122 Ibid., 171.
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as the scenery itself was representative of the creative work accomplished in these periods. For if the apparent days occurred in only the vision, and were not symbolic of foregone periods, they could not have been transferred with any logical propriety from the vision itself to that which the vision represented, as we find done in what our Shorter Catechism terms ' the reason annexed to the Fourth Commandment. ' The days must have been prophetic days, introduced, indeed, into the panorama of creation as mayhap mere openings and droppings of the curtain, but not the less symbolic of the series of successive periods, each characterized by its own productions and events, in which creation itself was comprised.123
The six days were small replicas of the vast periods presented in the visions of Genesis 1, and, in answering the common objection to the day-age theory based on the fourth commandment, Miller used the scale-model analogy. "The Divine periods may have been very great,the human periods very small; just as a vast continent or the huge earth itself is very great, and a map or geographical globe very small. But if in the map or globe the proportions be faithfully maintained, and the scale, though a minute one, be true in all its parts and applications, we pronounce the map or globe, notwithstanding the smallness of its size, a faithful copy."124 Miller suggested that Genesis 1 represented a prophecy of the past. This notion provided a key to the interpretation of the text. Just as historical fulfillment is the best interpreter of revealed prophecies which point to events in the prophet's future, so the historical fulfillment of a backward-looking prophecy is the best way to interpret it. That fulfillment is provided by science.
In what light, or on what principle, shall we most correctly read the prophetic drama of creation? In the light, I reply, of scientific discovery,on the principle that the clear and certain must be accepted, when attainable, as the proper exponents of the doubtful and obscure. What fully developed history is to the prophecy which of old looked forwards, fully developed science is to the prophecy which of old looked backwards.125
In Miller's judgment the geology of his day was sufficiently developed that much light could be shed on the events of several of the days of creation, just as the well-developed astronomy of his day could shed light on the character of day
Ibid., 205-6. Ibid., 176. Ibid., 194.
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four. He didn't think that geology was sufficiently advanced that the work of days one and two could be specified with confidence. Thus Miller focussed on days three, five, and six as those to which geology could contribute the most, but he also attempted a preliminary explanation of the other three days. The first and second days of creation were represented by rocks of the "Azoic period, during which the immensely developed gneisses, mica schists, and primary clay slates, were deposited, and the two extended periods represented by the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone systems."126 During this time the earth's surface and its primitive ocean may have gradually cooled so that the primitive, thick, cloudy atmosphere became less dense. Eventually the rays of the sun struggled through and strengthened "until, at the close of the great primary period, day and night,the one still dim and gray, the other wrapped in a pall of thickest darkness,would succeed each other as now, as the earth revolved on its axis, and the unseen luminary rose high over the cloud in the east, or sunk in the west beneath the undefined and murky horizon."127 On the second day, attention was focussed on atmospheric phenomena. To the prophetic eye absorbed in the vision such phenomena would have attracted far more attention than the appearance of invertebrate life of the Silurian period or the fish of the Old Red Sandstone period. Such events would have been "comparatively inconspicuous" to the prophet. Of days three, five, and six Miller was more confident. The vision of day three was more "geological in its character" than days one or two. "Extensive tracts of dry land appear, and there springs up over them, at the Divine command, a rank vegetation. And w know that what seems to be the corresponding Carboniferous period, unlike any of the preceding ones, was remarkable for its great tracts of terrestrial surface, and for its extraordinaryflora."128The Carboniferous period was characterized by "wonderfully gigantic and abundant vegetation."129 The fourth day, devoted to astronomical features,
126 127
Ibid., 196. Ibid., 198. 128 Ibid., 200-201. 129 Ibid., 201.
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was identified with the Permian and Triassic periods geologically. The fifth day was linked with the Oolitic130 and Cretaceous periods.
The grand existences of die age,the existences in which it excelled every other creation, earlier or later, were its huge creeping things,its enormous monsters of the deep,and, as shown by the impressions of their footprints stamped upon the rocks, its gigantic birds Its wonderful whales, not, however, as now, of the mammalian, but of the reptilian class, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and cetiosaurs,must have tempested the deep We are thus prepared to demonstrate, that the second period of the geologist was peculiarly and characteristically a period of whale-like reptiles of the sea, of enormous creeping reptiles of the land, and of numerous birds, some of them of gigantic size; and, in meet accordance with the fact, wefindthat the second Mosaic period with which the geologist is called on to deal was a period in which God created the fowl that flieth above the earth, with moving [or creeping] creatures, both in the waters and on the land, and what our translation renders great whales, but that I find rendered, in the margin, great sea monsters.131
Day six was equated with the Tertiary period. Although "its flora seems to have been no more conspicuous than that of the present time; its reptiles occupy a very subordinate place; but its beasts of the field were by far the most wonderfully developed, both in size and number, that ever appeared upon earth."132 Another prominent advocate of the day-age theory was Arnold Guyot, a Swissborn geographer and geologist who spent most of his professional career at Princeton University. Guyot was a committed Christian completely convinced of the antiquity of the earth. He sought to work out a harmonization between Scripture and geology, and a series of early lectures ultimately resulted in the issue of Creation.133 Although Guyot recognized that the main point of the Bible was "to give us light upon the great truths needed for our spiritual life,"134 nonetheless the "antique document" agreed in its statements with the science of his day. In fact the "history of Creation
The Oolitic was the equivalent of what today is referred to as the Jurassic period (system). 151 Ibid., 161. 132 Ibid., 162. 138 Arnold Guyot, Creation (New York: C. Scribner's, 1884). 134 Ibid., 4.
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is given in the form of a grand cosmogonie week, with six creative or working days."135 The problem for Guyot was to demonstrate the coincidence of the sequence of events outlined by geology with the sequence of events outlined in Genesis 1. Guyot devoted far more attention to the "cosmological" and "astronomical" parts of Genesis 1 than had Miller. For Guyot Gen 1:2 referred to matter in its primitive condition. The term "earth" Ceres) "is an equivalent for matter in general," and was the "primordial cosmic material out of which God's Spirit, brooding upon the waters, was going to organize, at the bidding of His Almighty Word, the universe and the earth."136 Similarly, the "waters" over which the Spirit brooded referred "to the gaseous atmosphere; it is simply descriptive of the state of cosmic matter comprised in the word earth."137 These were the same cosmic waters mentioned in Ps 148:4. Once it was recognized that "earth" and "water" referred to primordial matter Gen 1:2 became clear.
The matter just created was gaseous; it was without form, for the property of gas is to expand indefinitely. It was void, or empty, because apparently homogeneous and invisible. It was dark, because as yet inactive, light being the result of the action of physical and chemical forces not yet awakened. It was a deep, for its expansion in space, though indefinite, was not infinite, and it had dimensions. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face . . . of that vast, inert, gaseous mass, ready to impart to it motion, and to direct all its subsequent activity, according to a plan gradually revealed by the works of the great cosmic days.138
As the great gaseous mass began to move, light developed and the waters were separated. But Gen 1:6-7 was not referring to anything as ordinary as the clouds in the sky. Rather the work of the second day referred to the organizing of the heavens. "The vast primitive nebula of the first day breaks up into a multitude of gaseous masses, and these are concentrated into stars."139 Thus the nebulous masses (galaxies) of outer space were the heavens of heavens, that is, the waters
Ibid., 11. Ibid., 35-36. 137 Ibid., 36. 138 Ibid., 38. 139 Ibid., 63.
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above the heavens. In contrast, our own immediate celestial neighborhood consisting of the sun, moon, and nearby stars were the waters below the heavens. The firmament, by implication, meant the vastness of space between our own nebula and those at a far distance. By the third day the earth was like a cooling star. Chemical interactions within its atmosphere and ocean produced a luminous glow or "photosphere" like that of the sun. The glow diminished as the earth cooled and became more suitable for life. Only the simplest plant forms could appear under these conditions. Guyot wanted to postpone the development of complex plants until day five, but Genesis said that plants appeared on the third day. To deal with this problem, Guyot said,
Is this position of the plant in the order of creation confirmed by geology? If we should understand the text as meaning that the whole plant kingdom, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest dicotyledon, was created at this early day, geology would assuredly disprove it. But the author of Genesis, as we have before remarked, mentions every order of facts but once, and he does it at the time of its first introduction. Here, therefore, the whole system of plants is described in full outline, as it has been developed, from the lowest to the most perfect, in the succession of ages; for it will never again be spoken of in the remainder of the narrative.140
Thus Guyot introduced the idea that the events of the six days might overlap one another. The appearance of the heavenly bodies on day four had nothing to do with an ex nihib creation at the time. They "existed before, and now enter into new relations with the earth."141 Because the earth was self-luminous due to chemical action during its early stages, the light of the sun, moon, and star was "merged in the stronger light of its photosphere, and therefore invisible to it. But after the disappearance of its luminous envelope, our glorious heavens with sun, moon, and stars become visible, and the earth depends upon this outside source for light and heat."142
140 141
Ibid., 89-90. Ibid., 92. 142 Ibid., 93.
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Guyot correlated day four with the production of Archean rocks.143 On day five, Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks were deposited with their contained fossils, and on the sixth day Tertiary rocks were deposited. The boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods was thought to occur at the juncture between days five and six. There was an important difference between Miller and Guyot in the correlation of geological events with the days. Miller had assigned day three to the Carboniferous period in the latter part of the Paleozoic era, while Guyot did not even begin the Paleozoic era until day five. Table II compares the two correlation schemes with each other and with that of Dawson. The concordistic scheme of the great nineteenth century North American geologist, James Dwight Dana of Yale University, was nearly identical to that of Guyot.144 One of the major concordistic works of the nineteenth century was The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science145 by J. William Dawson, a great Canadian geologist from McGill University and a devout evangelical Christian. Dawson's work spelled out in great detail both exegetical arguments for his conclusions and scientific interpretations of a variety of correspondences between Scripture and geology. Dawson argued that the days of Genesis 1 must be long periods of time of indeterminate length. His major argument centered on the nature of the seventh day. He assumed that absence of the formula "the evening and the morning were the seventh day" was an indication that the seventh day had not yet terminated. The notion was further supported by appeal to the continued rest of God in Hebrews 4 and to the nature of God's working on his Sabbath day in John 5. Dawson also maintained that the lack of rain in Gen 2:5 indicated that
143 The term Archean is typically applied by geologists even today to the oldest known rocks. Such rocks generally underlie other rocks and are typically though not always metamorphic and igneous rocks. Some of the stratified Archean rocks contain fossil remains of primitive one-celled organisms. 144 See, for example, James Dwight Dana, "Creation, or the Biblical Cosmogony in the Light of Modern Science," BSac 42 (1885) 201-24. 145 J. William Dawson, The Origin of the World according to Revelation and Science (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898).
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TABLE II Correlation Schemes of Major Nineteenth-Century Day-Age Concordists Day one Miller Azoic period, clearing of cloudy atmosphere Silurian and Old Red periods, development of atmosphere Carboniferous period, lush vegetation Permian and Triassic periods, final clearing of atmosphere Guyot Dawson Atmosphere clears Clouds and oceans segregate
Day two
Day three
Primitive nebula breaks up into gaseous masses and stars Earth cools, simple plants only Archean period (equivalent of Miller's Azoic), sun becomes visible as glowing earth loses its luminosity Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras (equivalent of Miller's Silurian through Cretaceous), marine animals and complex vegetation Tertiary land mammals
Day four
Eozoic period, continents emerge Sun condensed, continents resubmerged
Day five
Oolitic and Cretaceous periods, ichthyosaurs, plsiosaure, birds, pterodactyls
Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras
Day six
Tertiary land mammals
Tertiary land mammals
the creation days were long periods of time, because it would be absurd that any prominence should be given to a lack of rain if the days were only 24 hours long.
Why should any prominence be given to a fact so common as a lapse of two ordinary days without rain, more especially if a region of the earth and not the whole is referred to, and in a document prepared for a people residing in climates such as those of Egypt and Palestine. But what could be more instructive and confirmatory of the truth of the narrative than the fact that in the two long periods which preceded the formation and clearing up of the atmosphere or firmament, on which rain depended, and the elevation of the dry land, which so greatly modifies its distribution, there had been no rain such as now occurs.146 Ibid., 142.
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For Dawson, the initial earth was a ball of hot vapor and liquid that had spun out of a primitive solar nebula. "The words of Moses appear to suggest a heated and cooling globe, its crust as yet unbroken by internal forces, covered by a universal ocean, on which rested a mass of confused vaporous substances."147 The great deep referred to the atmospheric waters covering the earth, and the darkness of Gen 1:2 was the darkness of outer space "destitute of luminaries." The cooling of the vaporous globe took millions of years and would continue until the "atmosphere could befinallycleared of its superfluous vapors."148 The light that appeared on day one " must have proceeded from luminous matter diffused through the whole space of the solar system."149 This luminous matter was gradually concentrated and "at length all gathered within the earth's orbit"150 so that only one hemisphere at a time would be lighted. At first there was no distinction between sea and atmosphere: "The earth was covered by the waters, and these were in such a condition that there was no distinction between the seas and the clouds. No atmosphere separated them, or, in other words, dense fogs and mists everywhere rested on the surface of the primeval ocean."151 Continued cooling led to separation of the waters and the formation of a distinct ocean and atmosphere. The ocean waters segregated into basins as the dry lands appeared as suggested by Prov 8:25, Ps 119:90, Job 9:6, and Job 38:4. Ps 104:5-9 especially referred to the work of the third day.
In whichever sense we understand this line, the picture presented to us by the Psalmist includes the elevation of the mountains and continents, the subsidence of the waters into their depressed basins, and the firm establishment of the dry land on its rocky foundations, the whole accompanied by a feature not noticed in Genesisthe voice of God's thunder or, in other words, electrical and volcanic explosions.152
Ibid., 110. Ibid., 113. 149 Ibid., 117. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid., 157. 152 Ibid., 176.
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Dawson saw geologist Elie de Beaumont's contraction hypothesis as consistent with the biblical account of day three. Geologists, noted Dawson,
have attributed the elevation of the continents and the upheaval and plication of mountain chains to the secular refrigeration of the earth, causing its outer shell to become too capacious for its contracting interior mass, and thus to break or bend, and to settle toward the centre. This view would well accord with the terms in which the elevation of the land is mentioned throughout the Bible, and especially with the general progress of the work as we have gleaned it from the Mosaic narrative; since from the period of the desolate void and aeriform deep to that now before us secular refrigeration must have been steadily in progress.153
Dawson identified the appearance of vegetation on day three with the Eozoic period154 (see Table II). Dawson was well aware that in the fossil record well-developed invertebrate animals appear earlier than land vegetation. To evade the force of the difficulty he assumed that many older deposits of fossil plants had been metamorphosed and destroyed beyond recognition. He suggested that during metamorphism the organic material was converted into graphite, i.e., crystalline carbon, a very common mineral in older metamorphic rocks. Dawson identified the Hebrew word min (kind) with biological species. In Deut 14:15 and Lev 1:14 the term was said clearly to mean species, and so Dawson believed that the text ruled out any development hypotheses. Long after the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection Dawson resisted biological evolution.
Each species, as observed by us, is permanently reproductive, variable within narrow limits, and incapable of permanent intermixture with other species; and though hypotheses of modification by descent, and of the production of new species by such modification, may be formed, they are not in accordance with experience, and are still among the unproved speculations which haunt the outskirts of true science.155
On the fourth day the concentration of luminosity in the center of the solar system, that is, the condensation of the
Ibid., 184-85. The term Eozoic was applied for a term to the very latest Precambrian rocks, rocks that occurred just beneath the stratified Cambrian rocks and that were thought to contain very primitive invertebrate fossils. 155 Ibid., 189.
154 155
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luminous envelope around the sun, was completed. The sun and moon could then become markers for the seasons and years. In earlier periods there were no distinctly marked seasons, and the limits of days and years were inaccurately defined. Dawson suggested that during the fourth day a large portion of the continental landmasses resubmerged because the fifth day was predominantly the day of marine life.
During the third day the extent of terrestrial surface was increasing, on the fourth day it diminished, and on the fifth it again increased, and probably has on the whole continued to increase up to the present time. One most important geological consequence of this is that the marine animals of thefifthday probably commenced their existence on sea bottoms which were the old soil surfaces of submerged continents previously clothed with vegetation, and which consequently contained much organic matter fitted to form a basis of support for the newly created animals.156
All the animals created on the fifth day were attributed to the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. The sixth day belonged to the Tertiary period, the age of mammals. On the latter point he was in general agreement with Guyot. Brief mention may also be made of George Frederick Wright, the last of the great nineteenth-century Christian geologists. Throughout his long career Wright addressed questions relating to the integration of Christianity and geology. In 1882, in Studies in Science and Religion,157 Wright noted that he was not impressed with the efforts of other geologists to achieve concord. "In many of these attempts it is difficult to tell which has been most distorted, the rocks or the sacred record."158 Calling Genesis 1 a "remarkable 'proem' " Wright believed that
it was not modern science with which the sacred writers wished to be reconciled, but polytheism which they wished to cut up root and branch When thus we consider it as a protest against polytheism, and an enforcement of thefirsttwo commandments, it seems an impertinence to endeavor to find all modern science in the document, however easy it may be for science to find shelter under the drapery of its rhetoric.159 Ibid., 205. George Frederick Wright, Studies in Science and Religion ( Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1882). 158 Ibid., 365. 159 Ibid., 366-67.
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Wright showed that in all the details of Genesis 1 it was affirmed that God was Creator. The sun, sky, animals, and so on were all creatures of the one true God and should not be the objects of worship. Wright later changed his mind and undertook the very effort he earlier condemned. In Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament Historyl60 Wright confessed that he had dwelt "too exclusively upon the adaptation of the document to the immediate purpose of counteracting the polytheistic tendencies of the Israelites."161 Upon further reflection he was so impressed by the writings of Dana and Guyot that he saw "in this account a systematic arrangement of creative facts which corresponds so closely with the order of creation as revealed by modern science that we cannot well regard it as accidental."162 His thumbnail review of the correspondence of Genesis 1 and the order of geology was essentially taken over from the GuyotDana position. 3. Nineteenth-Century Concordismthe Flood Because concordists felt the cumulative weight of geological evidence against the notion of a global deluge that deposited the entire stratigraphie column, harmonistic concerns shifted from the flood to the creation account. Nevertheless the flood played an important subsidiary role in their thought. Here, too, concordists adjusted their interpretations of the flood story to the constraints of the geological data. During the early nineteenth century there was still widespread belief in a catastrophic flood of continental or global proportions even among mainstream geologists and naturalists who were convinced of the earth's antiquity. The presumed effects of that flood, however, had been reduced. For example, William Buckland, who was anxious that geology continue its support for the Mosaic record of the flood, identified numerous surficial gravels, erratic boulders, and broad river valleys disGeorge Frederick Wright, Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament History (Oberlin, Ohio: Bibliotheca Sacra, 1906). 161 Ibid., 368. 162 Ibid., 370.
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tributed widely over northern Europe as the effects of a catastrophic deluge.163 Buckland's proposals regarding the flood encountered opposition on both scientific and biblical grounds. The Scottish naturalist and Presbyterian minister, John Fleming, said that Buckland's flood "occasioned the destruction of all the individuals of many species of quadrupeds."164 But that was clearly contrary to the Mosaic account, for Moses expressly stated that some of all kinds of animals were preserved in the ark. This preservation was identified as a preservation of "species": "we have revelation, declaring that, of all species of quadrupeds a male and female were spared and preserved during the deluge."165 Secondly, Fleming maintained that Buckland's deluge was "sudden, transient, universal, simultaneous, rushing with an overwhelming impetuosity, infinitely more powerful than the most violent waterspouts."166 Fleming took issue with such diluvial attributes.
In the history of the Noachian deluge by Moses, there is not a term employed which indicates any one of the characters, except universality, attributed to the geological deluge. On the contrary, the flood neither approached nor retired suddenly There is no notice taken of the furious movements of the waters, which must have driven the ark violently to and fro.167
Fleming also disagreed about the geological capabilities of the flood. Buckland's flood "excavated, in its fury, deep valleys, tearing up portions of the solid rock, and transporting to a distance the wreck which it had produced."168 But if that had happened,
16S See William Buckland, Reliquiae diluviarme (London: John Murray, 1823). Later in his career, Buckland became convinced of the adequacy of the glacial hypothesis to account for the boulders, gravels, widened valleys, and many of the vertebrate deposits. As a result, he manfully recanted his earlier commitment to a catastrophic deluge theory. 164 John Fleming, "The Geological Deluge, as interpreted by Baron Cuvier and Professor Buckland, inconsistent with the testimony of Moses and the Phenomena of Nature," Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 14 (1826) 211. 165 Ibid., 212. 166 Ibid., 213. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid.
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the antediluvian world must have been widely different from the present; lakes, and valleys, and seas, now existing in places formerly occupied by rocks, and the courses of rivers greatly altered. In the Book of Genesis there is no such change hinted at. On the contrary, the countries and rivers which existed before the flood, do not appear, from any thing said in the Scriptures, to have experienced any change in consequence of that event. But if the supposed impetuous torrent excavated valleys, and transported masses of rocks to a distance from their original repositories, then must the soil have been swept from off the earth, to the destruction of the vegetable tribes. Moses does not record such an occurrence. On the contrary, in his history of the dove and the olive-leaf plucked off, he furnishes a proof that the flood was not so violent in its motions as to disturb the soil, nor to overturn the trees which it supported; nor was the ground rendered, by the catastrophe, unfit for the cultivation of the vine.169
Convinced of the tranquil nature of the flood and of its general lack of substantial geological activity, Fleming commented that he did not expect to find any marks or memorials to the flood. As a matter of fact, if he had "witnessed every valley and gravel-bed, nay, every fossil bone, attesting the ravages of the dreadful scene, I would have been puzzled to account for the unexpected difficulties; and might have been induced to question the accuracy of Moses as an historian, or the claims of the Book of Genesis to occupy its present place in the sacred record." I7 Fleming's tranquil flood theory was not widely adopted. Later concordists who accepted the historical reality of the flood believed that the flood had left significant geological relics. However, thefloodwas considered to be geographically restricted. Hugh Miller eloquently argued against the geographic universality of the flood and spoke of the "palpable monstrosities" associated with universal deluge theories. In the nature of the case, Miller argued, there could have been no eye-witness to the extent of the flood. If Noah and his family were the only survivors there was no way they could have observed that the flood had been universal. God could have revealed such geographic facts, but then "God's revelations have in most instances been made to effect exclusively moral purposes; and we know that those who have perilously held that, along with the moral facts, definite physical facts,
169 170
Ibid., 213-14. Ibid., 214.
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geographic, geologic, or astronomical, has also been imparted, have almost invariably found themselves involved in monstrous error."171 The moral significance of the flood would not be altered by a reduction in its extent. Miller stated that universal language was commonly used in Scripture for more limited events. In many instances it was clear from the text that such a limitation was inherent, "but there is no such explanation given to limit or restrict most of the other passages; the modifying element must be sought for outside the sacred volume."172 The flood story fell into that latter category.
Almost all the texts of Scripture in which questions of physical science are involved, the limiting, modifying, explaining facts and circumstances must be sought for in that outside region of secular research, historic and scientific, from which of late years so much valuable biblical illustration has been derived, and with which it is so imperatively the duty of the Church to keep up an acquaintance at least as close and intimate as that maintained with it by her gainsayers and assailants.173
For Miller science showed that there had been no universal flood. One of the compelling arguments against the universality of the flood concerned the problem of getting animals to and from the ark. Supposing for the sake of argument the validity of the idea that the flood involved elevation of the sea bed and sinking of landmasses, Miller poked fun at some of the inherent impossibilities of the universal deluge.
A continuous tract of land would have stretched,when all the oceans were continents and all the continents oceans,between the South American and the Asiatic coasts. And it is just possible that, during the hundred and twenty years in which the ark was in building, a pair of sloths might have crept by inches across this continuous tract, from where the skeletons of the great megatheria174 are buried, to where the great vessel stood. But after the Flood had subsided, and the change in sea and land had taken place, there would remain for them no longer a roadway; and so, though their journey outwards might, in all save the impulse which led to it, have been altogether a natural one, their voyage homewards could not be other than miraculous. Nor would the exertion of miracle have had to be reMiller, Testimony, 300-301. Ibid., 302. 173 Ibid., 302-3. 174 Megatherium was a gigantic extinct sloth.
172 171
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stricted to the transport of the remoter travellers. How, we may well ask, had the Flood been universal, could even such islands as Great Britain and Ireland have ever been replenished with many of their original inhabitants? Even supposing it possible that animals, such as the red deer and the native ox might have swam across the Straits of Dover or the Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the dormouse, and the field-vole.175
Thoughfirmlyconvinced of a local deluge, Miller admitted being on "weak ground" when discussing the location and mechanism of the flood. He suggested that the very large, depressed area of central Asia around the Caspian, Black, and Aral seas might have been the locus of the flood. He claimed that if a "trench-like strip of country that communicated between the Caspian and the Gulf of Finland" were "depressed beneath the level of the latter sea, it would so open up the fountains of the great deep as to lay under water an extensive and populous region."176 If the area were depressed by 400 feet per day, the basin would subside to a depth of 16,000 feet within forty days and the highest mountains of the district would be drowned. If volcanic outbursts were associated with such a depression of the land, the atmosphere would be so affected that "heavy drenching rains" would have descended the entire time. Dawson, following Miller, suggested that the flood was a local event and that subsidence of an inhabited land area resulted in large scale flooding and entombment of the prediluvian races beneath deposits of mud and silt around the Caspian Sea.
The physical agencies evoked by the divine power to destroy this ungodly race were a subsidence of the region they inhabited, so as to admit the oceanic waters, and extensive atmospherical disturbances connected with that subsidence, and perhaps with the elevation of neighboring regions. In this case it is possible that the Caspian Sea, which is now more than eighty feet below the level of the ocean, and which was probably much more extensive then than at present, received much of the drainage of the flood, and that the mud and sand deposits of this sea and the adjoining
175 176
Ibid., 348. Ibid., 356.
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desert plains, once manifestly a part of its bottom, concealed any remains that exist of the antediluvian population.177
Wright, too, believed the flood had been a great local inundation of a huge tract of central Asia. To Wright the biblical account "represents the Flood as caused not so much by the rising of the water, as by the sinking of the land. It says that all the fountains of the great deep were broken up."178 As a glacial geologist, Wright related the flood to glacial action. The removal of enormous quantities of water from the ocean and their inclusion in massive glacial sheets caused redistribution of weight on the earth's surface. The ice sheets depressed the landmasses while the ocean beds were elevated as the load of water was removed. These readjustments led to pressures that reinforced depression of portions of the landmasses.179 One of the great depressed areas was that of central Asia in which early mankind was living. At the end of the ice age, enormous amounts of glacial meltwater returned to the oceans and also temporarily drowned the great basin of central Asia. The Caspian, Aral, and Black Seas, and Lake Baikal were said to be remnants of that vast depression. 4. Recent Concordism Since the nineteenth century, Christian geologists became a silent minority. For several decades few harmonizations of Scripture with geological data were attempted.180 Then in 1977, a suddenflurryof concordist works appeared beginning with my Creation and the Flood.18i My scheme resembled the day-age proposals of Miller, Dana, Guyot, and Dawson. The geological data were updated, and it was proposed that the events of the six days were overlapping. A diagram illustrated how the days of creation might have overlapped. Genesis 1
Dawson, Origin, 256. Wright, Scientific Confirmations, 206. 179 Ibid., 224-29. 180 An important exception to the dearth of concordist literature during this period is B. Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1954). It should, however, be recognized that Ramm spoke as a theologian trained in the sciences rather than as a scientist. 181 Davis A. Young, Creation and the Flood (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977).
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was said to contain summary reports of the major activities of each day so that the creative events of each day were not necessarily restricted to that day. For example, bird formation was envisioned as possibly continuing into day six, and the creation of mammals was viewed as being initiated prior to day six and reaching its climax on that day.182 I suggested that the creation of earth on day one referred to a partially organized body not yet fit for life and habitation. The deep was an initial ocean that covered the globe prior to continent formation.183 The light of day one had reference only to earth; it was "radiant energy falling on the earth's surface for the first time."I84 I denied that this creation of light had anything to do with the so-called Big Bang hypothesis.185 The division of waters related to the clouds above and watery oceans beneath; the creation of thefirmamentinvolved the development of the atmosphere. The waters accumulated into ocean basins, and continental landmasses appeared on the third day. It was admitted that "some difficulties are readily apparent in correlating Genesis with paleobotany."186 The problem was that "different categories of plants seem to have arisen over widely-spaced times."187 Like Guyot and Dawson, I noted that Genesis places plants before animals but that geology reverses the order. I suggested that future paleontological work would disclose more information about the origins of plants and that the biasing of early Paleozoic rocks in favor of marine deposits had led us to overlook the possible importance of terrestrial land plants that might have existed earlier than we had thought. After a century of intense paleontological investigation and of day-age concordism, I did no better with the plant-animal sequence than had Guyot or Dawson. Although more open to evolution than Dawson, I nevertheless thought that the expression "after his kind" sugIbid., Ibid., 184 Ibid., 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid., 187 Ibid.
183 182
116-17. 119. 120. 128.
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gested an "independence of botanical classes that is incompatible with the general plant evolution."188 I, too, insisted that the absolute origin of the sun, moon, and stars did not occur on the fourth day. The function of the heavenly bodies with respect to earth was in view. "The point seems to be that at this time the earth comes into its present and final relationship to the sun so that now the sun and moon can serve astimeregulators for the earth."189 In 1983, John Wiester published a fine summary of current geological and astronomical findings within the constraints of the day-age theory.190 Wiester said little about Gen 1:2 and linked that verse with the moment of creation or even "before the beginning." He made no effort to identify the great deep. Of this verse he said, "The most we can say scientifically about 'before the beginning* is that we know nothing about it. The scientific quest has reached a barrier it cannot penetrate. Time and space have no meaning or existence. We must turn to the Scripture at this point."191 Creation therefore began with the pronouncement of God, "Let there be light." This light was identified with the Big Bang of modern cosmology. "Science now fully agrees with the Bible that the Universe began with light. It is time our textbooks reflected the harmony of science with the first creation command in Genesis."192 Wiester attributed the formation of the atmosphere to day two. During its early history the earth went through a molten stage, characterized by segregation of materials in the interior as well as outgassing of volatile substances. The outgassed material separated into seas and a cloudy atmosphere. The waters were gathered into ocean basins and continents appeared. Wiester claimed that the creation of the sun on day four related to clearing of the atmosphere. He suggested that "the primordial atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other smog-like gases had to be purified,"193 and that Gen 1:15 has in view "the transformation of light from the Sun into a benIbid., 127. Ibid., 129. 190 John L. Wiester, The Genesis Connection (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983). 191 Ibid., 36. 192 Ibid., 45. 195 Ibid., 115.
189 188
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eficial energy source" for "we do know that scientific history places the appearance of sunlight beneficial to advanced life in the same sequential order as this fourth creation command in Genesis."194 Another recent attempt at concordism is The Genesis Answer195 by William Lee Stokes of the University of Utah. Although Stokes worked out a correspondence of cosmic and geological history with the days of Genesis 1, he asserted that the days did not represent figurative periods of time. The days "were not of equal duration and are not intended to be measures of time. They are not the periods, epochs, and eras invented by geologists. Their meaning is celestial and not terrestrial. They are God's divisions of his own creations."196 This view he called the Genesis code. Even though the days were not periods of time, each creative day was said to consist of a period dominated by darkness and a period dominated by light. Stokes maintained that in Gen 1:2 the original, primitive "earth" was "universal unorganized matter, primitive, basic, and elementalbut with endless potential for future development."197 Since there was no planet yet, neither the deep nor the waters of Gen 1:2 could refer to an ocean. The face of the deep "is to signify that there was a mass, at least a separate entity, with a surface or discontinuity surrounding surrounding the material which God intended to organize."198 The water of Gen 1:2 was water in outer space. Stokes stated that "water exists in the clouds of space and is known to be abundant in areas where new stars are forming. Reasoning and speculating from these facts it may be assumed for the sake of continuing the story that water may be essential to the formation of solar systems like the one to which the Earth belongs."199
Ibid. William L. Stokes, The Genesis Answer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1984). 196 Ibid., 53. 197 Ibid., 30. 198 Ibid., 32. 199 Ibid., 40.
195 194
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Stokes admitted difficulty in explaining the origin of light. He said that the creation of light on day one was not to be identified with the Big Bang of modern astronomy but to a later stage of development. Thus the Big Bang fireball could have occurred before the six creative days. As the original brilliance of the fireball gradually diminished, the universe approached a period of universal darkness. This darkness was the evening of thefirstday. "The appearance and dominance of light in the galaxy we call our own would be the 'morning' of the first day."200 Stokes' astronomical approach carried over into the discussion of day two. The waters above and below the firmament were waters of space, and the "production of the Firmament is equivalent to events that followed the production of the first light-producing objects of the galaxy."201 The creation of the firmament was essentially completed when the spiral arms of our galaxy appeared. The waters under the firmament and the waters above the firmament were the two opposite spiral arms of the galaxy! The next step was to explain the evening and morning of the second day. "Certainly a black hole appears to be exactly what is needed for the dark phase of the second day. Here, more dramatically than any other known arrangement, light is separated from darkness. The separation is forceablelight is restrained from escaping."202 On day three the waters were gathered together. Stokes proposed that some of the water on one side of the evolving galaxy came together and developed enough material from which to build several solar systems. "The emphasis is on a process that would eventually give rise to the earth."203 Moreover, "The theme of Gen 1:9 is clearly the emergence of a solid planet from formerly diffuse, unorganized material."204 The separation of earth from water was identified with segregation of earth from the nebular dust cloud. "The burning process literally 'cleaned up' the solar system by sweeping away the remnants of the nebular cloud. This was the final
Ibid., 63. Ibid., 78. 202 Ibid., 82. 203 Ibid., 85. 204 Ibid., 87.
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event which brought the planet earth into existence as a separate solid body. The earth had at length 'come up dry'."205 Still further, "the gathering together 'in one place' seems to be a very acceptable description of the accumulation of matter in a specific region of space that is an essential step in formation of a solar system and also in the formation of individual planets and satellites."206 As the process continued "it is not difficult to visualize the planet emerging form enclosing mists or clouds. The references to 'dry land' or a dry earth is [sic] scientifically very significant. The use of this wording forces the conclusion that the earth was at one stage without surface bodies of liquid water."207 The darkness of day three ensued as the matter of the spiral arm of the galaxy passed from the luminous region into the dark inter-arm region. As the dust and gas that had been diffused throughout the solar system were cleared away by solar light, radiation, and wind, the sun became visible. This passage from the obscurity of dust clouds into the clear light of the sun marked the passage from the darkness of evening into the light of morning of the fourth day. One final work that merits attention is Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth208 by Robert C. Newman and Herman Eckelmann. Although the primary interest of Newman and Eckelmann was in astrophysics rather than geology, their approach bears on geology. Our authors suggested that "each day opens a new creative period, and therefore each day is mentioned in Genesis 1 after the activities of the previous creative period have been described, but before those of the next period are given."209 Moreover, the days were "sequential but not consecutive" and "the creative activity largely occurs between days rather than on them."210 Each day of Genesis 1 was a 24-hour day that introduced a particular creative activity of God. The activity was not confined to that
Ibid., 92. Ibid., 97. 207 Ibid. 208 Robert C. Newman and Herman J. Eckelmann, Jr., Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977). 209 Ibid., 64-65. 210 Ibid., 74.
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day, for each day was followed by a long period of time in which the activity continued. Thus, although the beginning of the creation of vegetation preceded the beginning of the creation of land animals, the appearance of vegetation may have continued after the animals began to appear. "It is not necessary to suppose that the fruit trees . . . were created before any kind of animal life, which would contradict the fossil record understood as a chronological sequence. Instead, we assume that the creative period involving land vegetation began before the creative periods involving sea, air and land animals of sorts big enough to be noticed by an average human observer."211 Newman and Eckelmann named their view the intermittent-day view. The 24-hour days of creation were separated by long time gaps of indeterminate length, and most of the creative activity occurred during those unmentioned stretches of time.212 Newman and Eckelmann suggested that in Gen 1:2 "the earth at this point in the narrative is not yet a solid body, but is shapeless and empty, perhaps even invisible. This is an excellent, though nontechnical description of the gas cloud that would eventually form the earth."213 The darkness on the earth was a subsequent darkness that developed as the "shapeless, empty cloud, becomes dark as contraction raises the density enough to block out starlight."214 Similarly the "deep" was equated with "the gas cloud, now a dark, cloudy and unfathomable region of space."215 A large body of ice or of water, a mass of ice crystals, ice droplets, a cloud of water vapor, or even some other fluid would be within the range of usage of the word mayim (waters, Gen 1:2) in Scripture. "All of these would have a surface over which the Spirit of God might 'move' or 'hover*. In agreement with the scientific
Ibid., 79. An early exegetical defense of a view very similar to the intermittentday view can be found in F. Hugh Capron, The Conflict of Truth (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1903) 162-99. A similar view has also been proposed in Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution (London: Triangle, 1985). 2,8 Newman and Eckelmann, Genesis One, 70. 214 Ibid., 71. 2,5 Ibid.
212 211
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model proposed, a dark nebula would be expected to contain some water vapor."216 As the gas cloud contracted it would heat and begin to glow. An hypothetical observer wouldfirstsee darkness everywhere and then light,
then some of both after they are separated. From the viewpoint of an observer riding along with the material of the earth as it is being formed, this is just what our scientific model would predict. When the gas cloud first begins to contract, the observer can see stars outside Later the contraction becomes sufficient to absorb light from outside the cloud, and the observer within is in the dark (* darkness was over the surface of the deep'). After further contraction and heating, however, the whole cloud lights up and the observer, immersed in light, can see no darkness anywhere ('and there was light'). Then, when the observer follows the equatorial band of gas and dust out from inside the cloud, both darkness and light are simultaneously visible.217
The firmament (atmosphere) formed by degassing of the earth's interior. The sun and other astronomical bodies appeared on day four as the cloudy atmosphere cleared. In these recent efforts, the flood received scant attention; the focus has been on the interpretation of Genesis 1. My Creation and the Flood was the only one of these works to deal with the flood. Only thefinalchapter was devoted to the flood, and the intent of that chapter was to criticize the global diluvialism of scientific creationism rather than to make positive proposals. The only widely publicized contemporary flood theories available to evangelicals are those of scientific creationism. Small wonder that on the issue of the flood evangelicals are so attracted to that voice; it is virtually the only one speaking among us!218 Selected interpretations of nineteenth and twentieth century concordists are summarized in Table III. Concordists
Ibid., 72. Ibid., 73. 218 A variety of local and large regional flood hypotheses have been proposed by such writers as E. K. Victor Pearce, R. E. D. Clark, and F. A. Molony in Faith and Thought and fournal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute but none of these is well known to the general evangelical public. Perhaps the mot extensive evangelical treatment of the flood from a nonscientific creationist viewpoint is Frederick A. Filby, The Flood Reconsidered (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970).
217 216
SCRIPTURE IN THE HANDS OF GEOLOGISTS TABLE III Summary of Concordist Interpretations of Key Texts in Genesis Kirwan Gen 1:2 Global ocean that precipitates chemicals, heating ocean which then vaporizes to thick darkness; Spirit-evaporation Devastated state of world after catastrophe prior to re-creation Primitive ocean Gen 1:6-8 Atmosphere formed by evaporation of ocean during chemical precipitation Gen 7:11 Caverns and ocean
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Buckland
Oceanic tides accounting only for surficial gravels Tranquil flood Depression of central Asia and subsequent flooding
Fleming Miller
Guyot
Dawson
Matter in primitive condition; gaseous atmosphere Atmospheric water covering earth
Development of atmosphere; deposit of Silurian and Old Red rocks Primitive nebula breaks up into gaseous masses and stars Clouds and ocean segregate
Flooding around Caspian Sea Depression of earth by glacial ice and flooding of depressions by melting glacial ice
Wright
Newman and Eckelmann Stokes
Gas cloud that blocks out starlight Universal unorganized matter and water in space
Opposed spiral arms of galaxy; darkness of second day due to black hole
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have been as inventive as the literalists. Gen 1:2 has been interpreted as a global ocean precipitating chemicals and pro ducing a great evaporation, atmospheric water, a simple prim itive ocean, primitive matter, a gas cloud, or as the devastated condition of the world after a great catastrophe long after creation. Events of the second day of creation have included formation of the atmosphere by evaporation of the ocean or by outgassing of earth's interior, the segregation of a primitive nebula into stars, and the formation of spiral arms of a galaxy together with black holes. The flood was of continental scale and formed surficial features, it was completely tranquil and left no effects, and it inundated central Asia by flooding of the sea or the melting of glacial ice. The range of suggestions for the interpretation of these and other portions of the bib lical text indicates that concordism has not given us reliable answers about relating the text to scientific questions. The Christian concordist still does not know from God's Word what happened on the second day of creation or how the flood occurred. Despite many attempts, concordism has not successfully explained the making of the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Nor has concordism accounted for the creation of vegetation on day three prior to the appearance of sea creatures in relation to the prior appearance of sea life as disclosed by paleontology. As more and more concordist suggestions have been advanced in light of the latest devel opments in science, one becomes increasingly suspicious that the biblical text has been pressed into the service of a task for which it was not intended. I sense that the Bible does not, even incidentally, provide answers to detailed technical ques tions about the structure and history of the cosmos. Scripture contains no anticipations about the physical development of the cosmos that awaited the scientific discoveries of the nine teenth and twentieth (or future! ) centuries to be brought into the open. Concordism is not only the pet of Christian scientists. Con cordism has also been warmly embraced by theologians and exegetes. In the nineteenth century Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and . B. Warfield, as well as such Scottish Presby terian stalwarts as James McCosh, James Orr, and Alexander
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Maclaren were kindly disposed toward the day-age theory.219 James Murphy and Herbert Morris defended the gap theory in their writings.220 More recently J. O. Buswell, Jr., and Harold Stigers adopted the view that the days of Genesis 1 were periods of time longer than 24 hours.2211 suggest that we will be well served if commentators recognize that concordism has not solved our problem of relating Genesis and geology any more than literalism. Commentators should not try to show correlations between Genesis 1 and geology and should perhaps develop exegeses that are consistent with the historicalcultural-theological setting of ancient Israel in which Genesis was written. IV. Conclusions and Suggestions for the Future No doubt not all will choose to follow this trail out of the swamp. Those who have done so will need to survey cooperatively the terrain carefully before setting out a new path. In taking stock, I propose that several matters need to be stressed and faced if evangelicals are to follow a path that will lead to satisfactory integration of biblical interpretation and scientific study.222 1. Literalism and concordism are failed enterprises that evangelicals should abandon. A review of 300 years of literalistic and concordistic harmonizations between the biblical text and the results of emFor a more comprehensive listing of many prominent theologians and exegetes who adopted the day-age theory see my Christianity and the Age of the Earth, 55-67. 220 Herbert W. Morris, Science and the Bible (Philadelphia: Ziegler and McCurdy, 1871), and James G. Murphy, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Andover: Draper, 1887). 221 J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., A Systemic Theology of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1962), and Harold G. Stigers, A Commentary on Genesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976). 222 It is not the purpose of this paper to work out the areas of integration. That is the future task of Christian exegetes and scientists working in concert. Nevertheless I suggest that, if a proper integration should focus less on the precise correlation of presumably historical details, it should also focus more on broad biblical principles such as God's providence, the orderliness of creation, and man's role as steward of God's creation that are fundamental to the scientific task.
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pirical geological study shows that there has been absolutely no consensus among evangelical Christians about interpretation of the details of the biblical accounts of creation and the flood or about texts such as Psalm 104, Proverbs 8, or other wisdom literature that bear on the creation, the flood, or the physical character of the earth. There has not been a Christian consensus about the identity of the great deep, about the firmament, about the waters above and below the firmament, about what happened on the fourth day of creation, about the sequencing of events and their matching with the geological evidence, or about the nature of the fountains of the great deep. Given this history of extreme variation of understanding of these various elements of the biblical text, it is unwise to insist that the teaching of the biblical text on any of these matters is "clear and plain" or that one's own interpretation is obviously what the biblical text has in mind. As science developed and new theoretical frameworks were constructed in light of new discoveries, interpretations of biblical data were repeatedly adjusted to match the new understanding of those data. Both details and overall approaches to Genesis 1 or the flood were adjusted again and again. Such adjustments will continue with advances in the physical sciences so long as evangelicals assume that the biblical portrayal of creation gives us a skeletal outline of a scientific history of the planet or cosmos. The result would be still more variations of interpretation of texts from which to choose. We would be farther than ever from approaching an evangelical consensus. Perhaps the time has come to make the adjustment, in light of the extrabiblical evidence, away from the idea that the biblical text gives us a scientifically verifiable history of the planet. The inability of literalism to provide a satisfactory agreement between the biblical text and geological knowledge can be seen on two counts. In the first place, modern literalistic interpretations of the creation and flood texts yield results that are wildly at variance with geological knowledge. In the second place the wide variation of interpretation demonstrates that we have not yet discovered the proper understanding of "scientifically relevant" biblical texts. Literalism, after 300
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years, has failed and no longer provides a fruitful approach for achieving the appropriate biblical view of geology. Concordism has been unable to provide a satisfactory agreement between the biblical text and geological knowledge. Concordistic efforts have never been able to do justice to the fourth day of creation and to the relative positioning of the third and fifth days of creation in relationship to geological knowledge.223 On the other hand the variation of suggestions further demonstrates that concordism has not helped us to understand "scientifically relevant" biblical texts any more than has literalism. Concordism, after 250 years, has also failed and no longer may be assumed to provide a fruitful approach for achieving an appropriate biblical view of geologyIt is doubtful that, after centuries of failure, either strategy is going to be effective in the future. I suggest that evangelicals give up the attempt to identify the role of the great deep in terrestrial history, to work out a geophysics of the flood, to settle disputes between theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists about the origin and development of life from studies of the word "kind" or from the arrangement of differing life-forms on days three, five, and six, or to work out the sequence of geological events from biblical data. If evangelicals are to achieve an appropriate understanding of the relationship between biblical texts and scientific activity, then literalism and concordism should be abandoned and new approaches developed.
223 Genesis 1 does, of course, convey the impression of sequential chronology. But even if we do not press the chronology too hard and simply take refuge in a vaguely sequential interpretation of Genesis 1 and a general similarity between Genesis 1 and the events of geology, we still cannot avoid the fact that day four cannot be explained easily in such a way as to allow formation of the heavens long before earth, and thus achieve concord with one of the more thoroughly established scientific conclusions. Moreover, geological evidence makes it clear that marine life preceded land vegetation, contrary to the view of Genesis 1 that assumes sequence of creative events. These severe difficulties suggest that we should at least give serious attention to the possibility that the chronology does not belong to the temporal sequence of events on earth but in some way accommodates human understanding to divine actions that transcend time.
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2. The failure of literalism and concordism suggests that the Bible may not be expected to provide precise "information" or "data" about the physical structure and history of the planet or cosmos. Given the wide diversity of available interpretations, it is unlikely that the Bible provides "high quality data" about details of the history or internal structure of the planet any more than Revelation yields "high quality data" about events of the future as in The Late Great Planet Earth. If the Bible does provide such data, we have been totally unable to determine exactly what it is! For example, it is unwise to claim precision for biblical data about the mechanism of the flood in view of proposals about subterranean abysses, vapor canopies, caves, comets, melting glaciers, oceanic tides, colliding asteroids, and so on. We know nothing from the Bible about how the flood started except that water was involved! The fundamentaland understandableassumption (one that I made previously) behind the search for "data" or "information" by both literalists and concordists through the centuries is that Moses wrote strictly as a "sacred historian." Thus the creation and flood stories (as well as related wisdom literature texts) have been read as if they were reports providing detailed information with quasi-photographic, journalistic accuracy and precision. And it has been assumed that these events can potentially be recognized, identified, and reconstructed from the effects they left behind by using the tools of geological, cosmological, biological, and anthropological investigations. Such historical reconstruction has been thought to be essentially no different from efforts to reconstruct the historical events of the Roman Empire or Hitler's Third Reich from extant documents and monuments. The failure of literalism and concordism suggests that we may have been mistaken in such attempts. 3. Although the so-called "geologically relevant" biblical passages do not provide data for historical geology in that they are not straightforward reportorial chronicles, they nonetheless bear witness to genuine history. Even though the creation and flood stories probably should not be read as journalistic reports or chronicles, they nonetheless treat of events. We must reject the idea that the biblical account of creation does not speak of origination and can be
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reduced solely to the notion of dependence of the material world on God. Genesis 1 teaches not only the dependence of the world on God but also its divine origination. God did bring the world into being (Heb 11:3). Even though Genesis 1 may not yield a sequence of datable events, we must insist that God did bring plants, animals, heavenly bodies, seas, earth, and man into existence. Any thought of the eternity of matter must be rejected. A bringing into being came about because of God's creative action. What should be addressed by evangelicals is the manner in which Genesis 1 and other creation texts portray God's bringing the world into being. The flood story of Genesis 6-9 also witnesses to genuine history. The flood story tells us about God's action in this world and cannot be reduced to mere fable. Even though we may be unable to reconstruct a "historical geology" of the flood, behind the flood story of the Bible was an occurrence in the physical world in which God clearly acted in judgment and in grace. The task that lies ahead for evangelicals is to discover in what way the flood event is presented to us in Scripture. 4. In future wrestling with "geologically relevant" texts such as Genesis 1-11, evangelical scholars will have to face the implications of the mass of geological data indicating that the earth is extremely old, indicating that death has been on earth long before man, and indicating that there has not been a global flood. Evangelicals can no longer afford the luxury of ignoring the implications for biblical exegesis of the enormous mass of extrabiblical data provided by geology, cosmology, and anthropology. It is unwise to proclaim belief in creation and ownership of the world by the sovereign Creator and then ignore the discoveries in God's world. Such an attitude is like receiving a beautiful Christmas package, profusely thanking the giver, and then failing to open the giftever. We insult our Creator if we fail to appreciate and appropriate what he has given us in the world. Nor can evangelicals expect to provide an effective witness to unbelieving scholars in geology, cosmology, biology, and anthropology if we ignore or distort what is known about the world. We place unnecessary stumbling-blocks in the way of an unbelieving geologist if we persist in the claim that the
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literalistic approach to the flood is the only legitimate approach. Any geologist knows that a literalistic view of the flood flies in the face of the accumulated knowledge of the past several centuries. Will such a person be led to Christianity?224 Future wrestling with Genesis 1 and the flood story must come to grips with the mountainous mass of data that indicates that our planet is billions of years old and has undergone a complex, dynamic history. No longer can competent, aware Christian theologians naively insist on a recent creation by taking refuge in the so-called evidences for recent creation emanating from the scientific creationist camp. Those who do so do the Christian community a disservice. No longer can Christian theologians claim that the Genesis story talks about a geographically universal deluge that has left observable, physical remains all over the earth's surface. No longer may we tell our children about the flood in which pairs of penguins from Antarctica, kangaroos from Australia, sloths from South America, bison from North America, pangolins from southeast Asia, and lions and elephants from Africa all marched two by two into the waiting ark. The biogeographical data rule out such migrations of animals. Though it is difficult to make such assertions and very painful for evangelicals to accept them, the evangelical world must face up to the implications of the geological data that exist if we wish to do justice to the biblical text. The very tempting response that many evangelicals might wish to make is that the geological, biogeographical, and anthropological data have no real force because the present reconstructions of terrestrial history have been made largely by unbelievers who were controlled by world-views that are hostile to Christianity. What is needed, it may be claimed, is for Christians to reevaluate the data and to reinterpret it in the light of biblical principles. Such an assertion may compel those who have little knowledge of the practice of geology, but we delude ourselves by falling back on such an illusory hope. The historical reality is that geology as a science was
224 1 fully sympathize with the deep desire of literalists to achieve a biblical view of geology and to bring unbelieving scientists to Christ. Nevertheless I am persuaded that their basic approach fails to achieve a proper view and also has had a detrimental effect within the scientific community.
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developed largely by those who were active evangelical Christians or shaped to some degree by Christian principles. The force of the accumulating data led to the understanding that the world is ancient and that there was no globalflood.Christian geologists who loved Scripture and the Lord were repeatedly confronted with new discoveries that could not be squared with the traditional interpretations of the Bible. Christian geologists were compelled by the observations they made of God's world to conclude that there had been no global flood and that their world was extremely old.225 5. The idea of apparent age is an unacceptable way offadng the issue. There is only one way to avoid the force of geological data regarding the history of earth, but one must be willing to face the consequences. That way is to take refuge in a literalism that insists on a series of purely miraculous, ex nihih, nearly instantaneous, fiat creations in six ordinary days and that insists on a flood in which the water was miraculously created and annihilated, physical effects were miraculously removed, and animals were miraculously transported to and from the ark. The result of this view is that any evidence for the elaborate history and antiquity of the earth is purely illusory. On this view rocks are not old; they must be interpreted as indicating appearance of age and history only.226 Such a conclusion must be applied to all rocks that were formed prior to the beginning of human history. Only of rocks formed since human history began, that is, rocks not miraculously created, may it be said that they contain a historical record that can be reconstructed from internal evidence. All other rocks were miraculously created to look as they do; they did not go through any process. Not only basement rocks composed of igneous and metamorphic rocks, but virtually the entire column of sedi225 For aspects of the history of geology see, for example, Charles C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (New York: Harper, 1951), Roy Porter, The Making of Geology (Cambridge Press, 1977), Claude C. Albritton, The Abyss of Time (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper, 1980). 226 The apparent-age theory of creation was adopted in John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962).
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mentary rocks with their enclosed fossil remains must be created in place. Despite scientific creationism's contention that stratified rocks were formed during human history by the flood, the evidence accumulated during the past two centuries overwhelmingly indicates that stratified rocks, as in the Grand Canyon, were deposited long before the appearance of humans. Such rocks, if prehuman, would have been formed during the six days of creation and were therefore created in place. Proponents of this literalism must then be willing to accept the consequence that fossil elephant bones, fossil dinosaurs, and fossil trees are illusions created in place, and that such "fossils" tell us absolutely nothing whatsoever about formerly existing elephants, dinosaurs, or trees.227 If we wish to avoid the force of the geological data in dealing with the flood story we must also take the flood as a purely miraculous event. Physical mechanisms for the source and draining of floodwaters and migrations of animals land us squarely in contradictions and absurdities. Thus we must ultimately conclude that the floodwater was miraculously created and annihilated and that the animals migrated and emigrated from the ark in a purely miraculous way. We must accept, too, the notion that all physical remains of the flood were miraculously eliminated from the earth, because there is no recognizable physical evidence for a global flood.228
If we choose to explain most of the geological record in terms of miraculous creation of apparent age, then let us be consistent and give up all efforts to appeal to scientific evidence that supposedly indicates that the earth is young. If we want to appeal to scientific evidence, then let us be consistent and willingly accept that the evidence in total overwhelmingly points to long historical development. We cannot have it both ways by appealing to science when we think it supports a young earth and then appealing to apparent age when the evidence suggests antiquity. 228 The issue is not whether there have been miracles in history or whether God can perform miracles. It is unquestioned that God can perform miracles and that he has performed miracles, e.g., the resurrection. The issue here is only whether the flood or the whole of the act of creation was purely miraculous. For example, if we postulate that God miraculously brought the animals to the ark and miraculously returned them to their native lands, we could ask why God bothered to put animals on the ark at all. If he wanted to preserve the animals why did he not just miraculously recreate them after the flood?
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The idea of creation of the total rock column with an appearance of age is so fraught with problems that it ought to be rejected. Just as no theologian wants to work with a Bible that was suddenly created out of nothing and in which the many evidences of history in its composition were purely illusory, and as no individual wants to regard his life before last night as pure illusion, so no geologist wants to study rocks whose evidences for historical development are purely illusory. In addition, the idea of creation of apparent age was not a component of Christian thinking until the mid-nineteenth century. The idea, proposed by Gosse229 and currently espoused by scientific creationism, was suggested only as a means of evading the force of geological data while retaining a traditional reading of Genesis 1. So far as I am aware, neither the church fathers nor the Reformers ever held to the notion of creation of apparent age. The literalistic, apparent-age view of Genesis 1 and the purely miraculous view of the flood story are unduly rigid, for Scripture uses the terms "creation" and "create" in a variety of ways. Although bara"3 always has God as its subject, the word does not necessarily imply creation ex nihilo. The context must determine whether creation ex nihilo is in view. Although bara* might imply instantaneousness of effectuation in some contexts, the word does not everywhere demand such instantaneousness. Although in some contexts bara0 might not entail secondary causes, process, and providence, the word by no means necessarily rules out secondary causes, process, or God's providential activity in every context. There are many instances in Scripture, for example, in the creating of Israel (Isa 43:1 ), the creating of the wind (Amos 4:13), the creating of animals (Ps 104:30), and the creating of future generations of people (Ps 102:18), where creation does not involve pure miracle and instantaneousness and does involve providence, ordinary processes, and means. These are not ex nihilo creations. It is therefore unwise, given theflexibilityof the biblical usage of "create," to insist that creation in Genesis 1 involves only immediate, purely miraculous, instantaneous production
Philip H. Gosse, Omphalos (London: J. Van Voorst, 1857).
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of every item out of nothing. Capable theologians have maintained otherwise for centuries. An instantaneously created, mature creation that shows only an illusory history is also inconsistent with the nature of God and of man as God's imagebearer. In the absence of an incontrovertible word from the Lord that he has created an illusion, we must conclude that God would be deceiving us by placing us within a complex world which bears myriad indications of a complicated history that did not actually happen.230 Mature creation is also incompatible with the character of man as one created in the image of God and given dominion over the earth. God has given us the mental tools with which to make sense of the world and placed us in a world that makes sense. In every sphere of intellectual endeavor we assume the genuine character of the world. Why should the world's past be any different? Why should our intellectual tools be mismatched against an illusory past in an effort which God blessed when he told us to "subdue the earth"? Creation of apparent age also forces us to conclude that it is impossible to carry out any scientific reconstruction of terrestrial history prior to the advent of humankind. We can study the world scientifically only in terms of known or knowable processes. The past can be reconstructed scientifically only by analogy with what is known of the present. The only history that could legitimately be investigated scientifically would be that history which begins immediately upon conclusion of the miraculous six-day creation. "Prior" to that would be off limits to scientific research. We could only state of anything produced before genuine history began, that it was created and that it bears only an illusion of history. Even terrestrial history that coincides with human history would be
230 Appeal in favor of the idea of apparent age or mature creation is often made to Jesus' conversion of water into wine in John 2. However, in John 2, the conversion is designated as a "sign" performed in full view of the servants with the result that Jesus "revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him." The same cannot be said of creation or the flood. There were no eye-witnesses to the creation, and the flood story is not presented as a "sign" and the details of the story imply predictable effects of a lot of water!
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questionable if a purely miraculous global flood had occurred of which all traces were miraculously annihilated. If we adopt this approach we are confronted with the problem of deciding exactly, and on compelling grounds, how long real history is. When did creation cease and history begin? Biblical literalists and scientific creationists believe that real history is between 6,000 and 15,000 years long. Thus far, I have seen no compelling argument in favor of any specific date of creation. Suppose that history began exactly 10,000 years ago. If so, any rock formed within the last 10,000 years could be studied scientifically. We could legitimately talk about the processes involved in the formation of that rock. We could talk about its being an igneous or sedimentary rock. We could legitimately try to decide just when it was formed and whether it was older or younger than some other rock nearby. But suppose we found some rocks that appeared to be older than 10,000 years. Then those rocks must have been created miraculously during the six days. It would be inconsistent with our Christian belief to study them scientifically, that is, to attempt to discover the processes by which they were formed. Even though the rocks might look like lava flows or sandstones, we could not identify these rocks as igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks, for those terms imply processes. We could not even say anything about the relative age of those rocks compared with some other created rocks. We could not, for example, claim that the rocks were 20,000,000 years old while some rocks beneath them were 30,000,000 years old because the world was created 10,000 years ago. Therefore, created rocks are scientifically off limits. But how do we decide that a rock was created? How do we determine that a rock has an apparent age greater than 10,000 years? How do we decide that a rock may not legitimately be studied by the methods of geological science? The only way that we can possibly demonstrate that a given rock is "older" than 10,000 years, short of a direct biblical revelation which we do not have, is to presuppose the validity of the scientific enterprise and to carry out a scientific investigation of that rock. It is only through scientific argumentation that we can claim that rocks might be 100,000 years old or 16,000 years
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old or 2,000,000,000 years old. In order to claim that a rock is "old" and therefore created and that it may not be legitimately studied scientifically, we must study it scientifically. We must presuppose that which we are attempting to rule out! Such an approach is clearly destructive of the entire scientific enterprise. Any approach to creation which entails creation of illusory history ultimately undermines all scientific effort and should be rejected by the evangelical community. 6. In view of the complexity of the issues, Christian scholars must work in community in an effort to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of the relationship between Scripture and the various sciences. Too often evangelical scholars have worked in isolated groups. The theologians have often worked without much insight into developments within geology or other sciences, and geologists have often worked independently of theologians. For example, some of the harmonization schemes that we have reviewed, particularly the more recent ones, were developed by scientists working in relative isolation from biblical scholars. It seems to me that evangelicals can no longer afford to tackle the issue of origins without a lot of cooperative, interdisciplinary discussion. Evangelicalism will be successful in developing a fruitful understanding of the relationship between Scripture and terrestrial history only if biblical scholars work closely with geologists, archeologists, anthropologists, astronomers, paleontologists, and historians and philosophers of science. We can ill afford to remain in isolated academic enclaves shouting at one another. Geologists ought to be more cautious about proposing interpretations of the biblical text on their own than we have been. In turn, biblical scholars ought to be more cautious in insisting that geologists reinterpret their data to conform to some traditional rendering of the text when they have little idea of the compelling force of those data. We will have to work together in the future. 7. Approaches to Genesis 1 that stress the contemporary cultural, historical, and theological setting ofancient Israel are potentiallyfruitful and ought to be worked out more fully. Biblical scholars are, of course, the ones who are qualified to indicate the direction in which biblical interpretation ought to go in the future and to work out the details ofthat program.
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Thus I make no original proposals of my own at this point. Some evangelical scholars have already begun to work in the direction that I am suggesting.231 I suggest that we will be on therighttrack if we stop treating Genesis 1 and the flood story as scientific and historical reports. We can forever avoid falling into the perpetual conflicts between Genesis and geology if we follow those evangelical scholars who stress that Genesis is divinely inspired ancient near eastern literature written within a specific historical context that entailed well-defined thought patterns, literary forms, symbols, and images. It makes sense that Genesis presents a theology of creation that is fully aware of and challenges the numerous polytheistic cosmogonie myths of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the other cultures surrounding Israel by exposing their idolatrous worship of the heavenly bodies, of the animals, and of theriversby claiming that all of those things are creatures of the living God. The stars are not deities. God brought the stars into being. The rivers are not deities. God brought the waters into existence. The animals are not deities to be worshipped and feared, for God created the animals and controls them. Even the "chaos" is under the supreme hand of the living God. Thus Genesis 1 calmly asserts the bankruptcy of the pagan polytheism from which Israel was drawn and that constantly existed as a threat to Israel's continuing faithfulness to the true God of heaven and earth. As a sample of the kind of approach that is potentially fruitful, we might consider Genesis 1 as a preamble to the historical prologue of the Sinaitic covenant as suggested by Kline.232 If so, then Genesis 1 introduces the great divine King who enters into covenant with his people Israel at Sinai. In the first chapter of the Bible we are made privy to the King's council chamber. We see the great King of the universe issuing
See, for example, Meredith G. Kline, "Because It Had Not Rained," WTJ 20 (1958) 146-157; Henri Blocher, In the Beginning (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984); Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1984) 1-114; Gerhard F. Hasel, "The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology," i/Q46 (1974) 81-102; Bruce K. Waltke, "The Creation Account in Genesis 1:1-3," BSac 132 (1975) 327-342. 282 Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1972) 53.
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a series of royal decrees, bringing the ordered world into permanent being by his all-powerful, effective word. In Genesis 1 the King stakes out and establishes his realm, the sphere of his dominion. The King issues the royal decrees, "Let there be," and the King's will is carried out. The decrees of the divine King are recorded as a set of "minutes" or "transactions" by analogy with the decrees of earthly kings. Thus we may view the days not as thefirstseven earthly days or periods of time, but as "days" of royal divine action in the heavenly realm. If we receive an impression of chronology from the chapter, it is a divine "chronology," not an earthly one. Perhaps God's creative work is portrayed in the form of a group of seven days to signify completeness and perfection, thus establishing the weekly pattern of six days of work and one day of rest for Israel as a copy of the divine "week." God'sfinalroyal action is to set up his image in his territory, the created universe. Thus man is set in the earth as God's image and given derived authority and dominion over the King's property.233 Clearly the previous paragraphs present only the barest outline of how Genesis 1 might be viewed. There are many unanswered questions and many details to work out. Moreover, the development of a new approach to the flood will also require the turning over of much new ground. But we cannot let fear of what lies ahead allow us to fall back into the old comfortable approaches and deter us from the task. May God give the entire evangelical community the grace and courage to work together in developing new and deeper insight into the character of his amazing creation and his infallible Word. Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship Calvin College Grand Rapids, Michigan
I am indebted to Professor John Stek for his thoughts about Genesis 1 and its extensive usage of royal-political metaphor.
2SS
SHORT STUDIES
SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGISTS
JOHN BYL
1. Introduction In a recent pair of articles in WTJ under the title "Scripture in the Hands of Geologists,"1 Davis Young discusses the question as to how to relate Scripture and science or, more specifically, Genesis and geology. He examines in detail two approaches among geologists that have been popular over the last 300 years. Thefirstof these is "literalism," which insists that the early chapters of Genesis are literal narratives that report a succession of historical events and that scientific reconstructions of cosmic history should not be at variance with the literal interpretation of the biblical text (p. 4). The second approach is that of "concordism," whichwhile also treating Genesis 1-11 as historical narrativehas harmonized Genesis with scientific findings "by adopting a variety offigurative,symbolic, or broad interpretations of the text" (p. 4). Young concludes that both these approaches are inadequate and that they should be abandoned for a newer approach that does not try to answer technical scientific questions with biblical data: "I suggest that we will be on the right track if we stop treating Genesis 1 and the flood story as scientific and historical reports" (p. 303). The purpose of this paper is to examine Young's analysis of the earlier approaches, to point out a number of difficulties with Young's proposed solution, and to suggest an alternative that is more in line with the traditional view of Scripture. 2. The Preferred Interpretation of Genesis I-II The basic thesis of Young's article is that, given the wide range of interpretation by Christian geologists of the details of the biblical account of creation and the flood, we must conclude that the biblical text doesn't give us information of a scientific nature. In his historical sketch Young describes Davis A. Young, "Scripture in the Hands of Geologists," WTJ 49 (1987) 1-34 and 257-304. 143
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various attempts to explain such events as the flood and its geological consequences in terms of rational secondary causes. As he shows, numerous mechanisms have been proposed. These have involved many ingenious interpretations of such details as the "deep" (Gen 1:2), the "waters above the firmament" (Gen 1:7), and the "fountains of the deep" (Gen 7:11). I concur with Young's conclusion that the Bible does not provide us with a scientifically verifiable mechanism for the flood. Nor does it yield scientific answers to many other questions we may have regarding details of creation and the flood. However, I question whether the geologists' lack of consensus regarding rational mechanisms compels us to doubt the historicity of portions of Genesis 1-11: our inability to find scientific explanations for the biblical account can always be attributed to either our limited scientific understanding or to the occurrence of miraculous divine activity. Furthermore, as Young states (p. 7), the literalists were agreed upon the general features of Genesis 1-11, such as a recent creation in six ordinary days and a global flood. The lack of agreement upon the interpretation of certain details should not, in itself, constitute sufficient grounds for questioning the historicity of the entire Scripture portion. Also, as is evident from Young's account, the variance is due at least partly to the fact that the interpretation of details has often been stretched to lend maximum support to the particular scientific explanation being promoted. It is noteworthy that Young does not question that, leaving aside extrabiblical sources, the literal interpretation of Genesis is the exegetically preferred one (cf. p. 33). His main objection to literalism is not that it misrepresents the biblical text, but that it allegedly distorts the empirical data to fit the biblical text. He goes on to proclaim that "in contrast, all the variations of the concordisi theme give us a Bible that is constantly held hostage to the latest scientific theorizing . .. texts are twisted, pulled, poked, stretched, and prodded to 'agree' with scientific conclusions so that concordism today undermines honest, Christian exegesis" (p. 6). This is a significant assertion from one who, as Young himself remarks, was previously an ardent concordist. Among the concordist devices that Young cites are the treatment of the Genesis days as long periods of time, the postulation of gaps in the Genesis genealogies, and the notion that the Flood was universal only from the point of view of one going through the Flood (p. 5). Young argues that we are compelled by empirical data to conclude that there has been no global flood and that the world is extremely old (p. 297). Thus the crucial question is whether the geological evidence is indeed as unambiguous as Young assesses it to be. 3. The Distinction between Data and Theory The literal interpretation of Genesis is variously contrasted with the "conclusions of the scientific enterprise" (p. 5), "empirical data" (p. 6), "geological evidence" (p. 26), "knowledge about the earth" (p. 26), "empirical geological
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data" (p. 31), "geology" (p. 291), the "results of empirical geological study" (p. 292), "geological knowledge" (p. 293), etc. Regrettably, Young does not present a clear line of demarcation between empirical data and theory, or between genuine knowledge and mere speculation. In science we must always be very careful to distinguish between observations and theories that are devised to explain or extend these observations. The actual empirical geological data (e.g. fossils, geological formations, isotope ratios, etc.) yield direct information only about the present state of affairs. To infer from these what has occurred in the past we must rely upon various theoretical assumptions regarding the relative completeness of our present knowledge of natural processes, the constancy and applicability of these in the past, the absence of miracles, etc. Elsewhere Young implies that he is merely following the evidence of nature, wherever it may lead.2 But the observational data by itself leads nowhere; it does not become evidence for anything until it is interpreted within a given theoretical framework. Since Genesis deals with the distant past, it can conflict not with our present geological data but only with certain theoretical extrapolations of that data. How reliable are such theoretical explanations? In fonner days it was held that theories could be logically derived in an objective manner from the empirical data. During the last half century, however, a drastic shift has occurred in the philosophy of science. It has come to be generally accepted that the origin of scientific theories is largely subjective. For example, Sir Karl Popper, a prominent philosopher of science, concludes that "we must regard all laws or theories as hypothetical or conjectural; that is, as guesses";8 he sees theories as "the free creations of our minds."4 Theories are therefore not so much given to us by nature as imposed by us on nature; they are not so much the result of rational thought as the creations of our irrational intuition. Given the subjective nature of scientific theorizing, it is possible to construct an infinite number of theories to accommodate a given set of empirical data. How, then, can we ever hope to find the correct theory? Since we can't go back into the past we can neither prove nor disprove any particular theory. We may wish to prefer those theories that explain the data in, say, the simplest manner. But how do we know that simpler theories are more likely to be true? Ultimately the choice between competing theories must be made on the basis of prior conceptions as to what the world should be like. Thus it is heavily dependent upon our philosophical and religious commitments.5
Davis A. Young, Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982) 152. 3 Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge (London: Oxford University Press, 1972) 9. 4 Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge, 1963) 192. 5 It is beyond the scope of this paper to present a more detailed account of the nature of scientific theorizing. The subjective nature of science has been demonstrated in such works as T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems (Berkeley:
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No doubt Young is well aware of the above considerations. However, it is essential that he specifically discuss these issues and present sound demonstrations of the alleged reliability of secular geological theory. The establishment of scientific truth involves more than a mere majority vote. I believe that we can accept as "scientific fact" only the basic observational data. It may be argued that even the act of observing is a subjective one and that all data are theory-laden. Perhaps. But in general there is sufficient agreement on the background theory inherent in the observation process to leave us in practice with an undisputed common observational basis. It is when we attempt to explain and extend this data that we depart from our common starting point and enter our separate theoretical worlds, guided by religious choices and philosophical preferences.
4. Science and the Scientific Establishment
When Young states that the literal reading of Genesis is contrary to "the conclusions of the scientific enterprise" or to "the results of science" he implies that all scientists are agreed on this matter. But this is hardly the case. There are still scientists (e.g. the Creation Research Society) who are of the opposite opinion. While such scientists may constitute a very small minority, they are, nevertheless, there. Young appears to find it very difficult to acknowledge their scientific status. Furthermore, what Young refers to as "science" should more properly be denoted as "secular science," for it is based upon certain presuppositions regarding such things as the absence of the supernatural and the irrelevance of the Bible in scientific matters. Other types of science, such as creationism, may be constructed upon other basic assumptions. Perhaps Young is thinking of "the scientific establishment" in terms of such official organizations as the National Academy of Science. This organization has certainly made official pronouncements to the effect that Genesis is incompatible with the conclusions of science. However, when we consider the rationale for such decisions it is clear that this stance is based on a prior commitment to a particular philosophical position. For example, two of the main objections to creationism by the National Academy of Science are that creationism "subordinates evidence to statements based on authority and revelation" and that "it accounts for the origin of life by supernatural means."6 Such assertions illustrate that scientific theorizing is not the objective, value-free exercise that many may deem it to be.
University of California Press, 1977); and Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977). For a more popular account see, for example, Del Ratzsch, Philosophy of Science (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986). 6 Science and Creationism: A Viewfrom the National Academy of Science (Washington: National Academy Press, 1984)
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5. Secular Geology and Creationism The conflict between secular geology and scientific creationism can be viewed as one between competing research programs. The creationists start from the premise that scientific theories should be consistent with the literal interpretation of Genesis. Their basic rule for theory selection is that we should prefer those scientific theories that do not conflict with the biblical data. Thus they devise theories that allow for a young earth, a global flood, and the possibility of miracles. The secular camp, on the other hand, operates under the central premise that all the data is explicable in terms of natural, evolutionary processes. Both sides attempt to explain the empirical data in terms of their own basic premise, fitting all the data into a preconceived mold. This is all part of normal scientific research activity, described by Thomas Kuhn to be "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education."7 In so doing they must devise and apply secondary theories regarding specific geological mechanisms and processes. These secondary theories, based as they are on currently observable phenomena, are open to empirical testing. Yet their possible observational falsification does not falsify the central premise, for it is always possible to save this by constructing other mechanisms that have not yet been falsified. Young has accused the creationists of promoting false theories that are not in accord with the God-given facts.8 But such a charge is unwarranted. He may well have succeeded in pointing out various shortcomings and inconsistencies in their handling of the data or in their proposed explanations. However, such deficiencies are insufficient to falsify the central creationist thesis. They illustrate only the inadequacy of the total creationist model, with all its auxiliary assumptions and theories, in its present form. Given sufficient ingenuity the creationists could always overcome Young's objections by making suitable adjustments to their secondary theories, while still retaining their central thesis. Creationist attempts to falsify evolution fare no better. Although the creationists have cited numerous observational pi* ^nomena that are apparently not readily explicable in terms of the evolutionary model, the evolutionists, too, can always come to the rescue with appropriate secondary hypotheses. In this respect Henry Morris does better than Young when he explicitly addresses the subjectivity of scientific theorizing and attempts to find a criterion by which to measure rival theories: "Of course, either model can be modified to accommodate any set of data, so that neither can befirmlyproved or falsified. However, the model which fits the larger number of data with
7 8
Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 5. Young, Christianity and the Age of the Earth, 163.
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the smaller number of secondary modifications is the one more likely to be true."9 But even here one may well ask why such a model is more likely to be true. Morris certainly presents no compelling grounds for such a belief. Moreover, it is doubtful whether many evolutionists would concur with Morris' judgment that the Flood model is the theory that best fulfills this criterion. The point that is stressed here once again is the subjective nature of the origin, selection, and assessment of scientific theories. All these activities reflect our philosophical starting point. Thus Young's appraisal of the reliability of secular geology vis--vis creationism is too superficial. Again, he should explicitly stateand justifythe criteria for theory selection that he is implicitly applying. These criteria should be shown to be consistent with a Christian worldview. Finally, Young should demonstrate that secular geology best fulfills these criteria.
6. Miracles and Apparent Age
Young does concede one could avoid the force of geological evidence by taking refuge in a literalism that insists on a series of purely miraculous events regarding creation and the Flood (p. 297). T o this possibility he presents a number of objections. His prime concern is that of "apparent age." Young argues that then "any evidence for the elaborate history and antiquity of the earth is purely illusory" (p. 297) and that "no geologist wants to study rocks whose evidences for historical development are purely illusory" (p. 299). More importantly: an instantaneously created, mature creation that shows only an illusory history is also inconsistent with the nature of God and of man as God's image bearer. In the absence of an incontrovertible word from the Lord that he has created an illusion, we must conclude that God would be deceiving us by placing us within a complex world which bears myriad indications of a complicated history that did not actually happen. Mature creation is also incompatible with the character of man as one created in the image of God and given dominion over the earth... why should our intellectual tools be mismatched against an illusory past in an effort which God blessed when he told us to "subdue the earth"? [P. 300] To this we note first of all that the apparent age and history of an object are not properties intrinsic to that object. Rather, they can be inferred only on the basis of the theoretical model that is used to interpret the observed characteristics. The illusion of a particular past history arises only when we view the data through the mirror of a particular set of theoretical premises. Since different models may yield various apparent histories, the choice as to which to accept is dependent upon our criteria for theory selection. Young
9
Henry M. Morris, The Scientific Case for Creation (San Diego: CLP Publishers, 1977)
9.
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has not demonstrated that it is impossible to construct theoretical models that interpret the data in a manner consistent with the traditional biblical chronology. Therefore he has not proven that the "apparent" ages are necessarily at variance with Genesis. A second problem with Young's approach is its apparent denial of the ability of God to perform miracles. In science the presently observed characteristics of an object are explained in terms of a closed chain of postulated past natural causes and effects. Hence any such analysis, when applied to entities of a miraculous origin, must yield erroneous results. Is God being deceptive by using supernatural means, as Young suggests? Surely not. God is free to use any means he desires. We are faced here with a limitation on human knowledge, not on divine action. God can be said to be deceiving us only if he has given his divine sanction on our theoretical assumptions. Since Young has not shown this to be the case, his argument is deficient. One wonders, incidentally, why Young ignores the converse: the notion that the evolutionary picture of the past must be wrong else God is deceiving us in his revealed Word. While Young does grant that the impression of Genesis 1 is one of chronological sequence, he suggests that God is merely accommodating himself here to human understanding (p. 293). But how does Young know this to be the case? Is it not more plausible that any deficiency lies in our fallible scientific theories rather than in God's written Word? Young does not wish to deny all miracles. He mentions in particular the case of Jesus' conversion of water into wine (John 2). However, he claims that here, unlike the situation at creation or at the Flood, the miracle is performed as a "sign" in full view of the servants, with the result that Jesus revealed his glory and his disciples put their faith in him (p. 300). He argues that, in contrast, there were no eyewitnesses at creation and that the flood story is not presented as a "sign." The difficulty with Young's limitations of miracles to these two conditions is that he provides no proof that these are necessary conditions for the performance of miracles. It is easy to find other examples (e.g., the creation of Eve) where there were no eyewitnesses and which are not presented as "signs." In fact, it is precisely in the first chap'ers of Genesis where God is presented as performing many miraculous deeds. 7. The Proper Function of Science A second objection raised by Young is that "any approach to creation which entails creation of illusory history ultimately undermines all scientific effort and should be rejected by the evangelical community" (p. 302). According to Young we can legitimately study (i.e., attempt to discover the processes by which they were formed) only those rocks that were not created instantaneously. Since we can't scientifically distinguish between rocks that were
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formed via natural processes and those that were created, geology is thus undermined. Of course, this difficulty arises as soon as we allow for the possibility of even a single miracle to have occurred in the past. Since a miracle puts into being a new chain of physical causes and effects, any scientific analysis ofthat chain will lead to faulty extrapolations into the past beyond the miracle. Therefore, not knowing what may have been effected by past miracles, we can't determine which objects we can legitimately study. But the evangelical community can hardly be expected to reject the miraculous merely in order to guarantee the legitimacy of scientific extrapolations into the past. Surely it would prefer to safeguard its articles of faith by affirming miracles and attributing any conflict between Genesis and geology to faulty secular presuppositions. Rather than modifying the contents of Scripture, a better approach would be to base our science on biblically valid presuppositions. For example, we could specify that a prime criterion for theory selection be conformity with Scripture. This is essentially the creationist position. Even then we have a problem: there are an infinite number of possible theories compatible with Scripture. Without adequate criteria for theory selection we still have no guarantee that, once we venture beyond the observational and biblical data, we are on the right track. Furthermore, we are still faced with the above difficulty of extrapolating beyond a possible miracle. Another possibility would be to drop the notion that science can acquire knowledge about origins, or for thfmatjter, the unobserved world. We could adopt an instrumentalist view of science10 and restrict the cognitive function of science. This approach treats science as being concerned primarily with practical results, with getting from one set of observations to another. It considers scientific theories as merely useful fictions: the scaffolding that enables technological transitions. No judgments need then be made as to their possible veracity, in recognition of our human inability to know that part of reality lying beyond the observational realm. Note in this regard that the command to "subdue the earth" (Gen 1:28), which Young cites, is more concerned with practical application than with theoretical speculation. Scripture repeatedly emphasizes the limitations of human thought: Job 38-41 stresses man's ignorance regarding origins and deeper questions of nature; 1 Tim 6:20 warns us to avoid the oppositions of scienceor knowledgefalsely so called, etc. Certain texts (e.g. Psalm 19, Romans 1) do state that God reveals himself through nature. However, such revelation is made manifest primarily via our direct observations of nature rather than through our fallible theoretical speculations, and the knowledge thus revealed is of God's attributes rather than of origins.
10 See, for example, John Byl, "Instrumentalism: A Third Option," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 37 (1985) 11-18.
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8. Further Implications It may seem that little harm is done in permitting secular geology to modify our reading of the creation and flood account. Yet such concessions can have far-reaching consequences. For example, we may well ask whether, upon denying the historicity of certain parts of Genesis 1-11 we can be sure of other portions, such as, say, the creation and fall of Adam and Eve. Furthermore, our approval of secular geology involves also the tacit acceptance of its underlying assumptions. I have already pointed out that it in essence denies the possibility of miracles. And we have seen that, at its heart, the "scientific establishment" as represented by the National Academy rejects the notion that the Bible has any bearing on the physical universe. If we must accept the conclusions of secular geology, then why not also those of secular biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology? If the Bible is to capitulate to secular man in the field of geology, why not also in other areas of human reason? Where do we draw the line? Rudolph Bultmann, in his concern to bring Scripture in line with modern science, insisted that all miracles were to be demythologized.1 ! Young's reinterpretation of Genesis 1 as a "royal prologue"12 may still be far removed from Bultmann's reinterpretation of the cross as a symbol of man's selfmastery over his passions.13 Yet both positions were motivated by the same source: a desire to make our reading of the Bible consistent with "scientific facts." Since Young presents us with no definite and justified criteria as to how to determine "scientific facts," the choice is left an arbitrary one. Hence we have no effective means of distinguishing Young's stance from that of Bultmann.
9. Conclusion In summary, Young's analysis of the conflict between the traditional reading of Genesis and secular geology has significant shortcomings. It fails to adequately distinguish between observation and theory. Nor does it sufficiently address the subjective and speculative nature of scientific theorizing. Young's resolution of the conflict is unacceptable to the evangelical community because its accommodation to secular science compromises the confessed infallibility of Scripture. Rudolph Bultmann, "New Testament and Mythology," in Kerygma and Myth (2d ed.; ed. H.W. Bartsch; London: S.P.C.K., 1964) 3-5. 12 It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the exegetical merits of the literary approach to Genesis vis--vis the literal one. What concerns me here, however, is that Young makes the choice solely on the basis of scientific, rather than exegetical, considerations. 13 Bultmann, "New Testament and Mythology," 37.
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My plea is that the proponents of the various approaches to the relationship between science and Scripture will carefully scrutinize their epistemological and methodological assumptions, hidden as these often are. Let them examine these in the light of Scripture and modify them accordingly. They must establish and justify biblically valid criteria not only for distinguishing between scientific "fact" and speculation but also for determining the preferred (i.e., the intended) interpretation of Scripture. My prime concern is that we continue to acknowledge and apply the epistemological supremacy of God's written Word: let us ensure that our human reason is subjected to the authority of Scripture, rather than vice versa. Department of Mathematical Sciences Trinity Western University Langley 7600 Glover Road Langley, British Columbia Canada V3A 4R9
WTJ 51 (1989) 377-87
SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGISTS: A REPLY TO JOHN BYL

DAVIS A. YOUNG
I. The Issue In two recent issues of WTJ I maintained that 300 years of concordistic and literalistic attempts to harmonize the findings of geology and the early chapters of Genesis had failed and that "to achieve an appropriate understanding of the relationship between biblical texts and scientific activity, then literalism and concordism should be abandoned and new approaches developed" (p. 293). Some possible avenues for future work were briefly explored. John Byl challenged my thesis by claiming that empirical data and theory were not adequately distinguished and that I failed to reckon with the subjective and speculative nature of theorizing.2 He questioned "whether the geological evidence is indeed as unambiguous" (p. 144) as I claimed. He also thought I had not sufficiently considered the role of miracles in earth history. In sum, Byl asserted that I had adopted a "secular" theory of geology and had attempted to impose that theory on Scripture. Byl has raised important questions. Although the discussion would best be continued on a good geological field trip, these few pages of the Journal will have to suffice.
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II. Some Aspects of the Christian Philosophy of Geology 1. The Strength of Geological Evidence Is the geological evidence regarding the earth's antiquity and the flood compelling? All manner of unsolved problems remain in geology as in any science. Nevertheless, despite Byl's misgivings and the opposition of "creation scientists," the broad conclusions of geology regarding the antiquity and main lines of historical development of the earth are well established and rest on solid evidential and theoretical grounds. Discussion of the numerous Davis A. Young, "Scripture in the Hands of Geologists," WTJ 49 (1987) 1-34 and 257-304. 2 John Byl, "Scripture and Geologists," WTJ 51 (1989) 143-52.
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lines of massive amounts of evidence is beyond the scope of this article.3 I will simply assert that the evidence points toward an extremely old planet that has experienced a variety of mountain-building episodes, continental migrations, and igneous intrusions, as well as development and extinction of numerous organisms. The fossil evidence4 cannot be construed in a manner that is compatible with the understanding that animals from the entire globe migrated to and from the ark. Deposits unequivocally related to Noah's flood have not been found. The evidence relevant to these conclusions has been critically sifted and evaluated by thousands of competent professional geologists, Christian and non-Christian alike. That the conclusions have been opposed by "creation scientists" is as irrelevant as if I decided to oppose quantum mechanics. The reason is that the opponents of an old earth idea are not qualified geologists who have the technical expertise to make the proper evaluations of the evidence. There is, to my knowledge, only one flood geologist in the United States who has a Ph.D. in geology. Even those committed to flood geology are constrained to admit that the geological features present severe problems for their framework. Christians ought to accept the conclusions of geology with the same degree of tentativeness or confidence with which they are accepted by qualified professional practitioners of the science. Christians should be no more suspicious of the established results of geology than they are of those of chemistry and physics. The burden of proof for rejecting those conclusions lies with the opponents of standard geology.
3 The interested reader should consult the standard texts on historical geology, stratigraphy, or sedimentology for details of the geological evidence. For discussions of geology from a Christian perspective see Dan Wonderly, God's Time-Records in Ancient Sediments: Evidences of Long Time Spans in Earths History (Flint, MI: Crystal Press, 1977); Dan Wonderly, Neglect of Geologic Data: Sedimentary Strata Compared with Young Ear Creationist Writings (Hatfield, PA: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1987); Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution (London: Triangle, 1985) chaps. 5-9; John Wiester, The Genesis Connection (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983); Davis A. Young, Creation and the Flood (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979) chaps. 3 and 9; and Davis A. Young, Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Thousand Oaks, CA: Artisan, 1988) chaps. 6-10. 4 Some of the evidence was noted in my original article. Fossils were interpreted within other frameworks in previous centuries, but those frameworks ultimately collapsed and were abandoned because they were unable to account for the accumulation of observations about fossil distribution. Indeed, prior to the eighteenth century, many thinkers did not even regard fossils as organic. Hence, even a simple "fossil'' is not a pure observational datum, but involves a complex of theoretical considerations.
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2. Is Geology "Secular"? Byl repeatedly dismissed geology by labelling it "secular." He assumed that because many scientific leaders have a naive, faulty philosophy of science,5 geology is founded on "secular" principles. If this assumption is valid, then mathematics, physics, and chemistry are also "secular," and we should suspect the conclusions of "secular" science such as the kinetic theory of gases, the laws of motion, and the theory of ionic bonding. But the assumption is invalid. The science of geology was established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by a diverse group of Europeans that was strongly influenced, if not dominated, by moderate Calviniste. Christian principles played an important role in the development of geology and continue to do so even though they may no longer be recognized by non-Christians. To employ Cornelius Van Til's metaphor, the unbelievers within the sciences are using borrowed capital. Byl and I heartily agree about the undesirable influence of "secular" man. He rightly warned about "secular" sociology, psychology, and anthropology. But these disciplines investigate human beings and their behavior and so inevitably differ significantly from the natural sciences. Acceptance of scientific conclusions about the physical world that may have been developed by a nonChristian will not inexorably lead to capitulation to non-Christian theories of psychology or sociology.
3. The Presuppositions of Geology What principles underlie geology and other natural sciences? At root natural science assumes the ordered nature of the world as well as human ability to make some sense of the world. While scientists commonly do not consider the grounds for the order they assume, Christianity provides those grounds. Christianity claims that modern science is possible only on the biblical presupposition that God is the creator, sustainer, and providential governor of all things. Everything that exists he upholds at every moment by the word of his power. God's world is a world of order, regularity, covenant faithfulness, dependability, and, therefore, some measure of predictability. Moreover, God has created human beings with minds that can come into fruitful contact with the world and can understand it. Sin and rebellion may hamper but do not prevent efforts to understand. These biblical doctrines of a voluntary divine
5 A comment by Etienne Gilson is pertinent here: "Nothing equals the ignorance of the modern philosophers in matters of science, except the ignorance of modern scientists in matters of philosophy."
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creation and of divine governance were highly influential in spawning the modern scientific enterprise in the seventeenth century.6 4. Criteria for Theory Selection If we grant these most basic presuppositions about reality, how should we construct theoretical explanations of the behavior of the physical world? What criteria should be used to assess the validity of those theories? All modern natural sciences employ a variety of criteria in the evaluation of scientific theories, and the fundamental criteria are no different for geology than for other physical sciences.7 A valid scientific theory ought at least to be internally logical, able to account for relevant data, consistent with accepted bodies of knowledge from other relevant disciplines, able to unify a diverse array of observations that may not hitherto have been recognized as directly related, capable of yielding predictions that are testable and sustainable, and fruitful in opening up new avenues of research. No doubt other criteria are also applicable. Given that Christianity posits a world that is a unity and that is rational, that God's knowledge is a unity, and that humans are God's imagebearers, these criteria are consistent with a Christian world view. Whether or not a scientific theory meets all these criteria is invariably a collective judgment call on the part of the community of qualified practitioners of the appropriate science. Given the propensity of scientists to disagree with one another and to make differing assessments of various bodies of data, it must be regarded as a rare and striking event when a theory achieves the status of a near consensus. III. Accounting for Relevant Data Two of these criteria need closer inspection. First, a valid theory in any discipline must account for relevant observations satisfactorily; it must be empirically constrained. Byl, however, wrote of the "subjective and speculative" nature of scientific theorizing. He dismissed the notion that obser-
6 For some discussions of the religious influences on the development of early modern science see, e.g., Michael B. Foster, "The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science," Mind 43 (1934) 446-68; Eugene M. Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth Century Thought (Grand R Eerdmans, 1977); Stanley Jaki, The Origin of Sdence and the Science of its Origin (South Bend, IN: Regnery Gateway, 1979); Reijer Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Sdence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972); and Colin A. Russell, Cross-Currents: Interactions between Science and Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985). 7 On criteria for theory selection and evaluation see Ernan McMullin, "Values in Science," PSA 2 (1982) 1-28, and chap. 2 in Howard Van Till, Davis A. Young, and Clarence Menninga, Sdence Held Hostage (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988).
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vations are evidence for anything apart from a theoretical framework of interpretation. He wrote as if totally inert data passively waited for one of an infinite number of theoretical frameworks to be superimposed on them on subjective grounds. Popper was favorably quoted to the effect that theories are "free creations of our mind." Three things may be said in response. First, there is, of course, an important role for speculation and creative hypothesizing in science. Nevertheless, a speculation will eventually end up on the intellectual scrap heap unless it satisfactorily accounts for a wide range of observations. Virtually all of Byl's infinite number of theories will rapidly be discarded. Only appropriate and valid theories will "make sense" of data. Secondly, observations may carry weight in spite of our theoretical frameworks. Surely that is the case with the Bible. Although we cannot help but approach the Bible with certain preconceptions, views, and values that shape the way that we interpret and read the Word, the Reformed tradition has always insisted upon openness to the power of the Word and Spirit. Is there not an independent, objective power in Scripture itself that constantly challenges, shapes, and forces us to adjust our values, presuppositions, and world views? The biblical data have an impact on us that may lead us to rethink our explanatory frameworks. Our frameworks of biblical interpretation are not rigid and fixed forever but are themselves affected by the biblical data. So it is in geology. Of course, the observations that we make about rocks and mountains are interpreted within a theoretical framework. But precisely because rocks, fossils, minerals, and mountains are creatures of the living God, and precisely because God is immanent in and revealed through them, they have power over against us and our theories. These created objects do affect our thinking. There is an evidential pressure put on us by what we observe. It cannot be otherwise when we are confronted by what God has made. Precisely because of the force of geological observations made over the centuries Christian geologists have gradually adjusted their theoretical frameworks of explanation so that they could satisfactorily account for what they observed.8 In the third place, theories may be "free creations of our minds," but some geological theories don't require vast inputs of creativity and imagination. The creative element is perhaps less important in aspects of geology than in more abstract disciplines like physics because geology deals with objects and phenomena that are part of the experience of ordinary people not trained in
8 That is precisely what I sought to document in my pair of articles. In previous centuries scholars interpreted geological features in terms of an allegedly biblical theoretical framework but that framework was simply unable to bear the weight of what was actually discovered in God's world. My own early fascination with the flood geology of Whitcomb and Morris collapsed because of the pressure of repeated geological observations.
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the sciences. For example, the rock layers from which we attempt to reconstruct the history of the earth contain many features that are widely familiar. The conception that such a history may be constructed arises by analogy with our experience of stacking of layered objects in sequence. We know that stacking requires the passage of time, and we know that the layers on the bottom of a stack get there before the superposed layers. Layers of rock are commonly composed of familiar objects like pebbles or sand grains. The layers may contain features closely resembling mud cracks, ripple marks, animal tracks, skeletal parts, and raindrop prints. Can the geologist be excused for theorizing that those features originally were mud cracks, ripple marks, animal tracks, and so on because of experience with known modern examples? We theorize about these features in terms of established knowledge of modern-day analogs. That means that we theorize that fossilized mud cracks formed the way modern ones do, that is, on water-saturated mud flats that have subsequently become thoroughly desiccated. Such theories constructed by analogy with present features and phenomena generally account satisfactorily for the observations. Other theories of strata have not ' explained those features nearly so satisfactorily. We can even use our knowledge of floods to conclude that a universal flood does not satisfactorily account for the features of rock strata. IV. Agreement with Other Bodies of Knowledge Second, a valid theory in any discipline should also be consistent with other relevant bodies of knowledge. Our explanations of rock formation are consistent with what is already known about the behavior of mud, animals, sand dunes, and so on. Geological theories should also be consistent with established principles of physics, chemistry, and biology. We would not propose a theory of sedimentation that violated the principle of gravitation. Byl suggested that another relevant body of knowledge with which a valid geological theory might agree is the Bible: "We could specify that a prime criterion for theory selection be conformity with Scripture" (p. 150). He rightly recognized that there were problems with that criterion. Here are some problems that he did not consider. 1. Is Interpretation of the Bible Unproblematicf Because Byl was troubled that established geological theories conflict with literalistic or concordistic interpretations of parts of Genesis 1-11, he questioned the validity of the allegedly "secular" geological theories. He asked, "Is it not more plausible that any deficiency lies in our fallible scientific theories rather than in God's written Word?" (p. 147). He asserted that "rather than modifying the contents of Scripture, a better approach would be to base our science on biblically valid presuppositions" (p. 150). And he
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said that "since Genesis deals with the distant past, it can conflict not with our present geological data but only with certain theoretical extrapolations of that data" (p. 145). The quotations imply that interpretation of the Bible is unproblematic. The content of the Bible was repeatedly confused with his interpretation of it. Byl seemed to assume that "Scripture" is identical to "the traditional understanding of Scripture." In response to the three quotations we may assert that, of course, there is no deficiency in God's written Word. Maybe, however, the deficiency lies in our fallible theological theories rather than in God's creation. My original article suggested that not God's written Word but our exegesis of parts ofthat Word may be deficient.91 no more advocated any modification of the contents of Scripture than Byl advocated a change in the contents of the created world. I advocated the possibility of a modification of interpretation of those contents. And Genesis can't conflict with the realities of creation, but our fallible exegesis can conflict with our fallible scientific interpretation. Byl's critique implied that natural science, especially geology, is the only discipline that needs to distinguish between observation and theory. He ignored the fact that our understanding of the biblical text is also filtered through theoretical frameworks. All one needs to do is to look at the profession of biblical studies to realize how value-laden and subjective is that discipline! Exegesis and theology are as strongly affected by the approach one takes as is science. There is more consensus among geologists about the proper interpretation of rocks than there is about the proper interpretation of the Bible among theologians and biblical scholars, even among those guided by the Holy Spirit. Christians do well to remember that church history is rich in examples of scientific discovery and theory assisting the church to arrive at an improved interpretation of the text. Ps 93:1 says: "The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved." But we do not question the rotation of the earth, its revolution about the sun, or its movement through the galaxy. Although the heliocentric theory of solar-system mechanics flagrantly violates the literal interpretation of the text, it is compatible with the Bible. Ps 93:1 does not affirm heliocentricity, but the verse's pronouncement about the immobility of the earth is not a comment on the physical motion of the planet, so there is no inconsistency. Heliocentric theory "agrees" with Scripture by not being inconsistent with it. Heliocentricity and Ps 93:1 are complementary. We could insist that any valid theory from the realm of physics, chemistry, or geology must also be consistent with biblical knowledge. A scientific theory, for example, the kinetic theory of gases, may not necessarily be in clear harmony with Scripture for the simple reason that Scripture may say nothing
9 The reader is invited to consult the perceptive article by Clark H. Pinnock, "Climbing out of a Swamp," Int 43 (1989) 143-55.
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directly relevant about that theory. Nevertheless a valid theory must not be inconsistent with the biblical data properly interpreted. Given the rapid developments today in biblical studies we need caution in making pronouncements about what is certain in Genesis 1-11. We cannot always assume ahead of time that we already have the correct biblical interpretation when a new scientific theory comes along. Frequently it has required establishment and acceptance of a valid scientific theory to point out that what was thought to be valid biblical knowledge needed to be rethought and that a new interpretation of the Bible had to be developed. Such may be the case in the matter of geology and the early chapters of Genesis.
2. The Role of Miracles in Sdence Byl also suggested that geology should take into account the possibility of miracle. Although noting that I said that one could avoid the force of geological evidence by appeal to miraculous events, Byl nevertheless charged that my approach "in essence denies the possibility of miracles" (p. 151), and he spoke of "its apparent denial of the ability of God to perform miracles" (p. 149). But I insisted on God's ability to perform miracles (p. 298). Furthermore, geology can no more dispute the possibility of divine miracle than can physics, chemistry, or mathematics.10 Science, as Byl rightly pointed out, is incapable of judging whether or not miracles have occurred. As my article stated, however, the question is not whether God can perform miracles when and where he chooses but whether he did perform miracles during the flood and during the early history of the earth. As in our reconstruction of human history so in our reconstruction of the geological past we assume that God acted mediately in the absence of unequivocal biblical evidence to the contrary. Byl must demonstrate on solid biblical grounds precisely what geological events and phenomena require miracle for explanation. Otherwise science must be excused for proceeding under its normal rules of inquiry. Obviously the initial creation of the universe was miraculous, but I doubt that the Bible demands miracles during prehuman earth history and during the flood. I am particularly skeptical of claims that the flood was replete with miracles. Many commentators assert that the text does not demand miracle, but those who do appeal to miracles almost invariably invoke them only when they cannot explain some aspect of the flood on "natural" grounds. Miracles must not be used as a cover for our ignorance.
10 We need to stop assuming that the most vocal and blatant atheists are the authentic spokesmen for genuine science. Simply because some prominent scientists claim that science denies the reality of miracles or is antithetical to religion or opposes Christianity, we are under no obligation to believe that it is so. There are many scientists who are a little less philosophically naive than some of the atheists and agnostics and who have a much better sense of the limitations of science.
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I suggested that miracles were generally used as signs and that eyewitnesses were present. Byl proposed the creation of Eve as an example of a miracle where no eyewitnesses were present. But weren't both Adam and Eve there? Because God talked with Adam and Eve in the garden, Eve would learn that she had been brought into existence by God's miraculous power. Adam would certainly have realized that. Byl also begged the question when he asserted that "it is precisely in the first chapters of Genesis where God is presented as performing many miraculous deeds" (p. 149). Which are these, and why? Byl dismissed my argument that if we explain the geological record in terms of one sheer miracle of creation then we cannot define a boundary this side of which we may study rocks scientifically. He claimed that all miracles somehow interfere with the chain of cause and effect. Perhaps so, but even if true, the sciences of physics, chemistry, and astronomy are unaffected. The conclusions of astronomy regarding eclipses and the motions of the solar system are not affected by biblical miracles like the star of Bethlehem, Joshua's long day, or the sun going backward on Ahaz's sundial. The ascension of Jesus does not affect the validity of the theory of gravitation, nor does the floating axe head affect our theories of buoyancy and viscosity. We simply have singularities that do not fit the theory. At least in human history we know when and what the miracles were, but geological history would be completely undermined by bringing in miracles about which we have no information at all. More to the point, of no other biblical miracles do we still have the products of those miracles to throw us off the track in a scientific investigation. For example, we no longer have the bodies of Adam and Eve or of Jesus. We have no idea what mass of salt in the Dead Sea valley might be Lot's wife. We no longer have the results of the plagues of Egypt. We don't have the floating axe head. We don't have the wine that Jesus made at Cana. In contrast, we still do have a staggeringly mountainous mass of geological phenomena. Start invoking miracles for which we have no evidence and our understanding of geological history completely vanishes. The geological record presents an overwhelming impression of vast antiquity and complex processes. Of course, that impression comes through our framework of interpretation, but it is the only framework that has ever successfully yielded fruitful theories or made sense of the geological data. If the mud cracks, ripple marks, and fossils had all been the result of a miraculous instantaneous act of inception, God could not have done a better job of confusing us. We would never have suspected miracle, and we didn't have the advantage of seeing the miracle. Byl, however, asserted that "God can be said to be deceiving us only if he has given his divine sanction on our theoretical assumptions" (p. 149). But God has not sanctioned atomic theory, gravitational theory, the cell theory of biology, the fractional crystallization theory of igneous rock formation, or the kinetic theory of gases either. Yet no one is claiming that God is actually performing constant miracles today even though it certainly looks as if things are behaving in accordance with
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those theories. We don't appeal to miracles in the behavior of atoms or gravity. If there were such an appeal, we would very likely complain that God was confusing us even though he hadn't sanctioned our theories. In my article I also asked, "Why should our intellectual tools be mismatched against an illusory past in an effort which God blessed when he told us to 'subdue the earth'?" (p. 300). Curiously, Byl restricted the cultural mandate to practical application, but practical applications repeatedly arise out of theory. We could never have developed much of our technology without the development of electrical theory. Consider how much oil has been discovered by the application of reservoir theory. As physicist Ludgwig Boltzmann wrote: "There is nothing more practical than theory." To restrict the cultural mandate to the practical is arbitrary and violates the integrity of man as divine image-bearer. 3. What Rocks May Be Studied? If the Bible is really a guide to scientific conclusions, then the burden of proof rests on Professor Byl to tell practicing geologists what rocks they can legitimately study in accordance with scientific principles and what rocks they must attribute to miracles. But to provide that guidance, one not only needs to show unequivocal evidence of miracle from Scripture but also must have an intimate acquaintance with geology in the field in order to know just what rocks may and may not be evaluated sdentifically. It is easy to dismiss geology from a desk. But for the dismissal to carry any weight at all with geologists, the one dismissing geology must know geology in order to discount it knowledgeably. But then something marvelous will happen. In the process of learning geology, a person who is truly open to the wonder of God's creative activity will find himself or herself unavoidably confronted by the force of geological evidence that is not so easily explained away as the product of miracle once it is observed in the field again and again. It is small wonder that the dozens of trained Christian geologists with whom I am acquainted are agreed about the major conclusions of the science. V. Bible and Science in Reevaluating the Text Finally, Professor Byl thought that "it is noteworthy that Young does not question that, leaving aside extrabiblical sources, the literal interpretation of Genesis is the exegetically preferred one. His main objection to literalism is not that it misrepresents the biblical text, but that it allegedly distorts the empirical data to fit the biblical text" (p. 144). And in a footnote he observed, "What concerns me here, however, is that Young makes the choice solely on the basis of scientific, rather than exegetical, considerations" (p. 151 n. 12). But I do believe that there are strong biblical grounds for departing from traditional readings of Genesis 1-11 at a number of points. One might con-
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sider the fact that the seven-day structure of Genesis 1 resembles its usage as a literary convention in ancient Near Eastern epic literature, that other biblical texts imply that death was normal among animals prior to the fall, or that the language of the flood narrative does not demand geographical universality. Any number of qualified theologians can discuss those matters in more detail than I can. My concern was to present historical and geological considerations from my area of expertise that are relevant to the discussion about these chapters. I've simply added to internal biblical evidence extrabiblical reasons for reconsidering some traditional readings of Genesis 1-11. Often in the past, extrabiblical discoveries pressured theologians into seeing textual evidence that was there all the time. Consider that archaeological discoveries have led to the recognition of many textual features that were overlooked until their importance was made clear by the archaeology. Or consider how science nudged exegetes to reconsider the reading of texts like Ps 93:1 in the days of Galileo. That is what geology is doing today. The sooner the church develops a healthy attitude towards believing science and begins to regard science not as a threat but as a God-given tool for leading to an improved understanding of Scripture, the better for the church. The time is long overdue for us to stop hiding from what the Creator God of the Bible has put into our world. Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies Calvin College Grand Rapids, Michigan 49506

Scripture in The Hands of Geologists (By Davis Young and John Byl)

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Scripture in The Hands of Geologists (By Davis Young and John Byl)

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Reformed Academic, 16 March 2012

Westminster Theological Journal can be found online at www.wts.edu/resources/wtj.html .

WTJ 49 (1987) 1-34

SCRIPTURE IN THE HANDS OF GEOLOGISTS (PART ONE)*

WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL