The Problem with Biblical Literalism: Varieties of Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Young Earth Creationism.

 The Problem with Biblical Literalism: Varieties of Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Young Earth Creationism. 

McGrath, Alister E. Science & Religion: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010

Young, Donald B.De. Thousands not Billions: Challenging an Icon of Evolution, Questioning the Age of the Earth. Green Forest: New Leaf Publishing Group, Inc, 2005.

Moreland, James Porter and John Mark Reynolds. Three Views on Creation and Evolution. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. 

The idea that the world is created is of fundamental importance to many religions, especially Christianity and Judaism. It is important to draw a distinction between “creation” and “creationism,” as these two are often confused, especially in popular debates and media presentations. A belief in creation is found in all major religions. Within Christianity, this can be stated in terms of a general belief that God brings everything into being and sustains it. The British writer John Polkinghorne explains creation as a belief “that the mind and the purpose of a divine Creator lie behind the fruitful history and remarkable order of the universe which science explores.” It is thus an ontological, not a chronological, doctrine – in other words, it is concerned with affirming the ultimate dependence of everything upon God, not with providing a detailed account of the mechanisms and timeframes of the origins and development of the universe.

The important point is that the term “creation” is open to multiple interpretations, some of which embrace and others of which exclude biological evolution. The movement which is widely known as “creationism” adds specific timescales and processes to a general belief in creation. where most Christians regard them as secondary to the more general belief that all things ultimately owe their origins to God.

Young earth creationism (YEC) is the belief that God directly created the universe in six literal days and that the earth is relatively young. Young Earth creationists usually place the age of the earth at 6,000 years (10,000 years being an upper limit). Other points held by young Earth creationists include the occurrence of a global flood during Noah’s day, God’s creation of the world with apparent age, and (often) the existence of a single continent before the flood. Young earth creationism is more biblical.

Young earth creationists often call themselves biblical creationists because their position takes a direct, literal interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. Young earth creationism views Genesis as a historical record of what actually happened, not an allegory or metaphor. Young earth creationism interprets the words day, evening, and morning without symbolism, as plain terms meant to be understood literally. Young earth creationism keeps the creation of the plants, sun, and animals in the biblical sequence, whereas old earth creationism usually rearranges the order listed in Genesis. Young Earth creationists believe that when Romans 5:12 says “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin,” it is saying that death did not exist prior to Adam, while old earth creationists believe that Romans 5:12 only refers to human death and insist that a lot of dying happened (billions of years’ worth) before Adam appeared.

Young Earth Creationism, for example, argues that a general belief in creation must be supplemented by an additional a specific belief that creation occurred by specific, non-natural divine events over a period of six “days” roughly 6,000 years ago, rather than by God’s creative actions through the natural processes of stellar, chemical, and biological evolution.

The idea that the world was created is one of the most widely encountered and basic religious ideas, and finds expression in the various religions of the world. The dominant form of the doctrine of creation is that associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Both old earth creationism and Young Earth creationism seek to solve the apparent conflict between science and the Bible in regard to the age of the earth. What is the apparent conflict? If the book of Genesis is interpreted strictly literally, it seems to indicate that the earth and the universe are around 6,000 years old. In contrast, various scientific dating methods place the age of the earth at around 4.5 billion years and the age of the universe around 14.6 billion years.

Neither old earth creationism nor young earth creationism teaches that the Bible is wrong. Generally speaking, both old earth and young earth creationists believe in the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of God’s Word. What differs between these approaches is one’s view on what the Bible is, in fact, saying. It’s a matter of interpretation.

Old Earth Creationists sometimes called ‘progressive creationism”says that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, based on the geologic timescale, carbon dating, and other common dating methods. Variations of old earth creationism include progressive creationism, the day-age theory, the gap theory, and theistic evolution. It believe a strictly literal approach is not the correct way to interpret the early chapters of Genesis. They view Genesis 1–2 as being primarily symbolic and/or poetic. Young Earth creationists interpret Genesis 1–2 as a literal, historical account of how God created the universe. Young Earth creationists question why, if the rest of Genesis is historical, should the first two chapters be interpreted differently? Old earth creationists question why, if the Bible uses symbolism in many other books, can’t metaphor be used in Genesis?

The third view on Creationism is Fully Gifted Creation.

According to this view, evolutionary creation (also called theistic evolution), natural evolution was God's method of creation, with the universe designed so physical structures (galaxies, stars, planets) and complex biological organisms (bacteria, fish, dinosaurs, humans) would naturally evolve.  This view is described by Van Till.

The creation was gifted from the outset with functional integrity — a wholeness of being that eliminated the need for gap-bridging interventions to compensate for formational capabilities that the Creator may have initially withheld from it" so it is "accurately described by the Robust Formational Economy Principle — an affirmation that the creation was fully equipped by God with all of the resources, potentialities, and formational capabilities that would be needed for the creaturely system to actualize every type of physical structure and every form of living organism that has appeared in the course of time.

The theme of “God as creator” is of major importance within the Old Testament. Perhaps one of the most significant affirmations which the Old Testament makes is that nature is not divine. The Genesis creation account stresses that God created the moon, sun, and stars. The significance of this point is too easily overlooked. Each of these celestial entities was worshiped as divine in the ancient world. By asserting that they were created by God, the Old Testament is insisting that they are subordinate to God, and have no intrinsic divine nature.

Remarks on Creationism

It would be unthinkable for any Christian not to confess, “I believe in creation.”The worldview summarized in the biblical doctrine of creation is one of the most fundamental sets of doctrines revealed to us by God. It reveals to us that the God who loves us is also the God who created us and all things, and establishes the identity between the God of religious faith and the God of physical reality. Our belief in creation underlies our trust in the reality of a physical and moral structure to the universe, which we can explore as scientists and experience as persons.

Our belief in creation enables us to see that the universe and everything in it depends moment by moment upon the sustaining power and activity of God. Our belief in creation provides the foundation for our faith that we are not the end-products of meaningless processes in an impersonal universe, but men and women made in the image of a personal God. Our belief in “creation out of nothing” affirms that God created the universe freely and separately, and rejects the alternatives of dualism and pantheism. To worship God as Creator is to emphasize both his transcendence over the natural order and his imminence in the natural order. It is to recognize that his mode of existence as Creator is completely other than our mode of existence as created.

To appreciate God as Creator is to recognize that the creation is intrinsically good, and that sin and evil do not arise ultimately from properties of that creation such as finitude and temporality. The rationale for scientific investigation, the assurance of ultimate personal meaning in life, and the nature of evil as an aberration on a good creation are al intrinsic to such an appreciation.

When it is implied that creation and evolution are necessarily mutually exclusive, or when the word “creation” is used as if it were primarily a scientific mechanism for origins, a profound confusion of categories is involved.

The key to much of the evolution controversy lies in the recognition of the necessity and propriety of descriptions of the same phenomena on different levels of reality.

How tragic it often is when Christians, seeking to avoid the errors of philosophical evolutionism, promulgate the falsehood that the efficacy of faith in the atonement of Christ effectively depends upon the dogmatic acceptance of creationism and the dogmatic rejection of any evolutionary processes as descriptions of God’s activity in establishing creation.