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"Tracing the
future of the Universe from the present onward is not nearly as hard as tracing
the past: we do not need any new way of looking at the world. All that we really
need to plot out the future are a few good measurements". James
Trefil, Smithsonian Magazine, June 1983.
INTRODUCTION
This quote represents a
typical challenge from the secular humanist camp. Do you see what has happened?
Completely self-assured about their "Big-Bang" theory of the world's
beginning, they now assert with equal intrepidity their predictions about the
world's end. God is not invited or involved - even as a spectator! But at least
they are logical and consistent: the godless overture is matched with a godless
finale. A much stranger phenomenon today is Christians who profess to believe
what God says about the end of the world (Last Judgement, Heaven, etc.), but at
the same time refuse to accept what He has said about its beginning.
To an educated Christian,
the early chapters of Genesis present a harder intellectual problem than any
other part of the Bible. Here he finds an account of the world totally different
from what he has been taught at school and university, where the immense age of
the earth and stars, and the Theory of Evolution, are assumed to be facts as
undeniable as H2O = water or 2 times 2 equals 4.
Firstly, if he consults
the Encyclopaedia Britannica he will find these words:
"That the records of
prehistoric ages in Genesis 1-11 are at complete variance with modern science
and archaeological research, is unquestionable."
Secondly, Genesis 3:17-19
appears to teach that some drastic change came over the earth as a punishment
for man's disobedience. In this place, John Calvin comments:
"The inclemency of
the air, frost, thunders, unseasonable rains, drought, hail, and whatever is
disorderly in the world, are the fruits of sin".
But Science teaches that
death, disease, famine and drought, thorns and thistles, and "Nature red in
tooth and claw" have prevailed on this planet for scores of millions of
years. The doctrine of the Curse has simply dropped out of the thinking of
modern philosophers because no fossils have been discovered of straw-eating
lions or vegetarian wolves. Once again there seems to be a head-on collision
with the Bible.
Thirdly, Genesis 6 9
appears to teach that there was once a year-long Flood covering the whole globe;
but in the Encyclopaedia Britannica we find this flatly denied:
"External evidence
(i.e. geology) recognises no universal deluge.....Genesis preserves not literal
history but popular traditions of the past.....many of the stories (other
nations besides the Jews have Flood traditions) may arise from the inundations
caused by the far-reaching tidal-waves that accompany earthquakes.....Whenever
flood-traditions appear to describe vast changes on the surface of the globe,
these traditions are probably not the record of contemporary witnesses, but the
speculation of much later thinkers".
With this agrees the
dictum of G.E. Wright in his "Biblical Archaeology" (1962): "The
Flood is an exaggeration of local inundation".
To sum up the issue: in
Genesis 1-11 we are faced with three facts which the Bible appears very clearly
to affirm, and which science equally clearly denies:
1. The creation of the
universe in six days of 24 hours.
2. The Curse on the Earth.
3. The universal Flood.
In this brief article we
will concentrate especially on the first of these mighty facts examining the
reasons why there is no intellectual discrepancy in a faithful adherence to the
literal interpretation of early Genesis.
I. HISTORICAL
PRECEDENTS
It may be well first to
remind ourselves that the re-interpretation of Scripture is an old game:
"You hold the
tradition of men.....all too well you reject the commandment of God, that you
may keep your tradition.....making the word of God of no effect through your
tradition which you have handed down". (Mark 7:8-13).
We find this attitude of
Christ to the Old Testament uniformly consistent throughout His ministry - in
His answers to the devil, to enquirers about divorce, about the Sabbath, about
eternal life, and on a dozen other occasions. He never re-interpreted Scripture.
He simply quoted the words as being in themselves perspicuous, intelligible and
meaningful, in the plain sense of common speech. Why did this offend the
Pharisees? They were certainly fundamentalists. They believed in an inerrant
Book. But they had re-interpreted the words to suit their own life-style.
As we move on through the
New Testament we find again and again a similar resistance to new truth - or,
rather, to old truths rediscovered: "O fools and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken". Notice that the Lord did
not blame them for failing to understand dark and difficult passages. He did
blame them for failing to believe prophecies like Isaiah 53 where the sufferings
of Christ are clearly foretold. Once again, Bible-believers were blind to Bible
truth because of current philosophy - in this case expectation of a conquering
Messiah.
We can follow the same
theme through church history. As has often been pointed out, the Pope believed
95% of what Martin Luther believed, including the plenary inspiration and
authority of the Bible, and "the just shall live by faith". But
the schoolmen had re-interpreted St. Paul's words to fit in with the medieval
ecclesiastical system. It was 'all a matter of interpretation'.
So it was in the days of
John Wesley. Anglican prelates disapproved of open-air preaching, in spite of
obvious precedents in the Acts of the Apostles. Baptist elders tried to
discourage Carey: "God can take care of the heathen without your help,
Master William!" - in spite of Mark 16:15. They re-interpreted Christ's
command to suit the laissez-faire philosophy of 18th century England.
When George Muller and
Hudson Taylor affirmed that it was possible for Christian work to be supported "by
prayer alone to God alone", Christian businessmen laughed them to
scorn. The promises had always been there, in Matthew 6, but "little
faith" had re-interpreted them as being contrary to experience.
So we see that pioneers of
spiritual truth are often ridiculed in their own generation. Uncomfortable
doctrines are jettisoned to prevent them rocking the boat. Outward profession of
conformity to Scripture is retained even when practice and teaching differ
widely from its pattern. And not infrequently there is heavy reliance on
tradition: "Old So-and-So was a great man of God and he believed
this...so it must be OK for us too!" We are reminded of Kipling's
brilliant satire, "The Disciple":
"He that hath a
gospel
For all earth to own
Though he etch it on the steel,
Or carve it on the stone
Not to be misdoubted
Through the after-days
It is his disciple
Shall read it many ways."
The Fourth Commandment was
indeed carved on stone:"Six days shalt thou labour...for in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth...". But 20th .C. disciples have "read
it many ways".
II. DOES THE BIBLE
TEACH A LITERAL SIX-DAY CREATION?
Obviously there is no
point in defending a doctrine which God has not revealed, and many evangelical
scholars would answer "NO" to the above question. Later, we shall
examine some of their theories. But first let us look at the positive arguments
for believing that the right answer is "YES".
1. The Demands of
the Context.
The first reason for
believing that the Bible teaches a literal six-day creation is this: the context
demands it. The word for "day" in Hebrew (yom), as in many
other languages, is used with a variety of meanings; but in nearly every case it
is obvious from the context what is meant. In Genesis 1:5 the word is used to
mean, first, daylight, and secondly to include the hours of light and darkness.
It seems very probable, therefore, that a 24-hour day is intended.
It has often been objected
that, since the sun was not 'made' until the fourth day, the first three days at
least cannot have been solar days. To this Calvin supplies the answer:
"It did not happen by
accident that the light preceded the sun and the moon. To nothing are we more
prone than to tie down the power of God to those instruments, the power of which
He employs. The sun and the moon supply us with light: and according to our
notions we so include this power to give light in them, that if they were taken
away from the world it would seem impossible for any light to remain. Therefore
the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that He holds in His
hand the light, which He is able to impart to us without the sun and moon".
Only faith can perceive
this.
2. The Use of the
Word "Day".
Secondly in nearly every
other Old Testament passage where "days" is used with a numeral
(e.g. first day), it means literal days of 24 hours. The only
possible exceptions are Daniel 8:14 and 12:11,12; but these chapters are
visions, a type of literature entirely different from Genesis One, which bears
all the marks of being "sober history" (E.J. Young).
There is an interesting
parallel to Genesis 1:1 2:4 in Numbers 7, where we read that "the
princes offered for the dedication of the altar in the day that it was
anointed". We might have thought that all offered on the same day, had
not the narrative gone on to inform us that they offered on twelve separate
days. We have "the first day...second day...etc." exactly as in
Genesis 1; and common sense tells us that the word "day" is
used in Numbers 7:10 with a comprehensive meaning, while in the rest of the
chapter it is used literally to denote a period of 24 hours. Similarly common
sense tells us that in Genesis 2:4, the word "day" is used with
a comprehensive meaning, summing up the six individual and literal days of the
previous chapter.
3. The Fourth
Commandment.
Thirdly, God's commentary
in Exodus 20 states that God's working week and man's working week are exactly
parallel: "Six days shalt thou labour...for in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is...".
E.J. Young comments: "The
Fourth Commandment actually refutes the non-chronological interpretation of
Genesis One". Let us remember, too, that there is no possibility of the
Ten Commandments being man's interpretation of God's word. If any part of the
Bible is verbally inspired, this must be, since we are told it was the writing
of God written with the finger of God on tablets which were the work of God
(Exodus 31:18; 32:16). Dr. Marcus Dods (1900) wrote: "If the word 'day'
in this chapter (Gen.1) does not mean a period of 24 hours, the interpretation
of Scripture is hopeless".
For at least two
generations this commandment has caused acute embarrassment to the friends of
Christianity, and glee to her foes. Thousands of Bible readers have dismissed
all ten commandments as an antiquated tribal code unfit for 20th century man,
because of this "totally unscientific concept" annexed to the Fourth.
How very "unwise"
of God to set all morality at risk by thrusting such a bald, bold, ridiculous
statement in the middle of His otherwise reasonable table of laws
ridiculous, that is, unless after all it is true!
4. The
Interpretation of Older Commentators .
The fourth reason for
believing that the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour days is this: the vast
majority of Jewish and Christian scholars down the ages have believed them to be
so. Origen, it is true, thought they might represent ages; but since there is
nothing whatever in the text of Scripture to support this idea, it died a
natural death.
We have already quoted
Calvin. We can also quote confessions and creeds of the Christian church. The
Westminster Shorter Catechism (1644) reads:
"Q. What is the work
of creation?
A. The work of creation is God's making all things of nothing, by the word of
His power, in the space of six days, and all very good".
Scott's Commentary (1780)
usually mentions varying interpretations where they exist, but he says nothing
about any possibility of the "days" being other than 24 hour days.
Only since the middle of the 19th century, when geologists began dogmatically to
assert the immense antiquity of the earth, have Christians begun to doubt. Thus
Keil and Deilitzsh (1875) know of other views, but emphatically reject them:
"If the days of
creation are regulated by the interchange of light and darkness, they must be
regarded not as periods of time of incalculable duration, or of thousands of
years, but as simple earthly days".
Professor S.R. Driver
examines and refutes all the attempts to reconcile Genesis 1 with the dogmas of
science, and concludes:
"Verses 14-18 cannot
be legitimately interpreted except as implying that, in the conception of the
writer luminaries had not previously existed; and that they were 'made' and
'set' in their places in the heavens AFTER the separation of sea and
land...".
Finally, the German
scholar Gerhard von Rad in his monumental Commentary on Genesis (1960) writes as
follows: "Unquestionably the days are to be regarded as literal days of
24 hours". What is interesting here is that both Driver and von Rad
would explain the Six-Day Creation as a mistaken and primitive idea: we call on
them only as acknowledged linguistic experts to tell us what the original writer
really MEANT.
5. The Failure of
Modern Commentators.
The fifth reason for
believing that the days of Genesis 1 are literal days is this: all attempts to
explain the early chapters of Genesis as anything other than "sober
history" have, sooner or later, been proved inconsistent, incoherent or
erroneous. The explanation often poses more problems than it solves.
III. ORIGINS OF THE
NON-LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS
Lord Macaulay writes of
John Milton:
"His attacks were
directed against those deeply-seated errors on which almost all abuses are
founded: the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of
innovation".
One of the "eminent
men" most often quoted by writers of the
"God-Worked-Through-Evolution" school is the great N. African Bishop,
Augustine of Hippo. So, one reads concerning him:
"...the ancient
theologian Augustine argued that the Biblical author structured the passage
(Genesis 1) as a literary device..."
The picture here presented
to the unwary layman is of a learned Bishop sitting down to write his commentary
on Genesis just as Calvin and Luther did twelve centuries later, and 'arguing'
that his own interpretation is correct. This picture is wholly imaginary.
In his Confessions (Bks.XI,
XII and XIII, where Augustine deals with Genesis 1, he is not arguing with
anyone. Rather, he is meditating; in fact the whole passage is an extended
prayer to God. In no sense is he setting out his own view as opposed to someone
else's. Nor does the word 'structure' or the phrase 'literary device' appear.
What he does is allegorize the chapter, discovering esoteric meanings
that (perhaps) no one else ever thought of.
Consider the following
equations:
| Object |
Allegory |
| firmament |
angels |
| clouds |
preachers |
| sea |
unbelievers |
| dry
land |
believers |
| bringing
forth fruit |
works
of mercy |
| stars |
saints
(in various grades of light!) |
| fishes |
sacraments |
| whales |
miracles |
Luther comments,
concerning this allegorising, "Augustine resorts to extraordinary
trifling in his treatment of the six days". Also Augustine knew hardly
a word of Hebrew and was no Greek scholar. As anchorman in the non-literal team,
he is hopelessly lightweight.
For those who would render
Augustine as supporting the non-literal viewpoint of the six day creation,
consider the following particulars about Augustine's views on Genesis:
- In direct contrast to
Christian evolutionists who wish to stretch out the Six Days into four and a
half billion years, Augustine thought six days an unnecessarily long
time for Almighty God to take. So he resorted to Ecclesiasticus 18:1 (Greek)
as his proof text, misunderstood the word koinei, and came up with
the wrong translation: "He created all things simultaneously
(Latin simul)". He then tried to squeeze the Six Days into 'no time',
with a host of philosophical reasons.
- Augustine certainly
accepted Adam and Eve as literal history: no question of God breathing
'spiritual' life into some kind of animal.
- He argues exactly as
modern creationists do, that the God who turned water into wine, and Moses'
rod into a serpent, instantaneously, does not need time to make a man or any
other creature.
- Turning to his
"City of God", we find that he accepted Noah's flood as universal
and a fact (XV.27), and the heading to XII.10 is: "OF THE FALSENESS OF
THE HISTORY WHICH ALLOTS MANY THOUSAND YEARS TO THE WORLD'S PAST.
He continues: "Let us omit the conjectures of men
who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the
human race.....they are deceived by those highly mendacious documents which
profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the
sacred writings, we find that not six thousand years have yet passed".
- Augustine insists that
the ages of the Patriarchs are literally true (C.O.G. XV.9-15) and
constitute a chronology.
- Admittedly he did
believe that thorns and thistles were part of the original creation, and
evolutionists can extract a crumb of comfort from this. But, by and large,
there is no doubt that Augustine was a "literalist" and a Young
Earth Creationist.
Benjamin Warfield is
another "eminent man" whose words have hardened into an
evangelical tradition over the last one hundred years. He wrote:
"The question of the
antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance.....the Bible does
not assign a brief span to human history".
What Warfield seems to
have overlooked is that the veracity of God is a matter of profound theological
significance. Theologically speaking it is a matter of entire indifference
whether Christ rose from the dead on the third day or the thirty-third day or
after three years. Even if it were three years, not one word of Paul's letter to
the Romans would have to be changed. But God chose to do it on the third
(literal) day, and every reference in the Gospels to Christ's resurrection
includes the phrase "after three days" or "on the third
day", or occasionally specifies that only one day, the Sabbath,
intervened between His death and rising again. Why? Because God knows that we
require every possible assurance and reassurance to faith, and details of time
and place are what makes a story interesting and memorable.
It is the same with the
creation history and genealogies. Theologically it may be of no significance
whether Adam was created six thousand years ago or six million, whether the
universe was made in six days or sixty billion years, but the veracity of God
cannot be so easily dismissed and by all the laws of language it is certain
that Genesis tells of a six-day creation some six thousand years ago. There is
as little reason to doubt the six days of Genesis as to doubt the Three Days of
the Gospels.
A third "eminent"
scholar to propound the non-literal interpretation is the Anglican scholar Derek
Kidner, whose commentary somewhat ironically bears the illustrious name
of 'Tyndale'. He writes:
"Our present
knowledge of civilisation, e.g. at Jericho, goes back to at least 7000 BC, and
of man himself very much further.... the chapter (Gen.5) neither adds its
figures together nor gives the impression that the men it names overlapped each
other to any usual extent.....note the three fourteens in Matthew 1".
Three points here invite
comment:
i) Kidner dignifies
with the name of "knowledge" the notorious uncertainty and fluidity
which surrounds all archeological dating. Fifty years ago the Great Pyramid was
dated at 4800 BC; now it is supposed to be 2600 BC.
ii) Impressions are
highly subjective. A totally different impression was made on Sir Isaac Newton
(who worked for years on O.T. chronology) and on almost every commentator before
Darwin. S.R. Driver wrote:
"If the language of
Genesis 5 had been simply that A begat B, and B begat C. etc., it might be
conceivable, as in Matthew 1, that links were omitted; but when the age of
each patriarch at the birth of his firstborn is expressly stated, such a
supposition is manifestly out of the question". (Driver's emphasis).
Thus much for impressions.
iii) As for the
addition, why should Moses do for us what we can do for ourselves? Note that in
Chap.11 he does not add up the total life-span of each patriarch, as he did in
Chapter 5. Does that mean that (e.g.) Shela did not live to be 433? Obviously he
did; but Moses does not need to tell us the obvious, because the principle of
addition had already been established in Chap.5.
Also, Moses does not tell
us the age of Jacob at the birth of Joseph, but he very neatly works it into the
story (41:46; 45:6; 47:9) so that by simple addition and subtraction we find it
to be 91. We are left to do the sums ourselves.
There is no reason to
doubt that Moses was working on exactly the same principle when he left the
grand totals un-added in chapters 5 and 11. In the Bible long dates (Exodus 12,
1 Kgs.6) are given only when there is no other way of checking the spans. So we
may safely conclude with H.C. Leupold (1972 Commentary, Baker):
"The claim that the
Scriptures do not give a complete and accurate chronology for the whole period
of the Old Testament.....is utterly wrong, dangerous and mischievous".
This is a definitive
judgement on neo-evangelical scholasticism.
Our last "eminent"
advocate of the Non-Literal Theory is Douglas Spanner, Professor Emeritus of
Biophysics. His book (1987) is a desperate attempt to squeeze Genesis 1-11 into
the parameters of Science. Here we consider just two points:
i) The Creation of
Eve. Spanner contends that this was only a dream, in which God told Adam
how Eve was to be treated, but not how she was to be made. The objections to
this theory are obvious: (a) Genesis records seven famous dreams; why on earth
did Moses not call this a dream, if indeed it was? (b) Spanner ignores Mark 10,
1 Cor.11 and 1 Tim.2, all of which confirm that Eve was physically made from
Adam. The God of the Bible is a God of miracles!
ii) The Flood. Spanner
advances another Local Flood Theory which, unlike its many predecessors, is not
supported by one shred of evidence historical, geographical or geological.
It is fair to say that if
Genesis 6-9 had been written in any other book than the Bible, no one would have
doubted that the writer meant to convey the idea of a world-wide deluge. For
example, compare the Latin poet Ovid's account of the same event:
"...'Wherever old
Ocean roars around the earth, I must destroy the race of men...', says Jupiter.
He preferred to destroy the human race beneath the waves.....and now the sea and
the land have no distinction. All is sea, and a sea without a shore.....Here (on
Mount Parnassus, 8000ft.) Deucalion and his wife had come to land for the
sea had covered all things else. Deucalion addresses his wife: 'O, only woman
left on earth.....we two are the only survivors; the sea holds all the
rest'".
(Metamorphoses
I.260ff.)
Any scholar who dared to
suggest that Ovid did not intend to depict a universal flood would be laughed
out of court. Now, the language of Genesis 6-9 is at least as clear and
comprehensive as Ovid's, but Spanner calls it "the sort of impressionistic
language the reader is expected to take in his stride".! He completely
ignores God's promise in Gen.8:21 (repeated eight times in chapter 9) never
again to destroy ALL flesh, and fails to expound 2 Pet.3:5,6, which
unquestionably refers to the whole globe.
It is his Disciple
Who shall tell us how
Much the Master would have scrapped
Had he lived till now.....
Amplify distinctions,
Rationalize the claim;
Preaching that the Master
Would have done the same.
Referring again to
Macaulay, we may note how "deep-seated" is that error which compels
Christian scholars and scientists to turn the Bible upside-down rather than
abandon all notions of evolution.
We shall now call
witnesses to show that the literal interpretation has been the view of the
greatest scholars, ancient and modern, for nineteen hundred years.
IV. SUPPORTERS OF THE
LITERAL INTERPRETATION
These can be divided into
both earlier and later writers.
1. Earlier Writers
Flavius Josephus, a Jew of
the first century AD, was reckoned by Scaliger, the great Reformation scholar,
to be a better historian than all the Greek and Roman writers put together. He
certainly had unequalled opportunities of investigating and understanding the
culture and traditions of his own people. How does he handle the early chapters
of Genesis? In one place, Josephus writes:
"Moses says that in
just six days the world and all that is therein was made.....Moreover, Moses,
after the seventh day was over, begins to talk philosophically...".
(Antiquities I.i.2)
In other words, Josephus
is saying that chapter 2 may be a bit mysterious, but in chapter 1 there is no
hint of any mystery at all. He obviously takes the days as literal. In another
place, he states: "The sacred books contain the history of five thousand
years" (Op. Cit., Preface, 3). This is conclusive proof that the Jews
of Josephus' day added up the figures in Genesis 5 and 11 to make a chronology.
He later states: "...this flood began 2656 years from the first man,
Adam". (Both these computations are based on the LXX text).
What C.S. Lewis has so
trenchantly written about critics of the New Testament surely applies no less to
re-interpreters of the Old:
"The idea that any
man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the
same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and
yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages is, in my opinion,
preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no
argument and no evidence could counterbalance". (Fern-Seed &
Elephants, p.112)
In other words, it seems
unlikely that Englishmen of the twentieth century will understand Moses better
than a Hebrew and Greek speaking Jew of the first century AD.
St. Ambrose (d.397 AD) was
no more infallible than other Church Fathers, but his treatment of Genesis 1 is
grammatical and objective:
"In notable fashion
has Scripture spoken of 'one day', not 'the first day'.....Scripture
established a law that twenty-four hours, including both day and night, should
be given the name of 'day' only, as if one were to say that the length of
one day is twenty-four hours in extent".
Nobody disputes that the
great Reformers accepted Genesis as literal truth, but two brief quotations are
memorable. First, Calvin:
"God Himself took the
space of six days, for the purpose of accomodating His works to the capacity of
men".
Another comes from the pen
of Martin Luther:
"We know from Moses
that the world was not in existence before six thousand years ago".
Thus we have the views of
some earlier writers.
2. Later Writers
It is interesting that
James Barr, Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in Oxford
University, ridicules the non-literal interpretation espoused by the
Inter-Varsity Press:
"...the biblical
material is twisted to fit the various theories that can bring it into accord
with science. In fact the only natural exegesis (of Genesis 1) is a literal one,
in the sense that this is what the author meant.....he was deeply interested in
chronology and calendar".
Samuel Driver, former
Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, published his commentary on Genesis in 1904, and
it is still a standard work of reference. He writes:
"There is little
doubt that the writer meant 'days' in the literal sense, and that Pearson was
right when he inferred.....that the world was created '6000 or at farthest 7000
years' from the 17th century AD".
The same interpretation is
maintained by Keil and Delitzsch, Gerhard von Rad, Herbert Leupold, and by
almost every major commentary on Genesis. In fact we have never heard of any
Professor of Hebrew in any of the world's great universities who believes that
the original writer did not intend his words to be taken literally. Let
"The Interpreter's Commentary" speak for them all:
"There can be no
question but that by DAY the author meant just what we mean the time
required for one revolution of the earth on its axis. Had he meant aeon he would
certainly, in view of his fondness for great numbers, have stated the number of
millenia each period embraced".
V. UNNECESSARY
COMPLICATION
One final objection to the
Non-Literal Theory is that it is far too complicated. Every teacher knows that
one begins with the simple and moves on to the complex. This principle can
clearly be seen in the Bible, also.
Prose in the historical
books leads on to poetry in the Psalms, philosophy in Eccesiastes, prophecy in
Isaiah, and finally the difficult 'visions' in Ezekiel and Daniel. But the
non-literal school would have us believe that right at the beginning of His
revelation God has placed a conundrum as hard to solve as any in the whole
Bible. Listen to this comment on Genesis:
"The writer has given
us a masterly elaboration of a fitting, restrained anthropomorphic vision, in
order to convey a whole complex of deeply-meditated ideas" (Henri Blocher, "In
the Beginning", 1984).
Anyone who has tried to
teach the elements of Christianity to uneducated people will recognise the utter
impossibility of explaining to them why God's first words should be that
gobbledegook, rather than plain statements of fact easily intelligible in every
language to all nations as the pioneer missionaries believed.
The so-called
"Literary Framework Hypothesis" is a house of cards carefully
constructed by academics in the airless atmosphere and artificial light of a
theological library. We need to open the windows and allow a good strong blast
of common sense to blow it down.
And what about children?
Of all books in the Bible, Genesis is pre-eminently the children's book. Who can
doubt that these fascinating stories were designed by God to allure the sweet
innocence of childhood and lead us gently to faith in Christ? ("From a
babe you have known the Holy Scriptures", writes Paul to Timothy). But
now, inevitably, questions will be asked: "Dad, did God really make
everything in six days?", or "Mum, did the Ark really hold
every kind of animal?" and all those parents who follow the
Non-Literal Theory, with one accord, begin to make excuse: "Er, well,
no, not really, darling. You see, the scientists say....."
In view of Christ's solemn
words about causing little ones to stumble, I would not like to stand in the
shoes of anyone who teaches a child that in the ABC book of religion, God does
not mean what He says.
VI. DARWINISM TODAY
Of all the crooked
'parallels' adduced to justify re-interpreting Genesis, the Galileo/Darwin
equation is the worst. One hundred and twenty-nine years after Galileo, what was
the status of the Copernican system? Answer: every astronomer in the civilized
world accepted it as a fact. It fitted every observation; it clashed with none.
Predictions made on a heliocentric basis were found to be true. What about
Darwin? Today, 129 years after "The Origin of Species", Sir
Karl Popper's statement still stands:
"Neither Darwin, nor
any Darwinian, has so far given an actual causal explanation of any single
organism or any single organ".
The whole theory is
falling apart; as Michael Denton (who does not claim to be a Christian) has so
clearly demonstrated in his book "Evolution, A Theory in Crisis"
(1985).
One of the 'signs of the
times' is Darwin's dogmatic pronouncement:
"We may feel certain
that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some
confidence to a secure future of great length.....". (Origin of
Species, last page)
Another is the Times Atlas
of the Bible (1987) which does not show Mount Ararat on any map! The religious
publishing world has decided to expunge every trace of that uncomfortable story
which thunders God's wrath against sin. The apostle Peter predicted just such a
time:
"That there shall
come in the last days scoffers,...for this they willingly are ignorant of, that
by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the
water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with
water, perished" (2 Pet.3:5)
I suggest the way to help
such people is to warn them, not to divert them along paths which promise an
easy miracle-free route to heaven.
CONCLUSION
Martin Luther's challenge
is right up to date:
"If I profess with
the loudest voice every Bible doctrine except that one truth which Satan is
attacking today, I am no soldier of Jesus Christ".
You do not have to be a
reader of the Smithsonian to know that today's target for ridicule is Noah's
Ark, Ussher's chronology and the six-day creation. That is why God is calling
for real disciples who will not "amplify distinctions" or
"rationalize the claim", but who will stand up and tell the world that
He means just what He says in Genesis 1-11.
The scientific
establishment will never take seriously the Christian doctrine of the Last
Things until they see that Christians take seriously the Bible doctrine of First
Things. Unbelievers will recognise their dreams of the future as wholly delusive
only when they are shown that their picture of the past is completely
chimerical.
Here are two of the
"good measurements" that James Trefil is looking for in our quote at
the beginning of this article:
".....we shall all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump....."
(1 Corinthians 15:52).
Macro-mutation at last
in no time!
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