On Young-Earth Creationism

The Bible and the Age of the Earth

All Christians believe that God is the Creator of the world.  In this sense, all Christians are creationists.  But in the modern period, the term “creationism” has come to refer to a rejection of the scientific theory of evolution in favor of a belief that God directly created humanity and other living things.  Young-earth creationism is a popular form of creationism that teaches that God created the universe, humanity, and all living things six to ten thousand years ago.  

The overwhelming consensus of modern scientists is that the earth is not thousands of years old, but billions of years old (about 4.5 billion), and that the universe is much older than that (almost 14 billion).  Furthermore, the overwhelming consensus of modern scientists is that there has been life on earth for billions of years, that living things have gradually evolved into different species over time, and that humanity evolved from pre-human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago.  In spite of this, belief in young-earth creationism continues to be widespread among Christians today.  Many Christians regard both belief in an old earth and the scientific theory of evolution as incompatible with Christian faith.  Some Christians have devoted a great deal of effort to arguing that the young earth creationist view has scientific support (the most prominent example of this is the creation museum).  Other Christians, sadly, have lost their faith after being convinced that the scientific evidence disproves young earth creationism.

Young earth creationists base their beliefs in the book of Genesis.  They interpret the creation story of Genesis 1 as teaching that God caused the universe, the earth, all living things, and humanity to begin to exist all within the period of one literal week of time.  They then add up the years given in the genealogies of Genesis and the rest of the Bible and conclude that the earth, humanity, and the entire universe are six thousand years old or so.  Young earth creationists criticize other Christians who have different interpretations of Genesis as not taking the Bible seriously and instead allowing their interpretation to be determined by fallible human scientific theories external to the text.  

We should certainly take the Bible seriously.  And we should interpret it literally, rather than twisting it to fit with our preconceived ideas.  But interpreting Scripture literally does not always mean interpreting it according to what we think it seems to be saying at first glance.  Interpreting Scripture literally means that we should interpret it according to the human author’s intended meaning.  This means that we must always interpret Scriptural texts according to their literary genre, and fully take into account the historical and cultural context of each text.  For example, the modern genre of historiography did not exist at the time the Bible was written.  The Bible contains historical narratives of a sort, but they are not historiography; their purpose is not to give us enough information in order to reconstruct the historical events “as they really happened.”  Their purpose is to give a theological interpretation of past events.  We cannot anachronistically impose the standards and conventions of modern historiography on Biblical historical narratives.  We need to interpret these narratives according to their actual genre.  

Turning to Genesis, it is important to emphasize that the purpose of Genesis is not to give us a history of the human race, nor is it to satisfy our intellectual curiosity about the age of the earth.  Genesis is part of the Torah given to Israel by Moses; its purpose is to develop some theological themes that are important for Israel’s understanding of their covenant relationship with God by means of reference to some past events that had theological significance.  Consider the “table of nations” in Genesis 10; it lists the nations descended from Noah, but it is restricted to nations in the Middle East, which were geographically close to Israel.  Young-earth creationists calculate the age of the earth by adding up the ages of people in the genealogies in Genesis.  This is a mistake.  Hebrew genealogies were not necessarily exhaustive; they could skip generations.  If we compare the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-16 to the genealogy of Chronicles 1-3, for example, we see that Matthew skips some generations.  In Hebrew, to “become the father of” someone did not necessarily mean being the immediate parent.  Rather than the genealogies of Genesis being an attempt to give us an exhaustive genealogy of the human race, it seems more likely that they are often a literary device used to indicate that a long time had passed.  

Looking at Genesis 1 specifically, it is important to stress that it is not a historical narrative; rather, it is an Ancient Near Eastern creation account, and it speaks in terms that ANE people could understand, which in some cases are very foreign to our ways of thinking.  In The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate^[1]John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009)., Old Testament scholar Dr. John Walton has described how reading the Genesis creation story within its ANE historical and cultural context should shape our interpretation of the text.  This book is essential reading for any Christian interested in the topic of how to interpret the Genesis creation story.  I can provide only a very brief summary here.  For ANE people, to “create” did not mean to cause matter to exist where none existed before; rather, it meant to separate something out by giving it a name and assigning it a function.  Genesis 1, then, is not about God causing the matter of the universe to exist ex nihilo; it is about God bringing about order in the cosmos.  Therefore, the six days of the creation story of Genesis 1 tell us nothing about the age of the earth or the universe.  

Young earth creationists have developed a flood geology which attempts to explain the geologic and fossil record as being created by Noah’s flood, not by billions of years of geologic forces and evolution.  However, this flood geology does not stand up to careful scientific scrutiny.  There is simply too much data uncovered by geology and paleontology that is impossible to explain in terms of being caused by a single flood.  In fact, it seems difficult to square what we know from geology with the idea of a relatively recent, global flood.  The best explanation seems to be that the author of Genesis was describing a more local flood and used hyperbole for the sake of the theological point he was making.^[2]See The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate by Tremper Longman, III, and John H. Walton (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018).

Evolution and Christian Theology

What difference does it make, theologically, how old the earth is?  Obviously, none at all.  So, why are so many Christians so strongly in favor of young-earth creationism and opposed to the theory of evolution?

The real issue at stake for many Christians concerns the question of human origins.  If human beings evolved from pre-human ancestors, many Christians think, then this calls into question the Christian theological belief that human beings are uniquely different from all other animals, being created in the image of God.  Furthermore, if human beings just gradually evolved from pre-human ancestors who already experienced pain, death, and violence, then this calls into question the traditional theological belief that Adam and Eve were created perfect and sinless, and that suffering and death are a result of the Fall.  

However, we can believe that human beings are sharply distinct from other animals, while still believing that they evolved from pre-human ancestors.  Even if, from a biological perspective, human beings gradually evolved, God could still have engaged in a special creative act at a particular point in time that endowed humanity with spirit, “soul,” and consciousness, making them qualitatively sharply distinct from pre-human ancestors.  Animal pain and death are imperfections, not truly “evil,” and could have existed in the animal kingdom before humanity arrived and the Fall occurred.  But then, from the moment of their creation, the new, spiritual race of humanity could have been preserved by God from suffering and death, before the Fall brought these evils on the human race.  The traditional understanding of the doctrine of the Fall can thus be preserved even if one believes that the human species evolved from pre-human ancestors.  

How does this line up, though, with what Genesis 2-3 actually has to say about Adam and Eve?  There are actually a number of different ways of reconciling belief in a historical Adam and Eve with the scientific belief that the human species evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago.  One option is the “pre-Adamite theory.”  According to this theory, God directly created Adam and Eve at some point after the human species had already evolved.  Then, their descendants intermarried with the preexisting human race, until, eventually, it became true that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of all human beings, even though they were not the original pair of humans.  

Another theory, presented by Dr. John Walton in The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate,^[3]John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015). is that, interpreting this passage in its ANE context, we should interpret God’s creation of Adam from the dust of the earth and God’s creation of Eve from Adam’s side as archetypal claims, not as literal accounts of material origins (All human beings are dust (Psalm 103:14), and all men and women are two halves of one whole).  So, materially speaking, Adam and Eve could have had normal origins by birth.  The text presents Adam and Eve as priestly representatives of the human race, not necessarily as the only human beings who existed at the time.  Adam and Eve’s sinful rebellion against God brought negative consequences on all of humanity, but this does not require that they were the direct biological ancestors of every human being.  

Thus, there is no reason to think that what the early chapters of Genesis have to say about the origins of humanity and the origin of sin necessarily contradicts current scientific theories about the biological origins of the human species.  Christians should not be anti-science, nor should they doubt their faith if they become convinced that modern scientific theories regarding the age of the earth and the evolution of life are true.  There is nothing theologically wrong with being a young-earth creationist, but it is not necessary to be a young-earth creationist in order to be a Christian.