cphil_create1
THE PROBLEM OF CREATION
by Ray Shelton
I. INTRODUCTION
In traditional theism, God is considered to be related to the world as cause to effect. How is this relation to be interpreted? Does all forms of theism take God to be the creator of the universe? The answer is “No”, if the word “creator” means the being who makes the world out of nothing (ex nihilo). In the theology of the Greek philosophers, there is no concept of a God who creates out of nothing. In fact, the Greek philosophers denied that the world was created out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) asserting that “Out of nothing, nothing comes” (ex nihilo nihil fit).
II. HISTORY
A. ANCIENT THEORIES
The Greeks had two different views of the relation of God to the world, neither of which involved creation. One of these relations may be called transformation and the other emanation. These stand in contrast to Biblical view.
In most Greek theologies, matter is eternal, not created by God. When God makes the world, he gives form to this matter. Plato in his Timaeus explains the making of the world by means of the myth of the divine artisan, or demiurge, who gazing upon the eternal Ideas and Forms, takes the formless flux of matter and molds it according to the timeless patterns or forms that he sees before him. This demiurge fashions the world as a sculptor who, with his eyes on a fair model, gives form to the formless clay or stone.
Aristotle‘s view does not use the form of a myth. God is pure form and as the formal cause it induces form on the eternal matter. Interpreting matter as potentiality and form as actuality, Aristotle views God as pure form drawing matter toward itself, from one level of form to the next level, each level’s form is the matter for the next. Because of God, matter is being tranformed into form which becomes the matter for the next level of transformation. Hence the world is eternally changing from matter (non-being as potentiality) into form (being or actuality); it is always becoming and God is the unmoved mover moving all things toward itself.
Later Greek philosophers, called Neoplatonists, explained the relation of God to the world in terms of emanation rather than transformation. According to Plotinus, God, who is the One, is Being itself. In the fulness or plenitude of its being, God “spills over” like wine from an overflowing cup, or, to change the metaphor, radiates its being, as the sun gives forth light and heat. These radiations or emanations form a hierarchy of beings or hypostases, ranging from higher to lower. There are three stages of these emanations. The highest, next to Being itself, is Nous or mind, the divine intelligence; the next highest is the Pscyhe or soul, the soul of the world, and finally Hyle or matter, which is lowest level, next to non-being. Man is caught between the lower two emanations, his mind in the upper level and body in the lower level or matter, which he struggles to get free from.
Augustine rejected the Neoplatonic theory of emanations and held to the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) at the moment chosen by God. The world and time thus had a definite beginning. But what God wills to create is determined by what God’s intelligence has determined to be good. God’s intellect is the primary motive to create. From Neoplatonism Augustine also derived his conception of God as timeless. The One is unchanging, therefore, timeless. God is not only eternal, having no beginning nor end, but He is without time, no past nor future, but just an eternal “now”. In this eternal “Now”, God sees all the past, present, future of the world that He will and has created. According to Augustine eternity is motionless, no succession; everything is present at once; there is no past nor future. Time was created by God out of nothing, ex nihilo. Time is not an independent principle nor a being, the Receptacle, nor non-Being, the void.
The view that God is creator of the world out of nothing is Hebrew rather than Greek and is the interpretation of the story of creation given in the book of Genesis. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Some Jewish philosophers, for example, Philo Judaeus (30 B.C.- 50 A.D.), held that God’s creative energy operated on a primordial chaos or material substratum. Philo, being born and reared in Alexandria in Egypt, was influenced by Platonic philosophy. It was to reject this Platonic concept that God operated on pre-existing matter to form it and to assert that God created the matter that He formed, that the Christian theologians of the early church stated the doctrine that God created all things, visible and invisible, out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). God as the Creator made all things “out of nothing” instead “out of matter” or out of what already existed. They were not asserting that nothing was the source of all things, but that what did not previously exist God brought into existence. The Nicene Creed of A.D. 325 said that God is the “maker of all things visible and invisible” and the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), after reaffirming what the previous earlier creeds had said, idenitified God as “Ruler of all, the maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen.” In general, Christian theologians agree that the Biblical revelation indicates that God created the world out of nothing, but this cannot be proved by “natural reason;” it can be known only by revelation.
The medieval Schoolmen, following Augustine and opposing Aristotle, believed that time had a beginning. Between eternity, the Res Tota Simul, and time is the Aevum, or everlastingness, of heavenly bodies and of angels. But Aristotle’s view of species as fixed and immutable was accepted. And they accepted his view that change from potentiality to actuality was limited to the three basic types of change:
(1) “alteration”, or change of quality,
(2) “growth and diminution”, and
(3) “locomotion”, or change of place,
and that there is no place for evolution or development of species within these three basic types of change. The creation story in the book of Genesis was interpreted from within this Aristotelian view.
B. MODERN THEORIES
In 1788, James Hutton (1726-1797), a Scottish doctor and agriculturalist, formally presented the view that the entirety of geologic history was characterized by uniform process rates and unchangeable laws which we observed today. According to Hutton, there was little need to consider catastrophes or divine intervention as important in geological history. He wrote:
“Therefore, there is no occasion for having recourse to any unnatural supposition of evil, to any destructive accident in nature, or to the agency of any preternatural cause, in explaining that which actually appears.” [1]
The French comparative anatomist, George Cuvier (1760-1802), did not agree. His work with fossils and strata led him to believe that the history of life was interrupted at least five times by great watery catastrophes followed by periods of special creation. The Professor of Geology at Oxford University, William Buckland (1784-1856), held the prevailing view during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the special creation of God and the Noahaic Flood had distinct geological significance. They believed that catastrophes like the Flood interrupted the operation of natural laws by divine intervention so that process rates were significantly different in the past from the present rates. Those who held this view were called “catastrophists” and their view “catastrophism”. This view was opposed by those who held that the process rates were unchanging and that there was no interruption of their operation by divine intervention. This view was called “uniformitarianism” and those who held it “uniformitarians.” The uniformitarians considered the earth to be extremely old while the catastrophists held that the earth could have an age as young as about 6000 years. They accepted Bishop Ussher’s calculation of the date of the creation in 4004 B.C.
Defending the uniformitarianism was the British lawyer, Charles Lyell (1797-1875), who wrote a series of volumes entitled, Principles of Geology. This work of Lyell presented the view that geology could understand past events by observing present processes. His work made clear that uniformatianisnism was basic in this understanding. Other men worked with Lyell and using his assumptions developed the standard geologic column with its major divisions organized upon paleontological evidence. Later Charles Darwin (1809-1882) made the Principle of Uniformity a basic assumption for interpreting evolutionary past history of life. “The present is the key to the past”, as the Principle of Uniformity was expressed, became the foundation of geology as well as biology. By 1865 the field of historical geology was dominated by the evolutionary-uniforitarian view. And this system of interpreting the geological past, introduced by Hutton, popularized by Lyell, adopted by Darwin, has remained largely unchanged for over one hundred and fifty years. The Principle of Uniformity has been assumed to be the ultimate basis for interpreting all geologic, biologic, and astronomic data. The origin and history of universe have been explained from evolutionary and uniformitarian assumptions. Uniformitarianism has even influenced the social sciences and humanities. Even man’s concept of God is said to evolve. Evolutionary-uniformitarianism has become an all-embracing and comprehensive view of reality.
But not all theologians rejected Darwinism and some began to find it agreeable to theism. The Roman Catholics were more inclined to accept, or at least to tolerate, Darwinism because they were freer from Biblical literalism. These clergymen and theologians accepted the view that evolution is merely the instrument which God used to create the universe, or the mode of His activity in bringing about the events of creation. They argued that whether God did so or not is a question of fact to be decided by evidence, and the evidence seems to show that evolution was the way God created it. God had revealed in the Scriptures the fact of creation, but He has left the method of creation to be discovered by the scientist. By the end of the nineteenth century theistic evolution had become so popular that some writers voiced the opinion that the controversy between evolution and theism was over. But they did not reckon with the Fundamentalist movement in the twentieth century and its dynamic, militant attack upon evolution and theistic evolution. Theistic evolution was the position adopted by most liberal and neo-orthodox theologians.
There are various forms of theistic evolution and different terms have been used to identify them. Some of these are: “orthogenesis” (goal-directed evolution), “nomogenesis” (evolution according to fixed laws), “emergent evolution”, “creative evolution”, and others. None of these are accepted by the leaders of evolutionary thought. The evolutionist have excluded any divine intervention and their evolutionary views are only forms of naturalism, which by definition asserts only the reality of the natural and denies any supernatural reality. According to their understanding of evolution there can be no theistic evolution. But theistic evolution has not only been rejected by the evolutionist but also by many theists. There are many Christian writers that have insisted that evolution is itself anti-theistic and therefore theistic evolution is impossible. For example, Dr. Allen Higley writes,
“Theistic evolution, then, is a contradiction of terms. To maintain that evolution can be theistic is as inconsistent as to claim that falsehood is truth.” [2]
A large group of Evangelicals, sensitive to the traditional opposition to evolution in their constitutencies, have tried to circumvent this opposition while at the same time adopting the essential framework of the evolutionary system through what they called “progressive creation.” One of the best-known advocates of this position is Dr. Bernard Ramm who in his influential book The Christian View of Science and the Scriptures denies that his position is theistic evolution. [3] A similar concept is called “threshold evolution”. Other labels have been suggested for these attempts to reconcile evolution and theism, but all of them are nothing but semantic variants of the system of theistic evolution.
The basic assumption of Darwin’s theory of evolution is Mutable Species. That is, the species of living beings are mutable: the species come into existence, change, and not infrequently perish altogether. Darwin developed a theory of natural selection, supporting it with a large body of evidence, to account for this process and particularly to explain the “transmutation of Species” and the origin of adaptations. Hence he named his book, the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection. Christian theology (Protestant as well as Roman Catholic) has been dominated by Aristotelian philosophy and Aristotle’s view of species as fixed and immutable was accepted. And they also accepted his view that the change from potentiality to actuality was limited to the three basic types of change: “alteration”, or change of quality, “growth and diminution”, and “locomotion”, or change of place, and that there is no place for evolution or development of new species within these three basic types of change. So Christian theology that was married to the Aristotelian fixity of the species and that there is no evolution or development into new species, rejected Darwinian evolution. The word “kind” (Hebrew, min; LXX, genos; Latin Vulgate, genus) in Genesis 1:21 was interpreted as species and according to Aristotle the species were fixed. And this became the first issue in the evolution/creation controversy. Later Biblical scholars began to realize that the Hebrew word min did not mean “species” and must not be identified with the modern concept of species or varieties. To attempt to identify min with species or varieties is making the Biblical record to speak with a modern scientific particularity it does not possess. The account in Genesis 1 indicates at least ten categories of organic life that were specifically created “after their [his] kind”. This phrase occurs ten times in the first chapter of Genesis.
These categories are, in the plant kingdom:
(1) grass, (2) herbs, (3) fruit trees;
in the animal kingdom the specific categories mentioned are:
(1) sea monsters, (2) other marine animals, (3) birds, (4) beasts of the earth, (5) cattle, (6) crawling animals.
Finally, man “kind” was created as another completely separate category.
Although there is some uncertainty in the meaning of the Hebrew word min, it is obvious that the word does not have a definite and fixed scientific meaning. But one “kind” could not transform itself into another “kind”. There is certainly here no thought of an evolutionary continuity of all forms of life, but rather one of definite and distinct categories. Furthermore, the sense of the passage in Genesis is that there is great number of kinds that were created in the nine categories (excluding man) that are specifically listed. There is certainly room for variation within each kind, as is obvious from all the different races and nations of men, with the vast variety of physical characteristics, that are descended from the first man and are included within the human “kind”. The same is true for the other kinds. Many different varieties can emerge within the basic framework of each kind, but also there are no variations that extend outside the basic framework. This concept has been called micro-evolution and seeks to formulate this understanding of kinds. Many evangelicals have recently called for a giving up the fixity of species and to allow derivation of species from species. In 1948 Russell Mixter in a series articles, bound together as Creation and Evolution, cites such evangelicals as Hamilton, Dewar, and Short as believing in development within restricted areas. Mixter writes,
“As a creationist I am willing to accept the origin of species from other species called micro-evolution.” [4]
Mixter was very careful to reject macro-evolution.
Edward J. Carnell defended a “threshold” evolution, which is the same as Mixter’s position, and asserts that there is a wide possibility of change within the kinds originally created by God, but these variations must not step outside prescribed boundaries. He writes,
“Observe, therefore, that the conservative may scrap the doctrine of the ‘fixity of species’ also without jeopardizing his major premises. The Christian, thus, can accommodate a ‘threshold’ evolution, i. e., a wide and varied change within the ‘kinds’ originally created by God. We shall return to this in moment. …
Now, observe that both Christianity and science can accommodate the datum that the functional and structural aspect of man and certain animals are similar. The problem, therefore, cannot turn upon this issue. Next, the doctrine of the ‘fixity of species’ is not required by either structure. The real crux, we feel, is the Bible’s rejection of the evolutionary hypothesis that the ‘kinds’ of Genesis are related to still more primitive orders by their being evolved from them. On ‘threshold’ evolution view, there are gaps which exist between the original ‘kinds,’ while on the ‘total’ evolution view, each ‘kind’ can be traced back to a more primitive type, and that, to a still more primitive, ad infinitum.
But let us challenge the validity of the ‘total’ evolution scheme. Paleontology reveals that there are actual gaps in our knowledge of the relation between the ‘kinds,’ a datum which ‘threshold’ evolution can account for more smoothly than a ‘total’ evolution…. When science is faced with these gaps, it resorts to such hypotheses as ‘missing links’ (which are still missing!) and ‘mutations,’ while the Christian needs only to point to the fact that God, in the original creation, decreed that gaps should exist to mark off the original ‘kinds’–herbs yielding seeds, creeping things, beasts, etc.” [5]
Many theologians have come to believe that geological ages are so firmly established by the sciences that it would be folly to question them, and therefore some means of accomodating the interpretation of Genesis to geology must be devised. The most obvious way was to interpret the history of creation recorded in Genesis in such a way that the ages of geology correspond to the history of creation. Since the Genesis history of creation is given in terms of six “days” of the creative work of God, then the creative week must be somehow expanded to incorporate all of earth’s history from primeval beginnings up to the arrival of man. The obvious way was to make the “days” of creation correspond to the geological “ages”. There are many books and articles that adopted this approach and have exponded the day-age theory. Two of the most through studies are the following; Science Speaks, by Peter W. Stoner [6] and “The Length of the Creative Days”, by J. Oliver Buswell, Jr. [7]. The main argument for the day-age theory, in addition to its accommodation to geological ages, is that the Hebrew word yom does not always mean a literal 24-hour day. In Genesis 2:4 the Hebrew word yom is used to refer to all of the six days of creation:
“These are the generations of the heavens and earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and heavens.” (KJV)
The word “day” here refers to the six days of creation, thus, to a period of time and not to a literal 24-hour day. Warranty for this interpretation is also found in II Pet. 3:8, “… one day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” (Compare, Psa. 90:4).
Those who advocate this day-age theory argued that there is a correspondence between the order of the six days of Genesis 1 and the order of development of the earth and its various forms of life as represented by the geologic ages. That is, in both Genesis and geology, first comes the inorganic universe, then simple forms of life, then more complex forms of life, and finally man. Since the same order is in both cases, geology gives us the way to understand how God created the universe.
Many theologians and scientists who are Christians are unable to accept the day-age theory. They argue the six days of creation are literally six 24-hour days, because God said when gave the Ten Commandments,
“8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt do no work. thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days did the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” (Exodus 20:8-11 KJV)
They argue that it is quite clear that the six work days of God’s creation are identical in duration with the six days of man’s work week. To argue otherwise for this very precise commandment, that the days of creation are not literal 24-hour days is to make the reason for this commandment meaningless and irrelevant. Thus the day-age theory must be discarded because it is contrary to the Scriptures.
But the geologists had come to the conclusion that the geologic formations had occupied thousands if not million of years for their production. If the six days of Genesis 1 are literal 24-hour days, where could the time be found in the Genesis account of creation for the formation of the geologic strata? As early as 1814 in England the brilliant and capable Dr. Thomas Chalmers proposed that time could be found between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 for a succession of pre-Adamic catastrophes between the creation of the heavens and the earth in verse 1 and the condition of the earth without form and void in verse 2. All the time that the geologist needed could be found in the gap between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2. This proposal became known as the “gap theory” and was the favorite one in the early twentieth century with the Fundamentalist in their controversy with the evolutionist. The proponents of this theory postulated a time interval of indefinite duration between the first and second verse of Genesis 1. According to this theory God created a perfect world as recorded in Gen. 1:1. This world was turned over to Lucifer who conducted the worship of God in the temple of God located in a mineral garden of Eden on earth. This exalted position was too much for Lucifer and, becoming filled with pride, he sought to exalt himself as god. He and those who followed him thus fell and judgment was passed by God upon them and the earth. The earth became without form and void. For countless million of years the earth was left alone and during these years the various geologic formations took place. Some even argued that the ugliness of the dinosaurs and the great beds of fossils being vast cemetries were the results of God’s judgement on the sin of Lucifer. Somewhere around 4000 B.C. God recreated or reconditioned the earth in six literal days recorded in the rest of Genesis 1. This theory is supposed to harmonize Genesis and geology on the grounds that there was a very long period of time in Genesis 1:2 for all the geologic events to take place. This gap theory was adopted by C. I. Scofield and in his Reference Bible Scofield triumphantly announces,
“Relegate fossils to the primitive creation, and no conflict of science with Genesis cosmogony remains.” [8].
The Scriptural basis for this theory is supposed to be in the second verse of Genesis 1. In 1876, G. H. Pember in his book Earth’s Earliest Ages argues that the Hebrew word asah translated “made” does not refer to creation out nothing but to recreation or making over. The original heavens and earth was created out of nothing (Hebrew, bara), but the things of the six days are made (Hebrew, asah), not created. [9]. The Hebrew words tohu va bohu, translated “without form and void”, refer to something once in a good state, but now in need of repair and recreation. These words tohu va bohu express “an outpouring of the wrath of God” [10]. And the Hebrew conjunctive waw, usually translated “and”, should be be translated here as “but”, indicating a break between the two verses. Also the Hebrew verb hayah, usually translated “was”, should be translated here as “become”. Thus Genesis 1:1-2 should be translated,
“1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; 2 but the earth became ruined and empty and darkness was on upon the face of the deep.” [11].
Pember writes,
“Furthermore, according to Isaiah 45:18 God did not create the world tohu. Therefore, Genesis 1:2 can only refer to a judgment passed upon the earth by God and age after age may have rolled away, and it was probably during their course that the strata of the earth’s crust were gradually developed. Hence, the geological attacks upon the Scriptures are altogther wide of the mark and are a beating of the air. There is room for any length of time between the first and second verses of the Bible. And again; since we have no inspired account of the geological formations we are at liberty to believe they were developed in order that we find them.” [12].
The gap theory was also espoused by Harry Rimmer, who was one of the outstanding spokesman for Fundamentalism in matters of science and the Bible until his death. Rimmer’s views are found in his book Modern Science and the Genesis Record (1937). He rejected the day-age interpretation of Genesis 1 and argued vigrously for 24-hour solar days, although he admitted that he could not prove with finality whether the Hebrew word yom means a 24-hour day or a period of time. He asserted that the day-age theory was a concession to evolutionary geology and followed Pember in accepting the gap theory and his interpretation of Genesis 1:2. He assered that the “and” at the beginning of verse 1:2 should be translated “but”. He appealed to the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate for support. He appealed also to Isaiah 45:8 to prove that God did not make the world a waste. A waste world must be a judged world. He claimed that the Hebrew had no word for “become”, so the Hebrew verb hayah must be pressed into service and translated “become”. And finally he appealed to Ezekiel 28:11-17 as the story of Satan’s fall, causing the world to brought into the condition described in Genesis 1:2.
Many Hebrew scholars have been critical of the Scriptural basis of the gap theory. They point out that the Hebrew word translated “and” at the beginning of verse 2 is simply the ordinary Hebrew “waw connective”, a simple connective which in itself cannot indicate a break as that asserted in the proposed interpretation. It occurs at the beginning of both Leviticus and Numbers with nothing preceding except the preceding book, and it has no special significance as a break between verses. And many Hebrew scholars also diagree with the giving of the verb hayah in verse two the meaning of “becoming”. There is a Hebrew expression with this meaning, but it is not used in this verse. The word used here is the verb “to be” and appears to signify that the earth is an unfinished, unformed state, much like the condition of clay in hands of the potter before he molds into a definite shape. Instead of the result of a cataclysm, it is in the state of an object before it is fashioned into a finish product. Rimmer’s appeal to the Septuagint is misleading: it uses de rather that alla. In Greek the de is a weak connective that can mean “and” or “but”. The strong adversative Greek conjunction for “but” is alla, and the Greek word de means “but” only in men/de construction; it is commonly used as a transitional, or continuative particle. [13] And the Latin has autem which is another weak adversative word like de, whereas the strong adversative word in Latin for “but” is sed. There is no support in the Hebrew of Genesis 1 for the gap theory of a long interval of time between verse 1 and 2 of Genesis 1.
Rimmer appealed to Ezekiel 28:11-17 as the story of Satan’s fall, causing the world to be brought into the condition described in Genesis 1:2. But his interpretation of Ezekiel 28 has problems. Although this passage has been applied to Satan, the passage is a message (“a lamentation”) about the “king of Tyre” and not Satan (see verse 12). And the Isaiah 14:12-15 passage where Lucifer is addressed is in the middle of a prophecy (“proverb”) against the king of Babylon (see verse 4). Even if these passages are applied to Satan, they do not say when this fall of Lucifer occurred. Other passages of Scripture have Satan in heaven after the creation man (Job 1:6-12; Rev. 12:7-13). This Revelation passage places the fall of Satan from heaven in the future, not at the creation of the heavens and the earth. And there is also the problem that lead to the postulating the pre-Adamic cataclysm; that is, to reconcile the Bible and geology by providing sufficient time for the geologic strata. But there is no evidence in the orthodox system of historical geology for such a cataclysm. And no geologist would accept the gap theory for this very reason.
If the gap theory does not have Scriptural support, then where are the geologic ages to be fitted into the Scriptural account of creation? That is, if the six days of Genesis 1 are literal 24-hour days, and there is no time gap between the creation of the heavens and the earth and the first day of creation of the earth, where could the time be found in the Genesis account of creation for the formation of the geologic strata? This problem seems unsolvable because there is no time gap in the six days of creation for the geologic ages and historical geology does not allow for any cataclysm. If this problem is to be solved, historical geology will have to be revised to allow for cataclysms and that the cataclysm recorded in the Scriptures, the flood, must be accepted as the cause of the geologic strata. This means that the doctrine of uniformitarianism must be abandoned and to allow for cataclysms to explain the geologic strata. Today at the beginning of the twenty-first century, historical geology has already begun to allow for a cataclysm to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs by the collision of an asteroid with the earth. A Biblical historical geology would explain the extinction of the dinosaurs by the cataclysm of the world-wide flood as recorded in Genesis 6 and 7.
Back in the sixteenth, seventeeth, and eighteenth centuries various investigators of geological data found that a vast variety of animal and vegetable life was buried in the strata of the earth. Fossils were being found in every country of Europe. Some were even discovered high in the Alps, and others were unearthed below the sea level, deep in German and Welsh coal mines. The fossils included remains of marine animals, mammoths, bison, giants birds, dinosaurs, exotic vegetation, and many other hard-to-classify forms. Some were tiny and many were huge in size. There were so many forms and sizes of fossils that their classification became quite an art. Some of the fossils were found in the backyards of the academics of that day.
These abundant fossils demanded an explanation. Many scholars thought that some gigantic, watery cataclysm or cataclysms in the past was the explanation. This explanation immediately suggested the Biblical flood. Some sought for alternate explanations. Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Museum of Natural History at Paris, one of greatest names in the history of the science of geology, propounded a theory of successive floods or catastrophes followed with a series of restorations. He believed that the ocean waters shifted about, covering first one territory then another. The flora and fauna would be buried under the drifting sands. When the waters would recede, animals and vegetation would again migrate into the region. Evidence of this on a limited scale had been demonstrated again and again. Finally there was one big flood a few thousand years ago which prepared the world with the now existing geologic strata and flora and fauna. Cuvier differed with the simple theory of Carolus Linnaeus and advocated the disappearance of forms due to these floods. Cuvier also indicated that fossil man was late and was not mixed in with the older fossils. The older fossils could not be counted as part of the evidence for the flood.
Cuvier theory was criticized on two grounds:
(1) certain forms were caught in certain strata; whereas if ocean waters came in, a regular cross section of life would have been captured;
(2) if all of a certain species were to be eliminated, then the entire world would have to be flooded. And if the whole earth had to be flooded for the elimination of a certain species, then a recreation, not a migration, would be needed to account for the repopulation of various tracts of the earth. This is precisely what Louis Agassiz argued in light of these difficulties of Cuvier’s theory. Successive creation would account for suddenness of the appearance of species; sudden catastrophes would account for their disappearance.
Of the two men, Agassiz was closer to the data of geology. Fossils do suddenly appear in a geologic strata. Cuvier’s position could not account for the progression in the appearance of the fossils. In neither case is there any close parallelism with the Genesis account. These men were defending creationism, not the Genesis account of the flood. Many of the English geologist of the early nineteenth century, such as Adam Sedgwick, Roderick Murchison, and William Buckland, adopted Cuvier’s theory because it seem to offer an easy explanation of the fossil strata. William Buckland (1784-1856), Professor of Geology at Oxford University, as early as 1820, when a reader on geology at Oxford, published his Vindiciae Geologicae, or the Connection of Geology with Religion Explained, in which he held to views that were essentially those of Cuvier. His abandonment of the older Flood Geology was expressed in the following words:
“It seems … impossible to ascribe the formation of these strata to … the single year occupied by the Mosaic deluge … The strata … must be referred … to periods of greater antiquity.” [14]
In 1823 Buckland published his Reliquiae Diluvianae (Relics of the Flood), which secured his fame. In it he set forth the thesis that evidences of the Flood, which he named dilvuium, are to be found in the great deposits of “drift” and in the bones of tropical animals such as elephants, hippopotami, and tigers, which he had found jumbled together in a Yorkshire cave at Kirkdale. Cuvier adopted Buckland’s evidence for the Deluge and incorporated into his last and greatest work, Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface de Globe (1826). For much of the nineteenth century, the “diluvium theory” of Buckland, which was based on upon the “successive catastrophes theory” of Cuvier, gripped the imaginations of the theologians who were happy to have such positive evidence of the universality of the Flood, even if it meant relegating the vast majority of fossils to pre-Adamic catastrophes. After all, they reasoned, it was important to keep in step with the very latest geological theories, especially since the “diluvium” deposits of Buckland and Cuvier gave them plenty of ammunition against the deist who had never been willing to admit God’s power to destroy mankind by an universal Deluge. In the twentieth century Fundamentalism largely ignored both Cuvier, Agassiz and Buckland.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, those in the geological sciences gave up the Biblical flood as an explanation of the geological data. The Biblical flood was interpreted as a “tranquil” phenomena and then as a local phenomena. This “tranquil theory” of the Biblical flood was that the universal flood was far too calm or “tranquil” a phenomena to leave any deposits whatever. This theory was first suggested by the Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), but it was introduced to the British public in 1826 by the Scottish minister John Fleming. He wrote,
“I entertain the same opinion as Linnaeus on this subject; nor do I feel, though a clergyman, the slightest reason to conceal my sentiments, though they are opposed to the notions which a false philosophy has generated in the public mind. I have formed my notions of the Noachian deluge, not from Ovid, but from the Bible. There the simple narrative of Moses permits me to believe, that the waters rose upon the earth by degrees … that the flood exhibited no violent impetuosity, displacing neither the soil nor the vegetable tribes which it supports … With this conviction in my mind, I am not prepared to witness in nature any remaining marks of the catastrophe, and I find my respect for authority of revelation heightened, when I see, on the present surface, no memorials of the event.” [15]
Buckland adopted the tranquil view of the Genesis Flood as shown in the sixth series of “Bridgewater Treatises”, which he delivered in 1836, where he writes his recantation of earlier views concerning his identification of superficial deposits with the Genesis Flood.
“Discoveries which have been made since the publication of this work [the Reliquiae Diluvianae], shows that many of the animals therein described, existed during more than one geological period preceding the catastrophe by which they were exptirated. Hence it seems more probable that the event in question was the last of many geological revolutions that have been produced by violent irruption of water, rather than by the comparatively tranquil inundation described in the Inspired Narrative. It has been justly argued, against the attempt to identify these two great historical and natural phenomena, that, as the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual and of short duration, they would have produced comparatively little change on the surface of the country they overflowed.” [16]
What does the Scripture say about the movements and effects of the waters of the Flood? That is, does the Genesis account of Flood describe a “tranquil” event? The answer seems to be “no”. At the beginning of the Flood Genesis 7:11-12 (NAS) says,
“11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. 12 And rains fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
And at verse 17 it continues,
“17 Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days; and the waters increased and lift up the ark, so that it rose above the earth. 18 And the water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 And the water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. 20 The waters prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. 21 And all flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; 22 of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. 23 Thus He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping thing and to birds in the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the water prevailed upon the earth for one hundred and fifty days.”
And at the end of the Flood, Genesis 8:1-5 (NAS) says,
“1 But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided. 2 Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates in the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained; 3 and the water receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of one hundred and fifty days the water decreased. 4 And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the water decreased steadily until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible.”
This is not a tranquil flood. Its length (150 days), extent (“all flesh that moved on the earth perished”), and depth (15 cubits above the high mountains) does not describe a flood that is “gradual and of short duration.” This is not a flood mild and gentle, geologically impotent, leaving no physical evidences that it ever occurred. As Henry Morris, former professor of hydraulic engineering and chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, says:
“Even on the basis of uniformitarian considerations (the relatively small local floods of the present are often tremendously destructive, leaving great gullies and thick deposits of sediment) it should be obvious that a global kataklusmos [flood], such as the Bible describes, with its torrents of water from the skies, its erupting reservoirs from the depths, its universal destruction, its violent tidal actions, its great wind, its rising mountains and sinking basins, and other non-traquil phenomena must surely have accomplished far more geologic work than a great number of local floods could ever do. … The idea of a worldwide, year-long “tranquil” flood is hydrologically and geophysically absurd.” [17]
But no sooner had the theologians scrapped the Flood theory of geology for the successive catastrophes theories of Cuvier, Agassiz and Buckland, than the professional geologist began to abandon the successive catastrophes theory. And before the Christian public had adjusted its thinking to the new theory, the geologist fell under the spell of “tranquil theory” of the Flood, which removed the Flood from the category of geologic catastrophes and left it without any visible traces. With the Flood removed from consideration in geology, Cuvier’s views were replaced by Lyellian school of uniformitarian geology, and within a generation Cuvier’s view sank into almost complete oblivion. The fact that Lyellian uniformitarianism as the true philosophy of geology is accepted today in all major centers of scientific learning in the world can be attributed partially to Charles Darwin. He was a disciple of Lyell and he built his theory of organic evolution upon the uniformitarian foundation which Lyell had laid. Darwin was not reluctant to expressed his graditude to Lyell; in his Origin of the Species, he says,
“He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognize as having produced a revolution in natural science, and yet does not admit how vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.” [18]
In the light of this uniformitarian evolutionism, it is not surprising that orthodox geologist are opposed to the idea of a world-wide flood as an explanation of the great sedimentary bed of earth’s crust, as well as the fossil records contained in them. All of the geologic strata and formations, the great coal and oil deposits, the volcanic and glacial beds, the mountain ranges and geosynclines, and all the multitudinous phenomena of historical geology are interpreted in terms of uniformity and evolution. In view of what appeared to be overwhelming evidence for uniformitarian evolutionism, many evangelicals insisted that the Genesis Flood be reinterpreted as local. The local flood theory in various forms was advocated by such evangelical writers as Russell Mixer, Harry Rimmer, Arthur Cunstance, Bernard Ramm, William Lasor, and many others. [19] This is not surprising that a local flood view was combined with either the day-age theory or the gap theory. Since both of these theories seek to accommodate the geologic ages, and since an universal flood would eliminate the entire basis for them, it is obvious that the concept of global, catastrophic deluge would be incompatible with either theory.
An examination of Genesis 6-9 show that obviously the flood describe there is not a local flood. The following is some arguments against a local flood. [20]
a. The Height and Duration of the Flood
The record says that the flood covered the highest mountains (Gen. 7:19-20) and this situation continued until ten months (Gen. 8:5) after it began. If the mountains then were the same height that they are now, which the local flood theory assumes, the waters were at least height of 17,000 feet deep (Mount Ararat, on which the ark rested, is this height) and lasted for a period of at least nine months. These are not the conditions of a “local” flood.
b. The Need for an Ark
The requirements for the ark that Noah was to build to “keep seed alive upon the face of the earth” (Gen. 7:3) are those of a gigantic barge. It had the capacity at least equal to that of 255 standard railroad stock cars as can be easily calculated from the recorded dimensions (Gen. 6:15). This size ark was unnecessary if the flood was “local”. This is almost twice as large as necessary to accommodate two of every species of known land animals that have ever lived. If the Flood was only a local and regional flood, it would be a waste of time to spend 120 years to prepare an ark large enough to carry animals from the whole earth. Only the local fauna would have to be “saved” in it. Its size is absurdly out of proportion for mere regional fauna. And why was an ark needed anyway when it would be easy to escape a local flood by migrating to higher ground elsewhere.
c. Destruction of the Earth
The Biblical description of the physical aspects of the Flood preclude a small local flood. God said that He was going to “destroy the earth” (Gen. 6:13). This does not sound like a mini-flood. The forty day downpour (the “windows” of heaven were literally “floodgates”), the simultaneous clevage of the vast “fountains of the deep” (Gen. 7:11), the absence of rain before the Flood (Gen. 2:5), the establishment of the rainbow after the Flood (Gen. 9:13), and the fact that the waters “oveturned the earth” (Job 12:15) are all only understandable in terms of a world-wide cataclysm. These are not the characteristics of local flood.
d. Destruction of All Mankind
Genesis 6:21 says, “all flesh that moved on the earth perished,” Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as well as Peter (II Pet. 2:5; 3:6), and the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 1:7) affirm that the Flood destroyed all mankind. Jesus Himself said, “the Flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). The modern systems of geology and archaeology, which the local-flood theory tries to accommodate, holds that there would be a world-wide distribution of mankind long before any possible Biblical date of the Flood. If the Flood destroyed all of mankind, then this world-wide distribution of mankind must have been destroyed by a world-wide flood. A flood that is anthropologically universal would certainly be geographically universal.
e. God’s Unbroken Promise
God promised never again to destroy the earth by sending a Flood (Gen. 9:11). If that Flood were only a local flood, then God’s promise would be broken repeatably. The theory that the flood in Gen. 6-9 is only local flood means that God has broken his promise every time there has been a local flood. However, God’s promise was not about a local flood but about a world-wide catastrophe, about which He has never broken His promise not to do again.
These and other arguments could be given that the Biblical Flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 is not a local flood but a world-wide catastrophe. Just a thoughtful reading of the account in Genesis 6-9 trying to understand each verse as a local flood will show this theory is a distortion of the plain meaning of the text.
Following the publication of Darwin’s historic publication of his Origin of the Species, there was some opposing thought. Certain men, like Agassiz, Howarth, and Pasteur objected to the uniformitarianism; but despite their stature in their fields, their objections were largely ignored. Mendel, in spite of the importance of his work, was for a time overlooked. And there were others. But within the academic profession these objectors to the uniformitarianism failed to gain any significant number of disciples. Many clergymen and theologians also objected vigorously to evolution based on uniformitarianism, but their arguments were dismissed on the grounds that they were made on theological rather than biochemical and geological grounds. The monopoly of uninformintarian evolution did not extend into all church colleges and seminaries. Here and there some persons gathered data, did a modest amount of publication, and gathered a small following. In 1910’s the publishing catastrophist was Isaac Newton Vail, in the 1920’s it was George McCready Price, in the 1930’s it was Byron C. Nelson, in the 1940’s it was Alfred M. Rehwinkel, and in the 1950’s it was Henry M. Morris. These catastrophic writers have come from almost invariably out of conservative Christian denominations: Isaac Newton Vail was a Quaker; George McCready Price was a Seventh Day Adventist; Byron Nelson was Lutheran (Augustana) as was Alfred Rehwinkel (Missouri Synod); and Henry Morris was independent Baptist. They all opposed the Lyellian geology and held that the global Biblical Flood was catastrophic and had geological effects.
George McCready Price was a prolific writer starting in the 1910’s and extending into 1940’s. He published six major volumes and many articles. Among his publications are
The New Geology (1923),
Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism (1926),
Geological-Ages Hoax (1931),
The Modern Flood Theory of Geology (1935),
How Did The World Begin (1942), and
Common Sense Geology (1946).
He was considered authorative in his own denomination and also received a substantial response among other fundamentalist circles. He achieved no significant following in secular circles and a certain amount of scorn. Price was a learned man with a limited academic education of only three years of college and several years of religious education. But he was self-taught and he was familar with practically everything that had been published in geology during his time. He made extensive field trips and compiled illustrations of fossil finds and stratigraphical formations of dramatic interest and phenomenal length. He made a strong case against uniformitarianism that was largely ignored and scorned rather than refuted. Although his examples presented in his books are impressive and well-documented, he was ignored by the geologists, ostensibly because of his largely self-made education. The only serious attempts to refute Price’s examples was done by J. L. Kulp, of Columbia University’s Lamount Geological Laboratory. Kulp dealt with only one of Price’s example, though certainly one of the most spectacular, that is, the large section of the Canadian Rockies in Alberta extending down into Montana, where an extensive Pre-Cambrian limestone is resting in apparent conformity upon Cretaceous shale bed. In a rather technical discussion Kulp tries to show that Price’s interpretation of the geologic formation was wrong.
Byron Nelson published two major works, After Its Kind (1927) and The Deluge Story In Stone (1931). In the first book he mainly opposes the Darwinian biology and in the second he opposes Lyellian geology. In the first he concentrates mainly on the contradictions between Lamarkianism (environmental determinism) and Mendelianism (genetics). In the second he concentrates on the contradictions between uniformitarian explanations and catastrophics evidence. In this second work on geology he quitely closely follows the pattern that was establish by Price. He recounts the many amazing evidences of catastrophism as illustrated in the fossil record. In addition to the evidence against uniformitarianism Nelson includes the historical development of catastrophism. He recounts the existence of catastrophic themes in ancient literature and traditions of many cultures. Nelson’s work was broader than Price’s, appealing to a larger audience.
Alfred Rehwinkel published in the 1940’s and 1950’s and his major work entitled The Flood was published in 1951. Like Price and Nelson, Rehwinkel was a seminary professor. But his background and education was more extensive than Price’s and the subjects he taught was larger. While Price wrote only on geology, Rehwinkel kept abreast with other fields. Catastrophism was not the only project that he worked on.
Henry Morris’ major work was The Genesis Flood (1961), co-authored by John C. Whitcomb Jr. Like Price, Nelson, and Rehwinkel, Whitcomb was as seminary professor; he was concerned with the theological implications of the Flood story in Genesis. Morris, on the other hand, had a different and valuable background. He had been a professor of hydraulic engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. His background in hydraulics brought insights in flood phenomena and his technical and scientific background brought a knowledge of such subjects as atmospheric chemistry, carbon-14 dating, meteoric dust, and the principles of sedimentation. In 1970 he left his long career in engineering to set up a new Christian liberal arts college with its curricula founded on creationism and the full Biblical authority, named Heritage College. He also founded an associated creation studies center designed to promote the broad field of scientific Biblical creationism, known as the Institute for Creation Research. The College was organized under the sponsorship of the large independent Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego, California, with its famous pastor, Tim LaHaye, as its first president, and its associate pastor, Dr. Art Peters, as its Executive Vice-President. The College was intended to be trans-denominational. Dr. Henry Morris, as Vice President for Academic Affairs, set up the curricula and appropriate departments, all with a strong emphasis on Christian evidences, the scientific integrity of the Bible, and the foundation priority of creationism. The College grew rapidly and the ICR (as the Institute Creation Research was known) expanded with an international outreach with scientific lectures bringing the creationist message to every state of the union and around the world.
III. CONCLUSION
ENDNOTES
[1] James Hutton, “Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws of Observable
in the Composition, Disolution and Restoration of Land Upon the Globe”
(Royal Society, Edinburgh Trans., Vol. 1, 1788, p. 285.).
[2] L. Allen Higley, Science and Truth
(New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940), p. 31.
[3] Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and the Scriptures
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954), pp. 113, 215, 271.
[4] Russell Mixter, “The Science of Heredity and the Source of Species”
Creation and Evolution (1948), p. 2.
[5] Edward John Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1948), pp. 238-239.
In a footnote at the end of the above quotation, Carnell says,
“Whether the ‘kinds’ of Genesis corresponds exactly to the orders of science, only further exhausive research can tell us. The Bible simply states that there are natural divisions; it is the job of the scientist to locate them.”
[6] Peter W. Stoner, Science Speaks,
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1958), pp. 58-61.
Stoner’s position is a variation of the day-age theory. He says,
“My own personal belief is that most of the days of Genesis are very short periods of time, separated by extremely long periods. Most of the acts of God, recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, can be identified with a great cataclysmic change recorded in geology. These are so great that tremendous changes in life occur between two geological layers. Many new forms appear simultaneously. Many old forms disappear as suddenly. The change is so sudden that no new layer, even ever so thin, occupies these great breaks which correspond to these acts of creation recorded in Genesis. The formation changes abrubtly from one layer to another. This with the scriptural statement, ‘He spake and they stood forth,’ lends strong support to the interpretation that the days of Genesis are, in part at least, short, intensive acts of creation, separated by long geological periods of time. This makes perfect harmony between science and the Scriptures.” (Ibid., p. 61).
The author (Ray Shelton) of this article once held to this view of the days of Genesis 1 and 2, while he was in college and graduate work.
[7] J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., “The Length of the Creative Days”,
Christian Faith and Life, Vol. 41 (April, 1935), pp. 123ff.
[8] Edited by C. I. Scofield, Reference Edition of the Holy Bible
(New York: Oxford Press, 1917), p. 4, footnote 3.
[9] G. H. Pember, Earth’s Earliest Ages
(first edition, 1876), p. 22.
[13] H. E. Dana and Julius R. Mantey,
A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947), p. 244.
[14] Quoted in Harold W. Clark’s The New Diluvialism
(Angwin, California: Science Publications, 1946), p. 9.
[15] Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, XIV (April, 1826), pp. 214-215.
Quoted by John Pye Smith,
The Relation between The Holy Scriptures and Some Parts of Geological Science
(5th ed.; London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), p. 101.
[16] William Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy Considered With Reference to Natural Theology
(Bridgewater Treatises, 1836), p. 94. Quoted by
James M. Olmstead, Noah and His Times
(Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1854), p. 159.
[17] Henry M. Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism, General Edition,
Prepared by the technical staff and consultants of the Institute of Creation Research,
(San Diego, California: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974, 3rd ed., 1976.), pp. 254-255.
[18] Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Vol. XLIX of Great Books of the Western World
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc, 1955). p. 153.
[19] Bernard Ramm, op. cit., pp. 229-249.
[20] Morris, op. cit., pp. 250-254.