Class Notes: Views of Creation

I’m posting some more notes from last week’s lecture.  As before, some critical points: 1) Don’t argue with me.  These are notes I took from someone else’s lecture.  In no place will you see any indication of my views.  2) Don’t ask me questions about this.  I’d love to study it more and answer your questions, but I have other assignments that are required.  Posting this is as much extra as I can handle on it.  3) Don’t assume that this discussion characterizes a school or a department.  It does not.  4) Remember that I post this only to provoke your thinking (as well as to entertain, if you’re entertained by such things).  5) It’s possible that I wrote something down incorrectly. I’m typing as fast as I can but it’s easy enough to make mistakes.  In addition to that, some context may be lost, given 6) These notes are greatly abridged because I don’t like to read long blog posts and I doubt that you do either.  As it is, it’s longer than I would prefer.  7) These notes are not organized in parallel structure; just as lectures often get offtrack, so do my notes of lectures. 8) This discussion was only half of a 2.5 hour lecture; the second half was about Abraham.  Here goes…

Gap Theory: This was a view that was popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible and found in a number of commentaries written through 1950s. Idea is that Gen 1:1 and 2 are sequential. Full stop after Gen 1:1. Then the earth became formless and void. Gen 1:1 – everything was created in perfection. In verse 2, that is a subsequent event to verse 1. The gap theorist said, how do we explain the transformation from the perfection of verse 1 to the clear chaos of verse 2. The Bible doesn’t say, but it would be reasonable to assume that Satan’s fall and judgment and the ruin of the earth occurred at this tie. Here is the problem: our present understanding of Hebrew grammar (I insist present because who knows what they ‘ll say tomorrow). Gen 1:1 is a circumstantial clause – it begins with a vav disjunctive, a noun, and no finite verb… [lengthy discussion omitted here]

The Jewish Publication Society, with an anti-trinitarian bias (the Jews have been beaten over the head over the centuries), so they render ruah as wind and elohim as an adjective, mighty. A mighty wind was blowing. This is possible. However, a mighty wind blowing does not fit the participle merahefet, because this is not roaring but hovering. Mighty wind doesn’t hover. This is what Professor would call a tendentious, sectarian translation. This is a translation based on a preconceived point of view that is going to roughshod over issues of grammar and language to make their point known. Professor said this in a public meeting in a synagogue library and a couple of the rabbis smile and said you nailed it on the head.

Day 1 vs. Day 4: One of the hang-ups that we al have is that light is created on day 1, but the sun and moon are not created until day 4. That is just a fact of the presentation. Some people say that the light that was created in Day 1 was an unfocusd and spread light, but it becomes focused in the sun on Day 4. That presents huge problems for Professor. Logically the earth existed before the sun; that is an enormous implausibility. Earth has its meaning in relation to the sun and other planets in the solar system. But if the sun isn’t made until day 4, how can the earth predate the sun?

Limited Time on Day 6: Limited time for events on that day to take place. It’s not that God can do everything in no time at all. If God wished to create everything in the universe in its present complex status in a nanosecond, we believe that God could do that. But it’s rather that the passage suggests the passage of time. Rather we should correlate Gen 1 and 2; and not to correlate them is a methodological error. Creationists seem to fail to correlate Gen 2. Here is God creating the man and when he makes the man then he makes the animals (very different from ch. 1), and the man is given the responsibility to name all of the animals, which isn’t just coming up with labels. He is studying, getting used to, and the names that he comes up with, and he discovers that there is none like himself. He discovers the sense of overwhelming loneliness and God puts him into a trance and makes a woman. The only way Genesis 2 works is if there is a lot of time there. But if you go back to Genesis 1, you go back to the 6th day, everything but the sea and air creatures he is making the creeping and crawling things and the beasts of the field and the animals that are capable of domestication and then the apex, man and woman. So we read that the creation of man in Gen 1 is at the end of a long series of created things, and then Gen 2, the creation of the man precedes the creation of the female and it has to be more than just a couple of hours in the afternoon. This is a major issue that has not been dealt with well by youth earth creationists.

24-Hour Day View: This is the oldest interpretation. The view that comes from reading the Bible, not from worrying about science. The age of the earth works far better with the chronologies of Gen 5 and 11 than any other system, because while there is some elasticity because you can’t stretch then for hundreds of thousands of years; that’s a pretty good argument, Professor thinks. Goal is to glorify God and honor the Bible. Those are some strong arguments for their point of view. Here is Professor’s problem: not with the view but with the proponents. They tend to say that if you don’t believe this, you don’t believe the Bible. This, to Professor, is outrageous. This is where Henry Morris was – if you don’t follow me on this, then you don’t believe the Bible.

What the Morris ‘ did was to attack the view of uniformitarianism. And that all hinges on the genesis flood. When the book by Morris and Whitcomb was popular, that seemed to answer a lot of questions. But this book hasn’t been revised. And there’s a great deal of talk today, even among the most conservative scholars that since we don’t have a flood record in the archaeological centers of the ancient world that is is possible that the flood was local after all. 40 years ago that wouldn’t have been brought up, but today lots are talking about it. What does “the whole earth” mean? Lots of talk of a local flood instead of global today. Everything we see in archaeology is post-flood if the flood was universal. So Morris says that all of the geological structures are from the flood.

Revelatory Day Theory: Popularized by Bernard Ramm in 1960s. He wrote a book entitled, The Christian View of Bible and Science. Professor told him that he really enjoyed his book but… and Ramm interrupted and said, you hate the title. Ramm did too. He was infuriated that the publisher put the title, with the definite article. Creation account is from perspective of the author (Moses). The days are the literal, 24-hour days in which God revealed His works to the author. These are days in Moses ‘ life when God revealed it to him. Topical arrangement of events – there is a general chronology, light comes before man, but not absolute chronology. This is a very creative approach (pun intended) to the creation story which gets us out of the trap of too little time or too much time. This is a novel view; novel views should always be held with some suspicion. Not far-fatched, but not immediately transparent. One would only come to this view when you realize that the standard alternatives are so problematic that we ‘re looking for something else that might work. None of the church fathers thought of this; Jewish readers never would have thought of this. This is an attempt to fit geology (a hard science), astronomy, biology into this.

Framework Model: The 7-day creation scheme is a figurative framework with the concepts of day and sequence not to be ta
ken as 24-hour days. Days are considered to be “heavenly days” or a literary device. This is Waltke’s view. This is a literary framework; not chronological. Chronological in that you ‘re moving from light to man. Marvelous pairing of these days. This makes this an exceedingly satisfying literary approach. Framework is now becoming the more popular current view among scholars.

Somewhere in there is where Professor is these days. But you have perfect freedom in this or any class to believe in young earth. Just be sure that when you are asked questions about it, you have thought through all of these options.

Everyone believes in evolution to some extent or another: do you believe in macroevolution, microevolution, and how do you understand it to take place? You can go to Carlsbad Caverns and there are species of fish that are born without any eye element whatever, because they live all of their eyes in darkness but they are clearly related to other fish species.

DNA: with the completion of the human genome, that is an epochal moment in the history of the world in science. Then, when we ‘re told, that 95 or more percent of our DNA is shared with chimpanzees, that is something that you have to deal with. Does that mean that we are common ancestors or that God used some of same materials. It is an affirmation of Christianity to believe that God is Creator; that is not just a footnote but an essential part of Christianity. But it is not necessary to understand how he did it, how long he took, etc. And Gen 1 has pride of place because it is the first chapter in the Bible, but it is but one of the creation texts, but if we really believe in inerrancy we ‘ll take the other texts as seriously as Gen 1 and in none of the other passages has anyone ever tried to see how these fit with science; all seem to be literary passages that affirm that god is the creator. Professor’s question: why do we do that with Gen 1 when we don’t do it anywhere else? So he wants to be agnostic on the process but committed to God as Creator.

Intelligent Design: an attempt by well-meaning people to have creation in the classroom when they ‘re told they can’t have creation in the classroom. Theory is good but incomplete; Bible doesn’t talk about intelligent design but intelligent designer. Strategy is a good strategy, but critics are pretty sharp. How can you talk about creation without talking about God? Eventually the G-word is going to come out and then your goose is cooked. We leave in an increasingly hostile society. Professor doesn’t know what we gain by this; if a person believes that the earth is the result of intelligent design but don’t believe about God, what’s the point? I guess it is pre-evangelism.

Film shown at seminary last night – arguing for Intelligent Design. A professor is excited about it. But made by a Jewish guy who doesn’t believe in God.