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Lecture 17: Creationism

Creationism

The story of how "young earth creationism" became one of the fundamentalist creeds is most fascinating. Ronald Numbers, raised a fundamentalist, researched this story extensively in his book "The Creationists" with quite a sympathetic tone. From a sociological perspective, fundamentalists embraced creationism because it was a creedal statement that separated fundamentalists from liberals and catholics alike. Liberals hated it because it was anti-rational, denying 300 years of science. Catholics didn't like the "literalist" interpretation of Genesis, ignoring the Catholic contributions to the subject. Think about it a minute, not a single article of the 12 Fundamentals that define Fundamentalism, not a single doctrine of orthodox faith as developed in the creeds and confessions of the Church over the last 2000 years, not a single denomination depends upon the theology of a young earth. Thus it was never an issue in 1900 years of church theology, but suddenly found a receptive audience in the 20th century. That story is intriguing in its own right, and worth telling.

In Number's book, he documents a survey of church theology to discover how many hold to a young earth theology. The results are enlightening.

1929 Survey	% Agree	1963 Survey	% Agree
MS Synod Lutheran	89	7th Day Adventists	94
Baptists	63	Assemblies of God	91
Evangelical Free	62	Nazarene	80
Presbyterian	35	Church of Christ	78
Methodist	24	Southern Baptist	72
Congregational	12	MS Synod Lutherans	64
Episcopalian	11	Church of God	57
Other	60	Moderate Protestant	29
		Liberal Protestant	11

What has happened over the years? The arch-fundamentalism of MS Synod Lutherans has cooled a bit to young earth, Baptists warmed up a bit, and all the main line protestants have cooled off. In contrast, several denominations that hardly rated in the 1929 survey have become prime defenders of the young earth faith, notably the 7th Day Adventists, Assemblies of God, Nazarene and Church of Christ. These are a rather disparate bunch, with AOG being pentecostal and experiental, whereas Nazarene and Church of Christ are staunchly anti-pentecostal. However they are united in appealing to the same socio-economic class, and all hold to Niebuhr's category of separation between Christ and Culture. Clearly, all four of these denominations embraced this interpretation more completely than their more moderate protestant colleagues. Why?

The history of how creationism took fundamentalism by storm is documented carefully in Numbers' book. There are several complementary reasons for this phenomena.

Evolution had continued its deconstruction of man (see C. S. Lewis' excellent monograph, "The Abolition of Man"), and fundamentalists desperately needed a response. Kant's wall separating the noumena from the phenomena, religion from science, turned out to be the blade of a bulldozer on the tractor of scientific materialism. Something had to be done to stop the illegal land grab of evolutionism, appropriating territory that had always belonged to religion.
A short list of orthodox Biblical interpretations of Genesis 1-2 include:
1. Day-Age assumes each day could be an age cf. Psalm 90:4 For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
2. Gap Theory assumes that there is an unspecified lapse of time between days of creation
3. Catastrophism and 2nd creation assume that the world was created much earlier, and for whatever reason, God is recreating the world from pre-existing material.
4. 6-day 24-hr assumes that the creation took 144 hours by the atomic clock (sun not created until day 4).
5. Poetic and Genre position assume that the creation account belongs to a different literary genre, and the words are used more figuratively. cf. Ps 91:4 which doesn't imply that God is a fowl, He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;
In the 1920's, Price, a 7th Day Adventist, took #4 and elevated it to creedal status. This may be because of all the various views of Genesis, the young earth view had never been "harmonized" with Evolution, making it both the most scientifically repulsive and the most unsullied Biblical interpretation.
Because creationism was not a hot-button in the debates of the preceding 3 centuries, many Christians felt theologically neutral on the subject. This permitted the new-found creed to operate as a litmus test for Biblical Inerrancy, e.g., commitment to fundamental ideals.
Finally, the appealing simplicity of explaining all of geology with Noah's Flood (another scientifically impossible claim), made this theory pack a 1-2 punch with Biblical inerrantists.

It took a while for the advantages of this interpretation to spread through the fundamentalist churches. Numbers documents several of the evangelists of the new gospel, but there was one major disadvantage that hindered its wider acceptance for nearly 50 years: none of the evangelists had scientific credentials. It was only when Henry Morris, a PhD hydrologist at Virginia Polytechnic, took on the task of writing a "creation textbook" in 1961 entitled "The Genesis Flood", did the movement gain momentum and become the steamroller it is today. As anecdotal evidence of its power, a recent report of "General Assembly" of the PCA church concluded that young-earth theology was the position of Calvin and reformers, and should be elevated to creedal status. This from a denomination that throughout the 20th century, engaged in heated debates with fundamentalists and dispensationalists alike on the need to apply appropriate hermeneutical (I didn't want to say scientific), procedures to the interpretation of Scripture! (As a partial explanation of this surprising turnaround, the PCA is a recent split from the PCUSA with particular strength in the South and fundamentalist strongholds.) What was the attraction of creationism, and how did it spread?

My father attended one of Henry Morris' lectures, and found his presentation both appealing and convincing, causing him to purchase a copy of the Genesis Flood for me when I was in 10th grade. Reading the book, even at that young age, I couldn't help but be appalled at circular footnotes that appear to document a controversial point, but instead merely documented themselves. My uninformed position was that this book was only intended to appear scientific, without actually abiding by the rigor of a scientific document. In other words, it was an impressive wrapper around a Biblical interpretation intended for churches, not for scientists. (As an aside, the Intelligent Design community also combats Evolution and posits a creator God, which on the surface, are the same goals as creationists. Yet creationists violently reject the I.D. approach, accusing its proponents of various heresies, showing that creationism is at its core a theological, not a scientific issue.)

Morris himself agrees, and has said many times that the issue is not whether Creationism can be justified scientifically, but rather "Whom do you believe, Science or the Bible?" In his presentations and writings he constantly juxtaposes these as opposing epistemologies, arguing that Truth does not have to be rational or even make sense, it just has to be an accurate reading of the Bible. A classic argument, predating Morris, is that the world could be a mere 10 minutes old with all the fossils and libraries created by God to look as if it were much older, so that if God says the world is 6000 years old, we must believe it, even should all evidence be to the contrary. In essence, Morris agrees with Mark Twain's hero in Huckleberry Finn, who defined faith as "believing what you know ain't so." As one might expect, this makes debates on between creationists and scientists all but impossible. (See my letter to Bruce.)

In this way, Morris has moved the debate about Creationism versus Evolution one step higher into a meta plane discussion of truth itself, a field which philosophers refer to as epistemology. It is Pilate's classic question, "What is Truth?" with the toga exchanged for blue coveralls. In Morris' epistemology, the Bible trumps all other suits, and if the Bible says something is true, then at best we can try to rationalize it or explain it, but never contradict it. Thus anyone who opposes Morris is politely told that they are opposing God, which makes an awfully intimidating debating technique (and is precisely why Karl Barth was adamant about the trancendental divide separating us finite creatures from the infinite creator.)

As we tried to say earlier however, this presupposes that we know precisely what the Bible says. The art of Biblical interpretation is full of pitfalls, not the least of which is believing our hermeneutic to be infallible. One can point out that Genesis 1-2 is written in Hebrew, and that many of the words used in the text have multiple meanings, hence the multiplicity of orthodox interpretations of the passage. One can also point out that should the good Lord be capable of deceiving our senses (say, by creating the world to merely look old), then why wouldn't He be capable of decieving our Biblical interpretation (say, by using a word in a way unlike any we've ever seen)? Why should the science of interpreting the creation be fallible whereas the science of interpreting the Bible be infallible?

Indeed, as one reads the New Testament commentary on Old Testament prophecy, one is astounded by exactly this sort of duplicity in scripture. St. Matthew takes a phrase used by Hosea the prophet to describe Israel's escape from bondage in Egypt as prophecy concerning Jesus' return from exile, Matt 2:14-15:

So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: " OUT OF EGYPT I CALLED MY SON."

When Israel was a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.

That is, a verse that no one had previously identified as Messianic or prophetic, is suddenly elevated by Matthew to a prediction that Jesus fulfilled. If God could surprise the scholarly scribes and Pharisees of the 1st century, who had an encyclopaedic knowlege of the Hebrew scriptures, with creative Biblical interpretation, how much more could he surprise us poorly educated moderns today concerning Genesis 1 and 2?

(Just to illustrate this point with a small example: Ex 32:14 (KJV) "And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." A more modern, but literal translation, NASB, renders it "So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people." Even the politically correct NIV translates it "Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened." While the paraphrased NLT says "So the LORD withdrew his threat and didn't bring against his people the disaster he had threatened." It took a wildly inaccurate paraphrased Bible "translation" to escape the conclusion that (a) God thinks of doing evil (b) God repents of doing it. That is, if something as critical to theology as the essential goodness and unchangeableness of God can be muddled in translation, surely we should not think that our translation of Genesis 1-2 can avoid error too.)

In fact, Morris falls into the same trap as the Evolutionist, who also believes a theory that is often contrary to the facts. Both groups have adopted a post-modern, post-logic position that makes Truth relative, placing facts in a secondary relation to metaphysics; a position that easily accomodates contradiction, and stupifies cognitive dissonance. Both groups argue that there is no acceptable alternative view, and that despite obvious failings, all other options are worse. And both groups adopt a view that "Real Truth", is all about "scientific truth", statements that can be verified by an all-knowing observer or recorded on a videotape. In one very real sense, this epistemological stalemate can be traced to the emergence of science as metaphysics, and the pervading influence of positivism.

This is a key point, and worth repeating. It is reductionism applied to hermeneutics that has led to this impasse. It is the influence of materialism on Biblical interpretation that has made creationism popular. It is the infiltration of secular thought into theology that has created the post-modern culture war of Evolutionism versus Creationism. Understanding how both groups view truth, and how that concept of truth has been influenced by culture, goes a long way toward resolving this irreconciliable debate.

Last modified, March 4, 2002, RbS