Science, Philosophy, Faith, and Creation:
Christian Perspectives on the Origins Debate

Originally presented as part of the Faculty Roundtable Forum
Belhaven College, Jackson, MS
October 23, 2003

Introduction
Dr. Daniel Fredericks
Senior Vice President and Provost

How do faith and science interact?  Is it sound practice to integrate faith and learning when it comes to the field of science?

All of us have a great stake in these important academic debates.  If our faith cannot inform science, then the foundation upon which Belhaven College–and most probably, your own thinking–rests is not sound.

In a recent Faculty Forum, Belhaven scholars explored three key arenas in which this great debate wages: theology, biology, and philosophy.  The outcome was hopeful, even upbeat.  The names of the scholars and their topics are as follows:

·        Dr. Guy Waters, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies, outlines the key and most credible interpretations of the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2.

·        Dr. Rob Waltzer, Associate Professor of Biology, explains the scientific case for intelligent design as espoused by scientists such as himself who share a Christian worldview.

·        Dr. Wynn Kenyon, Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department and Division of Ministry and Human Services, deconstructs the logical framework of the evolutionary position and argues that this position may be beginning to crumble.

The Genesis Account: Four Prominent Interpretations

Dr. Guy Waters
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies

Prior to the year 1850, there were two prevailing understandings of Genesis Chapters 1 and 2.  The first—a doctrine of instantaneous creation—was espoused by Augustine, among others.

Augustine held that God’s act of creation did not transpire over the course of six ordinary days, but occurred instantaneously. Any outside pressure for Augustine’s non-literal reading of Genesis 1 seems to have come less from scientific concern (it does not appear that scientific opinion directed Augustine in that direction) and more from theological concern.  Augustine deemed it improper that God should take all of six days to create the world.  Should not almighty God have created the world only in one day?

For the most part, however, interpreters of Genesis took the days of creation as days of ordinary length, as solar days.  The adoption of new views, especially within evangelical circles in Britain and the United States, gained momentum in the middle of the nineteenth century.  And here, the occasioning concern was not astronomy or biology–as it often is today–but geology.  The findings of geology seemed to indicate that the creation took far longer than six, twenty-four hour periods of time.

In noble attempts to harmonize the data of natural revelation with the data of special revelation, theologians developed at least four views in order to explain both the findings of science and the opening chapters of Genesis.  All of these views, as they have been adopted and promoted by evangelical readers of scripture, hold a number of beliefs in common, as listed below:

·        The Bible is divine revelation.
·        Creation is an act of God.
·        Adam and Eve were historical beings.
·        Adam and Eve were created by God.
·        All human beings have their descent from Adam and Eve.
·        Adam’s sin in the Garden was both historical and conveyed to his posterity.

None of the four major views necessarily dispute any of these key theological and historical issues.

The first view is the Solar Day View.  This is the historical view of the Christian church, namely that the days in Genesis are ordinary days of twenty-four hour length.  In favor of this view are four basic considerations.

First, the narrative of Genesis presents creation as an unmediated divine act.  We are not informed of an elongated process; we are not told of secondary causes and effects by which the world was created. 

Second, proponents argue that the solar day view is the most natural reading of the Genesis text.  Because of the recurring phrase, “There was evening, there was morning the first day, the second day, etc.,” scholars argue that the definition of the word “day” is limited to meaning an ordinary day.  Further, the fact that these days are sequential is indicated by the fact that the author proceeds from the first day to the second day to the third day, etc.  So, based on the text, Moses describes a sequence of days, not just ordinary days simpliciter.  One final observation in support of this view is that the text gives no positive indication of extended durations of time intervening among the days or of individual days transpiring longer than the period of an ordinary day.

Third, Exodus 20:9-11 (“six days you shall labor and do all your work…For in six days the Lord made…) appears to understand the “days” of Genesis 1 to be identical in length to the “days” of Exodus.  Since Exodus speaks to the pattern of six days of human work followed by one day of Sabbath rest, the days of Genesis are ordinary, solar days. 

The solar day view has been challenged as incompatible with the findings of geology, astronomy, and biology.  Proponents of this view will generally offer one of two responses to the findings of science.

·      Some will dismiss the findings of science altogether.

·      Others will argue that science, in attempting to examine the questions of origins and the age of the earth, has stepped beyond its legitimate sphere—examining the present and making predictions about the future.  Instead, science has attempted to make pronouncements about the distant past—an area in which it has no competence.

Now, some proponents of the solar day view will argue for a young earth, that the earth is about six-thousand years old.  But the two views—a young earth and a solar day view of Genesis 1 and 2—are not logically tied together.  Someone can believe in the solar day view and not be bound necessarily to a young-earth hypothesis.

The second view is the Gap Theory.  Today this view is more an historical curiosity than a widespread position.  But it has been held by important individuals ecclesiastically.  This theory was and is taught in the Scofield Reference Bible, still being reprinted and read by Christians today.

 This view argues that a potentially massive, unspecified gap of time occurred between the events recorded in Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:3.  Within this gap of time transpires all that science tells us concerning the antiquity of the earth.

In its favor, this view attempts to respect scientific evidence as well as the integrity of the Genesis text as an historical account.

But there have been a number of weighty objections raised against this view.

First, this view would have us understand that verses 1:3 and following do not describe the creation as such but the “reconstruction of a disturbed world order.”  If this is so, then all that God has told us about the original creation is given in verse 1.  Again, that is not the way Genesis 1 and 2 have been read historically, and that merits consideration.

The second objection is that it would have us take verse 2–traditionally read “and the earth was formless and void” as “the earth became formless and void.”  In other words, verse two refers to the crisis that precipitated all that transpired in the unspoken gap.  Linguistically, this is not a compelling reading of verse 2.

And finally, the strength of this view is largely found in its silences and in its gaps, but this is really an objection against it.  There is very little positively advanced in support of this view.  The theory rests on certain gaps and openings to fill in what findings of science may or may not have found.

A third view is the Day-Age View.  Popular among evangelicals in the nineteenth century and into the present day, this view argues that the word “day” in Genesis Chapter 1 is a period of unspecified length.  It claims that findings of geology therefore can be accommodated.  The findings of science can be harmonized with the Creation Account if we understand that the six days of creation are of unspecified length.

Perhaps, for instance, the “days” took place over hundreds of years, perhaps over millions or billions of years; no particular cap on the length of the days is set necessarily by this hypothesis.

On the positive side, Day-Age proponents note the fact that the Hebrew word for “day” in the Genesis Account can refer to a non-twenty-four-hour period.  It can refer to a period of time such as an age or an epic.  Proponents cite Psalm 90:4, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night.”

Day-Age proponents also note that in Genesis 2:4 (“These are the generations of the heavens and earth when they were created in the day of their making”) the word “day” clearly does not refer to a twenty-four hour period.  It refers to the creation as a whole.

Day-Age proponents do try to harmonize science with the findings of scripture–a noble attempt on the part of interpreters of the scripture.  But there are certain objections to this view, several that stem from the way this hypothesis interprets the word “day.”  Among these objections are the following:

·      The Genesis text offers no positive evidence to show that the creation days themselves are anything other than ordinary days.

·      The positive specifications—“There was evening, there was morning”—seem to indicate an ordinary day.

·      The Day-Age View of “day” fails to explain Exodus Chapter 20 where God grounds Sabbath observance—working six days and resting one—in the creative week.  God worked six days and rested the seventh.  The analogy seems to rest on a similarity of duration between God’s creating days and the days of human labor and rest.

·      The Day-Age View seems open to the idea of animal death prior to the Fall.  In the Day-Age View, animals apparently lived and died on the earth prior to the creation and fall of Adam.  Therefore, the reality of death (at least among animals) predated the fall of man.  Yet Romans Chapters 5 and 8 indicate that creation was corrupted due to, not subsequent to, the Fall.

A fourth view is the Framework Hypothesis View.  This name is a bit misleading, and there are variations of the name.  This view says that Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 give a figurative framework—a topical and non-sequential account of creation—but not necessarily an historical account of the order of the creative process.  And so it tells us we have structure—we have order in the account of Genesis Chapter One, but the structure does not correspond to the historical order.  We are not to take the structure literally, yet we are not to hear a non-literal or a mythological reading of the text.  When God declares, “Let there be light,” they argue, there was light and this was an actual historical event.

Proponents of the Framework Hypotheses point to other places in scripture where history has been dischronologized.  For topical reasons, historical narrative has been broken up sometimes to reflect those topical concerns.  Proponents would point to the Gospels as one example.

Proponents point to other places in scripture where figurative language is ascribed to God.  For instance, some cite the Exodus 31 analogy between the creative days and the days of human working and rest where we read that “on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed” (Exod. 31:17).  They say since God permitted anthropomorphic language in that particular verse, it is then possible that the days of creation are not necessarily literal, but rather that God accommodated himself in describing the creation account in terms with which human beings would be familiar.

Of course, this view, of the four surveyed, lends the greatest latitude toward science in trying to reconcile scientific accounts of the origins of the universe with the biblical text.

There are key objections to his view:

·      Though an anthropomorphism may be used when Exodus speaks of God refreshing himself on the seventh day, that does not require that Exodus regards the creation account to be anthropomorphic in nature.

·      This view offers no salient reason why the creation account, the days of Genesis 1 and 2, is presented as history.

·      No indication exists that the narrative that follows in Genesis Chapters 3 and 4 and following is somehow to be read differently than the narrative in Chapters 1 and 2.  In other words, what is to prevent us from reading the remainder of Genesis in this way?

In summary, my view is the Solar Day View, but each of these views has been held by believers.

Bibliography

Hagopian, David, ed.  The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation.  Mission Viejo, CA: Crux P, 2001.