Young and Old Earth creation beliefs and origins

[Rory Roybal]

(Moved here from 'Theology Post 6' thread by request)

Long ages are a relatively recent phenomenon to justify evolutionary philosophy. I used to believe the day-age and/or gap models were credible, until I realized they had a number of linguistic and logical problems, and that my view was not based on the Bible’s language or historical views thereof, but simply to accommodate long age concepts. These models were constructed in the nineteenth century in an attempt to harmonize evolutionary dogma with the Biblical text. Long ages were touted as ‘proven’ by science, and therefore it seemed necessary to force the Bible’s language to conform to this supposed scientific fact even if this created linguistic, logical and historical inconsistencies.

No naturalistic evolutionists (at least none I’ve read about or encountered) accept this theory and its supposed harmony with evolutionary astronomy, geology, or paleontology. If imaginable, it has been treated with even more intense scorn that young earth creationism, because evolutionary atheists well recognize its inconsistency with Scripture, even if many Christians will not.

The Creation account is very specific. As you are almost surely aware, Heb. bara (to create) is used only of God, never of men, and refers to His unique ability to create ex nihilo , out of nothing. In the Genesis creation account, bara is used only three times, for unique creation of physical and plant life with body (Gen. 1:1), for unique creation of animals with body and soul (Gen. 1:21), and unique creation of man with body, soul, and spirit (Gen. 1:27, I Thess. 5:23).

There is no basis for selectively using the term asah (to make) for making of the sun, moon and stars to mean “appear”. In the creation account, asah consistently refers to making things out of pre-existing materials, like man does, but does not refer simply to the appearance of already made objects, and God used the term ra’ah (to see) when this was His purpose (Gen. 1:9). Note that God refers to both ‘creating’ (out of nothing) and ‘making’ (of pre-existing materials) in the creation account: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made” (Gen. 2:3). If one consistently uses asah in the creation account to mean “made to appear”, with everything fully made in advance but just revealed at a certain time, the entire account would cease to make sense.

The belief that the world would last 7,000 years appears to have been almost universally accepted by the early church. The early church writers based their teaching on the days of Genesis 1, Psalm 90:4, II Peter 3:8 and the biblical genealogies. They reasoned that as God created in six days and a day is as a thousand years, therefore the earth would last for 6,000 years. After this would come a thousand years of rest, equivalent to the seventh day. The same idea is found in Jewish literature. The Babylonian Talmud refers to a chronological scheme by which history is divided into three ages of 2,000 years each: an age of chaos; the age of the Law, and the age of the Messiah. A thousand years of rest would follow. Because the origin of this teaching cannot be dated accurately, we cannot say with certainty if the belief was widespread within Judaism or at what time it originated. The early church fathers did not believe that the creation had taken place over six thousand years, but that the totality of human history would occupy six thousand years, a millennium of history for each of the six days of creation. The widespread acceptance of the creation week pattern for earth history implies the acceptance by many of the church fathers of two important points:

1) The earth is young (less than 6,000 years old).
2) The Biblical genealogies provide an accurate chronology.

The following early church ‘fathers’ wrote specifically about this same topic. “Day” means “day”, and it takes substantial convoluted linguistic contortionism to twist the Scriptures to attempt to make it mean anything else. Those who want to make “day” mean something other than an Earth day in the creation account indirectly accuse God of misleading us from the obvious meaning of the text, which is consistently used throughout Scripture.

Church Fathers Who Believed that This World Would Last 6,000 years:

Pseudo Barnabas - Epistle of Barnabas 15:1-4, 70-135 AD
Irenaeus - Against Heresies 5.28.3, c.115-202 AD
Gaudentius of Brescia - Tractatus 10.15, d. after 410 AD
Hippolytus - Commentary on Daniel 4.23, d.235 AD
Hilary of Poitiers - In Matthew 17:1; 20:6; Tract Myst. 1.41; 2.10, c.315-367 AD
Lactantius - Divine Institutes 7.14-27, d. after 317 AD
Firmicus Maternus - The Error of the Pagan Religions 25.3, c.346 AD
Sulpicius Severus - History, 1.2.1, c.363-c.420 AD
Tyconius - Book of Rules, 5, c. 400 AD

Church Fathers Who Stated Belief in 24 hour Creation Days:

Theophilus of Antioch - Autolycus 2:11-12, c.180 AD
Methodius - Chastity 5.7, d.311 AD
Lactantius - Institutes 7.14, 240-320 AD
Victorinus of Pettau - Creation, d. c.304 AD
Ephrem the Syrian - Commentary on Genesis 1.1, 306-373 AD
Epiphanius of Salamis - Panarion, 1.1.1, 315-403 AD
Basil of Caesarea - Hexameron, 2.8, 329-379 AD
Cyril of Jerusalem - Catechetical Lectures 12.5, d. 387 AD
Ambrose of Milan - Hexameron, 1.10.3-7, 339-397 AD

Even those who rejected literal 24-hour days still believed in a young earth as the following list demonstrates. Origen believed that the world was less than 10,000 years old and Clement thought it was still younger. The early church fathers did not believe that the creation had taken place over six thousand years, but that the totality of human history would occupy six thousand years, a millennium of history for each of the six days of creation.

Specific Statements Made by Early Church Writers Concerning the Age of the Earth:

Clement of Alexandria – 5,592 BC, Miscellanies 1.21, c.150- c.215 AD
Julius Africanus – 5,500 BC, Chronology, Fragment 1, c.160-240 AD
Hippolytus of Rome – 5,500 BC, Daniel 4, 170-236 AD
Origen - < 10,000 BC, Celsus, 1.20, 185-253 AD
Eusebius of Caesarea – 5,228 BC, Chronicle, 263-339 AD

I am unable to find any credible reference to a theologian prior to the 19th century who specifically suggested that the Genesis day was longer than 24 hours, or that the creation week was longer than seven days. It wasn’t until Darwinism started to take hold that this phenomenon occurred.

[Marv]

Daniel said:

Trust me.  The bait is tempting.  Low hanging fruit, as it were.  But I want to give each claim its due on separate topics and not fracture this one ten different ways.

[E. A. Johnston]

ROFL . . . a LONG time.  My sides are busting!

Marv said:

You may need to succour us... ;-)

 

Perhaps you could elaborate on the stars and universe, at least. Someone... is going to ask anyway.

[E. A. Johnston]

I had JUST stopped laughing . . . and then I read, "Well, there's a succour born every minute..."

Marv said:

Well, there's a succour born every minute...

 

I don't get the stars thing. Sounds like something Daniel would say to you. I really don't know anything about a background temperature of the universe. I'm not sure we can measure the background temperatuve of the universe.

 

But anyway, baiting Daniel... sounds good to me.

[Rory Roybal]

The difference in perspectives here is primarily based on one's view of God's Word vs. men's words (most notably 'mainstream' science), also discussed in the topic How far should we take Inspiration? , which was spun off primarily as a result of my disagreement with Daniel about what Genesis says about the Great Flood starting at Theology Post 6, 12/5/09, 5:57 PM, which this thread was spun off of. 

After a profound amount of circling among us and others on such topics, to quote Daniel in his post:

How far should we take Inspiration, 12/14/09, 9:20 PM

"I don't believe the verses about inspiration can be taken to the level and topics/context that you want to go with it. It isn't about some hyper-precision about the background clutter that goes down to every dotted "i" and crossed "t". That was the whole point of my graphic examples. All those things it says it is "profitable" for are spiritual applications."

For those interested, the entire 'Inspiration' topic may be seen via the link above, but I think the above quote is the most direct I ultimately received from Daniel on the matter.

If I agreed with Daniel's perspective of God's Word, I might draw similar conclusions as he has. However, I don't, and as discussed in some depth on the 'Inspriration' thread, I believe what God's Word says about itself precludes such a view being consistent with God's view.

[Bit Brush]

Precisely! 

Rory Roybal said:

...I believe what God's Word says about itself precludes such a view being consistent with God's view.

[Daniel]

Nice recap.  I don't believe the level of precision to be the same between inerrancy and preservation and inspiration.  There is also a difference between the inspired communication as understood by the original audience and later interpretations of what the text is saying along with differences in what people think the text is authoritative on.  I think we often conflate all those ideas to a determent to the text, but I disagree that it's over trusting God's Word versus Man's or science.  I don't see support in the Bible for some of the positions expressed about it, therefore THEY are based on man's reasoning more than MY interpretations of the text and taking it at its word..  And that whole idea mish-mash is entirely different from specific scientific arguments for the young-earth creation model.  That is why I'm repeatedly encouraging those different arguments to be split off into different topics and won't be drawn into discussing them here and sending this topic down several scientific paths.

Rory Roybal said:

The difference in perspectives here is primarily based on one's view of God's Word vs. men's words (most notably 'mainstream' science), also discussed in the topic How far should we take Inspiration? , which was spun off primarily as a result of my disagreement with Daniel about what Genesis says about the Great Flood starting at Theology Post 6, 12/5/09, 5:57 PM, which this thread was spun off of. 

After a profound amount of circling among us and others on such topics, to quote Daniel in his post:

How far should we take Inspiration, 12/14/09, 9:20 PM

"I don't believe the verses about inspiration can be taken to the level and topics/context that you want to go with it. It isn't about some hyper-precision about the background clutter that goes down to every dotted "i" and crossed "t". That was the whole point of my graphic examples. All those things it says it is "profitable" for are spiritual applications."

For those interested, the entire 'Inspiration' topic may be seen via the link above, but I think the above quote is the most direct I ultimately received from Daniel on the matter.

If I agreed with Daniel's perspective of God's Word, I might draw similar conclusions as he has. However, I don't, and as discussed in some depth on the 'Inspriration' thread, I believe what God's Word says about itself precludes such a view being consistent with God's view.