[Please note that there are a number of blue-colored links inside this evaluation. All of these links are kept within the Creation Engineering Concepts website. To see the complete list of articles in the website go to the website index.]
I have been invited by one of the writers for the forward of the book to evaluate the theory presented in the book Genesis Unbound, 2nd Edition [GU], authored by Dr. John Sailhamer. This second edition was published in 2011 by Dawson Media following the first edition which was published in 1996. The book has 270 pages, is broken into four parts consisting of 23 chapters, and has an epilogue and two appendices. I was very disappointed to find that it has no index. Dr. Sailhamer [JS] is a scholar in Hebrew and Old Testament. I have no reason to dispute that he is an accepted authority among his peers on these subjects.
As you will see as you read this evaluation (as a strict biblical creationist) I do not accept his interpretation of the first two chapters of Genesis nor his overall interpretation of the creation story in the Bible. I believe it is greatly in error and so I would describe it as unbiblical as well as wrong regarding some aspects of true science. In my forty years of study of the origin debates JS is not the first theologian I have encountered to incorrectly interpret the Genesis account. In many of these cases I have found that the attempt to correlate secular ideas with the Word of God have led scholars and theologians far astray from the reality of the world as well as the truth of the Scriptures. Unlike creation scientists these theologians usually do not go into the field to study the evidence firsthand but instead rely on the writings of (often atheistic) secular authorities. What I have found is that in these cases what usually happens is a total lack of study of the science from what I would describe as a biblical perspective.
Another reason I have found theologians to go astray is that they allow themselves to be embarrassed by what they have been told to be “archaic, outdated and ancient” biblical creationist ideas (see GU p. 17). Once they find themselves embarrassed, they work to gain acceptance from their academic peers by incorporating secular thought into their worldview. In this way they become opposed to the plain truth of the Bible. The readers of this evaluation will be free to decide themselves whether this is the case for JS after completing their own analyses.
I admit I am not a Hebrew scholar. I know little about the Hebrew language, just enough to get myself in trouble. However, over the past four decades I have become acquainted with several Hebrew scholars of the biblical creationist consortium that I believe do reject the GU hypothesis or would reject it if they were aware of it. So, I will not speak in this evaluation from the forte of JS but from my forte. I believe my forte is in the fields of engineering (applied science), biblical creation apologetics, biblical paleontology, dinosaurs and fossils, and origins and worldview. My faith statement has as its foundation the acceptance of the accuracy, inerrancy, and authority of the Bible, a six-day (24-hours per day) creation, and the reality of the global Flood at the time of Noah some 4,500 years ago.
GU covers many topics of science and history. Let me explain my understanding of what science and history are as a foundation for my evaluation of the book GU. In the preface of GU, the author mentions what he calls “unexamined assumptions” (p. 13). In my biblical creation ministry, I always emphasize how important assumptions are to any worldview. I usually use the word “presuppositions” instead of assumptions because I think it makes clearer the commitment people make to these presupposed and foundational beliefs. For example, a large part of my book The Creation Dialogues-A Response to the Position of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Evolution, Christianity and the Bible explains the importance of presuppositions to worldview and the prevalence of presuppositions being stated improperly as “facts” in the secular literature. So, I do agree with JS that it is critical for all Christians to be open to examining their presuppositions. If one is to expend great effort in “integrating a Christian worldview” with science (GU p. 11) what is it that one would be attempting to integrate?
What is Science?
Foundationally science is knowledge. Or we could say that science is the process for acquiring knowledge about the universe and everything in it. Unfortunately, much of what is touted as science in our culture today is not science but rather philosophy or speculation. These types of ideas are not determinable by the scientific method. The scientific method does not allow for the determination of the details of the creation of the universe because the creation cannot be repeated in a laboratory or elsewhere. The creation was a unique historical event, and we have no way to use our senses to develop experiments that might falsify any all-encompassing creation hypothesis that we might dream up. (See Mitchell, J.D., The Creation Dialogues-2nd Edition, CEC Publications, 2014, p. XV, 5, 52.) In the origins debate both creationists and secularists are making claims about the past. That means they cannot strictly use the scientific method. Thus, both creation and evolution come under what can be called “origins” or “historical” science. Rather than observation, origins science uses the principles of causality and analogy. The difference between biblical creationism and the theory proposed by GU is that biblical creationism starts with biblical presuppositions regarding all aspects. GU has a primary goal of following the presuppositions of atheistic origin theories. Secular scientists will readily admit that the foundation of their science is to “not let a Divine foot in the door.” JS admits the foundational purpose of his theory is to match up to “modern science” which is the same as secular science.
Secular evolutionists use three main concepts today to influence people to accept deep time. Deep time is the idea of millions or billions of years of past existence since the creation. Deep time is a period greater than the biblical historical narrative of 6,000 to 10,000 years that is calculated from the genealogies of Genesis and other historical documents. Without deep time it would be difficult to imagine the veracity of macro evolutionary theories that are abundant in western culture today. The three concepts I am speaking of are the big bang, radiometric dating, and dinosaurs in the rock record.
The Big Bang:
Let’s look first at the big bang. The big bang is proposed as an answer to the creation story of the Bible, and as an explanation for the origin of every material thing in the universe without a need for a Creator. It is an atheistic philosophical idea. Christians who integrate deep time into their worldview must understand that it is foundational to all the secular “science” and is held to be true in our public schools, all secular and most Christian universities, government agencies, mainline media—almost everywhere in the western culture. As a result, accepting deep time means that one is in effect also accepting the big bang theory because it is the idea that transcends all of society regarding the age of the universe.
Yet the big bang has a load of problems even if accepted as a valid concept. For one example, the big bang theory currently requires the universe to be composed of one-fourth of what is called “dark matter.” But no one has ever seen or sampled dark matter! In fact, no one even knows how or where to look for it. I suggest that when considering the big bang versus biblical creation for an explanation of the beginning of things that we are looking at an argument over history not over science. To see what I mean I have made a couple of tables that compare the biblical creation story to the big bang as a comparison of histories.
Figure 1
It is important to see in Figure 1 above that the big bang is not only un-scientific and based on the presupposition of deep time, but that as a historical document it has no witnesses. I think it could also be described as a religion devised to replace Christianity. The importance of this to the Christian is that even if a deep time proponent like JS does not believe in the big bang his support of deep time will result in the reinforcement of a general acceptance by the culture of the big bang theory as true. On this point, please note that JS writes on page 17 that his interpretations of Genesis “fit remarkably well with our current scientific models of the universe.”
Radiometric Dating:
Radiometric dating methods developed in the 20th century are usually cited by evolutionists and others as scientific proof for the supposed 4.6-billion-year age of the earth. But radiometric dating and other uniformitarian dating methods are all based on unproven and unprovable assumptions. These assumptions are basically as follows:
- The amount of parent material is known at the beginning of the time segment.
- The rate of change (or decay) of the measured process is constant and is the same as the current measured rate.
- No contamination of the parent or daughter materials has occurred during the time segment.
Scores of these types of uniformitarian estimation methods exist that can be, and have been, used to attempt to determine the earth’s age. These methods are all fundamentally flawed because of the inability to scientifically test the assumptions. In addition, the different methods do not come up with the same estimated age of the earth. One list compiled by the Institute for Creation Research displays 68 different processes with resulting estimated ages ranging from “too small to measure” to a maximum of “500,000,000” years. All these processes result in ages that are far less than the secularly accepted 4.6-billion-year age of the earth. In fact, two-thirds of these estimates result in an age of a million years or less. The fact that evolutionists choose to use uniformitarian methods that utilize processes that result in the oldest ages instead of an average or some other combination is an indication of the philosophical foundation for their “science.” In reality, there will never be enough time for macro evolutionary changes to occur in lifeforms, but the billions of years does make the impossibility seem a little more plausible to those open to evolutionary theories. (Above is from The Creation Dialogues-2nd Edition pp. 3-4.)
For a detailed discussion of this topic see the 676-page volume, Vardiman et al, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, ICR, 2000.
The importance of this point to the Christian is that even if radiometric dating is not accepted by a deep time proponent (like JS) his support of deep time will result in the reinforcement of deep time radiometric assumptions by a general audience. I repeat here that on page 17 JS wrote that his interpretations of Genesis “fit remarkably well with our current scientific models of the universe.”
Dinosaurs in the Rock Record:
Dinosaurs are an intentional weapon used by secularists to promote millions of years and evolution to the populace. This promotion begins at a very young age, in preschool in fact. The current secular story is that dinosaurs lived 220 to 65 million years ago, were made extinct by a great asteroid impact (that curiously had no effect on most all the rest of the animal kingdom), and that today’s birds are the evolutionary relatives of the dinosaurs.
What I think the paleontological and geological evidence really indicates is that dinosaurs were created alongside man on Day six, went onto the ark with the other land and air lifeforms, came off the ark, were common for centuries, and then likely went extinct a few hundred years ago. The dinosaurs that are re-discovered today are in fossil graveyards or bone jumbles throughout the sedimentary layers over all the continents of the earth. The sedimentary layers are clearly the result of a single catastrophic event not that long ago and are not due to slow processes over millions of years. We know this primarily because these layers (up to thousands of feet thick) were deposited like pancakes one layer on the next with no evidence of erosion or plant growth between the layers. If the rock layers had been laid down over millions of years there would have been erosional water-caused gouges between them.
No one has historically witnessed local or flash floods that have resulted in the fossilization of large animals the size of bison, for example. I know that the reader has not witnessed this nor have I. The dinosaurs are clearly in the rock record due to rapid burial by water laden sediments in amounts never documented since the time of the global Flood. The uniformitarian (“the present is the key to the past”) deep time geological ideas of men like Hutton, Playfair, and Lyell put forth in the 1800s are slowly being abandoned by scientists of all persuasions. The only reason there is no total agreement is because secularists cannot philosophically accept the concept of a biblical global Flood. We must remember that these three men mentioned above, and others of the Enlightenment period, had as their underlying goal the destruction of Christianity. (See Marcy, Milt, Exposing the Hidden Roots of the Evolutionary Agenda, 2022, where this is all well documented.)
Every year more and more soft tissue is being discovered in dinosaur fossils. Reliable scientific techniques have found soft materials such as chitin, elastin, fibrin, osteocalcin, keratin, hemoglobin, collagen, and nerves in various supposedly millions-of-years-old fossils. The fact that millions of years are still being held onto tightly by evolutionists is proof that the deep time supposedly seen in the fossils is religion not true science. Where is the scientific evidence that these soft tissues can last even 100,000 years let alone 65 million? I wonder if any of the Christian theologians holding to deep time have gone into the field to see the soft tissue being discovered and then gone into the lab to see it being stretched under magnification. If so, how could they still logically believe in millions of years?
Even if a deep time theologian such as JS does not accept the secular view of the dinosaur soft tissue in fossils, the fact that he promotes deep time only supports the 65-million-year extinction of the dinosaurs, an idea which now lacks scientific credibility.
Next, I will look at some specifics of the book GU. To do this I will first examine the sidebars that JS placed and highlighted in gray throughout the book. The reason for this is to allow me to point out areas of agreement and of disagreement regarding the truthfulness of his statements. That will also serve to help me show additional weaknesses in his interpretations of the science and the Bible.
Page 25: “THREE MAJOR VIEWS, YEA THERE ARE FOUR”
In this sidebar JS describes the three evangelical views of the conflict between the Bible and science according to J.P. Moreland. These are: 1. Creationism, 2. Progressive Creationism, and 3. Theistic Evolution. JS adds his viewpoint 4. that he has named Historical Creationism.
In my experience I have found that there are other views supported in the evangelical community. These are: 5. Intelligent Design, 6. Framework Hypothesis, and 7. Various other Gap Theories such as the one in GU. Probably the most popular of all these is Theistic Evolution because it allows for the “believer” to think he can accept both a secular view and a view that there is a God who used evolution. Of course, this is a totally illogical choice and cannot be correlated to either secular science or to the Bible.
Remember that I explained earlier about the historical science that is used in the study of origins. So, I think JS is understanding this definition when he calls his view “Historical Creationism.” In that sense I would argue that biblical creationism is the correct historical creationism for the many reasons that have been and will be put forth in this response.
Page 35: “CAN BIBLICAL GENEALOGIES TELL US THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE?”
In this sidebar JS presents what he calls the “faulty assumptions” in the use of biblical genealogies found in Genesis chapters 5 and 10 to determine that age of the universe. I agree that the assumptions are indeed used by biblical creationists and other biblical scholars to determine the age of the earth and the universe. This is a component that allows for the 6,000-to-10,000-year estimates. I do not agree that they are faulty. The idea that there are twenty thousand to two hundred-thousand-year gaps in the genealogies would seem to me to throw the idea of biblical inerrancy right out the window. This sounds to me like nothing but pure deep time speculation.
Deep time creationist views always have a hard time with Exodus 20:11. Here is how it reads in the NIV: For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. The various gap theory mental gymnastics used to say it does not say what it seems to clearly say are difficult for me to comprehend.
Page 49: “HISTORICAL CREATIONISM”
Since this sidebar is somewhat of a summary explanation by JS of his deep time theory, I will not comment here since my comments following the sidebars will cover the theory as a whole.
Page 59: “CREATIONISM”
This sidebar is a summary of JS’s opinion of what creationism is. He ends the first paragraph with these words: “The present condition of the earth—which gives the appearance of being much older [than 10,000 years]—reflects the catastrophic destruction wrought by Noah’s flood.” The problem I have with this statement is that the appearance of the age of the earth depends on one’s presuppositions. If one presupposes that the secular ideas of the age of the earth are correct, then it follows that the earth might appear to be old. But if one looks at the geology of the earth with an open mind it is easy to see it as having recently (about 4,500 years ago) undergone a catastrophic global Flood.
The last paragraph of this sidebar ends with this sentence: “In this way the fossil record could have been laid down in a matter of weeks, months, or a few years.” This is an oversimplification of current biblical creationist science. Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8 provide a lot of information about the global Flood. Not everything we might like, but chapter 8 (for example) tells that the Flood was rising for about 150 days. These chapters also say that Noah and his family were on the ark a little more than one year. By looking at the actual geology of the surface of the earth and combining those observations with the Flood information in the Bible, creationist geologists largely agree that it is possible to develop a chart for the timing of the Flood that makes sense of both. There are at least four or five biblical creationist models for the timing and sequence of Flood events currently being worked on at this time.
Here are some facts from paleontology that help show the validity of the global Flood hypotheses:
- Fossils are almost always formed by rapid and complete burial.
- Fossils are often found in assemblages (fossil graveyards or bone jumbles).
- Fossil assemblages indicate catastrophe.
- Fossils are found in regions all over the earth, even on mountain tops.
- Most (95%) of the fossils of the world are marine invertebrates (without backbones).
- The sedimentary layers of the Geologic Column have been correlated mostly by fossils.
- True transitional fossils have not been found, and there is no scientific reason to believe they exist.
- No lifeform found living or fossilized today is “primitive” or “simple.”
- There is little evidence that fossils are now being formed in lake beds, rivers, or oceans.
- Fossil lifeforms are in many cases identical to or very similar to modern lifeforms. These are called “living fossils.”
The above are from Mitchell, J.D., Fossils: Description and Interpretation within a Biblical
Worldview, CEC Publications, 2017, p. 2-4.
Page 77: PROGRESSIVE CREATIONISM
In this sidebar JS writes in paragraph three that “They rely on scientific dating methods for establishing the age of the universe, the earth, and life on earth.” I think it would be more accurate to say that they rely on “secular dating methods.”
Hugh Ross is one of the most prominent of the current-day progressive creationists. He is an astronomer with a strong belief in the big bang and all his science “progresses” from this belief. He has also postulated that Christians should understand science as if it had the authority of the 67th book of the Bible.
Page 102: THEISTIC EVOLUTION
In this sidebar explaining theistic evolution JS could have better defined it as the same as “molecules-to-man evolution except God did it.” It could be said that there is really nothing that the atheistic evolutionist believes that the theistic evolutionist does not believe except that they blame it on God. I should know because I was one until the age of 40. To be consistent a theistic evolutionist cannot accept any Christian doctrine and most never spend any time reading the Bible because it makes no sense to their worldview.
JS mentions the importance of Darwin’s natural selection in his explanation of theistic evolution. Our public schools continue to teach that since natural selection is true then so is evolution. But much creation science research has shown that natural selection is dead as a process and as an idea. In fact, I have written ten articles that quote evolutionists who agree that the idea of natural selection has little merit. You can read those articles at the link above noted. One creationist theory demonstrates that lifeform adaptation is due to an internal preprogramed engineering process called “continuous environmental tracking.” Darwin searched for an external mechanism for adaptation in organisms from Nature that matched up to his experience with breeding pigeons. But Nature is totally stupid and entirely unable to select for anything. It is unfortunate that our school textbooks have not yet caught up to the true science. I don’t expect they will until they are able to unshackle themselves from Darwinism and the secular worldview.
Page 119: HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?
I have largely covered this question already. I would just like to repeat one quote by JS from this sidebar: “They [creationists] are prepared and willing to reject the conclusions of modern science and seek to establish their own alternative views of the age of the universe.” This is just not true! Biblical creationists are willing to reject the conclusions of any view of origins that does not match up to God’s Word, whether that is from modern (secular) science or other origin theories. Biblical creationists have no problem with true science and many biblical creationists are experts in areas of science with advanced degrees and decades of experience. What separates biblical creationists from others involved in the origins debates is their presuppositions and their worldview.
Page 128: WHAT ABOUT THE WATER CANOPY?
This sidebar is totally out of date. For example, the three most prominent biblical creationist organizations in the world, Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and The Institute for Creation Research no longer promote any water canopy theory. They have come to this conclusion through creationist scientific research that has determined such an idea holds insufficient merit.
Therefore, the canopy theory cannot be “a key element in their [creationists’] interpretation of Noah’s catastrophic flood.”
Page 141: THREE MAJOR BELIEF SYSTEMS
In this sidebar JS posits that there are three major belief systems about the nature of the world which are, Theism, Materialism, and Naturalism. I agree in general with the beginning sentence of this sidebar where JS says, “there can be no real conflict between science, history, and the Bible. The conflict exists at the level of the assumptions [I would say presuppositions] which science, history, and the Bible make about ‘pre-scientific’ matters.” However, I believe he is incorrect that there are just three belief systems involved, and that the Bible’s historical statements cannot ever be considered scientific.
In discussions about worldview, I tell my students that “people can and do believe anything.” That statement is true regarding belief systems about the nature of the world as well as any other topic one may want to consider. Secularism is primarily undergirded by naturalism, but also is influenced by materialism. Christian thought practice should always be confined by God thoughts, but the fact that we cannot even agree about the origin of everything shows that is not the case. Secularism is also influenced by spiritism like polytheistic New Age thought, such as evidenced by the actions and rhetoric of the radical environmentalists and climate alarmists driving politics in America. And Deism still exerts a strong influence in many churches today. All these ideas combine to make a treacherous mix affecting every aspect of modern life.
So, the big advantage that biblical creationism has is that it is totally confined to what the Bible says about everything. There is no problem with science until it does not match up to God’s Word. It cannot be man’s word we follow unless that word matches to God’s Word. In that sense not all Christians today are theists.
Page 153: THE AGE OF HUMANKIND
In this sidebar JS states, “both the Bible and modern science place the origin of actual human life (homo sapiens sapiens) very late in the geological time clock.” He then goes on to write about various secular presupposed thoughts about the age of humans. Few professional archaeologists would say anything that would lead one to understand that they think there is evidence for human activity further back past 10,000 years from the present. The “experts” that push the idea of 30,000 to 270,000 (and even millions of) years of human evidence are secular paleoanthropologists. These people are all committed evolutionists. Their ideas are not supported by real evidence, but as I said are presupposed.
My long study of paleoanthropological evidence has resulted in this: Christians can logically understand the existing paleoanthropological evolutionary fossil evidence (bones and footprints) to be in just two categories which are: 1. Post Flood and Post Babel variable humans, and 2. Unknown or extinct apes from the same time period.
This time period is not “very late in the geological time clock” but is rather from a period at the time of the global Flood and shortly after during the Ice Age. And biblical creationists would say that humankind did indeed come on the scene late in the six-day creation process alright, on Day six.
Page 163: IS LIFE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
There is no scientific evidence for extra-terrestrial life. This sidebar delineates several secular speculations for the beginning of life on earth and elsewhere. Since the Bible provides not the slightest evidence that God created any extra-terrestrial life, let’s look at some problems with the idea from a biblical creationist perspective:
- God gave mankind dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:26-28). This rules out any possibility of more advanced aliens that could counteract man’s dominion, especially conquering mankind.
- When Adam fell, the whole creation was cursed (Romans 8:18-23). This would logically include alien worlds. Therefore, Adam’s fall would have cursed the Vulcan and Klingon homeworlds, for example (to use alien races from Star Trek as an example). God will one day destroy this whole cursed universe—along with these hypothetical Vulcans and Klingons who are not related to Adam or share his sin nature—then create a new heaven and earth (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1 ff).
- God took on human nature in the Incarnation of Christ, expressly so humans could be saved (Hebrews 2:14). Christ became our ‘kinsman-redeemer’ (Isaiah 59:20), a fellow descendant of Adam. God never took on Vulcan or Klingon nature. So he died once (1 Peter 3:18, Hebrews 9:25-28)—for the sins of those He is related to, humankind.
- After Jesus rose from the dead, He sits at the right hand of God the Father (Hebrews 8:1) to be the advocate for redeemed humans (1 John 2:1), and will one day return to earth in the Second Coming. Thus the Incarnation is unique to the earth; there is no room for incarnations on alien worlds.
- The true invisible church of redeemed people is called Christ’s bride (Ephesians 5:22-33, Revelation 19:7-9). This is a problem for those who would, despite the above paragraph, speculate about separate incarnations to redeem alien races. That is, Christ will be monogamous, with only a human bride, not polygamous with Vulcan and Klingon brides as well.
The above five bulleted points are from Sarfati, Jonathan D. PH.D., The Genesis Account, Creation Book Publishers, 2015, pp. 212-13.
While we are talking about the subject of extra-terrestrial life, have you ever considered that America (NASA) is not only spending billions each year with the stated goal of finding extra-terrestrial life, but are also educating our young people in the field of astrobiology. This is a field that has as its sole purpose to study life elsewhere in the universe when there is currently not a speck of scientific evidence that such life exists.
Page 181: WHAT ABOUT THE HOMINIDS?
I already touched on this subject in the sidebar on page 153. Hominids are like the collection of famous bones known as “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis). The word hominid is an evolutionary term. They were in fact extinct knuckle-walking apes known from post-Flood fossils and were not in any way related to humans. When all the characteristics and capabilities of humans and apes are carefully compiled and compared their differences are astronomical.
Page 202: THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
I agree with a lot of the statements in this sidebar, but as usual JS attributes way too much credit to the speculations of “authoritative” men on this subject of the origin of life. The facts are that even the simplest living single-celled organism is extremely complex, including numerous, complex machines and the instructions to build them, all in a way that can be both decoded for use by the organism and passed on to offspring. The simplest theorized reproducing organism would require numerous proteins and molecular machines and a way to code and store the information to make them. Is it possible for such a cell to evolve from chemical processes given a large amount of time? The clear answer to this question is no! Current true scientific evidence would say it is impossible no matter how much time is allowed. Life could not have spontaneously sprung from a warm pond, from a rock, or come to be in any other natural way.
For life to come into being would require a miracle, and that is exactly what the God of the universe said happened in the beginning when he created everything over a period of six days. The Law of Biogenesis, which has never been observed to fail, says that life comes only from life. Abiogenesis is still just an inaccessible hope of atheists.
As I move on from the sidebars to the GU text I want to illustrate a couple important concepts. If we are to consider a theory of creation that is true to the Bible and true to secular science, we need to know the sequence of events that the creation theory must match to meet the goal. In the table below in the left boxes is the sequence of events that secular science currently holds. That sequence is compared to the biblical creation sequence of events in Figure 2 for comparison purposes. After I have evaluated the GU sequence, we will be able to see how it matches these two. Clearly the secular and biblical creation sequences do not match up at all.
Figure 2
Here in Figure 3 is another way to compare the secular view to the biblical creation view in light of a biblical Six-Day Creation.
Figure 3
The second concept to look at is the different beliefs about death that exist. Again, we will compare the secular evolutionary view to the biblical creationist view using two similar slides.
Figure 4
Figure 4 points out the secular view vs. the biblical creationist view of death. The secular view says that mankind has come into existence due to millions of years of evolution of one kind of life to another kind of life until man came on the scene. In this view death is good, for without it, mankind would not have evolved. The biblical creationist view is based on Genesis and Romans scriptures. For example, Romans 12:22 says, we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth to the present time. This was and is due to the sin of mankind, initially the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden. This sin has affected the entire creation.
Figure 5
Figure 5 is like Figure 4 but extends the timing sequence to what the future holds according to the secular vs. the biblical creationist views. For the secular view there is no hope as death will continue indefinitely. Some secularists predict that in the end there will be a heat death of the entire universe. In the hopeful biblical creationist view the Bible says that at some time in the future God will provide a new heaven and a new earth for believers. Notice that in this figure death is considered “good” for evolution. According to the Bible the original creation was “good” (actually “very good”) until Adam’s sin. Also, according to the Bible death is an enemy (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-26).
GENESIS UNBOUND TEXT:
As I get into the discussion of the GU text, I want to describe my hermeneutic, the methodology of how I interpret the Bible. When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior forty years ago and became born again (see John 3:3-8), I decided in faith that I would accept all of what the Bible teaches, from the first verse through last. Then as now I have no expectation that I will in this life understand everything due to my human limitations. But I continue believing this way in faith also knowing that the biblical genre (such as historical narrative, poetry, wisdom etc.) and textual context must be considered in any interpretation of scripture.
With that faith commitment it follows that I would expect that God’s Word would always be accurate and inerrant. The Bible says that God does not lie (e.g. John 14:6, Titus 1:2). I have also come to see that as one becomes more and more familiar with the scriptures their perspicuity improves as well. I have found that the Bible is not generally difficult to understand when taken with the assumption that God wants me to know him and know what he is saying in his Word. I assume that the Bible usually means what it plainly seems to mean and there is no need for me to consult any current day gnostic. The Bible was meant to be studied by everyone, not just the theologians.
In GU the author claims that Genesis 1:1 refers to the creation of the entire functioning universe, including the sun, moon and stars in the heavens, and the plants and animals on earth. He says that Genesis 1:2 onwards describes God preparing a land for man and woman to inhabit the same land promised to Abraham and his descendants. This all is based on the author’s position that the word for “beginning” in Hebrew in this context refers to an indefinite and possibly long period of time. I scanned the figure in GU from page 46 that illustrates the concept and is in Figure 6. (It is skewed because it was skewed in the book.) Notice another problem with this illustration is that one might assume that God was still creating on day 7. It was a 6-day creation and God rested on day 7.
Figure 6
I have already admitted that I am not a scholar in Hebrew. However, other scholars have said that there is no valid support for this argument (e.g. Andrew S. Kulkovsky). I know that the Bible makes clear that Jesus is God. Since he is God, then he is omniscient. Why then in Matthew 19:4, when Jesus said that the creator made male and female humans in the beginning, wouldn’t he moderate that in some way so that we could understand that it wasn’t really the beginning if that were the reality. Biblical inerrancy and perspicuity seem to have taken a real hit here.
What is clear to me is that JS is driven in his interpretations more by his commitment to matching up to secular ideas of billions of years than anything else, as reinforced in the next paragraph.
I have already written many words in this response about how the evidence for the fossil record only correlates to a recent global catastrophic global Flood and makes no sense with the secular presupposed millions of slow-process uniformitarian years. In the GU gap theory, the author writes on page 33: “If billions of years really are covered by the simple statement, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’ then much of the processes described by modern [secular] scientists fall into the period covered by the Hebrew term ‘beginning.’ Within that ‘beginning’ would fit the countless geological ages…including the long ages during which the dinosaurs roamed the earth. By the time human beings were created on the sixth day of the week, the dinosaurs already could have flourished and become extinct—all during the ‘beginning’ recorded in Genesis 1:2.”
This is a tremendous weakness of the JS gap theory. By arguing for his timeline, he basically ignores the global Flood to which the Bible provided several chapters of description and that logically falls a considerable time after the initial 6-day creation. This we know from the biblical information about the age of Noah and the other patriarchs.
Also notice that by placing the dinosaur fossil record millions or billions of years ahead of the creation of humans and their Fall, he inserts death before sin. This is a critical destruction of biblical doctrine! Remember the figures that I inserted illustrating this problem? The only logical way to solve this is to adhere to the plain biblical sequence of events where the creation of animals including dinosaurs was followed by the creation of humans, followed by the Fall, followed by the judgment of the global Flood at the time of Noah.
Could it be that this sequence could be replaced by a different interpretation of the Flood to solve the problem? Perhaps by someone with a PH.D. in theology who suggests it was a local or regional Flood? Maybe it was just one of billions of past local floods? I say no and here are the reasons from the Bible and true science why it had to be a global Flood:
- The Flood Killed All Terrestrial Life.
- A Limited Flood Does Not Require an Ark.
- Local Floods Do Not Cover Mountains.
- Local Floods Do Not Remain Flooded for Months.
- The Ark Landed in the Mountains.
- God Promised to Never Again Send Such a Flood.
- The Rest of the Bible Treats the Flood as Historical and Universal.
Anyone who seriously contemplates these reasons would see that the Bible describes a global Flood that could not in any way be interpreted to be local or regional.
Figure 7. An Artistic Interpretation of a Local Flood 15 Cubits above the Mountain Tops
JS claims that his gap theory view is based on a view that “flourished” before the rise of modern science and its use in biblical interpretation. This is just not true. The normal view of creation has for centuries been that of the 6 Day formation by God of the heavens and the earth. Nor is it true that the biblical creationist interpretation is less historic than his GU gap theory. So, how does the GU theory sequence match up to the secular and the biblical creationist views? To the best I can understand it looks something like Figure 8. I found the JS sequence to be very contradictory and if there is a better rendition of the GU portion of Figure 8, I am open to considering it.
Figure 8.
One thing is for sure based on Figure 8, if JS was trying to get his sequence to match the theories of modern science he seems to have failed. Not only that but I think that I have demonstrated why the GU theory provides only total confusion at best.
It is very true that some of the biblical explanations in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are sometimes not easy to interpret no matter your presuppositions. I found that due to my presuppositional position I was oftentimes lost trying to follow many of the author’s arguments. I think that was in part because I could never get ahold of the GU concept that the word “beginning” did not really mean “beginning.” Perhaps this could be expected for someone as passionately committed to biblical creationism as I am. For this reason, I do not expect that the author would be moved to accept my position any more than I can accept his. However, I do pray that others examining their presuppositions and worldview may be convinced to consider the biblical creationist perspective that I have presented here. It is extremely important for every Christ believer to understand that Genesis chapters 1-11 hold all the foundational doctrines of the rest of the Bible including the reason why Christ was sent to die for sinners on the cross and then was resurrected to life everlasting.
At any rate, to God be the Glory.
J.D. Mitchell
April 22, 2024
