At this point, I would like to review what has been said thus far by looking at the difficulties which must be accepted in order to affirm both the day-age interpretation and the calendar-day interpretation. By “difficulties” I mean primarily biblical or theological problems which present, or seem to present, something that is ad hoc, or implausible (from a Christian perspective).
Day-Age Interpretation
Problem 1: The presence of animal pain and death before the fall of humankind. I’ve suggested two possible solutions to this:
a) As I’ve stated earlier, there’s really no biblical reason to think that animals and plants didn’t experience death and pain before the fall—only human beings didn’t. Virtually all of the biblical passages which describe death being introduced by the sin of Adam and Eve are limited to human beings by their context. In fact, Job 38:39-40 refers to God’s providence in the predator-prey relationship, and Ps. 104:21, 27-28 even does the same within the context of creation week, calling this carnivorous activity “good.” The Bible certainly draws a pretty sharp line between human beings and all other living creatures, so the difficulty of animals and plants dying is not a biblical or theological difficulty, but is largely the result of anthropomorphism, or thinking of animal death in human terms.
Nevertheless, some of us (myself included) have a great affinity for animals, and it’s very difficult for us to accept that animal suffering isn’t an actual bad thing, and thus is not a part of God’s good creation. When I was a kid I had a dog that was my best friend for a long time, and the idea that his experience of pain wasn’t actually evil goes against everything I felt at the time, and feel today. For many of us, animal abuse is a crime that is reminiscent of child abuse, in the sense that the victims in both cases are largely unable to defend themselves, and unable to understand why they are being hurt.{i} Moreover, if certain animals display the attributes of mind, will, and emotion (as Hugh Ross maintains of nephesh), it’s difficult to say that their suffering has no intrinsic significance. Whether we can accept that animal suffering has no intrinsic significance or existential import, and that they have no capacity to experience pain in the same way we do, will largely determine whether we can accept this scenario or not.
b) The other possibility is that the biblical statements to the effect that Satan was a sinner and murderer “from the beginning” (John 8:44; 1 Jn. 3:8) means that he fell immediately upon being created. Since he was on the earth, and had access to the garden of Eden before Adam and Eve fell (Gen. 3:1-5), this allows us to postulate that he may have poisoned God’s good creation, and God created Eden as a sort of “sanctuary” for humanity. Thus animal suffering and death before the fall is accounted for.
The primary objection to this is that Gen. 1:31 seems to be saying that everything God created was in a state of “goodness” at the end of creation week. Thus, either Satan had already been created but hadn’t fallen, or he hadn’t been created yet. However, the Bible states that the angelic host witnessed creation (Job 38:4-7), and this would presumably include Satan. Similarly, to say that he hadn’t yet fallen by the time God finished creating the universe seems to directly contradict the statements in John 8:44 and 1 Jn. 3:8 that he had been bad “from the beginning.” However, Gen. 1:31 should probably be understood as referring to the physical world, since this is what Gen. 1 is concerned with describing. It may just mean that God reviewed his acts of creation and called them very good—not that everything was still in the same state at the end of creation week as it had been when it was created.
Problem 2: The fall of creation upon the fall of humankind. Again, I have two responses to this:
a) There is nothing in Scripture to suggest that when creation “fell,” it meant that it would no longer be a trustworthy witness to God and his creative power. In fact, all of the various scriptural statements to the effect that creation is a trustworthy witness were made to fallen human beings living in a fallen world, so we have good reason to think that creation’s witness is still trustworthy and reliable.
b) Moreover, when the Bible says that the ground would be “cursed” and will produce thorns and thistles to inhibit humankind’s harvesting (Gen. 3:17-19), this seems to merely refer to Adam and Eve being expelled from paradise, not that creation fell or that God created thorns and thistles at this point—an interpretation corroborated by the fact that God restricted his creative acts to the first six days of creation (Gen. 2:1-3). The other verses that state that creation is “groaning in the pangs of childbirth” (Rom. 8:22), are clearly anthropomorphisms, and don’t link this to Adam’s and Eve’s sin. This may still be a possible inference, but it’s not actually taught in the Bible. The former point shows that creation would bear witness to such an event, so if it does not so bear witness, we would have good grounds for rejecting such a connection.
Problem 3: The “appearance of age” of Adam and Eve. It’s easy to understand how the creation of Adam and Eve as adults could imply that they bore a false appearance of age. Nevertheless, as I’ve argued in chapter 13, this is a false inference. We don’t think that the cells or organs that made up their bodies had any kind of appearance of age. We recognize that, while they would have been adult-size, they would not have appeared as if they had experienced the wear and tear of having been functioning for several years. Rather, they would have appeared brand new—because they were brand new. It’s only on a superficial level that this argument sounds valid, so it can hardly be used to claim that God creates things to look differently than they are, much less to try and apply it to the universe as a whole. Moreover, as I’ve pointed out, the Bible very clearly, very consistently, and very adamantly states that nature and its elements are reliable and trustworthy witnesses to the God of truth.
Problem 4: Exod. 20:9-11. In this passage of the Ten Commandments, we are told to work six days and rest on the seventh, since God did the same thing. As I’ve argued in chapter 4, we have good biblical reasons to maintain that God didn’t work for six of humankind’s days and rest for one, but worked for six of God’s days and is resting for one. There is nothing in Exod. 20:9-11 to suggest this, however, and taken by itself and at face value I can certainly see why some people could understand it as implying that the days of God’s workweek were the same as ours. However, just because this passage doesn’t distinguish our days from God’s days doesn’t mean it’s identifying them. We have to take all of the scriptural evidence into consideration; and since Scripture tells us elsewhere that God’s Sabbath day is still occurring (Ps. 95; Heb. 4:1-11) and that God’s experience of time is radically dissimilar to our own (Ps. 90:4; 2 Pet. 3:8-9), any attempt to read such an identification between God’s and man’s days into this passage ultimately fails.
Problem 5: Gen. 1:5. I’ve argued pretty extensively in chapter 2 that, in Hebrew, the syntax and vocabulary of the phrase, “and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day,” is unique, and implies that the first day of creation (and by extension, days two through six as well) was not a 24-hour period. However, again, we don’t get this from a cursory reading. And here, even more than in Exod. 20:9-11, I can see how some people could understand it as saying that day one was a 24-hour period. Ultimately I think Gen. 1:5 is better explained by the day-age interpretation, but I’m very sympathetic to those who take it as defining the days of creation as 24-hour periods.
Calendar-day Interpretation
Problem 1: Gen. 1:5. The 24-hour day theory has virtually no capacity to explain the extremely unusual use of the Hebrew verb vayahi, nor the change in vocabulary, nor ending the days of creation at morning instead of evening in accordance with the ancient Hebrew calendar, nor the unusual characteristics of the phrase yom echad (day one). If the author wished to convey the idea that the days of creation were 24-hour periods, “he could surely have done it far more clearly and effectively in other words than in those which he selected.”{ii} It’s difficult to maintain that a passage should be understood in the usual, ordinary way when everything about it is decidedly unusual and out of the ordinary. The way Gen. 1 is written is probably the best way to delineate long periods of time in ancient Hebrew; conversely, if they were meant to be understood as 24-hour periods, this could have been communicated more clearly.
Problem 2: Gen. 1:14. The fact that the whole concept of the calendar day is specifically introduced on the fourth day of creation makes it very difficult to maintain that the first three days should be understood as calendar days. The usual response is that the elements of a calendar day are introduced on day one in verse 5, and that the light was God’s shekinah glory. But this doesn’t really address the problem: verse 5 identifies light and darkness as phenomena, but not as periods of time, much less assigning them their specific calendrical roles. It is sometimes light (or day) on the earth’s surface, and it is sometimes dark (or night) on the earth’s surface. But the fact that verse 14 specifically states that the sun and moon were to mark days and seasons and years implies that days and seasons and years had not been markable as the elements of the calendar prior to this.
As for the source of light, this is a complete red herring. Regardless of whether the light was God’s shekinah glory, or whether it was from the sun which had been created “in the beginning,” but couldn’t yet be seen from the earth’s surface, the fact that calendar days are not established until the fourth day strongly implies that the days of creation were not intended to be understood as referring to calendar days.
Problem 3: Day six. The various attempts I’ve seen to try to squeeze all the events of the sixth day of creation into the daylight part of a 24-hour period are as follows:
a) God placed Adam in the garden of Eden to work, but then had him name the animals before he had a chance to start. However, I argued in chapter 3 that the syntax and context suggests that Adam did work in the garden before God gave him the task of naming the animals. And even if we ignore this, it’s only a partial solution: it still doesn’t give us enough time to squeeze the naming of the animals into the daylight part of a calendar day.
b) Adam only had to name several animals. There are some limits we can place on how many animals Adam had to name (he probably only had to name the animals in the garden), but to suggest that there were only a handful goes far beyond what the text says. The account of Adam naming the animals is meant to explain to the original audience how the diversity of animals with which they were familiar came to have the names by which they were known. We have every reason to think that the number of animals Adam had to name was at least in the hundreds, if not the thousands.
c) Adam named the animals at super-human speed. This suggestion has no support from Scripture and is totally ad hoc.
Problem 4: Day seven. This is an almost insuperable obstacle for the calendar-day theory. The Bible seems to state explicitly that God’s Sabbath rest is still occurring, and there’s no reason to think that his Sabbath rest should be distinguished from his Sabbath day. This does not imperil the commandment to honor the Sabbath as God did, as many calendar-day proponents claim, since this simply means we are to honor our Sabbath as God is honoring his. Nor can it be maintained that the biblical statements to the effect that we should strive to enter God’s rest are referring to something similar to, but other than, God’s Sabbath rest: the Bible explicitly states that the rest believers enter is identical, not similar, to God’s Sabbath rest. If the statement was simply that we would enter rest as God did, that would be one thing, but we are specifically told that we enter God’s rest, and this is then referred to as the seventh day of creation (Heb. 4:3-4). Thus, the seventh day is not a 24-hour period, but a long period of time that is still continuing today.
Problem 5: The denial that God’s creation is a reliable witness. I’ve seen this done several ways.
a) The universe was significantly altered when Adam and Eve fell. I’ve dealt with this above, and the primary point to make would just be that Scripture clearly teaches—after the fall—that creation is a trustworthy witness. Thus, if we’re going to be biblically responsible, we simply can’t reject what creation tells us, and this would include its age.
b) God creates things with a false appearance of age. This objection just flies in the face of all the Scripture passages that say that creation is a reliable witness, and the only arguments given in its favor (such as that by creating Adam and Eve as adults, God created them with a false appearance of age) are superficial and invalid. Moreover, this argument ascribes deception to God, something that the Bible-believing Christian simply cannot accept. Many young-earth proponents denounce those who think that animal death may have occurred before the fall of humankind because it would ascribe cruelty to God and thus impugn his character. Yet at the same time they maintain that while God tells us that we can trust what the universe seems to say, he makes it appear differently than it really is. This is simply hypocritical. To imply that God is dishonest is not a very safe thing to do.
c) The testimony of creation must be interpreted through the lens of special revelation (the Bible) before it can validly testify to anything. Like the previous objection, this just flies in the face of the biblical text: as argued in chapter 12, the Bible states clearly that those who have no access to any other sort of revelation from God have still been given a trustworthy, reliable, and understandable revelation from him—namely the created world—and God holds them accountable for whether they accept this testimony (Rom. 1:18-20).
d) God’s creation week doesn’t have anything to do with the modern world, and hence the universe looks as if it didn’t happen. I only addressed this briefly at the beginning of chapter 7. The point made here is that Gen. 1 does not describe the creation of the world we experience, but a lost world which was completely destroyed by the flood. Moreover, there is a wall separating this world and these events from the modern world, and we can never see over this wall without the aid of Scripture. I would, again, simply appeal to the many and various passages written after the fall, which claim that creation is a reliable witness and the fact that there are no passages which describe such a wall of separation. The text of Gen. 1 is obviously meant to answer questions of where the various elements of the world that we experience, including ourselves, came from.
e) A flat-out denial of the doctrine of general revelation. For example, one young-earth creationist book argues that the first half of Ps. 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God…”) is actually about pagan worship of the zodiac!{iii} When you have to resort to eisegesis like this, your theological system is in big trouble.
The rejection of the doctrine of general revelation is often framed as an attempt to defend biblical authority by rejecting any sort of extra-biblical information which supposedly conflicts with it. In order for extra-biblical information to be justifiably ignored, it can’t be considered to be revelation from God. However, nearly all young-earth ministries defend their positions by means of the canopy theory—a concept that is lifted indiscriminately from Ellen White’s visions which played a large role in early Seventh-Day Adventism! This is difficult to reconcile with the claim that they are the guardians of biblical authority.
Problem 6: Strange bedfellows. In order to defend their interpretation of Scripture, young-earth advocates have to embrace positions of questionable provenance and authority.
a) Seventh-Day Adventism. The concept of a water canopy which surrounded the earth, and which collapsed to cause the flood, which in turn caused all of the geological features of the modern world is not based on the Bible or science but on the visions of Ellen White. These visions formed much of the theology for Seventh-Day Adventism, which was, at the very least, on the fringes of Christianity until recently. As such, it is hypocritical for young-earth advocates to accept this view while condemning any acceptance of science that refutes it as unbiblical.
b) Docetism/Gnosticism. By claiming that the universe appears differently than it actually is, young-earth advocates are agreeing with one of the earliest Christian heresies that the physical world is completely fallen and unreliable. The Docetists used this to deny the reality of sin and Christ’s atoning death, and the Apostle John argued against them by emphasizing that Jesus came in the flesh (John 1:14; 1 Jn. 1:1-4; 2 Jn. 7). Of course, young-earth advocates only use the claim that the physical world is unreliable in order to argue that one aspect of creation is an illusion, namely its age, so they’re obviously not in the same category as the Docetists. The point, rather, is twofold: first, it goes against the Bible’s claim that all of creation, not just some of it, is a trustworthy revelation from God. Second, this is a slippery slope: if one part of creation is untrustworthy, other parts may be as well.
c) Post-modernism. In order to defend their interpretation of creation as having the same value as others, young-earth advocates have to say that the facts can’t speak for themselves, but have to be interpreted by a worldview. This is exactly the claim of post-modernists, that there are no facts, only interpretations. This is not only self-contradictory (is it a fact that there are no facts?), it is fundamentally a denial that there is any actual, objective truth, something that Christians simply should not accept. Were this the case it would mean that Christianity is not uniquely true and it does not uniquely account for the facts better than any other worldview. Ironically, for these very reasons, most young-earth advocates that I’ve encountered are very hostile to post-modernism.
d) Super-efficient macro-evolution. I’m sure most young-earth advocates would be shocked to discover that some of their most vocal proponents actually affirm macro-evolution. Nevertheless, such an affirmation is necessary if one is going to consistently maintain that there were no carnivorous animals before the fall, or that the millions of species alive today are descended from the few thousand that Noah took on board the ark.{iv} Regarding the former, there are only three options: either God created the carnivorous animals along with every other living specie during creation week; God created them after Adam and Eve sinned; or, they evolved from the animals God did create. As stated earlier, the biblical evidence militates strongly against God creating new types of life after the six days of creation, so the only way to avoid God creating carnivorous animals during creation week is to affirm the third option, a macro-evolution that works extremely quickly and efficiently.
Some young-earth proponents have conceded that God created carnivorous animals with all of their attributes, but insist that they didn’t engage in carnivorous activity and were vegetarian. But, of course, this fails since many carnivorous animals couldn’t have survived on a vegetarian diet. Moreover, are we really supposed to believe that God created animals as carnivores, but didn’t let them engage in carnivorous activity? The teleological argument claims that since some things appear to have been created for a purpose, we can infer that some of them at least were created for a purpose. Young-earth advocates use this to argue that living creatures were created for purpose. Yet if the carnivores only “looked” like carnivores but really weren’t, then their application of the teleological argument in the realm of biology fails.
As for the flood, even young-earth advocates acknowledge that the number of animal pairs the ark could have housed is in the tens of thousands at the most. When we add the fact that the seven people on board the ark had to feed, care for, and clean up after them, the number drops down to the thousands, and possibly the hundreds. Yet there are several million species alive on the earth today, and we have evidence that these species were in their present forms immediately after a young-earth dating of the flood. Thus, in order to argue that all of these species are descended from those that Noah took on board the ark, young-earth advocates have to claim that only representatives of general types, not species, were on board. So if tens of thousands of animal pairs were saved on the ark, and several million species were alive immediately afterward, it means that on average each pair on the ark multiplied into about a hundred distinct species within an absurdly short amount of time. And again, that’s being generous; if the number of animal pairs on board was in the thousands or hundreds, each pair would have had to multiply itself into a thousand or ten thousand species on average.
Given this, it’s no wonder young-earth advocates are so adamant against the possibility of an old earth. With their views on the efficiency and rapidity of evolution, if the earth and universe were more than a few thousand years old, pretty much anything could have happened by natural processes.
Conclusion
These considerations lead me to accept the day-age interpretation over the calendar-day interpretation. I’m not saying that the latter is impossible, but that it is more ad hoc, has less explanatory power, and is less likely to be true than the former. However, it must be remembered that some of the holiest people throughout history believed in a young earth, and it did not hinder their walk with the Lord in any way. This issue is only significant insofar as it affects our evangelistic efforts, and our unity as the body of Christ.
Notes:
{i} See, for example, George Steiner as quoted in Os Guinness (2003), 102.
{ii} Henry Morris (1981), 54.
{iii} James B. Jordan (1999).
{iv} Hugh Ross (2004), 121-9; Greg Moore (2004); see also the references in note {xi} in chapter 10.