In order to counter scientific evidence that the earth and universe are much older than a few thousand years, young-earth advocates propose a model which attempts to provide an alternate explanation of this evidence. This model begins by arguing that the separation of the waters below from the waters above in Gen. 1 does not refer to the sources of water in our experience (namely, bodies of water and precipitation), but rather to a primeval water canopy that surrounded the earth—although it is debated which state (gas, liquid, or solid) the water in the canopy was made up of. This idea originates with the “visions” of Ellen White upon which Seventh-Day Adventism was founded and based much of its theology. The modern young-earth creationist model is virtually identical to—and historically, derived from—White’s visions.{i}
According to White and those who followed in her footsteps, the canopy created a greenhouse effect, which made the entire planet a kind of tropical paradise where it never rained. It also prevented some cosmic rays from reaching the earth, which allowed people to live to the greater ages the Bible describes (Gen. 5). The flood was caused by the collapse of this canopy, and during this occurrence, God altered the earth’s features from being largely smooth and flat to having greater extremes of elevation and depression. Thus, the fossil record and the geological column were laid down during the flood, and not over the supposed long time periods maintained by modern science. Since the flood was the first time it rained, God’s promise to never kill all the inhabitants of the earth by flood again was symbolized by the rainbow, which had never been seen before.
White experienced her visions in the 1840s. A few decades later, in 1874, an old-earth creationist named Isaac Vail proposed a similar canopy model.{ii} Vail based his claims more on Babylonian mythology than the Bible, and argued that this canopy formed millions or billions of years ago as the earth changed from a molten mass to its more or less current state. However, Vail’s model had little influence on contemporary young-earth creationism; again, the latter is based on and derived from Ellen White’s visions.
I must first commend the canopy model for trying to encompass and explain both the creation account and the flood account. The goal of systematic theology, after all, is to provide models which explain diverse biblical data. While it is preferable to employ a model which is directly derived from the Bible, this is not always possible—God didn’t write a systematic theology. It may be the case that sometimes the biblical data is best explained by a model that isn’t itself found in it.
Having said this, I must say further that this model does not explain the biblical data very well, either from an exegetical, a theological, or a scientific standpoint. As for how it explains the scientific data, I would just point out that virtually no scientist has found this scenario to have any validity whatsoever, unless he was already committed to a young-earth interpretation of the Bible. It’s also significant to note that this interpretation is just as much an attempt to deal with modern scientific discoveries as the day-age interpretation.
Some problems with the canopy theory
First, if the phrase “the waters above” does not refer to something common in our experience (like precipitation, water that falls from above), then this phrase is completely obscure, and could be interpreted to mean just about anything. For example, one could claim that the waters above refer to water above the level of the moon and sun. Mormons could then claim that it refers to the planet Kolob near God’s dwelling place.{iii} As implausible as this scenario is (and no one has actually suggested it, I’m just making it up), it is no less plausible than to claim that the waters above refers to an ancient canopy of water that used to surround the earth but no longer does. Gen. 1 does not define what the “waters above” is, so if it is not meant to refer to an aspect of our common experience (just as the “waters below” refers to rivers, lakes, oceans, and their underground sources), it could be forced to mean nearly anything.
Second, there is biblical evidence against the canopy theory. The text says that when the flood abated, the waters returned (shub) to where they had been prior to the flood (Gen. 8:3). Therefore, if they had originated in a water canopy, they would have returned to form another canopy after the flood. Since the water did not reform into a water canopy that surrounded the earth, the floodwaters did not originate in such a canopy.
Third, there are parallel Bible passages that clearly show that “the waters above” in Gen. 1 refers to clouds and precipitation. Prov. 3:19-20 states that “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the deeps were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew.” Referring to God’s laying of the earth’s foundations and setting the heavens in place obviously hearkens back to the creation account in Gen. 1. “The deeps were divided” sounds exactly like the separation of the waters below from the waters above (“the deeps” and “the deep” are common references to oceans and water in the Bible, even in Gen. 1—“darkness was over the surface of the deep”), and “the clouds let drop the dew” obviously refers to precipitation.
Similarly, Prov. 8:27-29 states “I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep.” Again, “when he set the heavens in place” clearly refers back to the creation account in Gen. 1, and “clouds above” and “fountains of the deep” immediately brings to mind the concept of the waters above and the waters below, thus demonstrating that the waters above refer to clouds.
Fourth, the Bible represents paradise as a particular location on earth (the garden of Eden), not the whole planet. So not only is there no positive biblical evidence that the entire planet was a “tropical paradise,” the biblical evidence seems to suggest, to the contrary, that paradise was confined to a localized area.
Fifth, the canopy theory doesn’t have the explanatory power to account for other biblical phenomena that is claimed. A water canopy surrounding the earth would not have prevented interstellar rays from reaching the surface, and it is these rays which are partially responsible for causing mutations, and as such, play a role in limiting human life spans.{iv} So, despite claims to the contrary, this model does not provide an explanation for how the earliest humans lived to the great ages that the Bible ascribes to them.
Rain before the flood
The claim that it didn’t rain on the early earth (and therefore that the “waters above” couldn’t have referred to clouds and precipitation) is based on two passages: the first is Gen. 2:5, which states that “the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth [erets] and there was no man to work the ground.” However, as pointed out earlier, this verse is a part of the story of God’s creation of Adam and Eve, and so does not refer to the entire planet and all of earth history, but to the garden of Eden on the sixth day of creation. The term erets means “land,” and often refers to local areas like this.
The other passage offered is Gen. 9:13-17 which states that God set the rainbow in the sky to represent his promise to never destroy the earth’s population by flood again. This implies that there had been no rainbows prior to this, and hence, it had never rained. However, whenever God makes a covenant with people in the Bible, he takes something they’re already familiar with and says, in effect, “From now on this represents my covenant with you” (for example, water for baptism, circumcision for the Abrahamic covenant, animal blood for the old covenant, bread and wine for the new covenant). Gen. 9:13-17 shouldn’t be understood as saying that there had never been any rainbows, but that they were to represent God’s covenant from that point on. Therefore, I conclude there is no biblical reason to suggest that the flood was the first time it rained on the earth, and that the passages from Proverbs mentioned above show that there are biblical reasons to think it had rained before.
The rising of the land
The claim that the earth was smoother before the flood is not based on the flood narrative itself, but on some translations of Ps. 104:6-8 which, in describing a separation of land from water, refer to the upheaval of the mountains rather than the recession of the waters.{v} There are several responses to this:
1) Ps. 104 is a poetic reiteration of Gen. 1. Thus, verses 6-8 are not describing the events of the flood, but the events of creation week when God first formed dry land.{vi}
2) Gen. 8:1-3 specifically states that during the flood it was the waters that receded, not the land that was raised. This is particularly significant when we recognize that from the perspective of someone on the ark, it would have appeared as if the land was rising out of the water, regardless of whether this was due to the mountains actually rising or the water receding. In other words, the text doesn’t seem to be describing this event from a phenomenal perspective, but from an objective one.
3) To claim that over eleven miles of tectonic uplift (the difference between the deepest ocean chasm and the tallest mountain) could have taken place in a year’s time poses insurmountable problems. A magnitude six earthquake only creates two inches of uplift. Multiply this by 180 million. In such a situation, the passengers on board the ark could not have survived. Moreover, there would have been aftershocks which would have been powerful enough to completely wipe out the post-flood population.
Miracles and ad hoc-ness
At this point, some will no doubt object that to say these things couldn’t happen is simply to disbelieve in a God who performs miracles. Surely God could have uplifted the mountains supernaturally rather than through tectonic uplift so that the lives of those on board the ark were not threatened. Or surely he could have supernaturally preserved their lives, and supernaturally prevented the aftershocks from destroying the post-flood population.
But the problem with these suggestions is not that they are miraculous; the problem with them is that they are ad hoc. That is, they are made in the absence of any biblical evidence in their favor, in order to salvage the “flood geology” model. The more a theory goes beyond the given facts, the more ad hoc, or contrived, it is.
Let me give you an example of an ad hoc theory: I have an audiotaped debate between William Lane Craig (a Christian philosopher) and Robert Greg Cavin on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. Cavin acknowledges that the historical evidence proves that Jesus was killed and buried, that the tomb was found empty a few days later, that many people experienced what they understood to be appearances of Jesus alive from the dead, and that the original disciples of Jesus believed that he had been physically, bodily resurrected. These are the given facts on which Craig and Cavin agree. However, Cavin doesn’t accept the resurrection of Jesus as the best explanation of these facts: rather, he believes it’s more plausible that Jesus had an evil twin. Seriously. They were separated at birth when one of a pair of identical twins was switched with the baby to whom Mary had given birth. They were raised geographically separated from each other, and immediately after Jesus was killed, the twin just happened to arrive in Jerusalem and, learning of the events, decided to steal Jesus’ body and impersonate his long lost brother for no readily apparent reason.{vii} Obviously, Cavin’s theory is completely contrived and ad hoc; in order to make the evil twin scenario work, he has to keep suggesting all sorts of bizarre details that we simply have no reason to believe. By way of contrast, in order to accept the resurrection, the only extra supposition we have to make beyond the given facts which Craig and Cavin agreed on is that a God capable of doing it exists—and for many people, this wouldn’t be an additional supposition since they already believe in God.
The resurrection is not ad hoc because it is not a contrived explanation of the situation, like the “evil twin” theory. As Wolfhart Pannenberg put it, the significance of the resurrection is not that some guy came back to life; it’s that this particular guy did. Jesus presumed to speak and act with the authority of God, and this is why he was executed. His resurrection amounts to his divine vindication.{viii} Of course, this doesn’t mean that it is true, only that it is not ad hoc. It makes sense of the given data without requiring that further data be accepted that we do not have evidence for.
God of the gaps
A common objection made against Christianity is that it implies a “god of the gaps.” This refers to the fact that Christians have sometimes used gaps in our knowledge to say that some unexplained phenomenon was evidence for God acting supernaturally. Then later, when natural processes were discovered which provided a sufficient explanation, the “supernatural hypothesis” got scrapped. This criticism is often valid, and is partially responsible for the widespread (but inaccurate) belief that scientific knowledge is slowly weeding out religion.
However, Christianity’s critics usually go a step further and argue that any miraculous claim invokes a “god of the gaps,” since presumably we may yet discover that natural processes are responsible for everything that has ever occurred. For example, just because we have not yet discovered natural processes that could explain how a man dead for three days could return to life with a glorified body, it doesn’t mean that forthcoming evidence will not supply a naturalistic explanation.
At this point, it becomes evident that such critics are simply making the opposite error by employing a “naturalism of the gaps.” They have faith that a naturalistic explanation will be discovered for the phenomenon in question. The problem with any “gaps” argument is that it bases its validity on what is unknown rather than on what is known. When the Christian claims that God raised Jesus from the dead, it is not based on what is unknown, since she takes the relevant data from the Bible. Of course, it may still be false—the data may be demonstrated to be inaccurate—but it cannot be accused of being a “gaps” type of argument. Conversely, if someone were to say that Jesus was really an extra-terrestrial or a time traveler who used advanced technology to fake his resurrection, this is based on what is unknown, since there is nothing in the data, either our knowledge of Scripture or of the world, to suggest that such events occurred. Therefore, this is a “naturalism of the gaps” argument.
By now I hope it’s obvious that the reason “gaps” arguments are invalid is because they are ad hoc. Criticisms of “god of the gaps” arguments are valid when the claim being critiqued is ad hoc; but just because a claim employs a supernatural explanation, it does not automatically make it ad hoc or contrived. Think of the evil twin theory: the naturalist explanation here is absurdly ad hoc, while the supernaturalist explanation, that Jesus actually rose from the dead, is not.
Now apply this to the current example of “flood geology”: the given facts in this case are the biblical data. But there is nothing in the text to suggest that “the waters above” referred to a primeval water canopy surrounding the earth (except insofar as the clouds and atmosphere itself is such a canopy). Nor is there anything in the text to suggest that God collapsed a canopy to cause the flood, or that he supernaturally caused nearly a dozen miles of tectonic uplift to take place during the flood, much less that the passengers on the ark and the post-flood population were supernaturally protected from the effects of such events.
When we try to explain biblical data, we must avoid positing extra miracles beyond those Scripture relates. If we were allowed to patch up all the holes in our theories by saying that God performed some miracle, virtually any interpretation could be defended. This point is made fairly well by Henry Morris, in fact.
It would be helpful to keep in mind Occam’s Razor (the simplest hypothesis which explains all the data is the most likely to be correct), the Principle of Least Action (nature normally operates in such a way as to expend the minimum effort to accomplish a given result), and the theological principle of the Economy of Miracles (God has, in His omnipotence and omniscience, created a universe of high efficiency of operation and will not interfere in this operation supernaturally unless the natural principles are incapable of accomplishing His purpose in a specific situation), in attempting to explain the cause and results of the great Flood.{ix}
Unfortunately, Morris violates these principles himself. For example, in attempting to respond to the argument that the eight people on board the ark could not have fed, cared for, and cleaned up after more than a few thousand animals at most, Morris and Whitcomb suggest that many of the animals may have gone into hibernation—even though most of the animals taken on board wouldn’t normally hibernate, those that do would only do so for a season and not for the year that they were on the ark, and hibernating for such a significantly longer time would create severe health problems for the animals. They then state that God could certainly have performed such an act, and that anyone who questions this doesn’t really have faith in a God of miracles.{x} But of course, the objection to this is not that it is miraculous but that there is no biblical evidence that any of it happened. This is what makes it so implausible, not the fact that it espouses a miraculous explanation.
Objections and responses
Objection: There is no evidence that circumcision existed prior to the Abrahamic covenant. Therefore, it was a brand new thing which God used to represent his promise to Abraham. So the seal of the Noachian covenant (the rainbow) could also have been a brand new thing, in which case the flood must have been the first time it rained.
Response: Well, first of all, it’s unclear exactly when circumcision was invented; it may very well have been practiced prior to Abraham’s time. At any rate, absence of evidence does not correspond to evidence of absence. Even if there was no evidence of circumcision before the Abrahamic covenant, this doesn’t require us to believe that it had never been done before.
Second, and more importantly, this misses the point: circumcision is taking something people are already familiar with and altering it. For example, if God had sealed the Abrahamic covenant by having his descendants get tattoos of a cross, and if no one had ever been tattooed before, it still wouldn’t be a brand new thing, since people were already familiar with dark liquids (ink) and skin. Or take another example: imagine that baptism never existed before Jesus’ time. In this case, while the action of baptism would have never been done before, the elements (water and people) already did. God would have been taking something that people were already familiar with, and saying “from now on, this represents my promise to you.”
Objection: Ps. 148:1-6 calls upon the various aspects of God’s creation in the heavens to praise God. Verse 4 states, “Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.” This obviously does not refer to clouds and precipitation, but rather to a water canopy that was above the clouds.
Response: This verse causes more problems for the canopy theory than it solves. The text does not refer to the “waters above the skies” as a past phenomenon, but as a present one. That is, it was something that existed at the time Ps. 148 was written in the first millennium BC. If the canopy collapsed in the time of Noah, it wasn’t still in existence for the Psalmist, and so he couldn’t (and wouldn’t) call upon it to praise the Lord.
In fact, after calling upon various elements of the heavens to praise God, the text states that “He set them in place for ever and ever” (148:6). If these waters had been absent since the time of Noah, this statement would be incorrect. Thus, this phrase cannot refer to a water canopy that used to surround the earth but collapsed.
It is true, of course, that the phrase “highest heavens” cannot refer to clouds and precipitation. But neither can it refer to a water canopy that surrounded the earth. Such a canopy would not have been higher than the sun, moon, and stars which are in the heavens. The resolution to this is that Ps. 148 doesn’t merely call upon the elements of the physical heavens to praise God, but calls upon the elements of the spiritual heavens as well (such as angels). And in ancient Hebrew cosmology, the “highest heavens” always referred to the spiritual heavens.{xi}
Finally, what exegetical evidence is there to claim that this passage refers to the separation of the water below from the water above in Gen. 1? The only connection I can see is that, by referring to waters in the highest heavens, it is recalling the statement in Gen. 1 that God set the waters above the expanse of the sky.{xii} But the other biblical passages mentioned earlier have much stronger exegetical links to Gen. 1, since they refer to God’s establishment of the world or heavens, as well as to waters below and waters above, clearly defining the latter as clouds and precipitation (Prov. 3:19-20; 8:27-29).
Notes:
{i} Ronald Numbers (1993); (1995); Don Stoner (1997).
{ii} Isaac Vail (1874); (1921).
{iii} Pearl of Great Price, Abraham 3:3-16.
{iv} Hugh Ross (1998), 115-22. Of course, there’s much more to why human lifespans are limited than interstellar rays and mutations.
{v} For example, the NASB translates vs. 8 as “The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them”; and the ESV as “The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.” In contrast, the KJV translates it as “They [the waters] go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them”; and the NIV as “they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them.”
{vi} See chapter 6.
{vii} William Lane Craig and Robert Greg Cavin (1995).
{viii} Wolfhart Pannenberg (1975), 92-4.
{ix}
{x} John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (1961), 70-9.
{xi}
{xii} It may also be the case that “the highest heavens” and the “waters above the skies” are not referring to the same thing. The text may be saying, “Praise him you highest heavens, and also praise him you waters above the skies.” This is a possible interpretation, although I don’t think it’s very likely exegetically, since it seems to be poetic reiteration.