| Old-earth or young-earth belief - Creation Magazine |
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First published: Old-earth or young-earth beliefWhich belief is the recent aberration?CMI takes the stand that the creation is thousands of years old, based on straightforward acceptance of the chronology in Genesis. Churchian critics accept the billions of years touted today and claim that the ‘young-earth’ view is a recent invention of Protestant ‘fundamentalist’ churches. They claim that various Church Fathers or other ancient authorities wrote things that suggested they did not hold a ‘young-earth’ view. However, such claims about the Church Fathers and Reformers have been shown to be wrong; for instance, in the rebuttal to the long-ager Hugh Ross, by Mark Van Bebber and Paul Taylor.1 It’s vital to analyse what the scholars of the past actually said, instead of what people claim they said2—see Did early Church leaders and reformers believe the literal creation account given in Genesis? Sometimes a non-specific statement from them about Creation is misinterpreted as claiming that they didn't have a position on the days and timeframe. This is obviously the fallacy of arguing from silence. It’s worse when clear statements about the Creation days and timeframe are ignored in favor of non-specific ones. The correct practice is to interpret the non-specific passages by the specific ones. Note that, by the same methodology, hundreds of years in the future, someone could find articles by every CMI writer that are not specific on days or the timeframe and, by ignoring their clear statements elsewhere, claim that we don’t have any position on these issues! Even Augustine cannot remotely be used in support of old-earth beliefs. Even though he allegorized the Days of Creation (and lots of other passages—he was no Hebrew scholar), he tried to compress the days into an instant, which is diametrically opposite to what long-agers claim! Furthermore, when ancient chronologies are researched, we find that many cultures, not just those based directly on the Bible, attest to an age for the creation of thousands of years. It seems that no serious scholar believed in the old-earth fashion of today. It is very much a modernist invention. The following comes from Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible, first published in 1879. Under ‘Creation’, Young listed dates of Creation compiled by a Dr William Hales,3 who was an expert in chronology. None of them give a date for Creation of more than 9,000 years ago. Note that dates of Creation dates from various non-Christian/non-Jewish sources (India, Egypt, China, pre-Christian Greece, Babylonia, etc.) all testify to an age of thousands of years.4 Furthermore, both Catholic and Protestant scholars agreed on this issue. It seems that no serious chronologist believed in an old earth. Many of the scholars listed in our table (below) made the chronology of the world a life-long study, involving meticulous cross-matching of ancient records (many of which are not available to us today). These scholars did not obtain these dates by throwing dice! It is only the arrogance of modern man that dismisses this tradition of careful scholarship. We must underline again the importance of this issue. The old-earth advocates accept the recently fashionable claim that the earth is billions of years old. This ‘age’ is based on radioactive dating. The same ‘dating’ puts the age of fossilized dead animals at up to hundreds of millions of years before people appeared on the scene. These fossils show evidence of violence and suffering—cancer and arthritis can be seen in the fossils, for example (see Genesis: the Curse). So in the old-earth schemes, this death and suffering was going on when God created Adam and Eve, and pronounced everything as ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31). Hardly! The Bible clearly teaches that the bad things came into being when Adam and Eve rejected the rule of the Creator over them, and the Curse of death came into effect (Genesis 3:17–19, Romans 8:20–22, etc.). And because of this true history of the world, Jesus, the ‘last Adam’, came into the world to die for the sinful descendants of Adam (Romans 5:12 ff., 1 Cor. 15:21–22, 45). In short, all attempts to marry the Bible with the old-earth view actually undermine the Gospel. Date of Creation(from Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible, 1879 8th Edition, 1939—entry under ‘Creation’) ‘Dr Hales, in his work entitled, “A New Analysis of Chronology and Geography, History and Prophecy,”? (vol. 1, p. 210 [published in 1830]), remarks: “In every system of chronology, sacred and profane, the two grand eras—of the Creation of the World, and of the Nativity of Christ—have been usually adopted as standards, by reference to which all subordinate epochs, eras and periods have been adjusted.”? He gives a list of 120 dates, commencing B.C. 6984, and terminating BC 3616, to which this event has been assigned by different authorities, and he admits that it might be swelled to 300. He places it at BC 5411. The date commonly adopted is BC 4004; being that of Ussher, Spanheim, Calmet, Blair, etc., and the one used in the English Bible [KJV].’ ‘The following are some of the principal variations:’ (notations regarding dates of compilation or publication, extra information on sources, etc., have been added by CMI).
References and Notes
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