Rejecting Six Literal Days - What's the Real Motivation?

“Ideas outside of Scripture” helped the church eventually reject geocentrism. There is nothing inherently wrong with allowing natural revelation push us to reexamine our interpretation of special revelation.

Luther, Calvin and the other reformers along with the historic church of that day rejected Copernicus’ theory as a rejection of Scripture.

I have more thoughts on this in a recent post: Rejecting Geocentrism: What’s the Real Motivation?

Ultimately it comes down to what the text actually asserts (directly or from valid inferences).

Agreed Bob. I do not like the direction that this debate has been going over recent years and the increasing polarization over an issue that Ham tries to present as more important than it actually is. I actually think it is going to have devastating consequences on future generations.

Of course the Bible did not mention anything about whether the sun or the earth was at the center. That the church took a position on this (and was proven wrong) only illustrated that they went beyond the Scriptures. The Bible does have something to say as to the creation of everything, so the question is how people interpret the Text. I think Ham asked some good questions in that article.

Bob,

I am a staunch YEC, but I do not hold to an exact age of the universe. Nowhere does Scripture assert or even make mention of the age of the universe. With that said, I do hold to each day being a literal 6 days.

A few points that do not align with your Geocentricism argument. First, the location of the earth is something that can be measured today with equipment and is something that is observable and testable. Items that clearly align with Science. The creation of the Universe is not an activity that is observable or testable. It can only be inferred. Secondly, the location of the earth is an action that is natural, that is it falls in line with natural phenomenon. The creation of the universe was a supernatural event, not explainable by naturalistic effects. Third, the impacts to our view of a 6 day creation, is not just a reinterpretation of Genesis 1, but it has impacts to our theology, such as Adam, natural sin…., as well as difficulties in explaining the fact that apostles and Christ viewed it as 6 literal days.

I truly appreciate the facts and the struggles that people have with reconciling science and the Scriptural account of creation. It is not something that can be resolved.

Your statement, “there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing natural revelation push us to reexamine our interpretation of special revelation”, has huge ramifications. What you are essentially stating is that, before modern science in the last 50 or so years was able to propose a different cosmological model, we as humans were unable to correctly interpret Scripture and were not just wrong about Genesis 1, but would not even be able to interpret Genesis 1, until thousands of years after it was written. This has huge ramifications to our theology. Where do we draw the line. There is a significantly stronger scientific argument against a God, than there is against creation. If we are so quick to throw out a literal interpretation of creation because of recent scientific discoveries, shouldn’t we be just as quick to throw out elements of God, or maybe even God himself, because of scientific certainty around a God?

Lastly, the reject of helio centricism by the church was a short lived, sporadic argument, not even officially held by the Catholic Church and others. Too much emphasis is given to this argument as proof that we should reject a literal 6 day creation. I won’t go deep into this point, but here are a few. First, Calvin never rejected Copernicus. Rosen , clearly outlined that this was a false statement attributed to Russell in his 1960 book. There is not a shred of documented evidence that Calvin was even aware of Copernicus’ ideas. Secondly, the church accepted Copernicus’ theories for more than 75 years after his work was published. It wasn’t until an individual in the Vatican, who did not like Copernicus, that some pressure began coming out. There was much more scientific and philosophical pressure that was exerted on Copernicus. Some was actually valid, since Copernicus did not fully test out his ideas properly. It wasn’t until deep into this discussion that a few individuals began using Psalms and Scripture as a final ploy to discredit Copernicus. There was no primary attack on Copernicus as a result of Scripture. Luther never rejected Copernicus in writing. It was only written down by someone who had, had dinner with Luther, that wrote down the conversation.

The rejection of Copernicus was actually driven by a handful of people years after the publication. The church didn’t take action, until 70 years later, because of pressure from a number of influential people, but the book was never banned, only suspended, and was still taught in many Catholic universities. Scripture was more an afterthought to the attack, than the lead cause to throw out Copernicus.

I appreciate that the “creation of the Universe” was a supernatural event. That being said, there is quite a bit that can be naturally tested from it. For example, if one hypothesizes that the universe used to be much smaller, denser, and hotter…so hot that not even atoms or even the nuclei of atoms could exist, and then let the universe expand and thus cool to the point that nuclei of atoms do form, then hydrogen nuclei form from protons. Then, a small fraction of the hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium. There is then no other nuclei that forms stably. The prediction would be that the universe would be 90% hydrogen and 10% helium. When astronomers measure the universe, they see this ratio.

One could keep going and predict the last scattering of light in the opaque universe that ended when electrons combined with nuclei and formed the cosmic microwave background radiation. Later reionization affects to this background radiation can be measured and explained…and on and on.

So, it is NOT THE CASE that there are no observable tests of the “creation of the universe”.

dgszweda,

A few responses:

1) So where does the NT tell us Jesus and the apostles believed the six days were literal 24 hour days?

2) in my blogpost I point out there is the carbon-14 dating method as well as several other dating methods based on other elements. In blind, controlled tests, these methods converge to date materials well beyond the 10,000 year limit most YECs would claim to allow for the age of the earth. Even the use of tree-ring dating, where correlations between different trees and patterns of certain years seen in tree rings can extend the date back and back (linking up known age trees - some that were 4,000 years old with earlier fossils) - that method goes beyond the 10,000 years as well. Such observational science with testing seems to compare well with observing the rotation of planets.

3) Allowing science to influence our modern day understanding of texts is not saying the original recipients needed such science to help them. Accommodation clearly plays a role, as seen in statements in Job, Genesis, and elsewhere that mesh well with the ANE view of a hard canopy above which were housed the “waters above.” So the text addressed people with a particular worldview and didn’t aim to teach them the centrality of the sun or the nature of where rain comes from, etc. Some of the questions we have today are totally foreign to the biblical audiences. As we learn more about ANE literature and genre, we come closer to the understanding earlier generations had of Scripture. It is certainly possible that later generations of Christians misunderstood some teaching of Scripture - in fact I think it is likely. But that isn’t to fault the Word. It is to fault us. There are numerous archeological discoveries which bring light to Scripture. New discoveries of the meaning of Greek words and Hebrew words likewise help us now understand Scripture better.

4) You are right about Calvin. http://www3.nd.edu/~mdowd1/postings/CalvinAstroRev.html But he did embrace geocentrism - look up his comments on Ps. 93:1 for instance. An official rejection of Copernicus would take time, I’m not making a point on that, just that the church as a whole frowned on the new theory - as evidenced by Luther’s comments against it. It took some time before science generally and the church specifically accepted this theory - as evidenced by the review I posted of E.F. Hills in the 1960s still being partial toward geocentrism.

I am not a dendrochronologist but the basis for this age-dating is simple. Trees leave annual growth rings. They even do it in tropical climates. These growth rings have been successfully matched with known historical events for hundreds of years back, and they correspond accurately with radiocarbon dating. Attempts to discredit their age dating accuracy on the basis of Noah’s Flood and other reasons have not met with success. From an age-dating perspective the oldest living trees on Earth are the bristlecone pines in Nevada, which take us back about 4800 years (there are some other candidate being touted as older but I have not seen the substantiation for them). While this is certainly impressive it does not take us back in time as far as we would like to go. Fortunately, trees are sometimes preserved long after their death via fortuitous petrification or burial in anoxic environments. Such preservation allows us to overlap tree rings from one generation to another as if we were overlapping bar codes or fingerprints. The method does not rely solely on interpretation by the human eye (although even this is pretty good) but is now done by computer imaging. Also important, it does not normally rely on single tree specimens. When this preservation works, it usually works quite well, serving to preserve many trees in a given area, providing the basis for crosschecking results. Such age-dating has been done with great confidence and repeatability back to 10,800 years in oak and pine tree in Poland [1] , back to 8,900 years in the bristlecone pines in Nevada [2] , and back to 7,300 years in the oak trees of Ireland. [3] The significance of this is that they (and others not cited) easily bust the 6000 year threshold. All of them must be refuted if one is to hold onto a 6000 year age.

from http://www.blogos.org/scienceandtechnology/age-earth-tree-rings.php

[Mark_Smith]

I appreciate that the “creation of the Universe” was a supernatural event. That being said, there is quite a bit that can be naturally tested from it. For example, if one hypothesizes that the universe used to be much smaller, denser, and hotter…so hot that not even atoms or even the nuclei of atoms could exist, and then let the universe expand and thus cool to the point that nuclei of atoms do form, that hydrogen nuclei form from protons. Then, a small fraction of the hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium. There is then no other nuclei that forms stably. The prediction would be that the universe would be 90% hydrogen and 10% helium. When astronomers measure the universe, the see this ratio.

One could keep going and predict the last scattering of light in the opaque universe that ended when electrons combined with nuclei and formed the cosmic microwave background radiation. Reionization affects to this background radiation…and on and on.

So, it is NOT THE CASE that there are no observable tests of the “creation of the universe”.

I am a scientist as well. And I do not doubt that hypothesis have been made and that scientists have tested them, and to this point the hypothesis holds. I also do not doubt that observations have been made, and that scientists have developed hypothesis based on these observations and have tested them, and to this point the hypothesis holds true. But these are hypothesis. I am assuming that you still hold to the fact that the initial creation of the Universe was performed by God (ex nihilo) and that this God is accurately reflected in the Bible. With that said, wouldn’t you agree that 1) science presents no place for a God to interact within his creation outside of any natural bounds, and 2) that a God who did create the universe and has the potential and has actually interacted with His creation in supernatural ways would significantly impact some of the very foundations of scientific hypothesis?

Science is constantly a set of hypothesis and tests. And invariably the observations break the tests, and the hypothesis has to be re-examined. This is clearly seen just looking at Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, that after a great period of time was shown to have defects and limitations. Einstein rewrote the whole thing with General Relativity. We are now at the point that we are showing defects and limitations to Einstein’s theories and are increasingly developing constants (“fudge factors”) to solve issues. Most scientists recognize that something has to be developed to overcome these. Science never gets to the complete answer, it just constantly must change itself. Relativity wasn’t a refinement to Newton, but an entirely new theory.

I find it difficult to understand scientists to seriously struggle with science that is observable, measurable, testable today, yet are 100% dogmatic on the fact that evolutionary theory should be considered fact, when even Netwon wasn’t even truly “fact”. It was just the best hypothesis at the time to understand the limited observations that science was able to gather. As observations expanded with the maturity of instruments and testing, the hypothesis was found broken. I fully understand and will confirm that there is science out there that aligns with the hypothesis around evolutionary origins. And I am okay with that as a Christian. I don’t need to resolve the fact that what I view as written in Scripture needs to align with that. I also understand that others cannot set that aside and feel that a resolution needs to take place. That since science is laying out this hypothesis and shows tests that prove this hypothesis, that we need to look at Scripture in a new light. I, and others will hold that what is written in Scripture transcends time, and that Scripture as it was written, was written in such a way and with such clarity that new “revelation” is not needed to further expand our understanding of what God has written. The fact that I have new science and new testing and new instrumentation, does not in one way allow me to re-interpret Scripture and that the story as written out in Genesis 1 could be fully understood without exception by someone in the first century church as it can be understood by me today. I have no better information than the first century Christian had when he read the Old Testament.

There are actually over 30 methods in addition to carbon-14 dating that indicate the earth is way more than 10,000 years. I don’t have a problem with the theory that God created an old earth but I get very annoyed with pseudo science that tries to pick holes in those 30+ methods by finding an obscure mistake or two with carbon-14 dating as Ham tried to do in his debate with Nye. That is just not a good way to defend creation.

The truth is that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that suggests an old earth. I think it entirely reasonable for Christians to go back and reexamine Genesis to see if their interpretation is wrong regarding age, literal days, etc. When someone does that, it is not a matter of denial of creation or the inerrancy of the Bible. It is also completely reasonable for one to say that regardless of science, they are going to believe that God created an old earth.

In my opinion, neither position is unorthodox or a major problem. For myself, I choose to accept creation by faith even in the face of science but I will not take marching orders from Ham.

Bob,

Josephus indicates that the Jews during the time of Christ believed that the first day of Creation and the creation of Adam was about 5,000 years before that time. Indicating that this was the common thought among the Jews that Christ was teaching. 1)Christ never speaks out against this idea, but instead quotes in ways that reinforces this idea. A few are, Matthew 19:4, Mark 10:6 (from the beginning of creation, not a long space of millions of years), Mark 13:19 (man’s suffering started very near to creation). In John 5:45-47, Christ states that what Moses wrote was true. And Moses wrote Exodus 20:11, which I am not sure any biblical scholar would reject as Moses clearly writing about 6 literal days.

Colossians 1:16-17, which was not only written by an apostle, but was breathed by the Holy Spirit, clearly indicates a belief in a 6 day literal creation. John 1:1-3, clearly indicates that God created all things, and that nothing was created without Him.

As stated before, I don’t hold to the earth being 6,000 years old, or 10,000 years old. Because no where in Scripture is age mentioned anywhere. So why would I be dogmatic on this. But the Bible clearly does stated in both the O.T and N.T that the earth was created in 6 literal days. You will hardly find a single theologian both conservative or liberal that will dispute that what is written in Genesis 1 is not stating 6 literal days. The Hebrew supports it and a clear plain reading of Scripture supports it. You will also hardly find anyone arguing that the NT writing did not believe in a literal creation or a literal Adam. What is coming out is not an argument on exegesis but trying to get science to reconcile with Scripture. Science is viewed as fact and Scripture is viewed as flexible. I find this view that is coming out from Christians today, and from sites such as Biologos troubling. And yes, I think it has larger implications. If I throw out this, I must, must throw out the flood. There is just as much scientific evidence against a universal flood as there is in a literal Creation Account.

[GregH]

There are actually over 30 methods in addition to carbon-14 dating that indicate the earth is way more than 10,000 years. I don’t have a problem with the theory that God created an old earth but I get very annoyed with pseudo science that tries to pick holes in those 30+ methods by finding an obscure mistake or two with carbon-14 dating as Ham tried to do in his debate with Nye. That is just not a good way to defend creation.

The truth is that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that suggests an old earth. I think it entirely reasonable for Christians to go back and reexamine Genesis to see if their interpretation is wrong regarding age, literal days, etc. When someone does that, it is not a matter of denial of creation or the inerrancy of the Bible. It is also completely reasonable for one to say that regardless of science, they are going to believe that God created an old earth.

In my opinion, neither position is unorthodox or a major problem. For myself, I choose to accept creation by faith even in the face of science but I will not take marching orders from Ham.

I am not a big fan of Ham, nor am I a fan whatsoever about trying to pick apart scientific methods. I won’t do it, nor do I need to do it to defend my faith.

I do have concerns with the thought process Greg, that states that because there is a new mound of evidence that has recently been revealed (I am stating that the last 50 years or so is recent in the big scheme of things), that we must reinterpret Scripture. First, I would like to see anywhere else in history that solid conservative evangelicals have done this. And by “this” I mean taken a secular argument with mounds of data to support this secular argument and reinterpet Scripture, I would even go as far as to say theology, since we would clearly need to re-examine a historical Adam, since the same exact evidence used in the age of the universe is the same exact evidence that attacks a historical Adam. The fact that much of Paul’s theology has underpinnings in a historical Adam, the underlying arguments have huge theological ramifications. I cannot throw out the age, and leave Adam untouched. Science and the mounds of evidence do not allow me to touch one without the other. If I go down this path as a Christian, I need to continue it, I cannot arbitrarily stop. And this is where the problem is. The Bible clearly states it, Jesus and the NT authors support it, what basis do I have to reinterpret it?

Thanks for bringing that article up. I’ll do lists since you seem to like them:-)

1) Inflation is NOT IN ANY WAY the Big Bang Theory. This measurement was looking for inflation.

2) Since I mentioned Big Bang, let’s correct something. The so-called Big Bang theory itself is simple and correct. It hypothesizes that the universe is expanding, and was therefore smaller and hotter in the past. This is OBSERVED FACT.

3)That being said, there are many additions to the Big Bang theory. Many, including scientists, call the whole thing “the Big Bang theory” when they are all individual pieces.

4) One of those pieces is inflation. There are many good reasons to propose inflation but that would be getting in to the weeds.

5) 2 experiments were using a new method to find direct evidence of inflation. One used one wavelength of light to look for it. As a result it was faster getting results. That is the experiment you provided the link to. Basically, the media got a hold of it and ran with it. The authors of the paper said they couldn’t rule out dust effects in the Milky Way since they only used one wavelength. The media ignored that and made it sound like inflation had been observationally verified when it hadn’t.

6) Later this year, the results of the second experiment should be forthcoming. This one uses 3 wavelengths, including wavelengths that dust do not scatter. The result will be much better.

7) Scientists were the ones who tried to tone the media down on the initial results of the first experiment!

8) Publishing one result does not make “settled science”. NO ONE thinks that.

What you are saying is there is no way to do cosmology. Correct?

Aren’t you an engineer, rather than a scientist? Maybe I am mixing you with someone else. As a physicist I would NEVER call myself an engineer, but many Christian engineers call themselves scientists. There is a big difference between engineering and pure science. Just an observation.

[Mark_Smith]

What you are saying is there is no way to do cosmology. Correct?

Aren’t you an engineer, rather than a scientist? Maybe I am mixing you with someone else. As a physicist I would NEVER call myself an engineer, but many Christian engineers call themselves scientists. There is a big difference between engineering and pure science. Just an observation.

I have a degree in Math and Science, and practiced as a Chemist in Nuclear Chemistry, Environmental and Pharmaceutical. I also worked for a bit of time with Leon Lederman (Nobel Prize) at Fermi Laboratory in the early part of my career. I am now the Global VP of Enterprise Business Analytics at Mylan Pharmaceuticals, so now I am in the field of Computer science.

I am not saying you cannot do Cosmology correct. I believe that cosmology accurately reflects our understanding of the universe today. I would not say that Newton could not practice true science in his day, although arguing Newton’s theories as superior today would be crazy. Newton did good science for the understanding that he had. The fact that our understanding is limited or not even always correct, or that it has holes in it, is the very essence of science today. It wouldn’t be fun if we understood everything 100% correctly, that we finally have a unified theory today that is always correct in every single scenario and that we have no challenges ahead of us. What fun would science be, without all of this?

I would say that the more we know, the more unanswered questions we find. We answer one thing, just to find that it reveals two more questions.