Creation

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Read Part 1

In the first part of this three-part series, I noted that the prevailing view of Christian orthodoxy had been the literal day interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3. I also presented four preliminary arguments supporting this twenty-four-hour day interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3. Here we will note four of the most prominent alternative views that have arisen largely as a result of the advent of modern geology and its claims about the (old) age of the earth.

Because the tradition of Christian orthodoxy has a legacy of interpreting Genesis as a historic narrative, the prevailing interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3 has been that it is a record of God’s creative activity in six, consecutive, literal days followed by a literal seventh day of rest. Because the focus is on the six days of divine creative activity, this view is often called the “twenty-four-hour view.” With the rise of modern geology and subsequent development of other disciplines, such as astronomy, biology and geophysics, secularists are convinced that the “scientific” evidence, such as radioisotope dating, demands an earth that is 4.5 billions years old and a universe that is 14 billion years old (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/scientific_age_earth.html).

Twenty-Four Hours or Not?

Raising the question of the “days” in Genesis 1 might seem unthinkable for many believers. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that “the doctrine of creation has proved vulnerable because it works in territory where the rights of Christian theology to operate have been subject to sustained challenge, first by natural philosophy and more recently by natural science” (McGrath 1993, 95). Most Fundamentalists appear to hold to the view of six literal twenty-four-hour days of creation. Closely aligned with the literal view is the young earth theory. Divergent views are often associated with either liberal views of Scripture, which deny inerrancy, or with atheistic, Darwinian evolution.

^{Note: This article is reprinted with permission from As I See It, a monthly electronic magazine compiled and edited by Doug Kutilek. AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com.}