The Creation Controversy Series - Introduction

“In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.”

—Augustine of Hippo, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis,” Vol. 1, Chapter XVIII

 

We are a privileged generation.

In the last one hundred years, we have learned more about the nature of our world and the universe than was known by all previous generations of humanity combined. Ancient astronomers learned to predict eclipses and tracked the movements of the planets with great precision, but for all of this they could only wonder what they were really looking at when they gazed up into the night sky. They could never have imagined distant worlds like Jupiter and Saturn as they’ve been revealed so clearly to us through the sensitive cameras of space probes like Cassini and the Voyagers. Even the sun and the moon, as nearby and prominent as they are, were mysterious and little understood well into the modern era. Today, the average person has access to more information at their fingertips than the most learned and privileged scholars of ages past, and not just where astronomy is concerned. Science has literally revolutionized every field of human endeavor.

As the scientific era got underway and knowledge increased, startling new pictures of the world began to emerge, and old ideas began to fall by the wayside. One such notion that fell by the wayside fairly early in this process was geocentrism: the belief that earth lies stationary at the heart of our solar system, if not at the center of the universe, while the heavens are in motion around it. Now, from the point of view of one looking up from the surface of the earth, it really does seem as if the sun, the moon, and the stars circle our world, while the ground upon which we stand does not appear to move at all. The sun appears to “rise” in the east and “set” in the west, hence the terms “sunrise” and “sunset”—terms we still use today in spite of the fact that we know that the sun does not actually move through our sky.

The geocentric model seemed so manifestly apparent that it lingered as the prevailing astronomical theory of the solar system until the 1600s. Competing theories provoked resistance, including resistance from some ecclesiastical authorities who felt that the Bible itself upheld the notion that the earth was stationary while the heavens revolved about it.[1] These authorities appealed to passages such as Psalm 93:1, which tells us that “the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.” Citing this passage, John Calvin comments as follows:

 

The heavens revolve daily, and, immense as is their fabric, and inconceivable the rapidity of their revolutions, we experience no concussion – no disturbance in the harmony of their motion. The sun, though varying its course every diurnal revolution, returns annually to the same point. The planets, in all their wanderings, maintain their respective positions. How could the earth hang suspended in the air were it not upheld by God’s hand? By what means could it maintain itself unmoved, while the heavens above are in constant rapid motion, did not its Divine Maker fix and establish it?[2]

In one of the most famous of his “table talk” sessions, Martin Luther referenced Joshua 10:12 in the face of changing scientific opinions, noting that “Joshua gave orders for the sun to stand still, not the earth.”[3] In his commentary on Genesis, Luther writes that the stars are “likely…round bodies like the sun, little globes fixed to the firmament.”[4] As to the sun itself, Luther remarked that it was “the first great movable body.”[5] These comments illustrate that Luther shared the popular belief of his day that the earth was stationary while the heavenly bodies revolved about it.

The Bible even records God himself speaking in terms that appear to affirm geocentrism. An example of this is found in Isaiah 45:6, where the Lord says: “I will gird you, though you have not known Me; that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me.” For another example, consider Job 38:4, where God speaks to Job and asks him many probing questions, including: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” To most people’s way of thinking, a foundation is only needed for something that is not intended to move.

Reading through passages such as these, we can perhaps sympathize a bit with those who felt that the observations and theories of men like Galileo and Copernicus directly contradicted divine revelation. Nevertheless, apart from a tiny minority who insist upon hyper-literal interpretations of scripture—namely those in the resurgent flat-earth movement—Christians today understand that man’s discoveries in relation to the positions and movements of the sun, the moon, the earth, and the stars, do not pose a problem for biblical authority. After all, the Bible was written from the limited, earth-bound perspective of its human authors, who perceived the heavens as moving around them; and given that they did perceive things in this manner, it makes perfect sense for God to have spoken to them within the bounds of that conceptual scheme.

We routinely deal with one another on the basis of age, experience, knowledge, and maturity. No teacher worth his salt is going to walk into a kindergarten classroom and start lecturing on quantum theory, just as he wouldn’t walk into a college classroom and ask the students to gather in a circle and sing the Days of the Week song. Different approaches are needed for different audiences. If a class of first-graders tell me “The sun’s gone down,” I don’t subject them to a lecture on cosmology, because they’re not yet mature enough in their understanding to grasp how the sun and the earth relate to one another. So, for the moment, I simply agree. After all, from a child’s limited perspective, the observation is true: the sun really did go down. Just as we routinely tailor presentations with respect to particular audiences today, so God chose to communicate in terms the original audiences of scripture could understand, and we must bear this in mind as we read what the Bible has to say about the natural world.

Writing in his first commentary on the book of Genesis, Augustine of Hippo reflected on this very issue while pondering conceptions of how the sky surrounds the earth and how the matter reflects on scripture. While Augustine said that he did not personally care what the truth of the matter was, he saw a threat to how the scriptures might be perceived if people failed to correctly interpret biblical language:

But because the trustworthiness of the scriptures is here in question, this, as I have reminded readers more than once, has to be defended from those who do not understand the style of the divine utterances, and who assume when they find anything on these matters in our books, or hear them read out from them, that they should not place any confidence in the scriptures, when they foretell or warn or tell them about other useful things. It must be stated very briefly that our authors knew about the shape of the sky whatever may be the truth of the matter. But the Spirit of God who was speaking through them did not wish to teach people about such things which would contribute nothing to their salvation.[6]

 John Calvin also comments on the same principle:

Moses makes two great luminaries; but astronomers prove, by conclusive reasons that the star of Saturn, which on account of its great distance, appears the least of all, is greater than the moon. Here lies the difference; Moses wrote in a popular style things which without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to understand; but astronomers investigate with great labor whatever the sagacity of the human mind can comprehend. Nevertheless, this study is not to be reprobated, nor this science to be condemned, because some frantic persons are wont boldly to reject whatever is unknown to them…but because he [Moses] was ordained a teacher as well of the unlearned and rude as of the learned, he could not otherwise fulfill his office than by descending to this grosser method of instruction…

 

Lastly, since the Spirit of God here opens a common school for all, it is not surprising that he should chiefly choose those subjects which would be intelligible to all. If the astronomer inquires respecting the actual dimensions of the stars, he will find the moon to be less than Saturn; but this is something abstruse, for to the sight it appears differently. Moses, therefore, rather adapts his discourse to common usage.[7]

Martin Luther agrees, noting that “Moses wrote for a rude people,” and cautions that scripture must be understood in its own context:

I have therefore thought it especially becoming and necessary to repeat here that admonition which I have frequently given, that we ought constantly to acquaint ourselves with the phraseology of the Holy Spirit. For no one can successfully study any of the human arts unless he first correctly understands the idiom of the language in which its principles are described. For lawyers have their peculiar terms, unknown to the physician and the philosopher. In like manner, the latter have each a phraseology peculiar to themselves with which the professors of other arts have little or no acquaintance… Accordingly we find the Holy Spirit, to use a language and phraseology peculiar to his own divine self…As therefore the philosopher uses his own terms, so the Holy Ghost uses his.[8]

Such understandings are all well and good, but they have not entirely extinguished controversies at the intersection of science and faith within the church. There are still scientific discoveries and theories that believers are struggling to deal with, and that have even pitted them against one another as if they were enemies rather than brethren. I first learned this at an early age.

When I was growing up, I was fascinated with gemstones, colorful rocks, and fossils. There was a rock and gem store just down the road from where we lived in Alexandria, Virginia, and I used to stop in and browse the displays while my mother was shopping at the grocery store a few doors down. On one particular day, I was admiring a trilobite fossil when a middle-aged woman walked up behind me and looked over my shoulder. She asked me what I was looking at, and when I replied, her mouth quirked into a frown and she gave the rock I was holding a disdainful look.

“Those are all fake,” she said with an air of great conviction. “Dinosaur bones and stuff like that. They’re all a deception Satan put in the earth to deceive mankind.”

I was stunned by this unexpected pronouncement, but being a shy child and rather alarmed by the woman’s strange, forceful manner, I meekly said, “Oh,” and moved off to another aisle to look over samples of pyrite in quartz crystal. I distinctly remember my bewilderment at this encounter. Like many boys of that era, I was something of a budding paleontologist. I used to daydream about digging up dinosaur bones in my yard. I had seen actual dinosaur skeletons on field trips to museums in Washington DC, and I had read just about everything in the kid-friendly dinosaur section of our local library. If the whole dinosaur thing was a satanic trick, it sure seemed like he had a lot of very smart people fooled!

My encounter with the “Satan lady” (as I came to think of her) in the rock shop that day was my first personal experience with controversy in science and theology, although I already knew by then that certain controversies over these matters did exist. Most of the science books I had read and films I had seen by that time said that the universe and the earth were billions of years old, whereas the Christians I knew claimed that God had created everything in six literal days only a few thousand years ago. One of my favorite books at that time, Dinosaurs, Those Terrible Lizards, by Duane Gish, claimed that humans and dinosaurs actually lived together at the very beginning of history. I couldn’t imagine how humans had survived in a world dominated by such fearsome creatures, but these same creationists (young-earth creationists, they were called) also claimed that dinosaurs had been harmless vegetarians when they were first created. It was difficult for me to picture a Tyrannosaur harmlessly dining on vegetation, what with those enormous jaws and formidable-looking teeth, but people who studied and taught the Bible said these things very authoritatively and I felt obliged to believe them. After all, the alternative was to call God a liar, and I certainly didn’t want to do that.

As I grew older, the controversy surrounding Genesis left me in something of a love/hate relationship with science. It was difficult for me to understand how scientists could be intelligent enough to build such impressive things such as lasers, computers, artificial organs, and space probes, but couldn’t see the forest for the trees when it came to the age of the earth or evidence for a global flood. “You have to understand that man’s mind has been darkened by sin,” young-earth creationists said in regard to this. “Man rejects the truth of God’s Word in favor of science because he wants evolution to be true. If evolution is true, man can get rid of God and be his own master. This is why they have to have all those billions of years.”

In theory, this explanation made sense to me, at least to a point. Some people certainly were hostile toward religion, after all; there was no denying that. But why should man’s “darkened” mind work well enough to produce a world of beneficial technological wonders, only to abruptly, catastrophically fail where anything that touched on the age of the earth was concerned? Something was off about that reasoning but I wasn’t sure what.

At the same time, I also knew that there were Christians who differed in their opinion of Genesis and related theological issues, and I found this intriguing. British author C.S. Lewis had been open to the idea of life elsewhere in the universe, potentially even intelligent life, whereas the Christians I knew denied the existence of life elsewhere, believing it to be a product of evolutionary thinking.[9] Prominent radio Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee advocated the Gap Theory: the idea that there were long ages of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, yet he was widely respected. Dr. Hugh Ross, who was not only a Christian but an actual astronomer, embraced what was known as the Day/Age Theory: the idea that the six days of Genesis represented long ages of time rather than literal calendar days. These men and others like them thought that scripture was perfectly reconcilable with science, and they found no difficulty in tolerating a diversity of opinions on the matter.

By contrast, the young-earth teachers and preachers I heard found such differing opinions completely unacceptable. To their way of thinking, alternative views of Genesis denied “the plain meaning” of the text, and those who taught them were actively “compromising” with evolutionists and elevating the authority of man’s word over the authority of God’s Word. “If you can’t trust what God said about creation, how can you trust him about anything else?” they reasoned. “Genesis is perfectly clear, so clear that a child can understand it. Those who find it necessary to ‘interpret’ Genesis are just trying to force evolutionary science on the text.”

“So clear that a child can understand it,” they insisted. Yet, even as a young person who regularly attended church, went to a conservative Christian school, and had learned to read the Bible from a early age, there were things about the Genesis creation account that I didn’t understand at all—in spite of how simple it was supposed to be. Certain aspects of the text seemed to suggest that there was more to it than met the eye. I was hesitant to admit this, though, even to myself, for fear that I might be slipping into compromise or even apostasy. Such is the effect that respected church authorities and their opinions can have, especially on the young.

Yet, esteemed church authorities can be wrong in how they understand what scripture has to say about the natural world, as the debate over geocentrism proved centuries ago. It would have helped me to have known this when I first began to wrestle with the creation controversy, in that I would have been more flexible in my thinking. After all, if Martin Luther and John Calvin had been wrong, who was to say that Duane Gish and Henry Morris couldn’t be wrong as well? On the other hand, however, the modern creation controversy has much more sweeping theological implications connected with it than were connected with the issue of geocentrism.

If the earth really is as old as it appears to be, then the fossil record shows us that animals were living and dying long before man ever came on the scene; and if this is the case, then certain understandings of the relationship between sin and death are affected. This, in turn, brings the Fall of Man into question in various ways. What exactly happened when Adam and Eve sinned? Is the whole of creation under a curse or not? The implications of these questions then ripple out to touch on other matters as well. What are the days of Genesis? Do long ages of time necessitate belief in macroevolution? What did God mean when he referred to the initial creation as “very good”? How do we square the Genesis genealogies with the apparent antiquity of man on earth? How extensive was the flood of Noah and how much did it alter the earth? Are the earth and the universe really quite young but simply “appear” old?

These are not trivial questions. In fact, for some believers, these issues are fundamentally connected with their perception of the character of God and even with the gospel message itself. The purpose of this series will be to address these and other noteworthy issues, with an emphasis on looking for plausible scriptural interpretations. It’s my conviction that this controversy over the days of Genesis and the age of the earth is unnecessarily divisive and subject to sensationalism. Scientific discoveries do not contradict the text of Genesis and pose no threat to either the gospel or the authority of scripture. In fact, science can be a powerful ally of faith.

Having thus provided some background for the reader, it’s my prayer that this series will help facilitate understanding between the young-earth and old-earth camps, particularly for those who are largely unacquainted with alternative views of Genesis apart from what they’ve heard from young-earth teachers and organizations. For me, the transition to an old-earth view began not with scientific considerations but with certain aspects of the biblical text that had never entirely made sense to me. In time, I came to realize that the problems I had lay not with the text itself but with the assumptions of “literalist” interpretations. Without those assumptions, the text of Genesis became more internally coherent for me and more easily reconciled with passages of scripture that touch on related matters, such as sin, death, and the Fall of Man.

In the end, all I can do is to lay out my case in good faith and appeal to those who disagree to set aside their assumptions regarding the motives of their old-earth brethren and the authority we ascribe to scripture, and consider the case on its own merits. One need not necessarily be convinced of a point of view in order to concede that it may, at the very least, be plausible, and, therefore, not subject to charges of heresy or compromise. As believers, we are responsible before the Lord for how treat one another, and, as always, the world is watching.

Next in this series: Part One - Biblical Authority

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[1] The history of religious persecution of Copernicus and his heliocentric theory contains much in the way of exaggeration and even outright myth. In reality, Copernicus had a good relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and actually dedicated his book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres to Pope Paul III. It was not until later, during the time of the Counter Reformation, that the actual persecution of Copernican ideas began. For one scholarly source on this issue, see: Mano Singham, “The Copernican Myths,” Physics Today, 60, 12, 48 (2007); doi: 10.1063/1.2825071.

[2] John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms (Complete), trans. James Anderson (HardPress Publishing, 2019), vol. 4, Psalm 93. Kindle.

[3] Luther’s table talk sayings were recorded by his students and not published until after his death. Contrary to what has been widely claimed, researchers do not find it credible that Luther actually referred to Copernicus as “that fool.” For a scholarly treatment of Luther on this matter, see: Wilhem Norland, “Copernicus and Luther: A Critical Study,” Isis 44, no. 3 (1953): 273-276. www.jstor.org/stable/227094.

[4] Martin Luther, Luther’s Commentary on Genesis: Critical and Devotional Remarks on the Creation, the Sin and the Flood, trans. John Lenker and Henry Cole (e-artnow, 2018), part iv, God’s Work on the Fourth Day, I. v 14a. Kindle.

[5] Ibid., v 14b.

[6] Edmund Hill, tras; John Rotelle, ed. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. (New York: New City Press, 2018), pp. 201-202.

[7] John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (Complete), trans. John King (Forgotten Books, 2011), chapter 1, Genesis 1:1-31. Kindle.

[8] Martin Luther, Luther’s Commentary on Genesis, part iv, God’s Work on the Fourth Day, II.

[9] See Lewis’ essay “Religion and Rocketry” for a sampling of his thoughts here.

Excerpts from St. Augustine, the Literal Meaning of Genesis, Vol. 1, translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor, SJ, Copyright © 1982 by Rev. Johannes Quasten, Rev. Walter Burghardt, SJ, and Thomas Comerford Lawler. Published by Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ. Used with permission. www.paulistpress.com

"Thousands...Not Billions" - The Young-Earth Creationist Book that Moved Me Toward Old-Earth Creationism

Thousands...Not Billions is a publication of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a prominent Young-Earth Creationist (YEC) organization that commissioned a group of scientists known as the RATE team (RATE - Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) to re-evaluate the radiometric dating results for various rock samples in an effort to produce hard evidence for its belief that the Earth is only around 6,000 years old. ICR bases this belief on its interpretation of the book of Genesis, which it believes teaches that the universe and the Earth were created over a period of six 24-hour days, as well as biblical genealogies that appear to place the creation of humanity on the sixth day of creation, sometime in the vicinity of 4000 BC. This, of course, contradicts mainstream scientific data showing that the universe and the Earth are billions of years old.

Oddly enough, and quite obviously contrary to ICR’s intent, Thousands...Not Billions helped to finally cement my conversion from Young-Earth to Old-Earth Creationism (OEC). By the time I read the book, I was already convinced that the biblical text did not require a YEC interpretation, but I was still hung up on a few questions. So when a representative from Answers in Genesis (AiG - another YEC organization) stopped by our church one Sunday, I picked this book up from his table and quickly got into it.

RATE collected and tested various rock samples from sites that had been dated previously using conventional radiometric dating methods, and while the samples sometimes returned dates that were different than those of previously published studies (even markedly different), I was impressed by the fact that they still consistently added up to many millions of years. The authors of the book admit that many eons worth of radioactive decay appear to have actually taken place, although they attempt to mitigate this with the claim that there is evidence for periods of accelerated nuclear decay in the past (insufficient helium diffusion from minerals known as zircons being their primary focus). Here are a few quotes from the book (note: ‘fission tracks’ are a type of damage caused to solid material by the decay of radioactive substances):

The RATE fission track ages determined for the Late Jurassic and Early Miocene reveal no surprises. All are in close agreement with the previously published ages. This is not to say that the RATE team agrees with the conventional assumptions from which these large ages are derived. Instead, we note that the amount of spontaneous uranium-238 fissions is in close agreement with the amount of uranium alpha decay as determined by other methods, at least for the Jurassic and Miocene samples. We conclude that the accelerated decay implied by helium diffusion and polonium radiohalos is consistent with a similar amount of accelerated fission decay in these rocks. (p. 106) 

While we believe the earth is young based on clear biblical data, many rocks contain an abundance of daughter atoms which give the appearance of being the product of nuclear decay. Is there strong evidence that these atoms indeed are the result of decay? The answer is yes, and for several reasons...If the earth’s age truly is only thousands of years instead of multi-billions, then nuclear decay was greatly increased, in some cases a billion-fold or more. This proposal is a significant challenge to the physics and geology communities, which assume unchanging constants in nature. (pp 142-143) 

The history of radioactive decay is amply demonstrated by accumulated daughter decay products in close association with their parent isotopes in many earth materials. There are also vast numbers of defects caused by nuclear decay in crystalline rocks, including radiohalos and fission tracks. We assume that the earth was not created with an appearance of age at this microscopic level of detail. Alongside this principle, however, there is not the usual constraint that radioisotope decay has always been governed by today’s measured nuclear half-life values. (p. 175) 

In the conventional timescale, the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras alone span more than four hundred million years. The RATE research concludes that accelerated nuclear decay on this scale occurred during the single year of the Flood. There is the obvious issue of protecting the precious animal and human life on board the ark. The water barrier between the ark and the earth’s rock layers could have played a major role along with divine intervention. (p. 151) 

Even at present rates, considerable heat is produced by radioactive nuclear decay. An acceleration of the process will multiply the heat output greatly. This heat, which is produced within rocks, must be removed, or it could melt or even vaporize the earth. This clearly did not happen to the earth. In fact, the existence of zircons within helium, radiohalos, and fission tracks shows that the host rocks and minerals have not experienced excessive heating...Possible mechanisms have been explored that could safeguard the earth from severe overheating during accelerated decay events. One of these involves cosmological or volume cooling, the rapid result of an expansion of space. (p. 180) 

Radioisotope studies of lunar rocks and meteorites also yield ancient radioisotope ages...To explain these additional observations, the concept of accelerated nuclear decay needs to be extended to include the solar system and space beyond. Indeed, half-life alteration appears to be a cosmic or universe-wide phenomenon. (p. 180)

Among these and other such quotes, I believe it was this one that hit me the hardest when I first read the book: “Even at present rates, considerable heat is produced by radioactive nuclear decay. An acceleration of the process will multiply the heat output greatly. This heat, which is produced within rocks, must be removed, or it could melt or even vaporize the earth. This clearly did not happen to the earth. In fact, the existence of zircons within helium, radiohalos, and fission tracks shows that the host rocks and minerals have not experienced excessive heating.” 

As you can see from these quotes, the RATE team was forced to admit that the physical evidence (including the testing of materials recovered from the Moon and meteorites) is solidly on the side of an ancient universe, right down to the microscopic level, a fact which they admit strains the standard YEC “appearance of age” argument. This must have been a difficult admission for them to make given the expectations associated with their project, their mistrust of mainstream scientific methods, and their confidence in the accuracy of their biblical interpretations.

And then we have this statement:

Why was nuclear decay accelerated in the first place, and what purpose or function did it serve? A temporary alteration of nuclear constraints obviously lies within the Creator’s realm of activity. It is clear that the One who created all things can alter physical constraints and laws at His will. In fact, most biblical miracles require a temporary suspension of basic natural laws. (p. 152)

This is a subtle but amazing admission. While they were convinced that God must have brought about accelerated nuclear decay on at least three occasions in the distant past (during the creation “week,” during the Flood, and immediately after the Flood), RATE could offer no suggestions as to why he might have done so or by what mechanism (they refer to these matters as “basic unanswered questions” on page 180). As I was reading, I couldn’t think of a reason why God might have accelerated nuclear decay either, or for that matter even a reason to ask the question that didn’t boil down to maintaining a particular interpretation of scripture, which I had already realized wasn’t necessary by the time I read the book.

In my opinion, Thousands...Not Billions was a disaster for the YEC community. The best young-earth minds they could assemble ended up not only failing to produce evidence in their favor but actually lending more credibility to the OEC position. Further, they reacted to the problem by proposing a solution that resembles nothing so much as a cosmic magic act: exponentially accelerated nuclear decay that would have dramatically affected the earth and all lifeforms on it but somehow managed to take place on three occasions without leaving any evidence whatsoever.

Could God potentially do such a thing? Yes, of course. But why would he do it? The RATE team does not offer even a suggestion here; yet they affirm that he must have done so because their interpretation of scripture (and I stress interpretation) leaves them with no choice but to conclude this. They have a theory to offer, but they can offer no reason for its necessity, no mechanism for its implementation, and no unimpeachable evidence of its occurrence. They do argue that they feel there is too much helium in zircons for the minerals to have existed for any more than 6,000 years +/- 2,000 years given known, consistent nuclear decay rates, but I am not aware of even a single non-YEC scientist who either concurs with their methodology and findings in this matter or even considers the issue doubtful.

As it happens, there is no reason to believe that mainstream scientific findings with regard to the age of the universe and the earth are incompatible with what the Bible has to say about creation, and it is unfortunate to see Christians effectively at war with one another over this issue. For more responses to YEC claims and general information on how an old creation is perfectly compatible with scripture, see these resources:

A Matter of Days, by Dr. Hugh Ross

Improbable Planet, by Dr. Hugh Ross

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by Richard Snoke

God and Science.org

Reasons to Believe

On helium in zircons, Dr. Gary Loechelt has written a two-part, lay-friendly look at the problems with RATE's conclusions. See part one here and part two here.

For my take on the Genesis creation account and the controversy surrounding it, see my Creation Controversy series, starting here.


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Does Man Have an Immortal Spirit?

If there is any fundamental belief that transcends most cultural and religious boundaries, it’s the notion that human beings possess an immortal “soul” or “spirit” that exists independently of the body and ventures off somewhere at the moment of death. In other words, we are all immortal ghosts housed in temporary containers of flesh. Your soul, spirit, or “ghost” is allegedly the “real you.”

This teaching is a staple in evangelical circles, so much so that I doubt whether many Christians have ever taken the time to really examine what the Bible has to say about the nature of mankind. Certain passages—such as the account of Saul’s meeting with the witch of Endor, and Moses and Elijah appearing at Jesus’ transfiguration—are often read in light of preconceived notions and/or without full consideration of either the immediate context or the overall context of scripture.

Additionally, there is a strong emotional component to the conception of man as a spirit able to survive the death of the body. Whereas the New Testament states that God alone is immortal (1 Timothy 6:15-16) and its writers consistently stress the hope of resurrection and entrance into the Kingdom of God upon Christ’s return, most Christians who have suffered the loss of a loved one tend to seek comfort in the idea that he or she is already “in a better place,” “walking the streets of gold with Jesus,” and “not dead at all but more alive than ever.” The idea that this might not be so is frequently met with consternation bordering on outrage.

As it happens, the Bible offers compelling evidence against the ghost concept, starting at the very beginning with the Genesis account of Adam’s creation.

What is Man?

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” – Genesis 2:7

There are several things to notice here:

First, note that Adam’s physical body is called “man” even before it is given life—“And the Lord God formed man of the dust…” If man is actually a spirit and the body is merely the spirit’s temporary dwelling, how much sense does it make for the Bible to refer to Adam’s body—in its initial, lifeless, ‘uninhabited’ condition—as “man”?

Second, note that after God created Adam, he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Where in this verse do we read that God fashioned a ghost and placed it into Adam’s body? Or that he made Adam and then placed him into a body he had prepared for him? Nothing of the kind is said or even implied here. The text simply says that God imparted the “breath of life” to Adam. Adam then became “a living soul” (or “a living being”). He was not given a soul; he was given breath and became a soul. The term “breath” in the phrase “the breath of life” is translated from the Hebrew word neshamah, which, along with the related term, ruwach, is sometimes also translated as “spirit” or “wind” in the Bible. The term “soul” is translated from the Hebrew word nephesh. Adam’s lifeless body was given neshamah and became nephesh as a result.

Interestingly enough, Genesis also uses these same terms in reference to animals:

“And God created great whales and every living creature [nephesh] that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly.” – Genesis 1:21

“And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam…and whatever Adam called every living creature [nephesh], that was the name of it.” – Genesis 2:19

“All flesh that moved on the Earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the Earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath [neshamah] of the spirit of life, died.” – Genesis 7:21-22

So we have both man and animals being called nephesh (‘souls’ or ‘living beings’) in scripture. Both were formed from the dust and both were given life by the same neshamah. Thus the Bible portrays human beings and animals as being no different in their essential composition. There is no evidence that man was given a different type of “breath” than was given to animals. Solomon underscores this for us in Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 and 12:5 and 7:

“For the fate of humans and the fate of animals are the same: As one dies, so dies the other; both have the same breath…Both go to the same place, both come from the dust, and to dust both return.” (NET Bible)

“For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street…then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the breath will return to God who gave it.”

God himself illustrates this in Genesis 3:17-19:

“And unto Adam he said…In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, until you return unto the ground; for out of it you were taken: for dust you are, and unto dust you shall return.”

“Dust you are.” Not “your body is dust,” but “you” are dust. Why would God call Adam—the conscious, thinking, feeling, reasoning, moral, spirit being—“dust” if humans are, in fact, immaterial spirits? Recall here that Genesis 2:7 refers to Adam’s lifeless body as “man.” I would be more persuaded of the view of man as a spirit if God had said something like, “Your body will return to the dust from which it was taken, for it dust, but you shall depart into Sheol,” or words to that effect, as this would suggest a true dichotomy; but, no, God plainly tells Adam, “YOU are dust.”

Also note what God says concerning man in Genesis 6:3:

“My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

Here, God refers to man as “flesh.” “He is flesh.” This is strange phraseology if man is actually a spirit encased in a temporary housing of flesh.

We see the essential nature of man referenced again in Ezekiel 37:1-14, the famous “Valley of Dry Bones” passage. This passage concerns the future of Israel, illustrated in terms of human resurrection. Ezekiel was shown a valley full of bones, and when he prophesied to them “the bones came together…the sinews and flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.” Ezekiel was then instructed to prophesy to the “wind” (literally “breath”), “…and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet.”

Note the similarity to Adam’s creation: lifeless bodies united with “breath” from God become living beings. Further, note that Ezekiel is not told to prophesy to individual spirits, or to heaven or Sheol to release the dead, or any other thing that might fit with popular conceptions of life after death; instead, he is told to prophesy to one “breath” of life for all of these individuals that come to life.

For a last example, consider Revelation 11:1-11. Two end-time prophets are killed in Jerusalem and lie dead in the streets for three days, after which “the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood upon their feet.” No spirits return from heaven or any such thing here; rather, a singular breath of life from God enters both men and restores them to life. This reference to a singular breath of life hearkens back to Ecclesiastes 12:7, where Solomon notes that man’s breath “returns to God who gave it.” The “breath” is not something that is inherently man’s or a part of man; it comes from God, and returns to him at the time of death.

Scriptural Problems with the “Ghost” Theory

Popular teachings in regard to the nature of man as a spirit that is able to exist in a disembodied “afterlife” state prior to the resurrection also create awkward exegetical problems.

For one, the Bible states repeatedly that the dead are “asleep” (Daniel 12:2, 1 Kings 1:21, Job 14:12, John 11:11-13, Matthew 27:52, Luke 8:52-53, 1 Corinthians 15:51). Ecclesiastes tells us that “the dead know nothing” (9:5), that there is “no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol,” the realm of the dead (9:10). Psalm 6:5 says that there is no praise of God in Sheol, while 146:4 adds that, when a man dies, even “his thoughts perish.” None of these passages are compatible with traditional views of the afterlife or alleged near-death experiences in which persons who temporarily died supposedly interacted with deceased loved ones.

Even various scripture passages that supposedly show disembodied spirits are in conflict with other passages. A prime example of this is the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which many Bible teachers claim is an accurate glimpse of the afterlife given by Jesus himself. In the story, we’re told that the rich man finds himself in agony in the flames of Hades, and desires that Lazarus be sent to him to cool his tongue with water. Yet, this imagery conflicts with what Jesus had to say about the nature of spirits in Luke 24:43, when he first appeared to his disciples following his resurrection:

“While they were telling these things, He [Jesus] Himself stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be to you.’ But they were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a spirit. And He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them.”

In this passage, Jesus indicates that spirits do not have physical substance, and he demonstrates that he is not a spirit by inviting his disciples to touch him and by eating a piece of a fish. This leads me to ask: If the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus depicts disembodied spirits in the afterlife, how is it that the rich man could be tormented by fire or comforted by water? Why are he and Lazarus described as having physical characteristics (eyes, fingers, and a tongue)? How could Lazarus touch the rich man, as the rich man desired him to do?

Defenders of the traditional view of the afterlife have tried to explain these discrepancies away by resorting to speculation about “spirit bodies” and “spiritual fire” (concepts that are nowhere found in scripture), but I feel it is more sensible to approach the Rich Man and Lazarus as the final parable in a long series of parables aimed at the Pharisees—a story full of illustrative symbolism, rather than a glimpse into the afterlife. Both Matthew and Mark tell us that that Jesus taught the crowds in parables, “and did not speak to them without a parable” (Matthew 13:34, Mark 4:34), whereas he explained things clearly to his disciples in private. Again, the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus comes at the end of a series of parables, which Luke clearly tells us Jesus taught in public:

“Now all the tax-collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’” – Luke 15:1-2

This was a public place, and the Pharisees were present. Jesus was teaching in parables at the time, as he habitually did when in public.

The united witness of scripture strongly suggests that man is not a spirit encased in flesh, but rather, a being of flesh who, upon death, returns to the dust from which he was formed. Man was created when God united his breath with the physical form he had fashioned from the ground, and death is essentially the reversal of the creation process; man’s components separate and return to their point of origin: his body returns to the dust, while his “breath returns to God who gave it.” Man is not inherently immortal. Immortality is a gift that God will give to the righteous following the return of Christ:

“Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, and then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 15:50-57

In this passage, Paul tells us that neither the dead nor the living are able to inherit the kingdom of God without “putting on” “immortality” and “the imperishable,” which necessarily means that neither is immortal or imperishable at present. Traditionalists will stress that Paul is referring only to physical bodies here, rather than to the immortal spirit of man, which they insist is able to exist independently of the body and exhibit and experience all manner of what we think of as physical actions and sensations: sight, sound, touch, speech, pain, comfort, etc. If this is so, then the body of man seems superfluous, even detrimental, because it somehow hinders the superior spirit it houses.

Indeed, if immortality is the criterion for inheriting the kingdom, why does the immortal spirit not qualify on its own, since it is able to do and experience virtually everything the body can do and experience? Why must the immortal spirit be joined to an immortal physical body before it can inherit the kingdom of a God who is himself “spirit” (John 4:24)? If the immortal spirit—the supposed “real person”—never dies but is really “more alive than ever” when apart from the body, then why is death only overcome when the physical body rises? The person never died, after all; only their fleshly housing died.

Why, for that matter, did Jesus come to pay the penalty for sin in the flesh?

“For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.” – Romans 8:3

If the body is merely a housing for a spirit, a ghost—the “real person”—why is it the flesh that is sinful? Why did Christ have to come and die in the flesh if it is really the spirit within the flesh that sins and the body is merely a helpless tool used to carry out the spirit’s wishes? Why is it the flesh that dies and not the spirit? Some will answer with an appeal to what theologians refer to as “spiritual death,” but if the spirit dies—‘spiritually speaking,’ that is, since it supposedly cannot actually die—why, again, was the price for redeeming man’s spirit’s paid in flesh? If the primary death man suffers is “spiritual,” why is death not said to be “swallowed up in victory” until the body rises? If it is “spiritual death” that Christ contended against, why is the rising of man’s cast-off physical body not said to be a formality rather than the quintessential moment of victory?

If, on the other hand, man really is what God called him way back in Genesis: nephesh, conscious, breathing “flesh,” then the problems I’ve outlined above disappear entirely. Christ came and paid the penalty for sin in the flesh because man is flesh, and when flesh that has died rises from the dust, unable to die again, then death is defeated indeed.

And for one last exegetical issue, there is the matter of how unrighteous spirits can be suffering torment without the judgment having taken place yet. I’ve heard traditionalists refer to Hades (usually just termed “hell”) as a “holding cell for judgment day,” but their teaching clearly indicates that they see it as much more than that. Essentially, they view it as a torture chamber, a place of active punishment. Yet, how is it that the unrighteous spirits consigned there are being punished without having had their day in court, without “the books” having been opened against them (Revelation 2011-13)? This flies in the face, not only of Christ’s kingdom parables and much other New Testament teaching (such as Hebrews 9:27), but also of the Old Testament precedents that God himself set under the Law of Moses.

Additional Considerations

The “ghost” doctrine also raises other questions even apart from purely scriptural considerations, such as the matter of how spirit beings are propagated by physical union. Can spirits procreate? Do men and women somehow combine in their spirits as well as their DNA when they conceive children, with the result that a new human spirit is generated along with a new body? Or does God create a new person each time sperm and egg successfully join, and then implant that spirit in the reproducing cells of the embryo? If a new soul is created each time, then why we are so often like our physical relatives (even those we've never met) in our personalities? The question is certainly interesting, if not rather bizarre.

Conclusion

Serious Bible students need to re-examine this issue of the immortal soul/spirit/ghost, and along with it the various common inferences drawn from scripture where the nature of death and the subject of an afterlife are concerned. I would argue that our concept of the human soul or spirit has been more heavily influenced by Platonism and popular culture (including reports of near-death experiences) than what the Bible actually reveals about the nature of man and the divine “breath” that gives us life. This is a dangerous state of affairs, particularly in light of the Bible’s warnings that deception will be rampant in the last days. If Christians believe that their dead friends and relatives continue to live on in some ethereal, ghostly state—rather than being well and truly dead until the time of resurrection, as the Bible actually teaches—then they are likely to be open to still greater deceptions. Already, some Christian teachers are promoting the idea that spirits of the dead can interact with the living and even provide them with guidance, pointing to the examples of how C.S. Lewis and J.B. Philips were supposedly influenced by “godly ghosts.”

The danger here should be self-evident, but I fear that many Christians are simply too invested in this theological dogma to see it. The popularity of books such as Heaven is for Real and 13 Minutes in Hell have captivated their imaginations and encouraged them to place more faith in alleged spiritual experiences than in the authority of the Bible itself. Even occultists will testify that spirits often lie and misrepresent themselves. Christians would do well to rethink these matters, avoid sensational claims, and heed the Apostle John’s advice:

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God…” – 1 John 4:1

For a detailed look at alleged ghosts of the Bible, see this article: Do the Dead return to visit the Living?

For discussions of the Rich Man and Lazarus, see the following resources:

https://www.afterlife.co.nz/articles/luke-16/

https://www.scribd.com/doc/272778834/The-Rich-Man-and-Lazarus

The Rich Man and Lazarus (audio), Part 1

The Rich Man and Lazarus (audio), Part 2

Related resources:

Did Jesus preach to Spirits while He was dead? (audio)

The “Ghosts” of the Martyrs in Revelation (audio)

“Away from the body and at home with the Lord”

Did Paul have an Out-of-Body Experience?

* Unless otherwise noted, all scriptures are taken from the NASB
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Why Some Cannot Find God

I recently made a video in which I take a few minutes to discuss why God, if he truly exists, appears to have hidden himself from mankind, and what you need to do to experience him personally.