Old Earth creationism
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Old Earth creationism is a variant of the creationist view of the origin of the universe and life on Earth. It is currently the view of many Catholic and Protestant Christians, and is typically more compatible with mainstream scientific thought, on the issues of the age of the Universe or Earth, than Young Earth creationism. However, it still takes the accounts of creation in Genesis more literally than evolutionary creationists. See also Progressive creationism.
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Types of Old Earth Creationism
Gap Creationism
One type of Old Earth creationism is Gap creationism. This view states that life was immediately created on a pre-existing old Earth. One variant rests on a literal reading of Genesis 1:1 as, "In the beginning, when the earth was formless and void," implying that the earth already existed, but had passed into decay during an earlier age of existence, and was being "shaped anew". This view is more consistent with mainstream science with respect to the age of the Earth, but still often resembles Young Earth creationism in many respects (often seeing the "days" as 24-hour days). This view was popularized in 1909 by the Scofield Reference Bible.
Day-Age Creationism
More commonly, advocates of an old Earth hold that the six days referred to are not ordinary 24-hour days, but rather the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) can be interpreted in this context to mean a long period of time (thousands or millions of years) rather than a 24-hour day. The Genesis account is then interpreted as an account of a progressive creation, or sometimes a summary of life's evolutionary history. This view is often called "Day-Age Creationism".
There are a variety of ways in which the events in the creation account are interpreted. Some closely resemble the order of events purported by Young Earth creationism. In this view the first "day" God is said to have created light; on the second, the firmament of heaven; on the third, the separation between water and land, and the creation of plant life; on the fourth the sun, moon, and stars; on the fifth created marine life and birds; on the sixth land animals, and man and woman.
The order of light, then the firmament, then stars, might be taken as a simplified description of modern theories of cosmology, namely the Big Bang, followed by cosmic inflation, followed by stellar evolution. Similarly, modern zoology believes that marine animals preceded land animals.
Critics of this old Earth view of Creationism comment that the order of the days of creation are inconsistent with modern scientific interpretation. For example, the Earth is unlikely to have existed before the Sun and all other stars, plant life could not have survived millennia without sunlight, flowering plants could not have been pollinated without insect life, and most birds could not survive long without terrestrial life.
Other OEC camps hold that the Sun, Moon and Stars were only given their mission or status by God on the fourth day, not literally created ex nihilo. Some believe that the phrase "Let there be light" implies only that light was made visible from the context of the surface of the earth (where the Spirit of the Lord was said to be moving upon the face of the waters) due to the removal of an opaque atmosphere. The Sun, Moon and stars were only made completely visible "for signs and for seasons and for days and years" on the fourth "day" when the atmosphere was made fully transparent and that the Sun was in existence well before the Earth. The "earth" mentioned in the first verse would be the cosmos as it existed in before the Big Bang, not literally the Earth itself in its modern form. The Hebrew phrase "shamayim erets" (Heavens and the earth) always refers to the entire Universe. It is also possible that the first verse "In the beginning ..." was only a summary of the account that would follow. The exact placement of particular creatures within the creation account such as insects and other forms of life are not necessarily mentioned in the text. The exact length and equality or overlap of "days" may vary from model to model.
The Framework Hypothesis
The Framework Hypothesis notes that there is a pattern or "framework" present in the Genesis account and that, because of this, the account may or may not have been intended to be read as a strict chronological account of creation. This view is broad enough that proponents of other old earth views (such as many Day-Age creationists) have no problem with many of the key points put forward by the hypothesis regarding a pattern within the Genesis account, but they believe that there is a certain amount of chronology present. While this view is not explicitly old Earth, its proponents usually are.
Cosmic Time
Gerald Schroeder puts forth a view which tries to reconcile 24-hour creation days with an age of billions of years for the universe by noting, as creationist Phillip E. Johnson summarizes in his article "What Would Newton Do?": “the Bible speaks of time from the viewpoint of the universe as a whole, which Schroeder interprets to mean at the moment of "quark confinement," when stable matter formed from energy early in the first second of the big bang.” Schroeder calculates that a period of six days under the conditions of quark confinement, when the universe was approximately a million times smaller and hotter than it is today, is equal to fifteen billion years of earth time. Thus Genesis and modern physics are reconciled. One problem with this approach is that it puts the creation of the Earth approximately eight billion years earlier than modern scientific theories and it may be incorrect with respect to the viewpoint of creation.[1]
Progressive Creationism
Progressive Creationism is the idea that God allows certain natural process to affect creation but has also intervened at key moments in life’s history to guide those processes or, in some views, create new species all together (often to replenish the earth). This view can be applied (as it often is) to virtually any of the Old Earth views. It is usually only promoted by Old Earth creationists, as Young-Earth creationists see everything in the fossil record as being created in six 24-hour days.
Broader Reasoning
There are a number of other reasons that OECs cite for belief in an old Earth that are often (though not always) held commonly by Gap, Day-Age and other old earth views. One argument is that there are a number of passages which seem to indicate the antiquity of Earth (many of which are poetic) for example Proverbs 8:22-31, although they are also compatible with a 6,000-year-old earth which is likewise "old" from the perspective of a human lifetime.[2] Others seem to relate the age of the Earth (or some aspects of Earth) to the eternal nature of God (implying great antiquity), although these would prove too much because old-earth creationists don't believe that the earth is eternal. One claimed passage is Psalm 90 (which is said to demonstrate that the passage of time can be considerably different from God’s perspective, although others claim it shows that God is outside time).
Many (Roman Catholics especially) also see a belief in an old Earth as predicated upon the view of Thomism, that the words of the Bible (Special Revelation) ought to be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the record of nature (General Revelation). Old Earth creationists are also often quick to point out that belief in any one interpretation of Genesis should not be considered a foundational issue or requirement for faith in God, as such a position limits a believer's faith to earthly and not spiritual matters.
See also
- Young Earth Creationism, a competing viewpoint
- Day-Age Creationism
- Progressive creationism
- Gap Creationism
- Cosmology
- Existence
- Timeline of the Universe
- Ultimate fate of the Universe
- Creation science
- Creator god
- Dating Creation
- Cosmogony
- Cosmological argument
- Biblical cosmology
- Deism
- Theism
External links
- Reasons to Believe An Old-Earth, Day-Age site with a number of resources
- Answers In Creation An Old Earth site purporting to demonstrate the flaws in young earth creationism
- ‘Progressive creationism’: why is it wrong to add billions of years to the Bible? from Answers in Genesis, A Young-Earth site purporting to demonstrate the theological flaws in old-earth creationism
- New Creationism.org Old-Earth Creationism Site
- Evidence for God Old-Earth Creationism Site
- Does God Exist?
- Notable Christians Open to an Old Earth Interpretation
Further reading
- Schroeder, Gerald , Genesis and the Big Bang Theory: The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, 1991, ISBN 0553354132 (articulates Old Earth Creationism)
- Ross, Hugh, A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy, 2004, ISBN 1-576-83375-5 (Details why Old Earth Creationism is the literal Biblical view)
- Ross, Hugh, The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis, 2001, ISBN 1-576-83230-9 (Details the agreement of science with Old Earth Creationism]
- David G. Hagopian, editor, The Genesis Debate : Three Views on the Days of Creation, 2000, ISBN 0-970-22450-8 (Three pairs of scholars present and debate the three most widespread evangelical interpretations of the creation days)
- Refuting Compromise (ISBN 0-890514-11-9) 2004 (critique of old-earth creationism, in particular that of Ross, Hugh)
- Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the Bible, 1995, ISBN 1-556-61679-1 (by a Christadelphian old-earth creationist)