Video Transcript: Theories of Creation

Hi, I'm David Feddes. And this talk is about theories of creation. What is the little child asked you, where do babies come from? What would you say? You might  tell the child that babies come from the love of mommy and daddy. And you  might give simplified descriptions of body parts and maybe even use some  figures of speech. But your main point is that mommy and daddy love each  other, and that babies come from the love of mommy and daddy. And you might  give accurate but very simple descriptions of how babies are made. Now, let's  say you're taking a biology test, the professor tells you describe the biological  process of human reproduction, would you write, Daddy loves mommy and a  baby starts growing in mommy's tummy. If you did that, you would flunk the  biology test. And you would deserve to flunk when you're taking a biology test,  you need to describe things by their scientific terms. And so you would have to  talk about male reproductive organs and female reproductive organs and  various terms such as the fallopian tubes, the ovaries, you'd speak of  blastocysts and fertilization and all of that you would use technically proper  terms, and you'd get into great detail about the process. The explanation that  you give a child might leave out details and might leave out technical terms that  you would include on a biology test, you're not trying to give the child an exact  scientific explanation. Does that mean that it's a poorer explanation? Well, not  necessarily. In fact, it might be richer, in some ways. When you're telling a child  of the love between daddy and mommy, you'd be saying something deeper and  more important than any technical details on a biology exam. Of course, in  telling a child where babies come from, you should still tell the basic truth. Even  if you're not trying to impress a biology professor, mommy and daddy are real,  not just figurative, and any information you give about body parts should be true, not false. Even if you use everyday language and maybe a few figures of  speech, you would not help a child at all, if you said, the stork brings babies.  That's just a tall tale. Now, what kind of story is Genesis? Is it like? The answer  that you would give a child who asks where babies come from? And so you give  some basic facts, and maybe include a few figures of speech? Is it a detailed  scientific description? Or is it just a tall tale, a myth something like the stork  brings babies? Well, the truth of the matter is certainly that it's not just a tall tale,  like the stork bringing babies, and it's not intended to be purely a scientific  textbook either. When we ask where did the world and living things and people  come from? Genesis doesn't offer all the answers that a scientist seeks. But  neither does it offer a stork like tale. It gives simplified history for people of all  ages, Genesis tells a true story that communicates the greatest deepest truths  about creation to every age level, and every culture. When we dig into the  details, we might not always know for sure whether this or that detail of the story is literal or figurative. But the main facts are clear. When we're thinking about  Genesis, here are five major facts of the creation story. First, the Genesis story  is true, even though it's not a textbook about scientific details. Second, God 

spoke God's word, created all things that came to be and God's word rules,  everything. Genesis makes it very clear that God by His Word, brought all things into being and continues to govern them. Third, the world is purposefully  designed. God is in charge, and he had a plan for this world. It's not just a  chaos. Fourth, Heaven and Earth are God's temple, the original readers of  Genesis would immediately understand from the description of a garden, that  this is a place of worship, a place where the divine comes to dwell. And the  language of Genesis 1-2 to Ancient Near Eastern peoples would be the  language of forming a temple. And so a major point of the creation story is that  heaven and earth together are God's dwelling place, God's temple. And on the  seventh day, it's not just that God takes a break and says, whooo I need a rest  after all that work. No, it's God, coming to rest or coming to dwell in what he has  made and prepared as his temple. And a fifth important point of Genesis is that  humans are created to image God to resemble him. And not only to resemble  him, but to represent God, humans image and represent God. And God did not  let people make images, to worship and bow down to partly because the only  image he made of himself is humanity. And we are to represent God in His  creation by ruling over it on his behalf. And being good stewards and caretakers  of the things he's made. Those that are five major facts of the creation story that  all believers in the Bible all Christians ought to be able to agree upon. But what  about evolution? Well, believing in the Creator doesn't rule out every form of  evolution, especially if by evolution, we simply mean changes within a group of  living things over time. For example, the average size of Finch beaks on a  particular island varies as the environment changes. Nobody denies that this  kind of adaptive change takes place. Nobody denies that lions, tigers, leopards,  and others in the cat family probably go back to a common cat ancestor. Nobody denies that different races of humanity trace back to the same ancestry, and  over time developed different characteristics such as different skin color and  facial features. That's all evolution meant, everyone would agree. But often,  evolution isn't used just as a word for changes within a population. But as a  word for a grand scheme, which explains the origin of all forms of life.  Philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out five main claims of this grand evolutionary scheme. First, the universe is very ancient, billions of years old. Second, simple  life forms produced complex life forms. So single celled organisms eventually  produced more and more complicated organisms. And then related that is the  claim that all life forms have common ancestry, we all go back to the same cells, which got it all started. The fourth claim of the grand scheme of evolution is that  chance, a chance process, produced all things it just randomly happened. And  fifth, life emerged from dead matter, by physics and chemistry, without God.  Now, Dr. Plantinga, in identifying these five claims of the grand scheme of  evolution, points out that you can separate these claims. For instance, just  because someone might believe that the universe is billions of years old, does 

not all mean that they believe that life emerged from dead matter by physics and chemistry. Without God, if you look at the five claims, you can separate them out from one another. There are some people who believe all five, there are some  people who believe none of these five claims. And there are some people who  believe one or two or three, but not all of them. You could believe the universe is very ancient, and not believe In any of the other claims, you might believe that  it's ancient, and that simple life forms produced complex, and that all life forms  have common ancestry. And you still might deny that a chance process did it all,  or that God had nothing to do with it, because there are many people who  believe in God, who would believe the first three claims of the grand scheme of  evolution but not the last to claims at all. And there is no scientific support for the last two claims at all. Because chance is not a scientific concept. And the notion  that life emerged from dead matter is of course, something that is denied  throughout all of science. That's a discredited theory called spontaneous  generation, that living things come out of dead stuff that was disproved by Louis  Pasteur and others. So We ought to realize that just because there's maybe  some evidence that the universe is very ancient, that does not mean there's any  evidence at all that chance did at all, or that God was not involved. When  Christians think about all this, they agree on many things. They agree that  creation is not just a tall tale. They agree that God is the Creator of all things.  And they agree that some form of evolution happens. We all agree that there's  changes within various life forms. But Christians don't all agree on the details.  Christians differ on the best way to interpret Genesis, they differ on whether  various parts of evolution are true. And they differ on how best to unite a sound  understanding of the Bible with sound science. And so Christians who differ on  these things, hold different theories, and how to fit it all together. We're going to  consider five theories in this talk, evolutionary creation, functional creation,  progressive creation, the gap theory, and young earth creation. First, let's  consider evolutionary creation, which is also sometimes termed theistic  evolution. And the basic idea is that evolution is God's method of creating. So  there is no argument with most aspects of the theory of evolution. Instead, they  say, Hey, let's keep scripture and science separate. Scripture answers, ultimate  questions about who is behind all of these processes? And what are his  purposes in creating, but Scripture doesn't deal with physical questions. That's  what science is for. So science will answer the physical questions. And scripture  will answer the more ultimate questions. And then when they look at Genesis,  people who believe in evolutionary creation, or theistic evolution, will say that  the six day sequence in Genesis 1 is a literary framework showing that God is  the Creator, but it's not meant to be a literal account. When evolutionary creation evaluates the grand theory of evolution, then it denies the last two claims. It  denies that chance did it all, and that God had nothing to do with it. But it agrees that the universe is very ancient, that simple life forms produced complex life 

forms, and that all life forms have a common ancestry. Some godly and sincere  believers take this approach, but there may be problems, evolutionary creation  might be too quick to accept unproven evolutionary dogma, and too slow to  recognize the factual content of the early chapters of the Bible. Genesis 1 is not  poetry, its prose. Its history, not just a mythic tale to make a spiritual point. And  the problems multiply in cases where those who hold this view don't believe that  Adam and Eve were two real individuals created in God's image. They don't  believe that all humanity descended from Adam and Eve even though the New  Testament says that from one man God made every nation of men. They don't  believe that Adam and Eve's fall into sin was a real event that corrupted all  humanity. And this undermines what the New Testament says about Jesus as  the last Adam, whose perfection brings life where the first Adam's disobedience  brought death. Now, not all evolutionary creationists deny the reality of Adam  and Eve, but some do, and the overall tendency of evolutionary creation, made  to be separating science through scripture, or to favor science over scripture,  when the two seem to be intention. Now while it's true that the Bible is not a  scientific textbook, Scripture does make factual claims that can't be dismissed,  just because they're expressed in non technical language. And now let's  consider the theory of functional creation. In the theory of functional creation, the word created Bara means that God assigned functions to already existing  material. One of the foremost teachers of this is John Walton, who formerly  taught at Moody Moody Bible Institute, and then later taught at Wheaton  College. And Dr. Walton is an expert in Ancient Near Eastern literature. And he  tries to understand Genesis by comparing it to some of the thoughts and world  view of some of the named green cultures in the ancient Near East. And he says that material already existed. And he says, hey, it even says so in Genesis 1, it  says, The earth was formless and void tohu wa-bohu, and then God gave it its  order, and God assigned it, its functions. But Genesis is not talking about the  creation of everything out of nothing. It's talking about God assigning the  purposes and functions to already existing material, all the material things  originated with God. But that's not the focus of Genesis. And then in six days,  God readied the earth to be humanity's home, and God's temple. And that's the  point he says, of Genesis 1 that God is assigning everything that's already there. And we don't really worry about the physical processes that God may have used to bring it about. But in the six days, God was readying the earth and assigning  all these different things to be humanity's home, and God's temple. And he says, Genesis 1-2, just doesn't teach anything about biological or material processes.  It's not concerned with that sort of thing. And it doesn't deny anything about  biological or material processes, either. So that means basically that you  shouldn't go to Genesis 1-2, for any information about biology or material  processes, because it's not talking about that. And Dr. Walton says that he's not  doing this based on study of evolution, or trying to make room for this or that 

scientific theory. Let the scientific theories come and go as they may, as we try  to discover the best ideas about the material process. He says, this is based on  the best understanding of the original Hebrew, and of the thought world of the  ancient near east in which Genesis was being communicated. Now, how does  functional creation evaluate evolution? Well, it says, of course, that the last two  claims that chance did it all, or that God had nothing to do with it are absolutely  false, because God is the Maker of all things, even the idea of creation ex nihilo, though he doesn't think it's the main focus of Genesis 1 is true. And the Bible  teaches that elsewhere, so everything comes from God. But is the universe very ancient? Maybe maybe not. Let the scientists worry about that. Scientists will  say one thing today, they may change their theory in the future. Did the simple  life forms produce the more complex life forms. Well, that seems to be what  contemporary science mostly thinks might be true might not be. Do all life forms  have common ancestry? Maybe maybe not. That's not the point of Genesis 1-2,  it says nothing about it one way or the other. So scientists may discover things  that seem to point in that direction now. But later on, it might point in a different  direction. Dr. Walton says that science changes, and Genesis isn't even talking  about the physical processes at all. So he's not going to worry about that. He  doesn't even try to evaluate contemporary theories of evolution. He just says  Genesis is talking about other matters. Now. The advantage of that, of course, is that biblical research can proceed without worrying about what the latest theory  is, and scientific research can proceed without worrying too much what the  latest theory on Genesis 1 is, in some ways it does, what evolutionary creation  does and separates the study of the Bible from the study of science, and that  has the advantage of people who want to be Christians, and don't want to deny  many of the main findings of contemporary science to kind of have both and to  not have a lot of conflict between them. Follow what the best biblical scholarship is, when it comes to the Bible. Follow what the best scientific research says,  when it comes to understanding creation, the downside may be that well,  Genesis 1-2 may be talking about facts about material things that God made,  and Dr. Walton and the and other functional creationists who think that it's only  talking about purposes and ultimate questions. It might be mistaken in that  maybe Genesis 1-2 is actually talking about things that actually happened, and  even material things that were made and processes even if it wasn't using highly technical scientific descriptions. Another theory that some Christians have is the  theory of progressive creation, also called the day age theory. In this theory, the  creation days in Genesis 1 were long ages. Not 24 hour days. So they appeal to the statement in the Bible that with God a day can be like 1000 years and 1000  years can be like a day. And in each new day, each new age, God created  things that couldn't develop from earlier things that had been made. In this  theory, earth is billions of years old. But God made humanity much more  recently, even if there were some primates or hominid forms that seem to 

resemble humanity. Those existed before and humanity is a recent creation in  God's image. So the day age theory holds that there are not just 24 hour days,  six of them in which God created but God is talking about six different eras or  ages, in which he did miraculous things in each new age to bring new forms of  life into being. And when progressive creation evaluates evolution, it agrees with only one claim of the big scheme. The universe is very ancient. It denies that  simple life forms could produce the vastly more complex life forms, it denies all  life forms have common ancestry, and of course, it denies that chance did it all,  without any help from God. Progressive creation has much to be said for it. It  affirms basic biblical truths. It recognizes that Genesis 1 teaches historical facts  and not just poetry. it affirms miraculous acts of God corresponding to each of  the six days, it afore affirms the Special Creation of Adam and Eve in God's  image it accepts what Christian are what Scripture says. And it tries to deal  responsibly with scientific information. One of the foremost Proponents of this  view is Dr. Hugh Ross, and many excellent Christians do hold this view. But  progressive creation has at least two difficulties that aren't very easily dismissed. First, interpreting the sixth creation days as long periods of time feels like a  forced meaning which doesn't quite fit the words of Genesis. Now it's true that  for the eternal God, extremely long periods of time, may seem no longer than a  day. It's also true that the Hebrew word for day Yom can occasionally mean an  indefinite period of time. But that doesn't seem to fit the context of Genesis 1.  There the Bible numbers each day, and marks each day with evening and  morning. It says, And there was evening and there was morning the first day,  and there was evening and there was morning, the second day and so forth  throughout the sixth day. Elsewhere in the Bible, whenever Yom The Hebrew  word for day is used with a number, it always means an ordinary 24 hour day.  So it seems like a stretch to say that Yom in Genesis 1 means a long age. A  second problem for progressive creation, is that in theorizing long periods of  time, it also theorizes that animals ate each other long before Adam's sin.  However, Genesis 1:30, says that God directed the animals to eat plants, and  not each other. It's hard to square eons of animals devouring each other, with a  statement that God made everything very good and that all animals and people  originally ate plants. And by the way, this is also a difficulty for the theories of  creation that we mentioned earlier. Well, let's move on to another theory. The  gap theory, the gap theory says that there's a huge time gap between Genesis  1:1 and Genesis 1:2, Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning, God created the  heavens and the earth. Now very, very, very long time gap, and the earth was  formless, and void. So there's the understanding that eons after God's original  creation described in Genesis 1 everything became a formless ruin, formless  and void by Genesis 1:2. And then God reconstructed the world during the six  days described in Genesis 1. So how does the gap theory evaluate evolution?  Well, it agrees that the universe is very ancient, but denies that simple life forms 

produced complex that all life forms have common ancestry, and of course,  denies that chance did it without God. But it does agree that the universe is very ancient, and a lot of stuff could have happened before it became formless and  void. Maybe that's when the dinosaurs lived. Maybe that's when all the various  things about the movement of continents and every other kind of thing described by scientists about a very ancient universe, maybe that's when a lot of that  happened. And then there was a recent creative act of God that made the world  that we see today. Now, the gap theory has considerable appeal because it  holds firmly to the key truths of scripture. And at the same time, it seems to  harmonize scripture with some widely held scientific ideas. The main difficulty is  that it might be inventing or imposing something that has no basis in the biblical  story. In Genesis 1:2 follows immediately after verse one in a smooth transition.  In the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth, and the earth was  formless and void, it sounds like it's just a very smooth transition without any  mention of a time gap. To most readers, it sounds like Genesis is describing the  first six days of a world that was just beginning to exist, not a world that was  being recreated after first existing for long ages, and then falling into ruin. The  Gap Theory inserts a huge period of time between two verses when there's not  a word about it in the text. Many Christians throughout history and still today  believe that God created the world in six days of ordinary length. And that's the  final theory that we'll look at young earth creation. young earth creationist  basically believe, Exodus 20:11, exactly as it sounds in six days, the Lord made  the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. young earth  creationists believe that that statement summarizes Genesis 1 that God did it all  in six days and made everything that is people, such as John Calvin and Martin  Luther agreed with this, God Himself took the space of six days, the days of  creation, said Luther were ordinary days in length, and there had been people  before Luther and not because of evolution, who didn't believe that the earth  was made in six days who believed that it was kind of a literary description.  Augustine for instance, Augustine believed that God did it all instantaneously.  And then he gave the six day creation account, to accommodate human minds  to understand a little bit more in a way we could understand his orderly way of  creating but he said, you know, six days is actually too long. God did it all in an  instant. And Luther said, well, as much as we respect and admire Augustine,  let's just agree with the Scriptures that it was six ordinary days in length and not  an instantaneous creation. Nowadays, of course, it's not an instantaneous, but  rather a billions of years kind of thing. But the basic principle of Luther and  Calvin was, hey, if it says six days, let's just take it to be six days. And young  earth creation, dismisses the entire grand scheme of evolution. It does believe,  of course, that there are those changes in Finch beaks, or that lions, tigers,  leopards, and so on, may all come from the same cat family. But it denies that  the universe is billions of years old, or that simple life forms produce more 

complex life forms and just evolved that way, or that all life forms have common  ancestry. And it denies that chance, and a godless process produce everything.  Now, when we think about young earth creation, the main difficulty with six day  

creation is that many scientifically educated people think that there is strong  scientific evidence for a very old Earth. And they may think also that there's  strong scientific evidence for common ancestry. And so they find six day  creation, hard to believe. Now, if the Bible is speaking figuratively, and it doesn't  actually mean to teach six day creation, then it would be best not to make it  harder for people to believe the Bible by making claims that the Bible doesn't  intend to make. So that the potential downside of six day creation, you say it six  24 hour days, God said so, and that's that. Well, those who have studied  science very carefully and have been persuaded that the universe is very, very  old, and that there is common ancestry, then they will find it very hard to believe  in the Bible, if they're told that the Bible is flatly contradicts what science seems  to them to clearly indicate. So that's a challenge for a six day creation. And if six  day creation is in fact, not the most accurate interpretation, then it would be kind of a shame to teach it that way. Because it would make it so much harder for  some very scientifically oriented people to believe. That's an important concern.  But our interpretation of the Bible's meaning shouldn't be determined by what  contemporary people find believable. The Bible reveals many things that don't fit current thinking. We have to seek to understand and accept the original  meaning of the biblical text, even when it doesn't fit our assumptions, and our  theories, so we shouldn't be too eager to make the Bible easy to believe. And in  doing so, not really listen to what the Bible itself is claiming and saying. So we  have these five theories of creation, evolutionary creation, functional creation,  progressive creation, the gap theory, and young earth creation. How do we deal  with those differences? Well, I'll just say, my own approach, in studying Genesis, I want to err on the side of taking scripture to literally, so if I'm doubtful about  which, or the other theory is correct, I'm going to lean towards the six day  creation theory, because it seems to take that statement in Genesis 1 pretty  straightforwardly. So if I'm going to make a mistake, I'd rather my mistake be in  the direction taking the Bible too, literally. But in dealing with fellow Christians  who have different theories, I want to err on the side of treating them too kindly.  It's all too common for people who believe in six day creation to denounce every other theory and every other Christian who holds those theory and say, all  they're old earth compromisers, there are a bunch of compromisers who don't  take the Bible, straightforwardly. And sometimes those who hold to evolutionary  creation, or one of the other theories, that isn't a six day creation will look at  those six day creationists and say, What a bunch of morons, they are so  unscientific. Don't they have a brain in their head, or at least, maybe they have a brain, but they don't know what the real findings of scientific research are. And  so you have people who have one theory that think the others are just 

compromising on the Bible. And those on another side are saying, Boy, those  people are ill informed or downright stupid. Let's be humble, and treat each  other generously, and treat them kindly. And let's remember the big picture, that  God did it all, that God is still in charge today. And that this, God does call us to  love one another. Let's get First things first, as well. If you're a person who isn't  really sure which of these theories is true, and you're not even sure if God is the  Creator? Well, then don't try to settle the theory before you face the main fact. Is the world just the chaos? Or is there strong evidence of an intelligent maker of  the universe who is very powerful and very wise? If you become convinced that  there is a Creator, and many people have become convinced of that, then it's  that important, but less important matter to figure out a theory on exactly what  happened. First things first, find out whether it's true. And for Christians who  come to the first chapters of Genesis, let's not be so entangled in differences  over how to map things out with our theories, that we forget the main truths.  These, again, to remind you are the five basic facts of the creation story. First,  it's true, even if it's not a textbook about scientific details. God did it. God's word  created, He said, Let there be and his word brought whatever your theory of  how he brought it about, he spoke it, he did it, he continues to rule over it all.  The world is purposefully designed, it's not just a chaos. Heaven and earth are  God's dwelling place, God's temple. And you and I, we humans, we were  created to image God to resemble him. And we were created to represent him  by taking good care of the world he has made. These are the five facts of the  creation story that Every Christian Needs to embrace and celebrate, no matter  where we might happen to differ on the various theories of creation.