Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:00]
A
The use of the word yom in Hebrew, which we translate day. It's the only word that could mean day. If he wanted to talk about this as longer periods of time. There are words in Genesis 1 that are much better options for that. There's times and seasons and days and years. So there's some options that they didn't use if they wanted to indicate, I think, something non literal.
- [00:21]
B
We understand today the Earth is rotating around the sun. Earth is made before the sun. If I'm just trying to picture it happening, the Earth is there. It's. Is it stationary then? As the sun is made, it's catapulted into orbit. As I'm trying to picture it, it does feel counterintuitive to me.
- [00:37]
A
I often hear, oh, nature is the 67th book of the Bible. I think, honestly, that's a terrible thing to say. It is a work of God, absolutely. But if creation has fallen, that's a different class of communication now than the inerrant word of God.
- [00:51]
B
Some people say, well, you shouldn't let science influence your interpretation of Scripture. I'm not convinced by that because I would say that they're not equal. I do want the Scripture to be the priority, but. But I think it's fair to say we want to seek harmony between these two. Well, Marcus, I'm so grateful to be able to have a conversation with you. And we're going to talk through the doctrine of creation, and we have different perspectives, and we'll kind of give our reasons for our side and that kind of thing. But even more deeply than that, part of our goal is just to model how do we have these kinds of conversations where there are disagreements in the body of Christ, how do we come together and just work through them? And I can't think of a better person from your perspective to talk with than you. So I'm really honored that you're here and grateful and we're going to have a great conversation.
- [01:33]
A
Thank you so much. I mean, I've really enjoyed the videos that you've presented with your own perspective on Genesis and the way especially that you've handled controversies. And, you know, sometimes other people have said things, you know, about you or what have you really.
- [01:47]
B
I never noticed this once.
- [01:48]
A
You know, maybe it was. Maybe it was a while back, but I. So I really appreciated the gracious way that you approach not just this, but other controversies that we find within the church. And as a teacher and an educator, I had a lot of students who thought the way that I did, but also a lot of Students that didn't think the way that I did. And so how would I, as a college professor at the time, present this in such a way that I hope is attractive to the student that recognizes where they're at, recognizes the legitimate reasons that they might have for having a different perspective? And certainly my educational background, which we might talk about a little bit, you know, is entirely outside of conservative evangelical dialogues on this sort of thing. So going to state schools and whatnot, so, you know, learning to be able to present your case to someone in a way that is compassionate towards where they're at, I think is really important. So I appreciate the way that you model that for the church and look forward to our dialogue here.
- [02:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, In a second. Let's come back. And I want people to learn a little bit more about you. You can introduce yourself and share maybe how you first got interested in creation, but just to pick up on what you're saying there. Just for our viewers to understand my heart and where I come at a conversation like this, it's not to minimize the topic and say this isn't important, just to the contrary, precisely because it is so important, we need to lean in with an open heart and work at the truth. And, you know, Isaiah 66 talks about fear and trembling before the word of God. I think as we Talk through Genesis 1, which will be our focus today, we both want to have a spirit of fear and trembling before the text of Genesis 1, but then there's this other obligation of love for all the people of Christ. And so it's a question of, and this is my heart, that people would feel the love of Christ even in Christian disagreement, whether on creation or anything else. So that's what we'll talk about a little bit. But how did you first get interested in creation?
- [03:48]
A
Oh, man, Gavin. I was a dinosaur geek as a little kid. I learned about dinosaurs when I was 9. Sorry, when I was 4, and just was absolutely captivated by them. I became a believer in Jesus Christ as the son of God also at a very early age. And so it honestly didn't take very long before I started seeing what seemed to be a conflict between Bible science types of issues. I was nine the first time that I remember contemplating what to do between the dinosaur books that I was getting from the library and the Bible as I was reading that or being taught at my church. So my passion for paleontology and dinosaurs goes way, way back to that dinosaur bug as a little kid.
- [04:35]
B
Yeah, me too. And tell just for viewers who aren't familiar with your background, do you want to say anything to introduce the kind of work you do and anything about your educational background?
- [04:46]
A
Sure. I'm a paleontologist, which I would tell my students means I'm a fossils and rocks guy. I got a chance to study that at Undergraduate, graduate and PhD levels, going through Penn State and South Dakota, School of Mines and Tech, and then back to my home state of Rhode island, surprisingly enough, for my PhD. And so, yeah, my background there is in studying Earth's history. That's one of the neat things about being a geologist and a paleontologist is we have among the sciences a very uniquely historical perspective on Earth. We're not as much doing beakers in chemistry and labware and reproducing experiments over and over again. We get a skeleton to excavate out of the rocks, we get a certain collection. We have rocks that are already there. A lot of geology is forensic work. You're trying to figure out the events that happened in the past that bring you to understanding what you're seeing in the present, rather than saying, you know, let me try this experiment, then tweak it again, then tweak it again, then tweak it again until I get an answer to the question I'm looking for. Instead, I look at the rocks and they're giving me, you know, some data. And I've got to try to sort out how those data came to be.
- [06:01]
B
In a second, I'll share more about how I got interested in these kinds of topics. I'm not a scientist, I'm a lowly theologian, but I'm fascinated in this especially kind of science versus faith tensions. I just find those absolutely captivating. So I'll share more about that. But maybe to start with, these debates about creation have been going on for a while. Both of us have been involved in this for a while. For me, it's actually been less in the last five years, more 10 years, 15 years ago. Just pretty deeply involved in these conversations. What is something that you see that is encouraging about the way Christians talk about creation? What's something that you see that is discouraging? And I'm framing that question first because, you know, for our conversation today, part of our interest is just how do we even do this? How do we come together and just talk through? I see it this way, you see it that way. What's going well in those conversations? What isn't going well? I'll give a really brief, maybe 10 second answer on each, but I want to hear yours first.
- [07:04]
A
Boy thinking about what's positive. What's a positive and what's a negative about where we're at right now? How's the dialogue going? One positive aspect I think is thinking of myself as a young earth creationist is that there are more and more specialized young earth creationists who have come up through the ranks who are cautious about the way that they do things. You know, when young earth creationism got itself started again, let's say in the 1960s with the Genesis flood and the like, for a long time it was such a small minority that, you know, like one creation speaker was supposed to handle all aspects of creation, every area of science, every area of theology, et cetera. You kind of had a one man band. However, over the years we've developed into our specializations. I'm a paleontologist and I don't feel comfortable talking about some other types of topics because it's not part of my training. And while I might be able to have a couple of answers here and there, I'm able to be able to say, hey, there's this other scholar over here who knows this aspect of science that isn't in my purview, or this person who handles Old Testament theology, this person who's a systematic theologian. That development, I think has been really good for young earth creationism and it's helping shift us into a more scholarly community. That's a slow shift, but it is a shift that's been happening for some time. So I'm encouraged by that. On the what's discouraging side of things, I think as part of the broader issues in our culture of subdivisions and strong rhetoric, Young earth creationism is caught up in that and has actually over the history, I think, been a leader in some of that. And I don't see that lessening in a lot of quarters with especially Facebook comments and YouTube comments that you have to deal with from time to time, there's a lot of Balkanization, even interior to young earth creationism. That's kind of always been the case, but there's also been some kind of calcification in that.
- [09:24]
B
It's difficult to say Balkanization. Could you define what you mean by that?
- [09:28]
A
What I mean is that an entity that was fairly unified has become fractured into smaller groups and divisions. So comes from political side of things. And when I look at young earth creationism, if you looked back in the 1980s and the early 1990s, et cetera, the Institute for Creation Research was the dominant voice. There's kind of like one big voice, at least here in the United States, we have more of them now, so there is kind of that plus side. But at the same time, those major organizations and some of the minor players as well have really separated from one another and don't communicate well internally. And that, I think, is to our detriment.
- [10:10]
B
That's interesting. Yeah. So I would say for the positives, just the amount of resources that are out there for each different perspective, I mean, you have whole ministries devoted to the different major camps. For viewers watching this video who are kind of new to this whole conversation, you might think of three broad buckets. Young Earth creationism, Old Earth creationism, evolutionary creationism, and then these are a bit porous. And as you get into this topic, you realize there's probably more like six or seven different options and they bleed into each other. But you've got ministries devoted to each of these different views and a huge amount of books. So about 10 years ago, I did a research fellowship on creation, a postdoctoral fellowship. And remember, so people would come in and we'd have conferences. I remember thinking, there's really a wealth of resources. Any view you take, you can find a lot of literature on it. And that's good, because this is a topic that's generated anxiety for people, I think it's. And because I do things like Protestant apologetics and things like this, I'm aware there's a lot of other topics that don't have this amount of attention, I think. So that's good. A downside to these conversations, I would say, is there's a level of acrimony and suspicion that often attends the conversations. Not always. That's part of our interest, is to try to say, how do we have the conviction without that? When I say that, I'm thinking of between the different camps mostly, but you bring an interesting point up that even internally there can be tensions. And so I think one thing I know we both have a heart for is how do we model both the value of truth and love? And what does that look like? As we have the conversation, maybe pressing into things, then a little bit, we can just. Let's lay out our respective views and just what do we believe about this? When you say you're a young Earth creationist, could you just give us a brief snapshot? It's an interesting label, Young Earth creationism. What does that mean?
- [12:10]
A
Yeah, and it's a label that didn't exist throughout church history until we get to, you know, really the 20th century. That's when the term kind of codifies itself. But it's one that goes all the way back to the beginning of Christian writing on Genesis. As far as what I would define young earth creationism as something that has five tenets. So one, at least in the modern world, is that you hold that the days of creation are to be understood as days like you and I experience them. Obviously, there's miraculous activity that God's doing, but the days are more or less about 24 hours long. Now, historically, there's been options on that point, but at least for today, that's one. Number two is that Adam and Eve were humanity's first and only parents. There were no co Adamites or pre Adamites. There was nothing out there in creation that looked sort of like us, but wasn't human sort of thing. So you've got Adam and Eve as the original, sole progenitors of all of humanity. Third, it would be that the curse on creation following the fall had cosmic effects, not only for Adam and Eve, bringing spiritual death and physical death to them, but broader ramifications across the entirety of the created realm. The heavens, the earth, all of it is in some ways under a curse because of that event. Fourth, that the genealogies of the early passages of Genesis can be used as a way to at least bracket how old the Earth is. So when I say I'm a young earth creationist, it's not actually because of the days of Genesis, it's actually because of the genealogies giving me a time to when Adam is having his first kids, for example. Right. And since I think the days are days, there's only a few days before all that happens. Right. So we've got the genealogies giving us some idea of a recent creation and that world history is following in the same time bracket as human history, basically plus or minus a couple of days. And then lastly, that the flood of Noah was an event that was global in its effect, what we would now call global. But for my theologians who don't like that word because we didn't think of the globe in the past, I would say worldwide. The flood was universal and as universal effectively as the creation itself. So those are the five things that I think theologically define what young earth creationism is. And I think it's important for it to be defined theologically and biblically and not define it according to a set of scientific tenets. That's a modern attempt to explain and understand what may have been happening that the text is talking about, but it has to be separated out. So five theological points for what is young earth creationism?
- [14:59]
B
That's A great helpful start. Now for our viewers in the timestamps, they can skip ahead to points in a moment. We're going to start to probe into some of these issues, and I think the focus will be mainly on Genesis 1 and issues of the days of creation, though we'll stray to other topics as well. Just before that, though, to define my view. And maybe this is a good time for me to share a little bit of personal narrative as well, of just how I've come to where I'm at. And I don't know exactly what label to use for my position because it's somewhere in that space between the evolutionary creation and old Earth creation. So just I'll try to remember everything to put it out on the table here quickly. Well, I'll start with the narrative. So growing up, creation days were never something that was hugely emphasized. It wasn't like this really emotional thing. But I was always like you, always interested in dinosaurs. We talked about Jurassic park before. I love Jurassic Park. And seventh or eighth grade, read through that book and it's just the basic intuitive question that immediately springs up. Or I remember in sixth grade in my geology class, you know, you just get right there. It's in your textbook. There's the Mesozoic era. Okay, right there, you're into it, right?
- [16:13]
A
What is that?
- [16:13]
B
What is that? And I've got Genesis 1 here. I'm a Christian. I believe this. And I've got these particular claims. And I'm trying to say, you know, right, as a sixth grader, you already see it right there. What do I do with this? I remember when I was in college, I didn't really have a view during those years. I didn't think I wasn't really interested in theology. But I remember I stray comment. When I was in college at the University of Georgia, a friend of mine just made a stray comment about, oh, Christians who believe the universe is thousands of years old. And then kind of rolling his eyes. And I remember just thinking, that's interesting. What is he seeing that makes him have that response to it? And that began a process of studying it. And I just became fascinated with this, not just with this issue, but just with the general tension that can exist between, I'm going to say, more scientistic ways of looking at reality and then being a committed Christian and trying to figure out what does that look like at some point in there. I read Carl Sagan's book Contact. Sometimes fiction brings these questions up in unique ways. So people, if they want to know all the details, they could go back to my website and read old blog posts as I was chronicling my journey through this, sometimes with some anxiety in my 20s and even in college already, basically to lay my views on the table. So, first of all, the things that are most important to me about creation are not actually how old the universe is or how specifically to interpret the days of Genesis 1, how literally. So I want to say first of all, creation from nothing, creation ex nihilo, that is foundational, the goodness of creation, what God made is good. The contingency of creation, God didn't have to make it. Those are some of the things the early church really wrestled with. I believe that the texts of Genesis 1 through 11 are historical. So this is one thing that comes up in these discussions a lot of times is sometimes those in the young Earth camp equate historicity with literality, as though to read it in a literal ways, to read it as historical. And I just want to clarify, and you're welcome to push back on this if you want, I think it's historical. I think that the things in Genesis 1:11 happened in history and that's all Genesis 1:11. But I'm pretty open handed about some of the real particular details. And in general, I see a difference of literary genre between Genesis 1:11 and Genesis 12:50. Not an absolute difference, but I see a bit more of an elevated broad stroke style of narration in Genesis 1:11. I believe in a historical Adam and Eve. I think there were a real people and a historical fall. So there's a before and after. And that's really important to me for understanding human uniqueness from the animal kingdom and for understanding the nature of sin as not an inherent feature of human nature, but something we fell into. So there was a good and then bad. And that's important to me theologically. I'm very open minded about questions of science. I'm open. I do think evolution has been a part of the process, but I don't think it's acceptable to see evolution as the master narrative to which everything must submit. So I'm just sort of trying to throw things on the table here. Hoping I don't forget anything. Just so my view's clear. Let me see, in terms of anything else I wanted, maybe this would be a good question before we start probing these issues too, is to say sometimes it's helpful when we're talking about differences to sort of lay our heart on the table and say, here's my fear, here's my concern. Here's what I think is at stake with this, Maybe you could start on this one. What do you think is at stake? What do old Earth creationists and evolutionary creationists need to know in terms of what's on your mind about this is why this matters to me. This is what I think is hanging in the balance here.
- [20:35]
A
Well, first, thanks for laying out your position as well, because the more clarity that we have on that, the better our discussion's gonna be able to be right, both for you and me and for the audience that's watching. And there's a lot that we have in common. I like the way that you frame a lot of this in terms of doctrine of creation, because within young earth creation circles, we tend to focus on some of the particular issues, Genesis 1 through 11, and we don't spend as much time thinking through the entirety of the doctrine of creation. There's a lot there. So when I was teaching this to my students, we actually spent a lecture going through the doctrine of creation itself before we would start getting to any of the particulars about different viewpoints and where they come down on these. And we've got a lot of commonality here between our understanding of Adam and Eve as real people. That the fall was a real event has real, actual, tangible consequences. Those are aspects, I think, that are going to help frame our discussion a lot moving forward. And so for those, what would I say to another old Earth creationist or theistic evolutionist who's in my church and say why you get all bent out of shape on this sort of thing? Well, I'm going to try not to be bent out of shape. Why do I put such a priority on these things? And I think actually because in my view, some of those concerns that you have about Adam and Eve's historicity, about the effects of the Fall, the before and after that you mentioned, I think find their sense, find their real rationale in a young earth creation framework. And I feel that other views honestly struggle with that, or if they didn't struggle with it in the past with further discoveries in science, they're finding themselves struggling with those. Now you're mentioning kind of being on a hinge between an old Earth and a theistic evolution position. I think there's good reason to find yourself in a hinge there because I think some of the old Earth creation perspectives, while possibly viable back in the 1800s, the early and mid-1900s, today, are under a lot of strain because of further discoveries that are pushing those. So, you know, for me, as a young Earth creationist, certainly I care about understanding what is Scripture trying to actually tell me? Right. Both of us want to know what is the message from the Bible that we're supposed to be getting from? First and foremost, that truth matters. And second, I think that there are a lot of core doctrines in Christianity, very central doctrines, about the redemptive work of Christ, about the fallenness of nature, et cetera, of why we need a savior in the first place, that find, as I said, their rationale and their best explanation within a young earth creation framework. And that my concern is that when we abandon that young earth perspective, we unwittingly are untethering some of these doctrines to the deep rationale that starts at the beginning pages of the Bible.
- [23:37]
B
Yeah, okay, that's good. And maybe I could share from my side and as we're starting to press into areas where we'll have differences, I'll lay out the concerns I see from my side and just ask for some grace. If anything I say here, does it come across the right way? So I'll just be very candid, you know, and my perspective on these things is I'll try to put it in terms of the concern of what I see is at stake. Try to put it really succinctly, is I basically take the view that the Bible isn't trying to give us information about the exact age of the universe. That's my basic position, that the intention of Genesis 1 isn't to answer all of these more specific questions about how exactly God did it and how long it took. I can totally understand how people do read it that way, and that's what we'll talk through and I'll have a lot of an open heart to see. Like, I get it, I can see the appeal there. But after wrestling with it, that's where I've landed. And so I can, I guess also to elongate my earlier answer of my view, I tend to take a framework view of Genesis 1. So I basically think the text is comparing God's work of creation to a Hebrew workweek in a kind of extended metaphor. Though I don't love the term metaphor, but I think something like that is going on and there's some reasons in the text for that. So in terms of what's at stake, then I think the concern would be something along the lines like this, that when we have something that the Bible isn't precisely targeting, but then it is held to target, that it can become a discrediting of the Gospel for some people, if they're saying, and I'll give a comparison here, but whenever I give this comparison, I want to be so clear. This is why I'm asking for a little grace. I'm not saying that the geocentrism heliocentrism debate is the same thing as this, but just categorically to understand the nature of the concern. It's kind of like, you know, in the early modern era, as scientific discoveries are clarifying that it's actually the earth that revolves around the sun. And as a theologian and church history guy, I'm aware of the vehement opposition to that among not just the Catholics, but, you know, Luther and Calvin, and so many are pouring invectives upon Copernicus and Galileo and their followers, and even to the point of calling them, you know, raving mad and upturning the Scriptures. And their appeal is, you know, the word of God is clear. The earth shall not be moved. Psalm 93, verse 1, Psalm 104, 5, the story in Joshua about the sun standing still. And they're appealing to Scripture. And of course, most of us today don't think the same way, but it did take a long time for Christians. I mean, even into the Puritans, you see the great Puritan theologians like John Owen, still opposing heliocentrism on the basis of the text of Scripture. Now, that is a completely different issue. And again, I'm trying to clarify. I'm not saying it's the same, but it introduces the nature of the concern because someone, you know, a young earth. It's interesting we're having this conversation on my channel where probably more of my viewers are young earth creationists. Okay? So that's why I'm interested in us getting along and trying to understand each other. And so someone who's a young earther could try to understand by saying, imagine if someone is insisting that the Bible teaches geocentrism because it says in the Bible the earth does not move. And if someone is insisting upon that, the kinds of dangers that can come up for discrediting the Gospel, that's the nature of the concern. I don't think it's the same scale or obviousness when we talk about age, but I'm just trying to explain that's the nature of the concern. Does that make sense?
- [27:35]
A
I appreciate that because a lot of times the Galileo affair, as it's frequently called, rears its head because in the history of philosophy of science and the history of church science, types of issues, it's. It's the big thing, right? And a lot of times that's very roughly applied to questions of origin. So I appreciate the way that you're. You're recognizing its difference in its distinctions, you know, and Certainly we've had 500 years to kind of figure out, you know, what we're going to do with geocentrism, heliocentrum, sort of sort of thing, and that the text of scriptures that deals with those are different sorts of scriptures than the ones that we're looking at with Genesis. Right. And making different kinds of claims. Are we talking about phenomenal claims of what we're seeing? Right. Is the sun standing still in the sky? And yes, you can make the argument that it is standing still. That's it. You can make the argument that it's standing still with respect to us, and therefore it's just phenomenological language. But at the time that, that was not, you know, that was seen as a capitulation. And so are we looking at something similar here in Genesis when we're talking about questions not of what are the phenomena, but when did events happen? Right. We're asking historical questions. So that's one way in which the Galileo issues are different and yet still something that we, I think, should have in the back of our mind as to, you know, the way that scripture and science have related to each other in the past.
- [29:11]
B
Right. And so this is getting us into general revelation and special revelation. And a broader part of my approach to these things is to say these two are harmonious and they are God's two books, and we want to try to interpret both of them. And maybe one last point where I think we have agreement before we is I affirm biblical inerrancy. I think the Bible's fully true. But I also think even though there's differences with the Galileo affair, there's a principle of we need to interpret the Scripture according to its purposes. So maybe. So am I right in thinking we have agreement on these two points? The Bible's fully true, but hermeneutically its truth is located in its intended meaning, not necessarily in sort of the immediate impression the English translation has upon my mind as a reader. And so actually, it takes some work to say, okay, what does this text mean? And we've got to get into other ancient Near Eastern literature. We've got to get into some of these complicated questions of literary genre and so forth that come up in the task of interpretation. But I also am happy to just say that to clarify, I forgot to mention earlier, I want people to understand I do think the Scripture is fully trustworthy and true.
- [30:30]
A
Yeah, I totally agree, but you're going to be asking a lot of this humble paleontologist to start wading into the theology stuff on your ground. But, yeah, and it's. When I've given some talks to general audiences about the history of the creation evolution debate here in the United States, one of the things that I mention is that young earthers and old earthers in particular have far, far, far more in common with each other than they realize. Because, like, this ends up being, like, one of the few things we end up arguing about because we do agree on inerrancy. You know, you and I here, we agree on God's inspiration of the Scriptures. And I think we probably have a very similar approach to hermeneutics. Right. We want to know what was the intended lesson for the audience that was hearing this through the scribe that first wrote it under inspiration of God. And there will be ripple effects of that intention that can, you know, that can radiate out in a lot of different directions. Every pastor has got to have an application of this passage that they're looking at to the church. Right. The word of God is timeless. John Walton says it was written, you know, for us, but not was written to us, but not for us, or however you phrase it, right. That there's an original audience that has a particular message, but we benefit from that in a lot of ways. So, you know, my goal as a lay interpreter of the Bible, I'm not trained in theology. I don't read the biblical languages. I know people who do and rely on them for that. But my goal is to understand what is that text trying to tell me, not because I'm a 21st century American, but because I am a reader of scripture. What was scripture doing then? I need to know that because that message is going to carry through to the present and I hope also will have implications for the world that I'm in and the life that I'm living led by Christ. Right. You know, you can look at parables, you can look at psalms, you can look at historical, and all of those will have a particular purpose. And I think Jack Collins says it well, you know, we want to read with the grain of the text. We don't want to work against the text. And in this broad history of creation, evolution, sorts of dialogue, there's been a lot of times when people have decided that, you know, they know exactly what the text is doing and it's doing this interesting scientific thing. And I say that not only for young earth creationists, but for old earth creationists and for theistic evolutionists. One of the times that I was just, I was young, I was first year grad student, I went to a meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, which is an association of Christians in the sciences, mostly old Earth and theistic evolution perspective in there. And at the time somebody was giving a poster presentation and saying how the narrative of the Garden of Eden was really a broad analogy of how we went from a hunter gatherer society into an agrarian society at 10,000 years ago or whatever. I remember going, where are you getting this in the text? Right? I mean actually they started off agrarian, you're supposed to tend the garden and they're being kicked out. I imagine there's some gathering that now has to be done. Seems like you've got this sort of backwards. And old earth creationists and young earth creationists have looked at the text of Genesis and said, I know exactly what the scientific events are going on. This was really intended to tell us something scientific. How would that have benefited the original audience that's existing before the advent of modern science? No, it's first to them, but through the grace of God to all of us as well. So I share with you that desire to be a responsible reader to the text. And I guess just to clarify for me as a young earth creationist, I'm not going to the Bible as if it's a science book. I'm not looking to learn scientific facts from there. My interest, especially as a paleontologist, I'm interested in Earth history. And if the Bible presents me with historical claims, then I think those, let's say that God acted in the past, right? If there was an action by God in the past, that action has left effects. Those effects can be studied by science. The initial action may or may not be able to.
- [35:03]
B
Right.
- [35:04]
A
If God miraculously just, you know, created Adam and Eve, that's not a process I can study with science. That that's God's capacity to manipulate the material world that he himself created. On the other hand, if God created Adam and Eve specifically and differently from anything else that existed out there, that has left effects on biology. That allows me as a scientist to at least investigate the uniqueness of humanity in comparison to non human beings. So that's my hope when I approach the Bible as a scientist, is not to learn from science, but actually to find tie points in history that will help to guide scientific investigations.
- [35:45]
B
That's really helpful. So from the good comments you're making there about hermeneutics, which we have a lot of overlap here, in agreement, I think just because we want this video to really serve the body of Christ and help people. I think one basic point that we would agree on is the call for humility as interpreters, both interpreters of Scripture and interpreters of general revelation. And we can both recognize in all of our different camps and throughout all of church history, there has been this danger of rashness, of thinking, you know, where we equate my understanding with the text itself, or we speak so cavalierly about the general revelation. And earlier I mentioned not knowing exactly what the label for my view is. Maybe I should call it just Augustinian, because he's influenced me so much. And my main area of research on this was my postdoctoral fellowship where I just studied Augustine. And one of his great emphases that all Christians can agree upon is humility before God. So we have the fear and trembling where we're not going to budge in our reverence for the word of God. And then we combine that with humility as an interpreter to say, you know, I'm not going to weaponize my theology and act as the master over the text, but I'm always going to retain this sense of I'm a pilgrim seeking to interpret. And that will result in greater and lesser degrees of certainty about different things. We don't have to have 1000% confidence about every judgment of how we read the text. And Augustine models that humility so well. So that's a word for our viewers is let's practice humility in the way we engage without compromise, without leaving off our convictions. So maybe that's a good all leading us to kind of let's work through some of our views. And I'd love to hear from you. What do you see in the text of Genesis 1 that leads you to your convictions? You mentioned those five aspects of young Earth creationism earlier. What are the strongest arguments for that? Just lay out, share your convictions. And then if you want to ask me about anything here as well, I can share my side too.
- [37:52]
A
Well, I think one of the good ways to approach understanding what the early passages of Genesis are doing is to look into what is Genesis itself doing and Genesis as part of the Pentateuch. I mean, keep broadening that out of Old Testament and Bible. But, you know, the Pentateuch has a very, very factual, historical emphasis. Right. There are things going on as the Israelites are coming out of Egypt. They're going through the trials in the wilderness before they get to the promised land. The Jewish religion, if we can think of it that way, is very, very unique in the ancient world because of its grounding in history, that this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that's itself a historical statement. This is the God of three people in a row who existed and what he's doing with them and what he's doing with their progeny. So first off, I look at the Pentateuch and say, okay, this is largely dealing with history. There's poetry in there, there's some other things going on, but for the most part, it's historical. When we look at Genesis as a book reading off the Pentateuch, very, very historical. We're anchoring the work of God in the work prior to the Israelites, right? So we've got four books for the Israelites, but we have one book to establish who is this God that's bringing you out of Egypt and bringing you to a land that he had promised in the past, historically to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. So we have that. And Genesis being a very historical book, I think, then is anchored in Genesis 1:11, as you mentioned. Right. These are historical. Now, in what way? But I think we're dealing with narratives that are materially no different than the narratives we see later in Genesis. So if we compare the narrative of, say, Noah to one of the narratives involving Abram or Isaac or Jacob, those narratives read the same way. You don't get a sense that these narratives are something altogether different. And when I keep working that way back through Eve and Adam and over to Genesis 1, Genesis 1 definitely has a focus that is very different. And Genesis 1 through 11 has that kind of global focus, universal focus, compared to narrowing down to one man and his family for the rest of the book. But nonetheless, the narrative components read the same. You know, whether it's God making Adam or God wrestling with Jacob, there's miraculous things going on with God and people in the real world. And this anchors the Israelites in a knowledge that God is the creator of this real world and he interacts with it. He is not like the other gods. As you said, the contingency of creation, it doesn't have to exist. God wanted it to be that way. God's not dependent on it in any way. That's totally foreign to every other polytheistic culture around Israel. So when I look at Genesis 1 then get really narrowed down into this, it's also following a narrative structure rather than, say, poetry, like we read in Proverbs or Psalms. And it is different. It's highly structured. And that's important, obviously, to us. Whether we recognize it or not, it should be important to us it's very, very highly structured. But I think that its description of events over a sequence of seven days is telling us that this is in fact, history. So so far, I think we can be kind of in agreement there's something historical going on here. And if we're not, let me know. So then we get into the particulars of why would I think that the days are actually days? You know, for that, you know, I might jump back to basil of Caesarea and say, you know, when. When the scripture speaks of grass, I think of grass, right? When I see the word day there, I think of day. They also think that there are clues in the text in the way that that word is used that are indicating that it is an actual day. It could be used for some other purposes, but it would be, I think, also a little odd if it was the first time that we're introduced to all of this, that this isn't talking about days like we experienced them. I think that using terms like evening and morning corroborate that. Because evening and morning used in conjunction with each other usually means period of time, either the evening through the morning or a full day. The use of the word yom in Hebrew, which we translate day, it's the only word that could mean day, right? So if God is intending to tell us about a day like we experience it, this is the only word that's there. If he wanted to talk about this as a period of time in which he's creating longer periods of time. There are words in Genesis 1 that are much better options for that. There's times and seasons and days and years, right? So you could have used plurals, you could have used seasons, you could have used years. The Hebrews used the word thousand a whole lot, the way that we contemporarily use million. I got a million things to do today, they'd say, I have a thousand things to do today. Right? I meant a whole bunch. So there's some options that were available to the author of Genesis that they didn't use if they wanted to indicate, I think, something non literal, or if they wanted to indicate some long period of time. The sequential nature to it is driving us through periods of time that we'll get to. Framework ideas there, I think do have some match, but are also working us through a definite sequence of seven distinct events that one follow after another. So those are some of the reasons that I would look at Genesis 1 again, starting off with the Pentateuch as historical. Genesis as historical. Genesis 1:1 through 11 is historical. And Moving my way back and then saying, okay, this passage is telling me about the creation of the world. And I think the text indicators are telling me I should be taking these days as ones that I'm accustomed to.
- [43:42]
B
Yeah, that's helpful. All very reasonable and thanks for laying that out. Maybe I could share a little bit of just things in the text that inform how I'm approaching it. And you can feel free to push back on any of this too. But there's a lot of agreement here because I think Genesis 1:11 is this historical anchor. And I love the way you're connecting it to the broader Pentateuch. Here you have a story. I mean, this text was written for the first and second generation Israelites about to enter the promised land. And a way we could summarize its import is to say, you guys need to know who you are, you have an origin story, and you need to know about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and you need to know about God's covenant and so forth. And so it's tracing their own history back and then even beyond Abraham. Now, a lot of what informs my approach to this is the simple question of how does literature work? Which is tricky. And I've had people say to me, well, you know, if the Bible's talking about history, historical events, then there's really just one literary genre that it can do that in. And I always want to say, well, you know, look at Zechariah, look at Revelation. I mean, the Bible's comfortable narrating history in different literary genres. As I'm tracing the thread back through from the broader Pentateuch as a whole, kind of going back, honing in on the beginning there, it looks to me like there's slight, though not total differences of literary genre. So that as I mentioned in Genesis 1 through 11, it's a little bit almost like you zoom back a little bit in the camera, you're a little more broad stroke and you're moving much more rapidly through sequences of time, which we could probably agree on that. And then when you get to Genesis 1 more specifically 11 to 2 3, that actually looks like a little bit of a different genre or kind of literature in its import than Genesis 2:4 for and following where you have the Toledots or the these are the generations of starting there and recurring throughout the rest of the narrative and different divine name starting there. Genesis 1 looks a little more elevated to me in its style. So that's. So as I'm looking, I'm saying historical, but that just makes me open minded to Say Jesus asked this difficult question again, humility to try to chip away at this. What kind of literature is this precisely. And what did the ancient Hebrew mindset come away with as it's reading this? I could share my so then getting more particular on Genesis 1. I could share the three things and I'll share this through Augustine. I don't want to lean on Augustine too much in a sense, but he's, you know, here's the guy who's arguably the most influential theologian ever. He wrote five different commentaries on Genesis. What he's most famous for in some respects is this area I've said in my book on this, what justification by faith alone was for Martin Luther. Creation was for Augustine in that it's that one area of theology that he's so personally invested in, he's wrestling with. And even the fact that he wrestled so much with it is itself instructive for us, I think. But there were three things in Genesis 1 he noticed that gave him pause, that made him read this not as just normal 24 hour days. One is the light before luminaries issue. I guess I can mention all these and then I'll come back and explain them and then I want to get your thoughts. Another is the when no shrub had yet appeared toward the beginning of Genesis 2. And then the third is divine rest and maybe going in reverse order. So divine rest is. It says God rested later in Exodus in recapitulating the story, it says God rested and refreshed himself. And Augustine looked at that and said that can't be literal. Why is it like this? You could say God just did it this way, but you can't say God literally rested because divine omnipotence never grows weary and needs rest. And so that starts for him was a factor to say is something else going on here than just a blow by blow account. And then he really, I mean it's funny to picture Augustine pulling out his hair at his desk and just because he really did, he's going back and forth. He really needed a good editor to come condense his thoughts because he's all these different commentaries and he's going back and forth and he's contradicting himself first he's leaning this way and then that way and he's wrestling with how can there be no shrub if we've already got the grass? I mean but the big one was. And there was a few other factors for him as well. But the big one was the light before luminaries. And this is probably one of the biggest Reasons for me in the text where I'm saying, one time I literally got an eight and a half by 11 blank sheet of paper and tried to draw day one, day two, day three. And I don't know how to envision it because. And I know there's different answers to this, but in terms of what's most intuitive from the text, you have this sequencing of day one, day four, day two and five, three and six. But you have light there prior to the light giving bodies like the sun and stars. And so you raise the question of where's the light coming from? But also, why would we say a day is 24 hours at that point, when we measure 24 hours based upon the Earth and the sun as they currently exist? And so that's one of the factors for Augustine where he's saying these seem like unusual days. And that's a consideration in my mind as well. That seems to me a legitimate point just to slow down and say, wait a second, is there something else going on here? I could say more about that, but let me pause there and just see where we want to interact here. And I have another question that can lead us forward, but I also just want to see if you want to jump in on anything.
- [49:37]
A
I was wondering if I could ask you a question about Augustine while I've got you here, which is really nice. And that is, did Augustine or didn't Augustine. I don't really know. I mean, I've read some, but I haven't dedicated myself to study of Augustine's thinking. Didn't Augustine have some pretty significant trouble in understanding how all of creation could have been accomplished in one day from a translation that he was working off of. When you've got Genesis one, that kind of goes through seven days. In Genesis two, we get, you know, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth in the day when God created them. Did he struggle with the wording there and trying to figure out then what to do with the creation week? Or am I not understanding or remembering that? Right.
- [50:24]
B
I think you're right. There's something going on there with Augustine. And there's a verse in Sirach that is influencing him. And then he's noticing the. In the day that the Lord made, which I think is Genesis 2, 4, where the word yom is used there. Some old Earth creationists get a lot of mileage out of that because they say, look, the word yom isn't always meaning 24 hours because it's in the day. And it summarizes the whole week. I don't really lean toward that. I kind of agree with you that when you've got evening and morning and you've got the sequencing of days, the first day, it does look like it's presented as 24 hour days. But I would say that's within the context of this metaphor. So I don't put as much emphasis upon that point.
- [51:08]
A
Okay. Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, I think wisdom of Sira, you're right, was something that I think influenced him a lot and made him think like, well, what do we do with these seven days if everything was made in one? And I can see how that would influence you to think a little bit more openly about, well, maybe this is a metaphor. Maybe this is some type of allegory or analogy of some kind. So I think those are great questions. I mean, obviously Augustine, he's thinking really deeply about this in a long time, and lots of other folks have likewise, I think, struggled with some of those aspects of what do you do? How do you have light without the sun? I think here Scripture gives us a way to approach that. One of the good interpretive principles is letting Scripture interpret Scripture. A lot of times Psalm 104 is brought up in issues of creation because Psalm 104 is structured to kind of follow along the creation days. It does it almost perfectly, but there's a little, you know, a little play in there. And Psalm 104 begins with God clothing himself in light. And this is connected to day one. Right. It's. It's a nice kind of allusion to what's going on in day one, where we have God saying, let there be light. And it says he enrobes himself in light. Now, does God do that? No. Right. God's not a physical being. He doesn't actually have a cloak that he puts on. But enrobing himself in light helps us understand that God illumines everything. Right. I think that's a nice clue to go back to Genesis 1:3. When God says, let there be light, where was the light? Well, it's obviously not coming from the luminaries because those are coming on day four, and we've got a few days before that. I think one of the things that this does theologically is it deprioritizes the luminaries. Right. The Jews are ancient Israelites coming out of Egypt and going to Canaan. Who's the big God in Egypt?
- [53:13]
B
Ra.
- [53:14]
A
Right. The Sun God. At least at various times, he's the most important guy. And you're going to a place in Canaan which is culturally dominated by Babylon and the worship of stars and astrology. And so there's a whole lot of theological work that I think Moses is doing under the inspiration of God in order to prepare the Israelites to not worship these sorts of things. And part of that is God not having created them at the beginning. If they were created at the beginning, it would be very, very tempting, even more tempting than it already was to worship them. By God creating light, I think providing the light himself, but that's my inference. I think he provides the light for himself as an illumination to the world for the first few days before giving that as a role for other things. I think Psalm 104 gives us a hint that that may be how the ancient Israelites thought about it, was that God was the source of that light. And certainly that tradition goes back a long way in church history.
- [54:15]
B
Yeah, I like bringing Psalm 104 into it because sometimes we talk about creation, we put all the focus on Genesis 1. We forget there's a lot of other texts in scripture that have a lot to say about creation. I think a question that I could throw onto the table, and you can answer this if you want, or we can move on to a different one, is in my mind, if the light is coming from God, how are we to envision the evening and morning and just the general sequence there where you've got. It almost feels a little bit. It just feels. It's not impossible. But in terms of what's the most intuitive way to take the text? It just feels a little weird to me to think of kind of the lights flashing on, but there's no sun from God and then the light sort of flashes off. Maybe if there's evening and you've got a 24 hour day, even though there's no physical bodies yet, that would actually demarcate why it's 24 hours and not 23 or 25.
- [55:06]
A
Sure, yeah. When I think of a 24 hour day, I'm using that. Just as the earth can be spinning at whatever rate it is, we think about the earth in terms of a globe that is spinning. Obviously the ancient Israelites didn't think of it quite that way yet. Nonetheless, they knew that there was a day, night, cycle, and the sun is making its course and coming back around again phenomenally. Whatever light God is producing, and I don't know that it is from God, but I suspect. But even if it isn't, if it's some point of light that is not the things that we're used to, it is still providing cyclicity. And for me, as we read through the text and we don't see that there's any change in the way that the days are discussed between the first three days and the next three days seems to indicate to me that all the days are. Are. You know, the first assumption would be that all the days are equivalent.
- [56:01]
B
Right.
- [56:02]
A
Without any good reason. I think to the contrary, that should be our base level assumption. That this day is the sort of day we experience that it's taking place at a roughly 24 hour period of time. We don't have a source of light from the sun because that's not what God wants to. God doesn't want to position the sun so prominently in his creation where he knows the temptations that are, that are going to be out there and so he provides some other light source. What that is honestly doesn't bother me that much, right? If it's God, if it's something different, whatever, if it's a flashlight that's blinking. But I think that might be a way in which we are starting to ask too much of the text in order to rationalize that. Where the text I think seems, seems to be pretty clear. We've got a light and we have darkness just like we have light and darkness with the sun. But it's not the sun, but it's the same effect.
- [56:59]
B
Okay. So the idea is kind of there's a 24 hour day or 24 hour ish. There's evening and morning to it and we simply don't know what is causing. It's not a sunrise and a sunset to be the morning and evening, but there's some other source of light. But I can't remember off the top of my head which day Earth is actually made on. Maybe you can remind me, but this is one of those things where when I was with my paper charting it out, I should have read through Genesis 1 right before we started. But in my mind another point is like I'm trying to envision, like you know, we understand today the Earth is rotating around the sun. I think I recall Earth is made before the sun. So then you've got the Earth. And I'm trying to envision in my mind I don't want to ask too much of the text. On the other hand, if I'm just trying to picture it happening right, I don't think I'm asking too much. And I'm picturing the Earth is there, is it stationary? Then as the sun is made, it's catapulted into orbit. You know, these are the things that I'm, as I'm trying to picture it, it does feel counterintuitive to me. But you know, maybe to you you can picture that clearly. That's what I'm trying to kind of bring these up as questions and how you see that.
- [58:11]
A
So we do, I mean, from the very get go, we've got Earth on the scene in verse two right now the earth was formless and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. That gets us into like, you know, how do you take Genesis one? We're not gonna get into the weeds on that one. But every single verse in Genesis has been written upon with many, many vials of ink spilled over it. Just to make my point obvious and clear so that the next statements make sense. I think that God creates the rough material for the heavens and the earth on verse one. Now a lot of people are going to say, no, that's just a title or something like that. I think it's an action as well as a bit of a summary of everything that is to come, right? Because when we approach verse two, we have the earth was formless and void. So I think God creates on that first verse. I think he describes that initial creation in verse two and in verse three we get. God said, let there be light. So he provides illumination so that there can be some kind of timekeeping, there can be a stamp of what's going on and it's going to be a regularity. Because God, you know, is a predictable being in a lot of ways, right? Because God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is consistent within his nature. He doesn't lie because to lie is to be inconsistent with oneself, right? And the facts. So when I look at what's going on, the Earth is there, it's there at the very beginning. We have the space of the heavens or the atmosphere made, you know, on the second day, on the third day we have plants, right? There's an interesting one that no doubt Augustine's kind of wondering about. How do you have, how do you have plants living without the sun? Well, as long as the plants have light of some kind, it's fine for them. And quite honestly, plants can do fine for a day without the sun. Even the plants that I own, which don't do well generally speaking, but I think if we've got a light source, plants are happy the next day. On the fourth day is when the specific luminaries of the sun and the moon and the stars are created and well made as far as The Hebrew term there is. And that's, I think, a very physical making. The word there is asa. So God made them, puts them in order to now take on the role of keeping that time and marking a big difference between the first three days and the second three days in terms of, you know, now we're starting to do a lot of filling of things and whatnot.
- [60:37]
B
Right.
- [60:38]
A
We do have that kind of forming and filling structure, though. We do have plants coming around and filling a lot of the earth on that third day.
- [60:45]
B
Right.
- [60:45]
A
They're. They're there to. To not multiply in the same way that animals do, but, you know, let the earth sprout forth vegetation and stuff.
- [60:53]
B
Could I jump in there? Thank you for drawing out the forming and filling, because that's a further clarification of what I was getting at, but didn't mention before about day one, day four, two and five, three and six. Just a question of clarification. When you mentioned kind of the rough materials there, that's interesting. What do you mean exactly by that? I mean, in other words, do you have, like, the rough materials made first and then. So I'm trying to picture that. Do you have stars that are there, or is it just empty space? Do you have the sun, but it's like, dark? Or how do you envision that?
- [61:31]
A
I don't think that we have the sun or the moon or the stars in any way, shape or form at that first moment when God creates the heavens and the Earth. I think that we have a lot of empty space. We've got the Earth that is full of formless and void, and darkness is over the surface of the deep. Right. So we have the tchom, the deep waters, kind of a world, ocean over anything. We're not gonna see the land emerge until the third day of creation week. So we've got some separation work that's gonna have to happen. The first separation is light and darkness. The next separation is probably Earth's atmosphere in some way. That's more of the way that I think about it. When I see God separating the waters above and the waters below, it's like there's clouds up there and there's a sky. Although, interestingly, the waters below aren't given a name yet on that. It's the only. And it's also the only day in which God doesn't say anything was good. It's really interesting about day two. It's just this short little thing, and God's like, moving on. And then the third day is when we see that separation between land and sea they're named. And then the plants are able to grow. So, you know, looking through that sequence, I don't see that the sun, moon and stars are around even in a rough unfilled spot. I think that we just have space, we have Earth, and God is going to start building around it.
- [62:50]
B
Okay, so if you're picturing, if you could, and maybe this is a bad question to ask, you might say so. But if you're picturing day two, right. You would see a huge vast of empty space. Planet Earth. No other planets, no other stars, no other sun. Just there, water separated in a big water ball. Light is coming on and off, or
- [63:20]
A
light is in one location and the Earth is rotating through it. Right. So, I mean, that's how we experience day and night Right? Now, the sun never turns off.
- [63:29]
B
Right, right, right. Okay, right.
- [63:32]
A
We don't have to have God blinking. We could, but we don't have to have God blinking. But what we need is a way to experience evening and morning on someplace on the Earth.
- [63:40]
B
Okay.
- [63:41]
A
And that can, I think, be affected by having a source of light on a side and the Earth on the other. Now that's getting into, you know, the science of it, that the Bible is not exactly telling us how this is all operating. So that's, that's again, an inference and a, and a supposition about this. But continue. That's where I was thinking.
- [64:02]
B
That's helpful. So let's picture then. The planet Earth is rotating. So that explains the morning and evening. And there's some source of light, but we don't know what it is. There's no other planets, no other stars, no sun yet it's just there. I mean, am I right then in envisioning that Basically you have this kind of supernatural sustenance of this very unusual state of affairs where you can have the Earth without the sun. And then on day four, when God creates the sun and the other planets and so Earth sort of catapults into orbit with the other planets on that day. Is that how you envision it?
- [64:41]
A
Yes and no. And part of that is because. Right. We're Newtonians, we're modern physics thinking people. And I remember having a discussion with Hugh Ross. He and I have had a couple of debates. They've gone well together. It's why we've had several debates and dialogues together. And he brings up a similar sort of thing like, you know, you can't have the Earth sitting out in space because, you know, the sun's gravity is necessary and we need all this sort of stuff and I have to kind of bring in. But we're talking about the creation of the world, of the entire universe by God out of nothing. When you have that level of miracle, the formation of the physical universe itself, all of space, all of time, everything. Is this a small thing for God to do? Yeah, it's actually nothing to think of. All the miracles that have to happen in order to now put Earth in orbit around the sun when the sun wasn't around to our minds is an immense group of things to do. But for God it's like, what are you talking about? I just, I just made a universe and I'm making more of it right now. So at least on my part, I, you know, recognizing that we are in the creation week, which is nothing but miracle, every bit of it is miraculous activity. God may be telling the creation to do things, sometimes he is speaking directly to stuff, sometimes he says let the earth bring forth, etc. But all of this is happening solely by God's command and his volition. And the universe immediately responds with whatever it is that its creator desires. Right. There's no way to resist the beautiful call of God when he says let there be.
- [66:26]
B
It's a fair point. And I've had my young earth creationist friends kind of say to me like, well, couldn't God do this? And you know, I always want to say absolutely, like God can do anything. I mean Augustine of course thought it all happened in an instant. So for him the week was too long, not too short, but absolutely, I mean God can do all of that. I think what is consequential for me in my conscience and in my thinking here is just what is the most natural way to take the text? And that's what I'm wrestling with. And maybe a question I could ask you about that is, do you see the various non young Earth readings of Genesis 1, be they a framework view or a day age view or a gap theory, and we'll just let our viewers google those if they want to get. Because there's others as well. Do you see those as plausible but incorrect, or do you see them as fundamentally evasive and kind of sneaky in terms of just kind of avoiding the point, kind of saying, well, I know the text is coming here, but I want to go over here.
- [67:33]
A
Yeah, what are you liberals up to? No, and I say that in jest, but I also don't want anybody to think that I view people who hold those views as liberal in any way at all. Because as someone who's looked at some of the history of how these views came to exist, especially gap theory and day age, because they're intimately tied to the discoveries of geology in the 17 and 1800s. We see gap theory, the idea that there was a big space in time between God's initial creation and let the world run for a long time and then judged it and started over again with the six days of creation. Gap theory is first introduced in a written form in 1802, and it is an attempt by a faithful clergyman who knows his science of the day to see if there is a way to reconcile Genesis with what seems, seems to be evidence from geology for an ancient world. And he thought he came upon a decent solution to that that kept a six day creation week. So me, as a young earth creationist from verse three on forward, I should be just plenty happy about this, right? We have a six day creation week, but what we have with gap theory is an initial creation and God lets the world run for millions and millions of years and we can put all the dinosaurs and the trilobites and the ice age in there and then at some point we judge the world because of Satan's fall or what have you, and then we have our creation week. It was an attempt to maintain a authoritative, inerrant high view of scripture and see if that could make sense with this argument that the Earth is incredibly ancient. So I don't disparage the view, especially at the time at which it was presented. Day age theory jumps in just a couple of years later. The first writings that we have of that I think are really, you know, decent writings of it are about 1807. I mean, they're like, you know, twins coming out on this saying, well, maybe the days could be something different from days. And again, this is coming from people who believe that God is communicating real truth about the history of the world in Genesis. And maybe there's a different way to understand them. So I appreciate the heart that was brought for these things. I don't think that those are ultimately successful. Gap theory has been dropped by most people. It doesn't really work. Day age, I think has had to morph and adapt itself, so much so that its original proponents would not recognize today's modern progressive creationism, say of Hugh Ross and reasons to believe. He traces that straight back to day age theory in the 1800s. But it looks really, really different because the Hope in the 1800s was that the different stages of geology would match nicely with the six days of creation. And they really don't speaking as a geologist, they just don't map well. So you have to finesse and massage all of this to make it work. Now, we've danced around framework ideas here a little bit. Those ones I actually like a lot. And that's going to surprise a lot of my young earth creationist friends and colleagues. And I like it a lot because I think that it recognizes real patterns in the text that we're supposed to pick up on that. The first three days are about forming the material portions of the world, separating, naming, etc. God names things in the first three days, he names nothing in the next three days. That's got to be important. And then we see Adam name things. That's very important. This is one of the ways he images God, is by providing names and calling things. It's the same word that's used in Genesis 1. One of the reasons why I think we need to be reading these texts very closely together. So with framework we've got in Genesis 2, we've got the. The world is unformed and unfilled. This is the condition of that watery ball of earth. And the first three days I think are all about forming it, or mostly about forming it. And the next three days are mostly about filling it so that we end up with a beautiful resolution, the Bible. Jack Collins says it nicely right. The Bible often shows us, doesn't tell us in its theology, especially in Genesis, you come at the end of creation week and you are satisfied, thoroughly satisfied. God is so satisfied, he rests, whatever that means. He rests. And we as readers on those verses, our bodies relax, they really do, because we understand the completion. We had a problem at the beginning of unformed and unfilled. And by the end the world is beautifully constructed and magnificently filled with stuff and now even has image bearers in it. And we are them. And God rests like wow. Unfortunately, I think for a lot of my young earth creationist colleagues in the past, the reticence to acknowledge the really good pattern recognition that framework gives us is tied to the advocates of framework hypothesis, saying that this gets us away from history in some way or moves us out of what seems to be the day to day history of Genesis, thinking of Meredith Klein for example, and whatnot. Basically, this provides a way to sidestep some of the age issues if we can take Genesis 1 and make it not about a 6 literal day. In my view, the framework approach is like garment that is laid over top of the historical core of the narrative itself. It's a way to help the Israelites Remember sequences of events. If you can remember what happens in the first three days, you're going to know what's happening in the next three days because they match up really nicely. Imprecisely, but nicely. And I think my young Earth creation colleagues have focused on the imprecisions maybe a bit too much. I think they're there, and I think they're a signal that we're still looking at history. I would tell my students this, and let me ask you, what comes after H, I, J and K?
- [73:49]
B
Elemental P, Elementop.
- [73:51]
A
Of course it does in English, because we learn the Alphabet according to a song to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. What comes after H, I, J, and K? Well, I mean, it could be L. And if you want to be a real jerk, you could say Z. Right? You could do that. We learn the Alphabet according to song because it's effective. And it's perfectly true that L, M, N, O, and P follow H, I, J, and K. It's absolutely true. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is that way for us. I think for the ancient Israelites, we have the truth of the six days of creation. And God in his wisdom also orchestrates a way for them to understand it and grasp it and remember it. Because most of them are not literate. They're going to be hearers of the Word. They're not going to be readers of the word. Jesus talks about that a lot in the Gospels, right? He always talks to the Pharisees. Haven't you read? But when he talks to the crowds, he says, you have heard it said. Right? It's the same way for the Israelites. Even more so, right. It's why we have scribes and things like that. So they need a way to know their history. Narratives are great for that, but mnemonic devices are really helpful for that. Patterns are really helpful for that. And I think that for me, as a young Earth creationist who does hold to the day, framework also adds an immense amount of theological richness to the text. And I wish it was more broadly appreciated by the folks in my tribe.
- [75:15]
B
Yeah, thanks for sharing all that. So it sounds like basically that there's a sort of literary framework is a point of agreement, but the implications of that are then where there's a departure. But that itself is significant because what that means is in terms of, you know, you were describing the emotional effect of reading through Genesis 1, and that's a point we can agree on, right? That you go from tohu, vavohu, formless and Void. That's not good. And then you get to divine rest and you see this imposition of order onto chaos, which is. It is emotionally thrilling to see the creation like that. Actually, that is very different. I mean, and this is why I always say what's most important in my judgment is not how long it took. What's most important is the difference between time and eternity, the fact that it came from nothing. Because there are lots of other ways of looking at the world, both in the ancient world and today, where it's not the imposition of order onto chaos. It's actually chaotic forces struggling. And that produced us. That's very much like a modern naturalistic worldview. That's very much like some of the ancient worldviews, that we're the product of chaos, and yet we look at Genesis 1 and we can see, no, we are the product of intelligence and order and design. One of the things you mentioned that I wanted to follow up on, that I think is important, is many of the proponents of various Old Earth views were very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians. And people don't realize this today. Let me sketch out a little bit of the history of this issue, and then I'll see if you want to push back on this at all or further it at all. But I would say Today, from the 1960s till today, there's been an increase of young Earth creationism. And it's come into. It's morphed a bit in my context. Well, our context here in the United States. I've met so many Christians who. They've never heard any. That there is any other view. It's just that that's it, you know, And I think sometimes people have forgotten that actually there have been really conservative Christians, some of the leaders opposing higher critical biblical scholarship, like B.B. warfield and Charles Hodge at old Princeton, J. Gresham Machen, who wrote the great book Christianity and Liberalism. I always bring up Charles Spurgeon because he wins points among many people. Everybody loves Spurgeon. But there's so many of these older 19th century, early 20th century, and even before very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians. I always mention R.A. torrey. There's so many others who were in one of these Old Earth camps. Now, I don't agree with the gap theory either, you know, so I'm not saying that's correct, but I'm just saying I do think, and this maybe can be where we can triage these issues a bit. I do think that should induce a little bit of reflection, that here's my appeal that people shouldn't look at everything outside of young earth creationism and regard it as liberal. Now to me and you, that may be obvious, but actually I've discovered people do not see that. They think this is really. It's kind of. I'll even have people talk like this, like, you know, to reject that, to reject young earth creationism and have any of these other views, even though this is like the Scofield reference Bible which affirmed the gap theory and William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial was an old earth creationist. There's this sea of fundamentalist old Earthers back there. And yet people today, it's like if you're not young earth, you might as well reject a biblical view of marriage. You might as well deny biblical inerrancy. And that's not the best, but it's common. And so that's part of my work as a. There's a pastoral part of my work in theology where I just want to speak to people out there who are wrestling through this and help us have our views in the most edifying way where there's least collateral damage for the kingdom of God. And I think for us to have historical awareness that Christians haven't seen this exact question as a litmus test of orthodoxy for the most part. You can find some people who do. But what I'm saying is in the last few decades the stakes seem to have been raised. It seems like it's gotten a little bit more pressurized. Whereas 100 years ago in the 1920s, J. Groeschen, Machen and others are fighting about the virgin birth. That's a hill to die on. But I don't think they were as much worried about this topic. And that's the recent past. And then of course a lot of my work is in the early church. And you've got young Earth, well let's call it, you've got 24 hour days. That view is well represented. You mentioned Basel, some of the great Eastern fathers, of course, Luther and Calvin, the Reformers held something like that. But you've also got this other strand from Augustine that sees the days in a non literal way and that's well represented. Andrew Brown is a book going through this. I've put out a video on this.
- [80:18]
A
That's Andrew Brown's book is outstanding.
- [80:20]
B
Yeah. And he chronicles just goes through sequentially showing all the different views. So I'm giving some comments about history to the end of kind of helping us have perspective and context for the discussion today. Is that fair? And do you want to add on anything to that.
- [80:37]
A
I think it's something that a lot of folks in young earth creationism need to be reminded of, need to hear. I think you're right that a lot of folks are unaware of just how prominent and important old earth creationists were in formulating what we have for modern evangelicalism, fundamentalism, for standing up against higher critical views and liberal scholarship, truly liberal scholarship, that was denying the inspiration of the Bible, that was denying inerrancy, that was denying Jesus's substitution, physical resurrection, all these sorts of things, right? The fundamentals as a series of pamphlets and whatnot wasn't about pounding on the pulpit and yelling louder. It was about what are the fundamental tenets of Christianity itself? What does it mean to be an orthodox small O Christian in the first place? And that was we all owe a great debt of gratitude to these thinkers and many, many others that were of various stripes in terms of their views of the age of the earth. I think for some of the old earth and theistic evolutionists who might be listening in on this, one of the mythologies I think that is out there on the opposite side is that young earth Creationism is a 20th century invention that owes its existence to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. And I have a lot of friends in the seventh day Adventist Church Church, that's the only denomination, one of the few denominations, I should say, that officially espouses young earth creationism. So also something to remember for our view is like very few denominations stake a claim on this and that's again why old Earthers and young Earthers in particular, and a growing number of theistic evolutionists are in the same churches. It's because we're inerrantists and we go down the line within our church creeds and things like that and we find ourselves in the same Presbyterian church or the same Baptist church or the same Calvary chapel or whatever it happens to be. And you're like, we agree on all these things and why do we end up arguing about this? Because it's the thing we can argue about, right? We actually find ourselves in the spot where like, well, you know, we've got all the other things covered. This is a point of irritation between us. Let's play with this one for a while. End times things, right? You know, those are the ones that really fan some flames. Because what else are you going to argue about on these things? So I think for to your point on this history, it demonstrates that one does not need to be a young earth creationist to be a conservative evangelical I was raised initially to kind of believe that, but it didn't take me very long of meeting other conservative evangelicals at Penn State or whatever to go like, okay, they're with me on marriage. They're with me on the resurrection. They're with me on the virgin birth. They're with me on inspiration and inerrancy. Okay, we've got this issue. It's one we can talk about. But it's not the thing that separates me from non believers. It's not this thing that separates me from people who I think are rejecting large swaths of the Bible because they're not holding to inerrancy, for example, just saying, well, the Bible is a guidebook from God to us, but don't put too much weight into any of its particular claims. I don't go to church with folks who look at the Bible that way. Yeah. So I think that's where I'd come down on those types of issues. I'd be cautious for our young Earth community because I know they have pushed these issues. And I guess, Gavin, part of it is that many of us in Young Earth see that when a young earth creation perspective is abandoned, some of the things that we all agree on and all care about find that they've lost their footing. I think. I think that's theologically and sometimes societally, as sometimes it gets wrapped up in kind of culture war sort of stuff, which I'd rather it not. But nonetheless, I think that some of those things, I think young Earthers see that when you take away a recentness to creation, you're opening up a bigger problem to deal with. With the Odyssey, for example. Right. That's a big topic, but it is one that I think is a point of separation then between when you take an old Earth or a theistic evolutionary perspective and you have lots of death to deal with. Right. Long histories of death that are not the result of Adam and Eve's sin in the garden. And their sin deals with their own death, their own physical death, their own spiritual death. But I think has ramifications. I think the curse on creation has ramifications that help to deal with issues of theodicy and provide a satisfactory approach to theodicy that other views struggle with. And I think it's things like that that a lot of young earthers worry about. A whole bunch of dominoes falling. And so they're going to, you know, build as big a fort around this as possible and even use that fort motif in their illustrations from time to time. Not a big fan, but they've done that. I think that's motivated largely by concerns over other theological points that they believe are very strongly tied to Genesis. And I think with good reason.
- [86:09]
B
Yeah, I really appreciate the fair mindedness of what you're outlining there because there's many people where to give a moderated, honest assessment, as you're doing, kind of calling out both sides in this honest way. You know, we live in such a time of escalation and extremism that people interpret that as a betrayal or something like that. And people can do that for me, where I'm trying to reach toward a different perspective as well. And so I think part of what we want to model for our viewers in terms of how to have this conversation is the truth is number one. And that means where my side does something wrong, you know, and that's true for my side on so many things. I'll try to think of those things as well as we talk here, to be willing to call that out and say I'm not just here to defend my camp at all costs, which I think is good. As we're nearing toward the end portions here, let's maybe transition to rapid fire so we can get through as many final topics as we can. Because I think we should talk about scientific evidence a little bit, say something about that animal death a little bit, and then kind of concluding comments as well. So moving into faster paced here a little bit without wanting it to be rushed either on the scientific issues, here's where I'll put my heart on the table and again, ask for grace and how it comes across. But as a non scientist, my honest sense, which is very fallible, but nonetheless it's pretty informed. I've read a fair amount to get to this point.
- [87:40]
A
You certainly have. By the way, I've watched your video. You're one of the really good communicators for your position and also again towards the church and with grace. So thank you. Before you even get to that, thanks. I've loved what we've been doing so far. It has been really great. And I hope that people watching are enjoying this.
- [88:02]
B
Yeah, I'm sure they are. And they. I know that from what I sense from my comments. I know there's a thirst for this. There's lots of people who are weary with watching theological dialogue happen in a way where each side pulls out a samurai sword and tries to swing and they're weary, they're just exhausted with that whole way of approaching things. And so they want something better. And I suspect this will be the first of probably further conversations where we've got so many other things we can talk about as well. But we need to try to find a way to where we talk through these issues and we're not minimizing them. But you know, there's a sense of charity in it and so forth. But on the issues of science, from my reading on that, I find the scientific evidence of, or the, I'll call it the scientific impression of age to be overwhelming. I do. Even just the simple fact of starlight, you know, it just looks old. It looks like it's been traveling for vast amounts of time to become visible to us, to be. Because the stars are so far away. And I find the evident, the indications of age overpowering. So that's just honestly where I, you know, a factor in. I don't think some will say, well, you shouldn't let science and influence your interpretation of scripture. I'm not convinced by that because I would say that while again, we've got the general revelation, special revelation idea, God's two books, they're not equal. I do want the scripture to be the priority, but I think it's fair to say we want to seek harmony between these two. So let me just ask you, as a scientist, I guess I'm curious, what's your response to that? And also as a working scientist, you know, in your training, for example, have you had to wrestle with this sense of tension between your views as a young earth creationist and your scientific calling and training? And what has that been like?
- [89:57]
A
Yeah, well, first let me thank you for bringing up the two books analogy and for nuancing that a bit with some weight that, you know, the book of nature, so to speak, doesn't stand at the same level of scripture because as a young earth creationist, I hear, I don't hear that nuance a lot. I often hear, oh, nature is the 67th book of the Bible. I think, honestly that's a terrible thing to say. It is a work of God, absolutely. But if creation is fallen, which is the title of Ken Colson's most recent book where he deals with theodicy issues, if creation is fallen, that's a different class of communication now than the inerrant word of God. Our interpretation of that is obviously fallen. We're fallen beings. But one of my colleagues, I think it was Kurt Wise that said nature itself makes no propositions. The Bible is filled with propositions. They're actual communications, statements, claims, etc. We make propositions about nature and then we judge them. So that is a way in which nature, I don't think, functions as the 67th book of the Bible. And so the two books analogy goes a long way back, not just to Galileo, who used it very famously, but going much further back in church history. We have it in some of our more recent confessions, like the Belgic Confession, I think, uses the two books. But importantly, just like you did, the Belgic Confession also nuances that and says that, you know, nature is not on par with the 66 books of canon itself. Now to your question then. You know, first off, I understand why you feel the weight of that impression of age. I don't think the Israelites would have felt quite the same way. For them, the stars were just pinpoints of light in the sky. They didn't have necessarily a history to them in terms of transit. They wouldn't have been thinking about that. For us, that is the problem that we have to deal with. And I'm a humbled paleontologist. I spend my time looking at the rocks at my feet, and I don't bother looking up at the stars in the sky because I have a lot of problems here. And I know my astronomy friends have issues up there as well. So I would defer on astronomical issues, as I often do, to several of the young Earth creationists who actually do have training and expertise. In this issue. I can think of several. But off the top of my head, Danny Faulkner is an astronomer, Robert Hill is an astronomer, Jason Weil is an astrophysicist, and there are a few other physicists out there in young Earth creationism that have good understanding of the issues of relativity and transit and starlight. But at least those are the three guys who are like, hey, those are the actual astronomers. You can look to them for their particular solutions and approaches. I'm not sure that I'm even satisfied with them. They each have kind of their own approach to it. So we don't have even agreement within Young Earth creationism as to how to address that problem. That's how sticky it is for us. I think that the distant starlight problem that you mentioned, I think that the radioactive dating method issues are valid reasons for people to be concerned about a young Earth claim in the context of modern science. They are powerful arguments for an ancient Earth. I can hear some howls from my friends. I think that's my honest assessment, is that these are difficult things. I don't have the experiential chops to handle starlight. I have some training dealing with geochemistry and the like to at least know what's going on with the radioactive dating methods and think that there are some. There's been some good creation research that I think is giving us paths towards solutions and given us already some good results. So I'm hopeful in that. And that's a place where I would encourage people who are listening no matter where they are on this, is that the issues are not settled and it's okay to find yourself unsettled in the midst of that. I certainly have been. You're asking like, did I ever feel to say attention? All the time, Gavin.
- [94:12]
B
Right.
- [94:13]
A
My educational history was K through PhD in state schools and I come from Rhode island originally. Right. I was never in some evangelical bastion growing up. I was in a place where I was kind of the only person who thought the way that everybody else was culturally Catholic or non religious or what. There was in my high school, probably six evangelicals. It's not many. Going to Penn State and then becoming a geology major meant that every day I'm coming back to my dorm room and going, okay, of what I just learned today, that is all this geology stuff. I would ask myself kind of three questions. What is fact? What are just the observable things, the tangible items from nature that I've learned that we can all agree on the data. Second, what is reasonable inference from those data? What seems to be a plausible understanding of this? And third, what did I hear today that was very speculative? Because in your science classes you're going to get a few of all those. Anything you're going to get a few of those. Science is filled with speculation and speculation has helped what eventually drives better science later? You have to think weird thoughts sometimes to get to good thoughts. Sometimes we think that scientists, when they come up with hypotheses, come up with their hypotheses in scientific ways. Scientific hypotheses come from both data driven analyses and daydreams. The process by which you come up with a hypothesis can be anything. It's just mental. How you evaluate that hypothesis is when science actually kicks in on things. So I had to wrestle with all of that. And one of the benefits that that gave me was we talk in education a lot about kids need to learn critical thinking skills. We obsess about this at college. And I would always tell my students and my fellow colleagues, critical thinking skills don't happen on multiple choice exams. And they don't happen on most of our exams actually, despite the fact that we are asking critical thinking questions. Critical thinking questions happen when you are introduced to a problem for which you don't have a solution. And you have to think about it for a while. As a young Earth creationist in college, I had a lot to think about and there were a lot of challenges that I still to this day don't have answers for. But there are also challenges that I saw that, wow, okay, I think we actually do have an answer for this, or we have a good leader now we've got a hypothesis that is generating research. I can see other colleagues like John Whitmore at Cedarville University is a good friend of mine. He's been working for 25 years on a sandstone unit that's exposed in the Grand Canyon and nearby places in Arizona and Nevada that everybody in geology knew was formed by Sahara style sand dune stuff. And it's sandwiched right in between all the layers that creationists say are part of Noah's flood. So how do you, young Earth creationist handle the Sahara in the middle of Noah's flood? It can't happen, right? The Earth has got a longer history than this. But him going out for 25 years with students, measuring samples and strata, taking samples, looking at them under the microscope, identifying the minerals inside them, looking at fine structure, I mean, we're talking the real detailed work that somebody spends an entire career doing that nobody else knows in the world about. And he discovers all these interesting indicators that this material was not deposited in a sand dune type of system, but rather in these big underwater sand waves. Because there's minerals in it that don't survive the impact of air blown sand. There are features of the way that the sand is stacked up in these weird little internal angles that look like sand dunes from afar. But when you get up close and you actually measure them the way that geologists are supposed to measure these things, overall, the distribution shifts and looks not like sand dunes. Using the distribution that was established back in the 40s by the guy who was the guru for determining all this stuff. Like, if you used his method in the 40s that he said, you know, showed that this was a sand dune, like, nope. Turns out using his methods, taking lots more measurements, hundreds, thousands of measurements, it looks like underwater sand waves. And so, okay, that doesn't prove the Earth is old, is young. That doesn't prove that these sand waves were formed during Noah's flood. But the challenge against the young Earth creationists is explain to me how the Sahara formed in the middle of Noah's flood and we can say it wasn't. This was underwater too. For me, as a young Earth creationist, that is Tremendously encouraging. And we get those from time to time. And more is coming along the way. So there are points of real struggle that I have had and continue to have one of the more interesting struggles that I had recently because in grad school I had plenty of geological problems. There were times of great difficulty in trying to wrestle with this. But a few years ago, I was asked to write a position paper for Young Earth Creationism on Adams history, historicity, in a. In a book called Perspectives on the Historical Adam and Eve. I think you had Bill Craig on talking about that book. And while I had been at Liberty University at that point for 16 years, and I've been teaching creation issues that entire time, and I've been interested in this all the way back to nine. Right. It's a long time. And I'd read Genesis and I'd read some commentaries and things like this. This was the first time I was going to have to actually really deal with deep biblical scholarship. I was going to have to read Walton. I was going to have to read Higher Critic guys. I was going to have to read far more broadly than these young Earthers and the occasional Old Earth view. And this other thing that my sister, who's a theologian, said, you need to read this. I had to dive in. And to be honest, Gavin, I was worried. I was worried not because of the science issues that I was going to be dealing with. I was actually pretty comfortable with dealing with Adam, Eve, anthropology, et cetera. I was worried that my perspective in young Earth creationism was going to be exposed as very naive. That when I got into the commentaries and whatnot, I was reading the ancient Near Eastern literature, as you alluded to. I was worried that it was going to collapse and it was going to find out that, you know what, this really doesn't work. The text is doing something different. And. And yet I had to soldier on anyway. Right? I got this project to do, but I had to be open to the possibility that I was wrong. And I think that's really important for all of us every once in a while to reevaluate what do I believe, why? And I was honestly very surprised when I came away far more convinced that a young Earth interpretation of the Scriptures was what was intended by the Scriptures, and that the critiques of young Earth views, whether they be the days or whether they be the time frame or other sorts of things, or the flood as a local versus universal thing, I was honestly very, very surprised that they weren't more challenging to me. But that was a scary moment because all of a sudden I could find myself, am I going to abandon young earth creationism because the Bible isn't teaching that? As a Christian, that's my first dedication,
- [101:43]
B
even for you, to acknowledge that process of at moments there's anxiety, there's uncertainty, that kind of thing is to me just a healthy reminder for everybody. I get a lot of comments from people who are supremely confident. And you can tell the bit, you know, just the science has shown. Noah's flood was global and then they'll appeal to something. And I'm thinking that's actually something both sides agree on. And you realize they're not actually listening to both sides on this. They're only listening to one side. And therefore they are supremely confident. And so I think part of that, going back to fear and trembling before the word of God, humility as interpreters, I think that will result in moments for all of us. And I'm going to meet you halfway on this point here where we're kind of wrestling with this. We're kind of holding it open and saying, okay, on Monday I was really confident, but Tuesday new information came in and now I'm kind of assessing this, learning the critical thinking skills, right? And so we want to help encourage Christians and build up the body of Christ by encouraging humility, critical thinking and just the open hearted posture to wrestle with the truth about these things and not act in an arrogant, censorious way, like, how dumb are those people for not seeing what I'm seeing. These issues are complicated. So to meet you halfway, since you've been kind to sort of acknowledge some of the scientific challenges where there's not necessarily one view among young earth creationists and there's ongoing points of tension and so forth. The biggest challenge from my side in this debate is animal death. So that's maybe a final thing we can talk through. And I'll just say that's a tough one. There's no easy. I think in some respects young earth creationism has a cleaner answer to that. For me it is more emotionally satisfying to consider. Now a couple of things don't ultimately mean that that's conclusive for me. One is when I'm reading the early church fathers like even Basil. So Basil and Augustine agree on this point that they both think carnivores are great. So you know, they think it's a warning for humanity. It's a sort of discipline that God has set up. So, you know, an alligator eating a gazelle is not evil for either Basil or Augustine. So that when I'm seeing them pretty strong on that. Thomas Aquinas says the same thing. So many of the pre modern Christians seem to indicate you didn't go from when the fall happened. You didn't go from all herbivores to now you get carnivores. They seem to think that, you know, lions and tigers were eating other animals even before the fall. Now whether they're right or wrong, that inclines me to say, wait a second, maybe our intuitions about what animal death is and is it really evil at least we need to slow down and work through this. And I do think there's a legitimate difference to make a distinction between good and perfect because the Garden of Eden is there, but it's not heaven. It's not quite perfect yet. I mean you've got the serpent for one thing, but also you've got the possibility of fall. And I think we agree in heaven it will be perfect. There won't be the possibility of a second fall. So my way of looking at this is to say God has made the world good, but he actually didn't make it perfect in the way it will ultimately be on the new heavens and new earth nonetheless. And there's other things I've said. I have a whole chapter in my book on Augustine on animal death. There's much more to say about that. But I guess I'm acknowledging that that is a point where I personally feel an emotional tension with it and just saying because when you look at some of the more grisly aspects of animal predation and just some of the blood and guts of it, it's totally fair to say, wait a second, you're saying God set up the world to work like this. And then there are some responses to that too in terms of other forms of theodicy. You're talking about the, the angelic fall and I've explored that and so forth as well. So I'm meeting you halfway here by saying there's not one view that is just going to make you never have to think about this. We have different convictions. There's going to be ongoing points of tension wherever you land. Maybe a final question we can talk about is just if we were to imagine, fast forward to five years from now and we were to imagine that Christians disagreeing with each other, specifically disagreeing on creation were going a lot better. It was going. The discussions had improved significantly. What do you think in your mind, what do you envision that looking like?
- [106:20]
A
I think first off it would be more face to face. Like this is right. A lot of Our debates and dialogues and discussions are all happening online, which inflames. Right. It's very easy to send off a quick message on Facebook or what have you. I think that if people were more willing to discuss, discuss with one another face to face, it has a way of reducing the temperature of that. Right. This is my brother, my sister in Christ. This is somebody that I care about. They're in my church, what have you. I think it would be good for. I think it would be good for churches to not dance around it, maybe.
- [106:57]
B
Yeah.
- [106:57]
A
You know, it's one of those things that, you know, you've been a pastor, you know, when you've got a congregation that. That doesn't have unity on a particular topic, that becomes a delicate point to deal with. And at our churches, sometimes they're very strong in one direction or another, and other times they'd rather kind of not handle this too much, but maybe being more willing on the pastor's side to say, let's look at this, and let's maybe even bring in people who are able to discuss either from our congregation that we know are good people who can disagree well together and still, you know, stand in line together at the potluck.
- [107:38]
B
Right.
- [107:39]
A
And know that we are having communion with one another. You know, again, I mentioned that I had a couple of debates with Hugh Ross. One of the things that I said at our last one was to the audience, listen, if Hugh and I are together in church, we're singing the songs together, and when the communion plate gets passed, we are taking communion together. I think that if we were to look into the future and see that having a way in which we first solidify that we are, in fact, together in the body of Christ and even more specifically in our denomination or in our association, whatever that happens to be, have these conversations, be willing to have them and not shy away from them, and look for the mature men and women in the congregation to help foster that.
- [108:28]
B
I love that. And you mentioned this when we were talking on the phone a while back, pastors watching this video, they need to know they're probably more likely than not going to have different views among the members of their congregation. And they're coming up for the Lord's Supper together. And so there's no way around this. And I like your point about courage, you know, leaning in to talk about these things. I have one of my big worries about when we're talking about theology. So many times I'll hear people say, oh, that's too controversial. I can't go there. Now, I understand sometimes you might have to function like that where you're, you know, you can't quite yet get to something. You need to be practically wise. But I also think it's a real loss if we just never talk about the difficult issues. So I think courage to lean in. Obviously, we've emphasized so clearly throughout this discussion, charity for people on the other side, that the love of Christ is felt even while we wrangle about the truth of Scripture. Triaging the issues. Some issues are more important than others, I think. You know, there's foundational issues you can deny and you can fall outside of orthodoxy, but then there's others that are less clear. I'll say one last thing that I think I'm envisioning. Here we are in 2026, 2031, if Jesus has not returned yet. What do debates look like this that are better? Christians coming together on the fundamentals of creation to really vigorously champion those which are not just about the sequence and the timing of it. And so we mentioned earlier, ex creation from nothing, contingency, goodness. A lot of the cultural issues we're having right now say the transgender movement. You have to have a robust doctrine of creation to understand how to respond to that. What does it mean to be an embodied creature? There is so much to explore about that. The doctrine of vocation, that there are legitimate callings in the world. That's a part of our doctrine of creation. So I would love to see Christians coming together around these foundational points because this is where a lot of energy happens, from Christians to the surrounding culture and so much more. We could unpack about all this. I would love to keep talking, but I think we need to for time's sake. We're really out of time, but let this be the first of further conversations. Lord willing, this has gone as well as it could have. I'm so grateful. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
- [110:54]
A
It has been fantastic. Gavin, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I hope that this is the first of many more to come.
- [111:00]
B
Wonderful. Thank you, Marcus.