Creation Science

What is our Authority?

First Published 30 June 2013

I’ve deliberately named this article after the heading that Gary Bates (CEO, CMI-Worldwide) used as a heading in his recent supporters’ newsletter. This is really the big issue for YECs, and probably the main issue driving most of them. In fact, in recent years they’ve been calling themselves not “young-earth creationists”, but “Biblical creationists”, thus implying that if we don’t believe in a young earth, we’re not Biblical, even if we think we are. In fact, (they think) we’ve compromised on the Bible, by letting science stand as another authority. It doesn’t matter that many evangelical scholars of great reputation don’t seem have a problem with long ages; they’re not really Biblical, apparently.

Gary in his article comes to the crux of the matter when he quotes an answer he gave to a questioner at a meeting, who raised the problem of a reputed scholar having no problem with billions of years. In Gary’s reply, he said “...For instance, could you show me anywhere in Scripture, if I read it at face value, where I can read the term millions or billions of years? Or, even get the impression—just from Scripture—that the universe or the earth is that old?”

Gary appears to have a good point, but the problem with his answer is the words “at face value”. None of us can actually read the Bible, or anything else, simply at face value. It sounds easy, but it’s not. We bring our cultural background understanding to everything we read or hear, and our culture is very different to the cultures at the time and place when the Bible books were written. For us in western society, scientific questions are very important, and we look for answers in exact periods of time, or mass, or velocity, or whatever. It’s bred into us. So of course when we look at Genesis 1 we are inclined to see 24-hour days, and pick out all the detail of how God did things. This is natural for us. But for people of another culture, what they get out of the text might be quite different. For example, I’ve worked for 30-plus years with Australian Indigenous people, and they wouldn’t be interested in these “scientific” questions at all. What is important for them in Genesis 1 is the spiritual power at work. We see no other spirits, just God alone, making everything from nothing, and then forming all the plants, animals and humans, just by his word, without any other spiritual forces having any role whatsoever. These people simply wouldn’t be very interested in such questions as what the days are, or how Adam could name all the animals within one day—other things are just far more significant for them.

So, I’m suggesting that while YECs are commendably determined to maintain the authority of the Bible, their particular interpretation is culturally determined, and isn’t in fact necessarily part of what the Bible is actually teaching us. And why should it? Why would God want to spell out for us in his Word details that we can find out for ourselves with the abilities he’s given us? If we really have a high view of the authority of the Bible, we should be very eager to find out what it’s really teaching us, and not to look for other information which might interest us greatly, but isn’t actually part of the teaching.

For example, and this is just one possibility, Genesis 1 might be a parable or story giving a graphic account of creation in everyday terms. In Jewish culture this would be quite common, as we see in the New Testament parables, or when the Saducees came to Jesus with the story of the woman who’d been married to seven brothers, one at a time. Nobody thought this actually happened literally, but it was a vivid “thought experiment” to try to prove a point. Now I’m not claiming that this is necessarily what Genesis 1 is, but just that it’s one possibility that would fit the culture. And this is the sort of question that should be in our minds when we’re trying to understand the Bible correctly. Sorting out the real teaching from the side details or teaching method isn’t always easy, but must be tackled if we really take the Bible seriously. And of course, this has been the lifetime’s work for these same evangelical scholars who have been written off by the YECs.

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