About the Author
----------------
Gleason Archer was professor of Old Testament and Semitics at Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School where he has served since 1965. Previously
he was Professor of Biblical Languages and Acting Dean at Fuller
Seminary where he served for 17 years. He holds a B.A. from Harvard
College (Greek and Latin Classics, summa cum laude), A.M. and Ph.D.
from Harvard Graduate School (Comparative Literature), LL.B. from
Suffolk Law School. Dr. Archer has also had pastoral experience and is
currently ordained in the Evangelical Free Church of America. He
serves on the national boards of Greater Europe Mission, United
Evangelical Arab Mission, and the Council of ICBI. He is also the
author of many books and articles.
 

A RESPONSE TO
THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF SCRIPTURE IN AREAS
RELATING TO NATURAL SCIENCE
Gleason L. Archer

This clear and well-written discussion deals largely with the case
against the Young Earth Theory espoused by advocates of the
twenty-four hour interpretation of the creative days in Genesis
chapter 1. This is probably the most debated area of interpretation
among inerrantists today and represents an issue of decisive
importance to the science of biblical hermeneutics. The question of
the trustworthiness of Scripture is definitely at stake in the
reconciliation of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. If these two passages are
construed in such a way as to establish a basic contradiction between
the two, the inerrancy of Scripture is fatally undermined. This then
is an issue which must be honestly faced and dealt with according to
sound hermeneutical procedure, such as is normally employed in
treating all other matters of doctrine in which Scripture must be
compared with Scripture.

But before we launch into an extended discussion of Young Earth
geology and its hermeneutical assumptions, we should first observe
that there are many other areas in which reconciliation is needed
between scientific theory and biblical references to matters of
science.

The legitimacy and appropriateness of phenomenal language should be
dealt with very carefully, especially in view of the fact that modern
twentieth century science textbooks employ different terms in
referring to meteorological processes, to flora and fauna and the
operation of physics and mathematical science. Criticisms leveled at
biblical references to these matters are usually framed in complete
disregard of contextual factors and characteristics of literary
genres. Matters of common sense and prevalent contemporary practice
are largely ignored to an amazing degree of naivete and
oversimplification.

By the term "phenomenal language" we refer to things as they appear to
human observers outside of the laboratory or the astronomical
observatory. Modern exponents of scientism often speak disparagingly
of such phrases as "the four corners of the earth" (as if implying a
rectangular earth-surface) and "from the rising of the sun to the
going down thereof" (as implying a terracentric theory for the solar
system). But honesty demands that we face the fact that our
scientifically enlightened twentieth century usage still adheres to
the terms "sunrise" and "sunset" just as habitually as the ancients
ever did. It would be utterly absurd for some future generation of
scientific savants to fault our calendars and almanacs for giving the
exact times for "sunrise" and assume therefrom that we are a
terracentric, backwardly primitive culture in this twentieth century.
The same is true of the term "eclipse," whether of the sun or of the
moon, since there is actually no part of either of them which is
removed or missing in their spherical structure (the Greek ekleipsis
means "a forsaking; a disappearance" rather than "an overshadowing by
an intervening spherical body").

A similar principle of recognition of phenomenal language is involved
in the events of the fourth creative day (Gen. 1:14-1). Taken by
itself, the final clause of v. 16 appears to say that God made (wayya'
as' ,elohim) the sun, the moon and the stars in the fourth creative
day. It is safe to say that scientific creationists who hold to a
twenty-four hour day are heliocentric in their concept of the solar
system, i.e., they understand that earth and the other planets revolve
about the sun. Now if the sun was not actually created until three
days or more after the earth, it gives rise to at least two serious
problems: (1) a complete lack of orientation as to the orbit of earth
until the sun was installed as the central focus for its annual
revolution; (2) the difficulty of explaining the process of
photosynthesis essential for the terrestrial vegetation created on the
previous day, during which the most advanced seed-bearing plants and
trees were brought to full development. The suggestion advanced by
some writers that there was some kind of cosmic light which was
created on Day One in response to God's command, "Let there be light:"
has little to commend it, and that for two reasons: (a) there is no
reference to ("light") anywhere else in Scripture that is not
connected with the sun or stars, or with moons or planets which
reflect sunlight, or to fire resulting from combustion; (b) there is
no scientific evidence whatever for photosynthesis resulting from
cosmic light alone.

The harmonization of the creation of light on the first day and the
role of the sun and the other heavenly bodies on the fourth day is
quite obvious, in view of the specified purpose which God articulated
in Gen. 1:14-15: that the heavenly bodies might serve as clear
illuminators of the earth's surface and might indicate time-divisions
with ascertainable accuracy: "Let them be for signs and for seasons
and for days and for years." It is fair to deduce from the innovative
element in this 14th verse that previously the light from the sun had
been filtered through a cloud cover thin enough to permit proper plant
growth but too thick to afford accuracy in calculating the exact time
of sunrise, the vernal or autumnal equinox, or the true length of the
solar year itself. At last the cloud cover was parted and clear blue
sky became visible to observers on earth. The Scripture makes use of a
phenomenal approach in this passage.

On a smaller scale the same principle applies to such matters as the
inclusion of the shaphan (identified with the Hyrax syriacus) as a
ruminant in Lev. 11:5. There it is stated that this "coney" or "rock
badger" (NASB) "chews the cud, even though it does not divide the
hoof." A similar comment is made about the "rabbit" ('arnebet) in Lev.
11:6. Although it is true that neither animal does not regurgitate
cuds from its stomach to chew them over again-- as true ruminants do
-- they give the appearance of chewing their cud in the same way as
genuine ruminants do. It is said that even Linnaeus at first
classified them with ruminants because of this resemblance. They
actually do practise "refection," or the re-mastication of their
droppings, while resting in the shade (ZPEB 3:33), and so their
inclusion with ruminants is quite justifiable from the phenomenal
standpoint. A similar observation pertains to the description of the
whale who swallowed Jonah as dag gadol ("a large fish"), Jonah 1:17.
The term dag may well have included any aquatic animal of a bodily
structure resembling that of a fish, even such mammals as whales and
dolphins. If this was the semantic scope of the Hebrew term used, as
established by literary usage, it is inadmissible to categorize such
phenomenal terms as scientifically erroneous.

The examples above cited lead us to the guiding principle which
applies to valid interpretation of any literary production, whether
secular or sacred: that the concern of the interpreter is to discover
as accurately as possible what the original author meant by the words
which he used, rather than imposing upon his text meanings attached to
terms used for translation purposes in some foreign language. Even
earlier English works, such as those of Chaucer or Shakespeare, may be
improperly construed by twentieth century speakers of English who have
not taken the trouble to discover what men of the fourteenth or
seventeenth century meant or connoted by the words used differently
then from what they signify today. A careful study of parallel usage
elsewhere in Scripture is absolutely vital for valid interpretation of
any biblical text. It should also be perfectly evident that it is
wrong to take figuratively what the original author meant literally,
or to take literally what the author intended in a figurative way. (In
the latter class would be our Lord's dictum: "It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into
the Kingdom of God" - Matt. 19:24.) It is, therefore, ill-advised for
any evangelical Bible teacher to urge the necessity of "taking the
Bible literally." Anyone who takes literally what God means
figuratively is right on the brink of heresy.

After this preliminary discussion of basic principles involved in
valid interpretation of Holy Scripture, we revert to the particular
issues raised by the Bradley-Olsen paper. Their purpose is to survey
the objective scientific data bearing upon the antiquity of the planet
earth, or of the universe in general, since the time of their first
creation. Their analysis of the arguments advanced by the exponents of
the Old Earth and Young Earth approach is very helpful and convincing,
so far as this reviewer has any competence to make a judgment. It
seems that their handling of the evidence provided by geological
science has been fairly done, even though Recent Creationists might
feel that there is throughout the discussion the influence of an
underlying commitment to the Old Age Theory. Yet it should be observed
that all investigations of a scholarly nature involve scholars who
have already been attracted to one side or the other of the matter
under discussion and that observation certainly pertains to the
proponents of Young Earth geology. They, too, operate upon the basis
of an underlying presupposition which has a strongly determinative
effect upon their handling of the evidence.

The presupposition referred to in this case is that Genesis 1 actually
does teach or reveal that the planet earth was fully created in six
twenty-four hour days. If this is a valid interpretation of Genesis 1,
then logical integrity demands that Christian scholars in the field of
science should make every effort to show that there is no body of
objective scientific data, whether in geology or in astronomy, which
is not compatible with a maximum interval of 10,000 years since
creation began. (Stricter constructionists of the genealogical
material of Gen. 5 and Gen. 11 might find even the suggestion of
10,000 years impossible to accept, since their interpretation of those
texts as a tight line of descent without any links omitted leads them
to a starting date of no more than 6000 B.C. or even more recent than
that.) Be that as it may, the perception of Genesis 1 as clearly
teaching a succession of six twenty-four hour days would certainly
bind the conscience of the true believer, whether a scientist or a
layman, to a very tenacious defense against the long-age theories of
secular science. Their interpretation of Scripture really obligates
them to do so. Nevertheless, it needs to be demonstrated that there
are at least two main fallacies which discredit this viewpoint so
seriously as to make it well nigh untenable.

The more serious difficulty with the twenty-four hour theory is that
it gives rise to an insoluble contradiction with Genesis 2. Since this
contradiction is easy to prove, it results in a fatal undermining of
the inerrancy of Scripture to which all consistent evangelicals are
committed. The surrender of inerrancy is too high a price to pay for
the preservation of the twenty-four hour day theory, and therefore it
should be very firmly insisted that Genesis 1 be construed in a sense
compatible with the data of Genesis 2.

The crucial passage in Gen. 1:27 tells us very clearly that Eve was
created as well as Adam during the sixth creative day. "And God
created man ('adam) in His own image, in the image of God He created
him; male and female He created them." Since man is not mentioned in
the list of sixth-day creations until all of the other terrestrial
animals had been produced (vv. 24-25), it is fair to assume that no
more than an hour or two would have been left toward the close of the
sixth day for the introduction of Eve upon the scene.

Chapter 2 of Genesis supplies more detailed information concerning the
succession of events transpiring between the creation of Adam and the
creation of Eve. These events are as follows:

1. Gen. 2:7 records the creation of Adam from the "dust" (or the
chemical constituents) of the ground, and the special infusion or
inbreathing of His "breath" (neshamah, or more exactly, nishmat
hayyim, "the breath of life") into the nostrils of this climactic
creation, fashioned in the "image" (selem) of God. Since God
forbids the worship of any graven image (in the Second
Commandment) and emphasized to Israel that no graven image (pesel)
or resemblance of any three-dimensional kind (temunah) was to be
made or revered, we can only conclude that the selem in which Adam
and Eve were fashioned bore only a spiritual resemblance or
analogy to their Creator, "in knowledge, righteousness and
holiness" (as the Westminster Shorter Catechism defines it).

2. Gen. 2:15 next records that God placed Adam in a specially
prepared environment, the Garden of Eden, and assigned him the
responsibility of cultivating and caring for this large and
beautiful park area, with its abundance of streams and lush
vegetation. He was put in charge of this entire area as an
administrator, under a covenant of obedience to God (especially in
regard to the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"). It is
clearly implied that his general supervision of Eden went on for a
fairly extended period of time.

3. Gen. 2:18 relates how the Lord perceived Adam's sense of
personal unfulfillment as he carried on this arduous task, for he
lacked companionship. "It is not good for the man to be alone,"
God observed, "I will make him a helper suitable for him" ('ezer
ke negdo -- literally "a helper corresponding to him"). This
qualification could only be fulfilled by Adam's future wife, as
Gen. 2:20 makes clear. Nevertheless, the Lord saw fit to bring
Adam first into closer fellowship with the animals and birds of
the Edenic environment, if not of the earth as a whole. This
involved nothing less than carrying out a major project in
taxonomy: the careful study and assignment for an appropriate
specie's name for every single animal and bird known to the Middle
East. Many hundreds of species must have been involved. Adam had
no fund of earlier nomenclature to fall back upon; he had to
decide upon all of these names by himself. Apparently they were to
be official and permanent names, accepted by God Himself, since
"whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name"
(Gen. 2:19).

If this assignment was thoughtfully and carefully carried out,
involving as it did a certain amount of personal attention and the
study of each specimen from every angle, taking stock of factors of
shape and color and texture and the sound of voice, it must have
required a considerable period of time. The Swedish taxonomist
Linnaeus back in the eighteenth century is said to have taken a good
thirty years in carrying out his survey of the flora and fauna known
to European scholarship. To be sure, his techniques of examination of
internal structure and his concern for genera as well as species must
have demanded more time than the pre-scientific approach of our first
parent operating entirely upon his own. But in the absence of computer
technology it is safe to conclude that Adam must have required several
months at least to carry out this project in an adequate fashion --
especially in view of the factor of personal fellowship with each
specimen to be assigned a distinctive name. There is a clear
implication that a cordial personal relationship was to be cultivated
between Adam and all of his menagerie, for the announced purpose of
this natural history project was to mitigate or temporarily (at least)
to banish Adam's feelings of loneliness amid the green paradise of
Eden. Yet the latter part of v. 20 states "but for Adam there was not
found a helper (i.e., a life's partner) suitable for him."

This introduces us to the third stage of Adam's career prior to the
creation of Eve. The Lord induced him to fall into a deep sleep,
during which the first bone operation performed under anesthesia was
carried out. There is no suggestion that this deep sleep was very
suddenly induced or very quickly brought to its determination by the
removal of the rib within a few seconds. And yet this kind of speed
would have been absolutely essential if Adam and God had been working
on a very limited time-frame while the sun was fast approaching the
horizon at the end of a sixth twenty-four hour day. Nor is there any
hint that Adam himself had to go through a frenetic performance of
spitting out specie's names faster than the mind could think -- as the
twenty-four hour day theory demands. What we have here is not a
comically speeded up movie scene, but a beautiful, dignified,
leisurely account of a career completed by Adam as a bachelor prior to
the appearance of Eve. Indeed it is safe to say that any unbiased
reader, not previously committed to an adverse presupposition, would
gather from the wording of Genesis 2 that there was a long and careful
preparation of Adam by God in order for him to appreciate and adore
that woman whom God fashioned from his rib. The impression of an
extended period of time for the large taxonomic project would also be
unavoidable.

If this be the case, we must face a very basic issue involved in the
science of hermeneutics. All biblical scholars admit that yom ("day")
may be used in a figurative or symbolic manner, as well as in a
literal sense. This is very evident in Gen. 2:4: "This is the account
of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that
the LORD God made earth and heaven." Since we have just been told in
chap. 1 that six days were involved in the creative process, it is
perfectly evident that yom in Gen. 2:4 could not refer to a
twenty-four hour day. In the frequent phrase, yom Yahweh, "Day of
Yahweh" (Isa. 2:12; 13:6, 9; Amos 5:18, 20; Jer. 46:10; Ezek. 13:5;
30:3 and many more) it is impossible to take this period of God's
vengeance upon His foes as restricted to a mere twenty-four hours. The
same is true of yom qasir, "(in the) day of harvest." Nowhere on earth
is an entire ingathering of crops accomplished in a single day.

Since the term yom may refer to an interval of time when the
transaction referred to achieves completion (whether it be a
twelve-hour period, as in Gen. 1:5, or in a twenty-four hour period,
or in a more extended space of time), it is necessary to establish in
the light of the context and of comparable usage elsewhere in the
Scripture, in which sense yom. In any serious study of Bible doctrine
it is absolutely essential to bring together all biblical passages
bearing upon the subject in hand. Failure to do so violates the
principle of comparing Scripture with Scripture (1 Cor. 2:13). It
results in the kind of false teaching such as emanates from the
Russelite, who argues that since Jesus did get tired and sleepy upon
occasion, whereas God never slumbers nor sleeps, Jesus could not have
been God. The fallacy lies in the failure to compare all that the
Scripture says about the Lord Jesus Christ in His divine nature and in
His human nature. It is through comparing Scripture with Scripture
that we come to an understanding of the Holy Trinity and of the
hypostatic union of Christ.

In the case of Gen. 1 and Gen. 2, therefore, a proper methodology
requires us to line them both up beside each other and see how they
fall into focus with each other. Unless we are to side with skeptics
who maintain that Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 must come from two different
authors at two different periods of time, we are compelled to see that
the long interval of time between the creation of Adam and the
creation of Eve utterly precludes a twenty-four hour interpretation --
for the sixth creative day at least. And if the sixth day was much
longer than a single rotation of the earth, then there is no reason to
believe that the first five were twenty-four hour intervals either.
The days of Gen. 1 must have involved a longer process of time than a
single calendar day. The yom is rather to be understood as a symbol of
the beginning and completion of a distinct stage in the unfolding work
of creation. The wording "And the evening and the morning took place,
as day one" or "as a second day" (the Hebrew text has no definite
article for any of the first six days) emphasizes the process aspect
of the creative stage from its earliest beginnings to its final
completion. There may be some analogy also with the occasions when God
commanded Ezekiel to lie on his left side, symbolizing the 390 years
of Israel's apostasy, and on his right side for forty days, "a day for
each year." Or again to the celebration of the Feast of Booths
(Sukkot) for a period of eight days, in commemoration of the forty
years of wilderness wandering under Moses during the Exodus. The
argument that yom never means anything else in the Hebrew Bible but a
literal twenty-four hours is completely untenable in the light of
Scriptural usage elsewhere. Furthermore, it tends to set up a genuine
and essential contradiction between two passages in Scripture (in view
of the unavoidable inference of a long time interval between the
creation of Adam and that of Eve). And if a true contradiction can be
shown to exist (on the basis of an insistence upon a twenty-four hour
day interpretation) between these two chapters, then the doctrine of
Scriptural Inerrancy must be abandoned.

It is, therefore, on such basic grounds as these that we must insist
that Genesis 1 was not intended by either the Divine Author or by the
human author (Moses) to teach that the whole work of creation took
only six calendar days to complete -- even though we may freely
concede that God cauld have done it that way had He chosen to do so.
In other words, Moses never intended the creative days to be
understood as a mere twenty-four hours in length, and the information
he included in chap. 2 logically precludes us from doing so. It is
only by a neglect of proper hermeneutical method that this impression
ever became prevalent among God's people, during the post-biblical
era. Entirely apart from any findings of modern science or challenges
of contemporary scientism, the twenty-four hour theory was never
correct and should never have been believed -- except by those who are
bent on proving the presence of genuine contradictions in Scripture.

A comment should be made in this connection relative to the Sabbath
ordinance in the Decalogue, which stipulates (in Ex. 20:10-11) that
the seventh day of each seven-day week is to be honored as holy,
because Yahweh God made the heavens and earth and sea in six days and
rested on the seventh. By no means does this demonstrate that
twenty-four hour intervals were involved in the first six "days," any
more than the eight-day celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles proves
that the wilderness wanderings under Moses occupied only eight days.
The reminder of God's marvelous power, wisdom and grace, culminating
in the completion stage of God's "resting" after His six earlier
stages in the creative process, could only have been celebrated by
sanctifying one whole day in seven for this purpose. It was the number
and sequence of the successive phases of creation that was symbolized
by the institution of a seven-day week, rather than a reproducing of
the precise time-interval involved in each stage. In view of the fact
that no terminus is indicated in Gen. 2:2-3 50 far as the Seventh Day
is concerned, and Heb. 4:4-10 states that God's Sabbath continues on
without delimitation, it is hardly justifiable to claim for the first
six days preceding any more circumscribed duration than is true of the
seventh.

If, then, the Bible does not teach a six-calendar day creation, and if
the purpose of Genesis 1 is to show forth that the God of the Bible is
the only God there is, and that He by Himself created the sun, the
moon, the stars, the winds and the seas, the rocks and the mountains,
and everything that lives and grows upon the surface of the earth --
then what we really have in this opening chapter of Holy Scripture is
a manifesto directed at all the perversions and superstitions of
ancient polytheism as well as of modern scientism. For modern
scientism also has its absurd superstitions, such as the belief in the
eternity of matter, or the possibility of orderly development
according to an intricate and integrated plan -- without any
transcendent planner or creator. In fact, we must point out that any
scientific theorist who believes that uncontrolled fortuity as the
explanation of life and the universe has already canceled himself of
all rational validity or meaningful dialogue. The reason for this lies
in his proposition that all matter results from a chance collocation
of atoms. If that be the case, then the molecules of the brain with
which the materialistic- humanist does his thinking is also a mere
product of a chance collocation of atoms. As such, therefore, his
analysis of issues and his construction of may have no connection with
ontological reality and the only thing he can be sure of 13 is his own
opinion. By his own premises, then, he has condemned himself to
solipsistic subjectivism and has absolutely nothing of assured
validity to share with anyone else. This observation carries with it
an inevitable corollary: that science itself is rendered impossible
upon any atheistic hypothesis. For science is predicated upon the
assumption of assured regularity and control. But if the atheistic
premise is correct, all is dependent upon sheer fortuity, and there is
no true connection between cause and effect. If chance is the real
basis of physical law, then any result may follow from any cause, and
the orderly observation and systematization of data becomes totaliy
impossible. Only if there is an intelligent guiding force or
controlling intelligence outside of material reality is it possible to
conduct scientific investigation at all. Otherwise there is no
guaranteed regularity to observe. So much for the challenge of
atheistic evolutionism.'