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