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Christus
Rex
Historic Creationism On Trial
Maurice Hagar
“The doctrine of creation lies at the heart of Christian living, deeply embedded within our assumptions about worship, knowledge, faith, celebration, beauty, and redemption. In recent decades, many conservative evangelicals have been moved by the science of the day to oppose the historic view of creation in six sequential days of common length, several millennia in the past. Instead, they hold that the bare ideas of creation presented in Genesis have little to do with the actualities of creation. Falsely pitting poetry and symbolism against history, they distort the text of Scripture and divorce ideas from the created order in ancient Gnostic fashion.
Science changes like the wind, and therefore its authority ought to pale beside the Spirit-led, traditional exegesis of creation in six days of common length. Intimidation by apparently more sophisticated non-Christian knowledge-priesthoods is not new. Over the centuries, God has regularly tested the Church’s courage to stand loyal to His revelation over against the ever-changing sciences of the day, those “profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.” – Article XI Section F, Constitution of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals
For nearly two thousand years literal, six-day, 24-hour creationism was universally affirmed as a non-negotiable, foundational article of orthodox Christian faith. Accordingly, our confessional standard, The Westminster Confession of Faith, unambiguously declares, “In the beginning...[God] made everything in the world, visible and invisible, in the space of six days, and it was very good.”(1) This historic affirmation, however, now finds itself under intense prosecution in even the most conservative and reformed of churches and schools. Very well. Let the prosecution begin and call its first witness.
We hear, first, the expert testimony of Scripture. “Does not the Genesis account of creation tell us the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ of creation but not necessarily the ‘how?’” our inquisitors begin. “For the Hebrew word yom could be translated ‘age’ instead of ‘day.’” But let the witness speak: “God created the heavens and the earth in the space of six yom.” Yom sometimes indicates longer periods of time but when used alongside a specific number always means a literal 24-hour day. Yom is used this way more than 700 times in the Old Testament.
“But how, then,” the prosecution counters, “could a ‘day’-yom have existed prior to the creation of the sun and the moon on the fourth day-yom?” The Bible informs us that light existed before the creation of the sun and moon and that light will exist in eternity future after the sun and moon are darkened. Light does not emanate from the sun and moon but from the Father of lights. And, just as in Polar Regions of the earth where winter months are spent in darkness, the “evening and morning” language of the Genesis narrative is employed precisely for the purpose of relating specific, 24-hour periods of time as opposed to either solar days or ages of time.
The defense begs to cross-examine: “How could an ‘age’-yom of a very lengthy and indefinite period of time consisting of thousands or millions of years serve as the precedent for a literal, 24-hour Sabbath ‘day’-yom? How could a literal, historical Adam, who was created on the sixth day and lived through the entirety of the seventh day, have lived a mere 930 years if he had, in fact, lived through at least one entire ‘age’-yom?” (If Adam is not a literal, historical man, then we have tumbled down the slippery slope and into the abyss: Was Jesus a literal, historical man? Yes, everything is up for grabs!)
No, the fact is that the biblical record could not be more clear and explicit than it is. How could it be? What else should God have said? How could He have been more straightforward and honest? Genesis is historical narrative, and God created the heavens and the earth in the space of six, literal, 24-hour days. Adam and Eve were created suddenly as mature beings and inhabited a world also created suddenly and mature. To vainly imagine that present-day naturalists might calculate the age of that creation by counting gray hairs, tree rings, or geologic columns is mere folly.
The biblical witness reminds us that the God-man, Jesus, miraculously fed 5,000 men plus their families with thousands of barley loaves never harvested from fields or baked in ovens and with thousands of fish never hatched from eggs, harvested in nets, or dried in the sun. In a similar episode, our Lord instantly transformed 150 gallons of water into wine, an otherwisenatural process requiring vast periods of time. Marvin L. Lubenow explains what transpired:
Our Lord took H2O and turned it into C6H12O6 […] There was not only the direct creation of billions of carbon atoms, but also the arranging of all of these atoms into the highly complex molecules in wine.(2)
John C. Whitcomb astutely observes the critical lesson to be learned from such events:
Jesus, the Lord of Creation, bypassed all these natural processes and created the end product with an appearance of history [...] Now it is instructive to note that the headwaiter who “did not know where it came from,” naturally assumed that this “good wine” had been somewhere “kept...until now” (John 2:10). This was a natural conclusion, of course, for neither he nor anyone else in the world had ever considered the possibility of wine coming directly from water. It must, therefore, have had a history of natural development. But he was mistaken.(3)
Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris conclude:
If God actually created anything at all, even the simplest atoms, those atoms or other creations would necessarily have an appearance of some age. There could be no genuine creation of any kind, without an initial appearance of age inherent in it. It would still be possible to interpret the newly-created matter in terms of some kind of previous evolutionary history. And if God could create atomic stuff with an appearance of age—in other words, if God exists!—then there is no reason why He could not [...] create a whole universe full-grown [...] Obviously, if He did this, there would be no way by which any of His creatures could deduce the age or manner of Creation by study of the laws of maintenance of His creation. This information could only be obtained, correctly, through God Himself revealing it! And if God reveals how and when He created the universe and its inhabitants, then to charge God with falsehood in creating “apparent age” is presumptuous in the extreme—even blasphemous. It is not God who has lied, but rather man who has called Him a liar, through rejection of His revelation of Creation as given in Genesis and verified by the Lord Jesus Christ!(4)
The real question comes down to one’s presuppositions, or a priori faith commitments. Does God exist or not? Does God possess supernatural powers of creation or not? The burden of proof is squarely on those who argue that God’s self-revelation on these matters cannot be understood or trusted in its plain and most obvious sense. As for me and my house, based upon the customary assumption of presumed innocence in such proceedings, as well as our a priori faith in the character of God and the credibility of His witness, we presuppose that historic creationism is innocent of any falsehood or deception and is to be trusted in its plain and most obvious sense.
We hear, next, from the witness of Science. “Does not the biologic and geologic evidence suggest that God’s creation evolved slowly over millions or even billions of years?” the prosecution begins. No, the evidence is circumstantial and such conclusions are dubious at best. “Objection!” interrupts the prosecution, “Haven’t you theologians learned by now to leave science to the scientists?” Well, now we’re back to presuppositions again, aren’t we? The truth is that historic creationists are credible scientists practicing real science. Attorney W. R. Bird, in The Origin Of Species Revisited, fills six pages with the top-rate credentials of today’s leading creation scientists.(5) One leading evolutionist even concedes, “it is the conventional neo-Darwinians who appear as the conservative bigots” while creation scientists “rate as enlightened rationalists prepared to contemplate the evidence.”(6)
And, though unreported by the thoroughly secular media and educational establishment, the evidence for historic creationism is staggering and comes from every scientific discipline: cosmology, geology, archeology, anthropology, biology, zoology, and so on. For one example, our most ancient historical records are Egyptian and Sumerian chronologies that date back at most 10,000 years with more conservative estimates of a few thousand years. If humans have inhabited the planet much longer than this then where is the evidence? At conservative geometric population growth rates, over a million years trillions of humans would have lived and died on earth. Where are their skeletal remains or any other evidence?
Upon further cross-examination, leading evolutionist Gareth J. Nelson admits that the evidence for evolution is “weak or nonexistent” and “exaggerated by evolutionists.”(7) In a remarkable lecture by Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the museum's text on evolution, he asked an audience of evolutionists at the American Museum of Natural History:
Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing [...] that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said ‘I do know one thing—it ought not to be taught in high school.’(8)
Bird quotes leading evolutionists from every field of natural science who refer to evolution as “a theory in crisis” and “myth” and “illusion” and a “highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support.”(9) Even Cambridge evolutionist B. Stonehouse admits that historic creationists are “convincing” in that “there is more in the Creationist argument than scientists are generally willing to concede.”(10) So, in light of this intellectual quagmire, who and what are we to believe about the scientific record? Based upon our foundational faith in God alone to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we find historic creationism innocent of all charges of naivete, falsehood, or deception and worthy of our trust in its plain and most obvious sense.
In our closing argument, the defense questions the motives of scientists so committed to suppressing the truth about historic creationism. Evolutionist W. Scot Morrow forthrightly provides the answer: “So much of what [evolutionists] think and know, resolves to a matter of philosophical preference.”(11) Renowned evolutionist D. M. S. Watson adds that evolution is a theory universally accepted “not because it has been observed to occur or can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative—special creation—is clearly incredible.”(12) British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith agrees:
“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable.”(13) Unthinkable? “Yes,” Sir Julian Huxley, frankly admits, “the reason we leaped at [Darwin’s] The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.”(14) Aha! They suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).
What, then, of Christians willing to accommodate such ungodliness? Pastor D. James Kennedy replies: “They engage in this compromise only because they think that science has proved evolution and they must take the Scripture as some sort of putty nose to twist around until they have made it conform to evolution.”(15) As Cornell evolutionist William B. Provine remarks, such syncretism “of atheistic evolutionists and liberal theologians” produces an understanding of the evolutionary process that is “demonstrable nonsense.”(16) Indeed!
In conclusion, as is the case in any courtroom or debate hall, presumption is in favor of the status quo and the burden of proof falls on the challenger. The status quo is not required to answer every charge. But the accuser, on the other hand, must prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the innocent is guilty as charged or that the status quo is significantly deficient. In our case, we cannot appeal to direct human observation or laboratory experimentation. Instead, we have scientific hearsay and circumstantial (open to more than one interpretation) evidence versus the authoritative, sufficient, timeless truth of God’s word as confessed by Christians for over 2000 years. Along with renowned biologist and former evolutionist Soren Lovtrup, we look forward to the day when the “[evolution] myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens many people will pose the question: How did this ever happen?”(17) But now we’re back to presuppositions once again, aren’t we? 
1 The Westminster Confession of Faith, (Signal Mountain, TN: Summertown Texts, 1979), 9.
2 Marvin L. Lubenow, From Fish to Gish: Morris and Gish Confront the Evolutionary Establishment, (San Diego, CA: CLP Publishers, 1983), 196.
3 John C. Whitcomb, The Early Earth, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1986), 41.
4 Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications, (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian And Reformed Publishing Company, 1961), .238.
5 W.R. Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1991), vol. I, 326-31.
6 Edmund Leach, Men, Bishops, and Apes, (Nature, Sep. 3, 1981), 19-20.
7 Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, vol. I, xii.
8 Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin On Trial, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 10.
9 Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, vol. I, 4-5.
10 Quoted in Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, vol. I, 8.
11 Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, vol. II, xii.
12 Quoted in Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism (San Diego, CA: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), 8.
13 Quoted in Fred John Meldan, Why We Believe in Creation Not in Evolution, (Denver, CO: Christian Victory Publishing., 1959), 8.
14 Quoted in Henry M. Morris, The Troubled Waters of Evolution (San Diego, CA: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), 58.
15 D. James Kennedy, Why I Believe, (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1980), 52.
16 Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, vol. I, 504.
17 Soren Lovtrup quoted in Bird, The Origin Of Species Revisited, vol. II, 422.
Volume One - Issue Two
Literature: Thoreau & the Dust of Death - Gregory Soderberg
Theology: Historic Creationism on Trial - Maurice Hagar
Aesthetics: Hours - Maurice Hagar
Culture: Manhunt - Maurice Hagar
Sodomy: Letter to an Editor - Marcus Rench
Skeletal Thoughts and Emaciated Musings - Gregory Soderberg
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