The Stones Cry Out

Consider the picture above.  This was probably the most beautiful place I have ever been.  Perhaps nowhere else have I seen the majestic and powerful hand of the Creator as I did here.  I would venture to say that most Christians would agree, and even non-Christians would appreciate the grandeur of this place.  But, how does it fit into the Creation account in the Bible? 

Would you say that this scene was created just like this in the beginning?  Would you imagine that it looked differently in the beginning, but was transformed into this landscape as a result of Noah's Flood?  Or would you agree with the mainstream geological interpretation that these mountains are the result of a collision between the Iberian and European plates from roughly 55 to 25 million years ago, and have since undergone the process of erosion until the present?  Does the third option contradict the Bible?  Can you be a Christian and adopt this interpretation?

One thing that is often tossed around the Young-Earth Creationist camp is the idea of the "appearance of age".  The notion is that the mountains were formed very recently in Creation or the Flood, and that they simply just appear to be old.  There is just one problem with that idea, however.  The mountains do not appear old.  They have the "appearance of history".  If that's true, then the mountains really are old.  The rocks in the picture are standing nearly vertical in places, and in other places they are thrust up and over other rocks that are usually on top.  One thing is for certain...these rocks were not created like this, they tell a story of geologic processes.  So how do we reconcile a geological feature like the Pyrenees with the Bible?  We need to start...in the beginning.

The Biblical Creation Account:

Much of the debate over the interpretation of the first two chapters of Genesis are centered around the following questions. 

• How long are the Creation “Days”?
• Does Day 1 begin with the creation of the universe?
• How can Days 1, 2 and 3 be literal 24-hour days if the sun was not created until Day 4?
• How could all the events of Day 6 transpire in only 24 hours?
• Is Day 7 longer than 24 hours since the Bible does not mention its ending?
• Can we reconstruct what the natural world looked like and how it functioned in the time before the Fall and Curse in Genesis 3?
• What are the geologic effects of the Creation Week?
• How can the two Creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 be reconciled without contradiction?
• Does the Bible speak to the age of the earth? 

These and many more questions and topics are discussed in detail in my exegetical commentary on Genesis 1 and 2 (PDF), but for now, I will briefly touch on the highlights of what the text says.

The Creation Days:

Most Young-Earth Creationists (YECs) believe the Bible speaks of a 168-hour Creation Week comprised of seven 24-hour days in which all that exists was created.  On the other side of the table, most Old-Earth Creationists (OECs) believe the Bible speaks of Creation over an indefinite period of time.  We must be honest in saying that a casual reading in an English translation will lead one to the former interpretation.  But we must also be honest in saying that the Hebrew word for day (yom) has a semantic range that includes both interpretations.  So which is right?  I believe context will answer the question, and the context demands the latter.  There are several biblical reasons for rejecting the 24-hour interpretation of yom even though that has been the interpretation throughout most of Christianity’s history.

First, it is a little known fact that Creation Day 1 does not start in Genesis 1:1, it starts in verse 3.  In the Hebrew language, a narrative that tells a story of something that happened in the past will typically use verbs in the wayyiqtol tense.  They are used to announce broadly sequential events.  If an author wishes to provide background information relevant to the story, he will typically do so in an introduction using mainly verbs in the perfect or weqetal tenses.  That’s exactly what we find in Moses’ Creation account in Genesis 1.  The result is that Day 1 begins in verse 3 with the first wayyiqtol verb wayyomer elohim (And God said); the same way Days 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 begin.  This also means that verses 1 and 2 record events that happened prior to Creation Day 1 and speak of the conditions in Creation at the time the first Day begins.

Stromatolite fossil from the Archean Era (~3.4 billion years ago) from Australia.  This structure was built by a cyanobacteria colony and represents one of the oldest fossils ever found on earth.  It is probable that these organisms were created before the Creation Week gets started in Genesis 1:3.  According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon, the word merachepheth (translated as "was hovering") in verse 2 may have a connotation of fertilizing the waters as taken from a Syriac cognate.  It would seem fitting for the Creator to populate the primative waters with these oxygen-producing organisms in order to ready the atmosphere for His higher creatures (photo by author - specimen is about 10 inches in height). 

Was the sun created on Day 4, or was it the source of the light on Day 1?  The Bible and scientific data indicate the latter (image credit: NASA).

Second, there is a problem in saying the first 3 Creation Days were 24 hours in duration while maintaining the sun was created on Day 4.  We know that a day, morning and evening are determined by the earth’s rotation with respect to the position of an observer towards or away from the sun.  If Days 1-3 were 24 hours and the sun was not created until Day 4, then there must have been a luminary in the same position as the present-day sun.  Why not just call it the sun?  So you see then the contradiction in the 24-hour view.  Days 1-3 were likely not 24 hours in duration if there was no sun as the terms 'day', 'morning' and 'evening' would have absolutely no meaning.  This is not a problem for OECs who maintain that the sun was the source of light on Day 1.  The sun itself was just hidden from the earth-based observer (God, in verse 2) in the permanently overcast skies of the early earth.  The astute reader will notice that the expanse that was formed on Day 2 is the only thing not called “good” (LXX: kalos) by the Creator.  That is, it was not able to fulfill its purpose at that time.  But, by the end of Day 6, God calls everything “very good”.  This would include the expanse.  The interpretation would then be that the atmosphere was toxic in the early parts of earth history, and that it changed over time with the addition of land plants on Day 3 to be just right for human habitation much later.  This, of course, happened according to the plan of the Creator. This view is also consistent with geological observations regarding the primordial earth.

Soils have distinct layers and are formed from the decomposition of the bedrock by the elements and accelerated by plant growth (image credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture). 

Third, there is the issue of the events of Day 3.  While land could have tectonically appeared very quickly, and plants could have supernaturally grown in one day, the soil needed for plant growth could not.  As we have seen from the Pyrenees example above, any uplift of rock will show a history of the processes involved.  The same is true of soil.  It is the product of the erosion of the bedrock that underlies.  It therefore has a history and cannot be an instantaneously created thing or else it would be the product of deception which raises serious theological problems.  Soils contain information about their parent material, thus revealing their history.  As such, a minimum time needed for Day 3 would be the time it took for the rock to appear, erode and form a soil suitable for plant growth.  This would have obviously been longer than 24 hours.

Supernova remnant SN 1006.  This well-witnessed explosion of a star occurred in 1006 AD.  We know that the supernova remnant is 7,200 light-years away from Earth.  This star, therefore, must have exploded over 8,200 years ago.  There is simply no way to explain this in terms of a 6,000 year-old Creation.  If that were true, then this star would have been in its exploding state at the Creation event and, thus never existed: a notion the ancient Chinese and Arab astronomer witnesses would have hotly contested (image credit: NASA).

Fourth, we encounter the problem of light transit time on Day 4.  It is said that stars were made in the account of Day 4, and that they were to give light to the earth.  Even the closest star is a few light years away.  It stands to reason for the star to fulfill its purpose, Day 4 must have been a few years in duration at a minimum, but most likely several thousands of years for all starlight visible to the naked eye to reach an earth-bound observer.  Some have argued that God could have created the light in transit, thus appearing old.  That would again invoke deception on the part of the Creator because the light does not appear old, it appears to have had a history.  The spectral lines we see from starlight indicate it has traveled through certain mediums (i.e. gas and dust in the interstellar space).  If that did not happen, God has deceived us, and that is contrary to His nature.  Others have said that the speed of light may have been faster in the past, but this is easily disproven by Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence formula.

Fifth, there appears to be no way that the events of Day 6 could be squeezed into a period of only 24 hours.  If we search the text to see all that transpired on Day 6, we see…

1. God makes the land-dwelling nephesh chayyah from the ground such as livestock, reptiles and wild beasts (Gen. 1:24-25; 2:19)
2. In a land west of Eden that was experiencing its dry season (Gen. 2:5-6), God makes man in His own image and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 1:26-27a; 2:7)
3. God plants a garden to the east in Eden where four rivers come together and places Adam there to take care of it (Gen. 2:8, 10-15)
4. God warns Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17)
5. God realizes it is not good for man to be alone so he brings all of the land-dwelling nephesh chayyah and all the birds to Adam so he can name them (Gen. 2:18-20)
6. God causes Adam to fall into a deep sleep and from his side, He creates a woman, Eve (Gen. 1:27b; 2:21-25)
7. God blesses Adam and Eve and tells them to multiply and to take dominion over the creatures of the earth (Gen. 1:28-30)
8. God declares His Creation “very good” thus pronouncing its completion (Gen. 1:31)

Some have reached an improvable conclusion saying that, in his pre-fallen state, Adam possessed super-human ability to be able to think and move at high speeds.  There is absolutely no biblical passage that even remotely suggests that.  It should be realized that this is special pleading to try and uphold a view that has fallen apart.  We can only speculate how long Day 6 lasted, but we can be confident it was longer than 24 hours.

Sixth and finally, we have the 7^th Day.  It is the only Day that the Scripture does not bring to an end.  If it was also 24 hours in duration, one might expect an 8^th Day that followed, but no mention is given.  The refrain, “and there was evening and there was morning” is not given.  In fact, there is evidence in the Psalms and in Hebrews 4 that suggest that this 7^th Day, God’s rest, continues on into the present.  The author of Hebrews tells us that we can still enter His rest “today”.  The obvious conclusion then is that this Day is longer than 24 hours (see this powerpoint for a visual description of God's rest as portrayed in the Bible).

In the brief discussion above, I have shown biblical evidence that Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 were most likely longer than 24 hours in length.  There is not enough evidence from the text alone to say the same for Day 5, but there is no reason, either, to say that it is the only one that was 24 hours.  While this was the traditional view through most of Christian history, it does not appear to hold up under close examination of the text.  A bigger danger exists in that it forces the subscriber into a corner in which he cannot counter the overwhelming amount of geologic data that says the earth is older than 6,000 years.  I do not believe the Bible teaches a recent Creation.  In fact, it talks more about the eternality of God and the fact that He is not bound by the natural laws that we are.  He created time and thus transcends time.  While the concept of billions of years may be incomprehensible, and may sound heretical to some, we should not let our limited understanding limit the abilities and nature of the Creator.

How Did the Natural World of Genesis 1 and 2 Look and Operate?

Well, the Bible tells us, and the conclusions may surprise some people.  There has been a widespread belief throughout history that persists even today that the original Creation was perfect, containing no natural evils (i.e. tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc…).  This perfection was supposedly lost when God cursed the earth and all Creation as a result of Adam’s sin in Genesis 3.  In this section I will summarize observations from the text to hopefully show that the original created heavens and earth were virtually identical to the ones today, and the processes evident then are still ongoing presently.  In my research, I have found that very little attention has been paid to the clues the Creator left in His Word regarding the physical nature of His Creation.  This oversight has helped propagate the notion of “original perfection” which has again placed a dividing wall between those who adhere to this doctrine and those who see an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.  Here is a brief summary of what the Bible says about the pre-Fall world…

Observations in the heavens:

• The expanse (sky or atmosphere) went through a process to become “very good”.  It was not created as such (1:8-13; 31).

• The expanse had roughly the same chemical composition as it does today by Day 4 to allow the visible light from the heavenly bodies (1:14-15)

• Day 4 most likely lasted a minimum of 10,000 years based on the starlight we receive.  The nearest star Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away.  All of the stars we see with the naked eye are relatively close within the Milky Way Galaxy.  In fact, the furthest star we can see unaided is roughly 10,000 light-years away.  In order for God to declare them good (1:18), the stars had to fulfill their purpose of lighting the earth and helping aid in telling signs and seasons (1:14-15).  According to Einstein’s equation E=mc² and the spectral lines we see from incoming starlight, the speed of light has remained constant and it was not simply created “in transit”.  Therefore the minimum duration of Day 4 must be the minimum time for all visible starlight to reach the earth-based observer.

• In order to give light to the earth (1:14-15), stars including the sun were undergoing thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen.  This proves the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics was in place before the Curse. 

Observations on the earth:

• The earth is rotating to produce a day and night (1:4-5).  This rotation produces a coriolis effect which is responsible for the wind patterns we see on earth.  When the first land appeared (1:9), there would have been differing pressure cells creating a spiraled wind flow towards areas of lower pressure.  These are cyclones, hurricanes, even water spouts etc…  All of these so-called “natural evils” would have been present before the Fall.
• God made dry land appear in 1:9.  This was the formation of one of the supercontinents in the early earth’s history as interpreted from the “gathering together” of the waters.  This was clearly a tectonic event, proving crustal plates were in motion before the Fall.  Along with plate tectonics comes events such as earthquakes, volcanoes and changes in ocean and wind currents that effect climate.
• Since God commanded the earth sprout vegetation (1:11), there must have been a fertile soil.  Since soil is formed from weathered bedrock, it cannot be an instantly created thing, it must have taken time to form.  This is because God cannot show any deception and that is what it would be if the soil gave a false history of coming from parent material.  The general rule of thumb is one inch of soil takes 1,000 years to form.  Based on these data, Creation Day 3 must have spanned at least a few thousand years.
• Man is told by God to subdue (khavash) the earth in 1:28.  Again he is told to cultivate and keep (shamar) the land in 2:15.  Both of these terms suggest that the earth would fight back in a sense and not want to be subdued and kept.  Literally it will try to take over and run its course unless man steps in.  This paints a different picture than the supposed perfect pre-Fall state in some interpretations. 
• God gave humans and animals food in 1:29-30 which suggests the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics was already underway in the form of digestion and therefore not instituted at the Curse.
• If there was mist (2:5) and waters above the expanse (1:6-7) and there was light (1:3; 14-15), then there were rainbows before the mention of God’s covenant after the Flood (9:12-13).  It was therefore not a new creation in Noah’s time.
• Adam’s body was formed from the “dust” of the earth (2:7).  This term literally means dirt or loose earth.  It is therefore a byproduct of erosion of pre-existing bedrock.  God may have instantaneously fashioned the body of Adam, but according to the text He used material that would have taken time to form; likely a few thousand years at a minimum.
• God planted a garden in Eden in 2:8 and caused the vegetation to grow in 2:9.  Among other things this involved soil and time.  The text does not envision an instantaneous miraculous appearing of a full lush garden straight from the bedrock.  Rather it utilizes terms the reader would understand describing the natural process of growing vegetation.  Again, since soil is a product of erosion it cannot be an instantly created thing.  It likely involved thousands of years at a minimum.  The planting of the garden would have taken an additional few decades.
• A river flowed out of Eden (2:10).  A river flows because of gravity pulling it down slope.  This means there was topography in the land of Eden.  Topography is not a created thing as it shows a history.  Rather it is formed by plate tectonics and erosion.  For the most part sedimentary rocks were originally laid down flat.  Any sedimentary rocks that we see today that aren’t flat have undergone some tectonic movement.  Igneous rocks may not form in an originally flat position but they are a product of tectonics as well (i.e. stretched and thinned crust, intrusions, volcanism, etc…).  This flowing river proves plate tectonics were in effect before the Curse.
• For the river in 2:10 to keep flowing, it would have needed to be recharged as to not run dry.  This means there was an active hydrologic cycle.  This proves there was rain before the Flood.
• The four tributaries that meet up in Eden to form the main river that watered the garden (2:10) all started in separate highlands.  Again, this scenario invokes a tectonic history for the region.  As a matter of fact, the geography mentioned here portrays very closely the present-day Mesopotamian region.
• Gold, bdellium and onyx are said to be in the region of Havilah (2:11-12).  Gold is formed by secondary geologic processes and is therefore not an originally created thing.  Its existence proves there were fractures in the bedrock for hydrothermal fluids to migrate through.  The text makes it clear that these geologic processes were quite active before the Curse and the Flood.

These are a few of the observations that can be made concerning the pre-Curse natural world.  I hope you agree that the text does not paint a picture of a world shrouded in mystery but rather a world that functioned very much the same as it does today.  There appears to be absolutely no biblical reason to conclude that geologic processes such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis as well as hurricanes, heavy rain, fire and other climatic changes are a result of God's Curse in Genesis 3.

What Did God Mean When He Said "Very Good"?

So, if these so-called natural evils existed before the Fall and Curse, what did God mean in Genesis 1:31 when He pronounced His Creation "very good?"  Did He mean perfect in every sense of the word as some people suggest?  Or did He mean very good at fulfilling its purpose?  The Greek word in the LXX is kalos, which suggests the latter.  It is primarily used to portray an external or fulfilling goodness.  Consider the Hebrew phrase as well.  The phrase tov meod is found four times in the OT (Judg. 18:9; and Jer. 24:2-3).  In the Book of Judges, five valiant warriors from the Tribe of Dan set out for Laish to spy on that land to take it as part of their inheritance.  When they came back to report, they urged their fellow Danites to take the land saying, “we have seen the land (erets), and behold (hinneh), it is very good (tovah meod).”  This phrasing sounds very similar to Genesis 1.  First, we see that erets is properly translated as the local term “land” rather than the nonsensical global “earth”.  Second we have an attention getting hinneh.  This is followed by the phrase very good.  What did the Danites consider the land to be?  Surely not an unblemished, perfect tract of land with no possibility of an earthquake, volcano or anything else that might prove detrimental to human life.  No, rather the land was fit for them to call home, it was “spacious” and “there is no lack of anything" (Judg. 18:10).

Furthermore, the Apostle Paul says in 1Tim. 4:4 that “everything created by God is good (kalos).”  Specifically referring to the institution of marriage and to food, Paul says that these things (and everything else which God created) are good.  Paul does not mention that these were once good and because of man’s sin they ceased being good when God cursed them.  No, the Bible teaches that God’s Creation WAS and IS good.  Again, the word kalos refers to a useful or outwardly-appearing goodness.  Paul certainly felt that the things God created were still good in his day.

Therefore since the Bible teaches that Creation is still good at the present, we should be careful not to read more into Scripture than what is truly there.  Despite their great contributions to the Church, men like Luther, Calvin, Wesley and their modern day followers have failed to realize the real-world implications of their stance on the “goodness” of God’s Creation.  It seems their lack of knowledge about how God’s Creation works led them to a faulty understanding of His Word.  A world without the so-called natural evils of earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides, tides, etc… is not a “good” world: it is a dead world.  These are all consequences of plate tectonics.  These natural processes are largely responsible for things like fertile soils, ore deposits, accumulations of oil and natural gas among other things.  Without plate tectonics we would have little to none of the above mentioned products.  We can either view them as products of sin or the long-term provision of God.

The implications of the interpretation I have laid out are thus: 1.) with the existence of plate tectonics in the original Creation there is a possibility of animal death via an earthquake or volcanic eruption or some other catastrophe, 2:) if plate tectonics and animal death occurred before the Fall and the Flood then we would expect hydrocarbon accumulations before the Flood (and this is a biblical fact in Genesis 6:14 (pitch: LXX-asphaltos – a biodegraded oil), and 3:) if these circumstances existed before Adam’s sin then it follows that the natural world was largely unaffected by the Curse of Genesis 3.  These implications may be hard to swallow for some, but I believe the teaching of Scripture is clear.  There is no possible way to fathom a “very good” world that did not contain such natural phenomena without creating a mystical fairy tale world in which the following are impossible: a sheep falling off a cliff and dying, a fruit fly being swallowed by a larger animal, an ant being stepped on, rainwater collecting and slurrying down the side of a hill and drowning an insect, a fish being trapped on a shoal as the tide goes out and suffocating, etc...  Such situations just happen.  There is no need to think that they only happen because of sin.  There is no biblical basis for that position.  Creation is still “very good."  Only a “very good” Creation can clearly display the divine attributes of the Creator “since the creation of the world” (Rom. 1:20).