The 10 Things You Should Know About the Creation vs. Evolution Debate (7 page)

The gap theory sounds like a great story! It is full of interesting drama. However, many biblical scholars have raised serious objections to the theory.

1. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-2 does not allow for a gap.
Verse one is an independent clause. Verse two is composed of
three circumstantial clauses (that is, clauses that explain the
"circumstances" of the earth when God began to create). No
grammatical break exists between verses 1 and 2. Further,
Genesis 1 provides no context of judgment.

2. Genesis 3:17-19 indicates that Adam's fall, not Satan's,
resulted in the judgment of the earth. God said to Adam,
"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you
will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and
thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field."

3. The gap theory depends on the phrase "formless and void"
meaning "evil" or "the result of judgment." Such a conclusion
is unwarranted. Notice that the usage of the Hebrew word tohu
(emptiness) in job 26:7 does not support the idea of intrinsic
judgment: "He [God] spreads out the northern [skies] over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing." (Space can be utterly
empty without being evil!)

In the same way, the use of tohu (emptiness) in Isaiah 45:18
does not connote judgment: "For this is what the LORD sayshe who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and
made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty,
but formed it to be inhabited." This verse is perfectly compatible with the traditional understanding of creation. That is, God
first created the "stuff" of the earth, and then molded it into
shape so it could be inhabited. Just as a potter first gets a glob
of clay and then molds it into shape, so God created a "glob"
of (empty) earth material and then molded it into a beautiful
planet, fit for habitation.

4. The argument that Genesis 1:2 should be translated "the
earth became without form and empty" is unwarranted. The
Hebrew word hayetha can be translated this way, but this usage
is rare in the Old Testament, and hayetha should not be translated this way without compelling evidence to do so. Only 22
occasions out of 1522 usages of the word in the Old Testament
use this translation.'° In the Pentateuch (the first five books of
the Bible), hayetha is translated "was" in 258 out of 264
instances." Clearly, the word should usually be translated as
"was." All of the standard translations of the Bible render Genesis
1:2, "the earth was without form and empty."

5. The argument that the presence of darkness in Genesis
1:2 ("darkness was over the surface of the deep") necessarily indicates sin and judgment is not persuasive. For example, Psalm
104:20 says of God: "You bring darkness, it becomes night, and
all the beasts of the forest prowl." This verse has no hint of darkness being evil. Context always determines how the word darkness should be understood, and Genesis 1 has no hint of sin or
judgment.

6. If the gap theory were correct, then God's estimate of the
created earth as being "very good" (Genesis 1:31) would not make much sense. After all, Adam would have been walking
on an earth in which untold numbers of animals and perhaps
pre-Adamites had died and been buried. As John Whitcomb
notes, Adam would have been walking upon a graveyard of
billions of creatures.12 And this earth would have already been
the judged domain of the fallen Lucifer. All this hardly seems
"very good."

7. Scripture plainly states that God created everything in six
days. In Exodus 20:11 we read, "For in six days the LORD made
the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but
he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the
Sabbath day and made it holy" (italics added). Since everything
the Lord created was done in six days, that leaves no room for
God to have engaged in a previous creation.

Progressive creationism is the idea that God created directly
and deliberately via a series of creative acts over very long periods of time. The "days" of Genesis are not consecutive twentyfour-hour days but are ages or epochs, or perhaps literal days
that marked only the beginning of successive long creative periods." Some of these various creative periods may have overlapped
with each other to a certain degree.14 This view has been held
by such well-known Christians as Eric Sauer (author of King
of the Earth), Davis Young (author of Creation and the Flood.
An Alternative to Flood Geology), and Reformed scholar James
Boice.

According to progressive creationism, life on earth could not
have emerged without intelligent intervention. This view rejects
that idea that macroevolution can account for "the increasing
complexity and relatively abrupt appearance of new life-forms
in the fossil record." They propose that "the scientific evidence
is more compatible with the hypothesis that God acted miraculously several times throughout biological history.""

Progressive creationists typically argue that God created the
first member of each "kind," and from that first kind others
developed via evolution. They are careful to note that they accept
only microevolution (evolution within species)." As theologian
Millard Erickson explains it, "God may have created the first
member of the cat family. From it developed lions, tigers, leopards, and just plain pussycats."" God would then create another
"kind" (such as dogs), and from this first creation many varieties evolved. God would later create perhaps a horse "kind,"
and from that would evolve all kinds of different horses. One
progressive creationist gives this explanation: "We think God's
activity in creation occurred in a progression-a number of steps
over a long period of time.""

When God finally decided to create man, God created him
directly and completely. God did not take a creature that
already existed (some kind of prehuman life-form) and then
mold him into a human. Rather, God created him "from the
ground up" both physically and spiritually. (As we will see, this
serves to distinguish progressive creationism from theistic evolution.)

This means that God interspersed several special acts of
creation at strategic points throughout a long evolutionary
process." Those who hold to this viewpoint are able to say that
they believe in creationism, but they're also able to say they
believe in evolution-at least to a degree.

Progressive creationists are open about the fact that they have
a high view of science. They are generally willing to reinterpret
Scripture if some new scientific discovery makes a previous
understanding of Scripture untenable. So, for example, in view
of the apparent antiquity of the earth, they interpret Scripture
in a way that allows for a long period of creation, turning the
"days" of Genesis into long periods.20 Progressive creationists
suggest, "Ultimately, responsible geology must determine the
length of the Genesis days, even as science centuries earlier settled the issue of the rotation of the earth about the sun. "2'They say
that "in this sort of scheme, we can get a very nice correlation
between the creation account in Genesis and a reasonable model
for the earth's origin as commonly proposed by astronomy and
geology. "22

Progressive creationists find theological support for the
idea that the "days" in Genesis are long periods of time. For
example, in Genesis 2:4 (iqv), day refers to the entire time frame
during which God created. In job 20:28, "day" refers to the time
of God's wrath. In Psalm 20:1 (KJv), "day" refers to a time of
trouble. Moreover, in 2 Peter 3:8 we are told, "With the Lord
a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a
day" (see also Psalm 90:4). Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A.
Demarest argue that yom, the Hebrew word for day, can be translated as "time," "year," and "age," among other meanings, and
therefore can lexically refer to a long period of time.23 In addition, the sun was not created until the fourth day of creation,
so the first three days certainly couldn't have been literal twentyfour-hour "solar" days. Also, God "rested" on the seventh day
(Genesis 2:2), and since that rest continues even to the present
today (Hebrews 4:3), the seventh day must involve a long period
of time (and so all seven days must be ages). Still further, the
events that took place during the sixth day of creation would
have taken far longer than a single twenty-four-hour day.24 (For
example, Adam's naming of the animals must have taken more
than one day.)

Progressive creationists recognize that the genealogies contained in Genesis seem to prohibit long ages. However, they
argue that genealogies in the Bible often had gaps in them, and
therefore more time is allowed for than a strict literal reading
of Genesis would seem to indicate.

Typically, they deny that the flood of Noah's day was a
universal flood, opting instead for a local flood confined to the
Mesopotamian area. They argue that the Bible sometimes employs universal terms when, in fact, only a limited meaning
is possible (see for example, Genesis 41:57; Deuteronomy 2:25;
1 Kings 18:10; Psalm 22:17; Matthew 3:5; John 4:39). "The
universality of the flood may simply mean the universality of
experience of those who reported it. "25

1. Progressive creationists have found themselves on the
receiving end of strong criticism from both young-earth creationists and evolutionists. Evolutionists, for example, say that this
theory is simply postulating a "God of the gaps"-that is,
progressive creationists appeal to God as Creator of a new species
whenever the fossil records have a notable gap. God allegedly
steps in from time to time during the process of evolution to
create new life-forms. Evolutionists resist running to God every
time we find scientific difficulties in the fossils. Otherwise, true
science will never get done. By invoking supernatural explanations when natural explanations fail, progressive creationism
leads to a stifling of scientific progress.26

2. Young-earth creationists focus much of their criticism on
the "day-age" theory-the idea that the "days" in Genesis 1 are
actually long periods of time. They point out that the Genesis
account makes reference to evening and morning, indicating
that literal days are meant (Genesis 1:5).27 Professor Charles Ryrie
writes:

The qualifying phrase "evening and morning"
attached to each of the six days of Creation supports
the meaning of the days as twenty-four-hour periods.
Proponents of the day-age idea reply that evening and
morning is a figure of speech for beginning and ending.
Each "evening" saw the completion of the work of that
age which was followed by the "morning" of renewed
activity. But evening and morning, each occurring more than 100 times in the Old Testament, are never used
to mean anything other than a literal evening and literal
morning, ending or beginning a solar day.28

3. We read in Genesis that God created the sun to rule the
day and the moon to rule the night. This would seem to indicate that the "days" were literal solar days (Genesis 1: 16).

4. Solar days seem to be implied in Exodus 20:11, where
we are told that "in six days the LORD made the heavens and
the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the
seventh day."

5. Whenever a number is used with the Hebrew word for
"day" (yom), it always refers to a literal solar day (no exceptions
in the Old Testament). Since God is said to have created the
universe in "six days," literal solar days must be meant.29

6. If Genesis had intended to communicate that God created
during long periods, there was a perfectly acceptable Hebrew
word that would have been ideal to communicate this
concept: olam.30 But this word is not used. Yom is used, and as
noted above, yom with a number always refers to a twenty-fourhour day.

7. Even though 2 Peter 3:8 says, "With the Lord a day is
like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," this
does not give support to the idea that the "days" in Genesis are
periods of time. The verse does not indicate that a day for God
actually lasts a thousand years. Rather it says that a day is like
a thousand years. John Whitcomb suggests that this verse indicates that "God is above the limitations of time in the sense
that he can accomplish in one literal day what nature or man
could not accomplish in a vast period of time, if ever. "31

8. The progressive creationist objection that Adam, during
the sixth day, could not have done what he is reported to have
done in a twenty-four-hour day (such as naming the animals)
is not persuasive. Creationist Henry Morris notes that the "kinds" created by God were likely broader categories than our
modern "species." We are not told how many "kinds" were
involved, but Morris suggests the number was probably less than
a thousand.32

Another factor to keep in mind is that Adam was a newly
created human being who was not subject to the debilitating
effects of the fall and God's judgment. Medical specialists today
tell us that human beings presently use only a small percentage of the brain. Adam, freshly created by God, may well have
had 100 percent mental capacity, so the task at hand would not
have been nearly as challenging for him as it would be for us
today. Further, since Adam was newly created as an adult, God
would have had to instill in Adam's brain a perfect human
language that Adam would have easily used to accomplish his
task.s3

9. The Genesis account indicates that God created Adam
on day six, and Adam lived on through day seven and continued to live in the days that followed. If the days of Genesis were
in fact long ages, how can we reconcile these many thousands
of years with the biblical statement that Adam died at age 930
(Genesis 5:5)?

10. The progressive creationist argument that the seventh
day is still going on today (with God continuing to rest) is not
convincing. Exodus 20:10-11 tells us that the Sabbath day for
the Jews was a literal twenty-four-hour period, and this was
patterned after God's (single) day of rest following the
creation. Citing Hebrews 4:3-4 does not help the progressive
creationist case, for this passage affirms that God "rested" (past
tense) on the seventh day34