A Biblical Theory of Origins

By Joel Settecase / 24 October, 2024

Introduction

God wants us to know the truth about the origin and nature of the world and mankind. He has not left us in the dark; He has given us His written word, Holy Scripture, which contains a good amount of information about our origins. 

God’s word and God’s world are two forms of revelation from God, and it’s important that we see how they are in agreement, rather than disagreement. 

While many thinkers—both inside and outside the church—have tried to pit Scripture against science over the years, believers must recognize that both are valid ways of learning about God. As special revelation, Scripture is normative and authoritative; the truth of the Bible is our fundamental epistemological presupposition (our most basic belief about how we come to know truth). Everything God tells us through creation, outside of the Bible, is called general revelation. Science, when done properly (viz. in accordance with our fundamental trust in Scripture) studies God’s general revelation and can lead to true knowledge about God and His works. 

Special Revelation and General Revelation both come from God, and since God can never contradict Himself, neither can Special and General Revelation contradict each other. Any apparent contradiction reveals a flaw in mankind’s reasoning, or inquiry, or conclusions, but never in God’s revelation.

Understanding our true origins will help us better understand our relationship to God, our place in the world, and our duty to our neighbors. 

There are theories of our origins which make human beings nothing more than random-chance products of material forces acting on matter through an unguided process. There are other theories that, while maintaining that God did create the world, He created it with pain and suffering included, and that He called this situation “very good.” And there are theories which may seem to fit the current scientific consensus regarding the age of the universe or the descent of man from non-human animals, but which contravene biblical teaching. 

Every theory of origins, when its implications are played out, and it is applied to life, will affect how we view God and His word, the world and our place in it, and our own identities and connection to those around us. As Christians we believe that the same God who created us, who loves us, and who redeemed us, is the same God who revealed the story of our creation in the Bible.

Therefore, it is vital that we seek to adopt a thoroughly biblical understanding of our origins, because whatever the Bible says, is going to be not just true, but also revelatory of God’s care for us, purpose for us, and intentions toward us. 

In short, the Bible reveals what God wants us to know about our origins. So, what does the Bible actually say?

What Are the Christian Beliefs About Origins?

Obviously any viewpoint that takes the position that the Bible is wrong (N. B. this is not the same as a position which misinterprets the Bible) is unacceptable for Christians. Among the different positions on origins, there are several that can be held by Christians without crossing over into heresy. 

However, the position that most closely aligns with the most faithful interpretation of Scripture (not to mention the forensic investigation (historical science) is Young Earth Creationism, that is, that God created everything ex nihilo in six literal days, less than 10,000 years ago. Included in this view is the tenet that God created the literal Adam and Eve, our first parents, on Day Six.

Young Earth Creationism Evidence

To establish this position, we will look at the key Scriptural passage detailing human and cosmic origins and seek to determine what their intended meaning is. Following this, we will examine several corroborating passages which provide additional insights. Then, lest we be left with the conclusion that Scripture and science are at odds, we will look at the scientific evidence in favor of Young Earth Creationism. Before we conclude, we will also investigate three competing theories, namely Old Earth Creationism, Theistic Evolutionism, and Naturalistic Evolutionism.

What Is the Doctrine of Genesis 1–11?

In Genesis 1–2 we read of the creation of the world ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), followed by the formation of the various realms that would be inhabited by His creatures (sea creatures and birds, land animals and creeping things, and human beings) and the creation of those creatures themselves. 

Genesis 3–11 tells of the Fall of mankind into sin through disobedience and the corruption of Adam and Eve’s descendents, followed by the global cataclysm we call “Noah’s Flood.” 

A huge question facing Christians who hold to every theory of origins is whether these chapters are meant to be taken as historical fact or poetic myth. Without going deep into a literary comparison between these chapters of Genesis and the pagan myths of other ancient cultures, I will simply say that, based on the purpose and worldview of myths, the Bible is definitively not a myth. Myths, properly speaking, were typological stories rooted in a monist-polytheistic worldview (very different from the worldview of the Bible in which the Lord is supreme and transcendent) which served a religious function through retelling and recitation. The Bible is not a myth. 

Furthermore, these early chapters of Genesis read like history. Yes, there is clearly a literary structure to them, and scholars have wisely pointed this out. However, the structure does not negate the purpose of this portion of Scripture, which apparently was to convey real truth about how God created the World. Ken Ham writes, 

“Genesis 1–11 is history—not poetry, parable, prophetic vision, or mythology. This is seen in the Hebrew verb forms used in Genesis 1 and following, which are characteristic of historical narrative, not poetry. Genesis 1–11 has the same characteristics of historical narrative as Genesis 12–50, most of Exodus, much of Numbers, Joshua 1 and 2 Kings, etc. The early chapters of Genesis name real people, describe real places, and discuss real events in real time. Also, the other biblical authors and Jesus treat Genesis 1–11 (using specific names like Adam, Eve, Noah) as literal history.”

If the Lord intended for Genesis 1–11 to be read and believed as history, then it is history. God is not a liar and is not in the business of deceiving His people (cf. Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2). This concept is reflected in the rest of Scripture, which likewise testifies to the historical validity of the Creation Week. 

What Is the Meaning of Exodus 20:8–11?

Ken Ham calls Exodus 20:8–11 “God’s own commentary on Genesis 1.” That passage reads, 

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 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. 

Ham, along with other Young Earth Creationists, point out that God refers to His own six-day creation work as a basis for His command that Israelites work six days and rest on the seventh. He writes, “If God wanted to say ‘you work six days because I created over six long periods of time,’ He could have said that in Hebrew….” Ham’s analysis seems correct. God is commanding the Israelites an ordinance pertaining to a literal, six-day work week, and He seems to be using the literal, six-day week of creation as a justifying reference. 

Ham goes on to call Exodus 20:11, “an insurmountable brick wall against any  attempt to add millions of years into Genesis 1.” He continues, 

[Millions of years] can’t be inserted into each of the days or between the days or before the days, for the verse says ‘in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them’ (emphasis added). That means that the first day begins in Genesis 1:1 (when God created the earth), not in 1:3 (when He created light), and there was no time before verse 1.

Indeed, the language the Lord uses in Exodus 20:8–11 seems conclusively to give God’s own interpretation of the Creation Week, and He seems to be saying clearly that the Creation Week was, in fact, a real week.

What Is a Chronogenealogy?

A chronogenealogy is a list of ancestors and descendants, giving the age of each father at the time when he begat his respective child(ren). There are several such passages in the Bible, and historians in the past have used these to attempt to calculate the time of creation. We find such chronogenealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. These are corroborated  by 1 Chronicles 1 and other genealogical passages in Scripture. 

There are some issues with trying to use these passages to determine exact times of past events. For example, sons were not necessarily born on their fathers’ birthdays, so for each record of a birth, there is a 365-day window in which that son could have been born. Furthermore, some have argued that the term “begat” could mean “became the ancestor of,” which would indicate that the genealogies are truncated, missing who-knows-how-many names. However, Young Earth Creationists such as Larry Pierce, Ken Ham, and others have demonstrated that there are likely no gaps in the records, and that the purpose of the chronogenealogies really is to give us an exhaustive list of the ancestors, ultimately, of Jesus Christ. 

What Jesus Thought About the Age of the Earth

There are many other passages in Scripture which corroborate a young-earth interpretation of the Creation Week. However, for the present writer the most persuasive passage is Matthew 19:4, where Jesus says (in the ESV), “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female…?” Notice that Jesus says that God created Adam and Eve as male and female “from the beginning.” Jesus viewed Adam and Eve as having existed at the beginning. If millions—or even tens of thousands of years—had passed between the initial creation and the creation of Adam and Eve, then in no way could they be said to have been created at “the beginning.” 

Scientific Evidence for Young Earth Creationism

The Scriptural evidence is primary for Christians. As believers, we subordinate all our scientific inquiry and interpretation of the natural world to our beliefs about the Bible. The Bible is absolutely true; if our scientific conclusions seem to contradict Scripture, then either our science or our understanding of Scripture is wrong. This means that, if we have conclusively made the case for Young Earth Creation from the Bible, and science seems to contradict that, then our science is wrong. 

For our purposes, we will not go into all of the following scientific evidence that corroborates the Young Earth Creationist Position, but they are all worth looking into. 

When you are done looking into those, look into the following information which undercuts the deep-time assumptions and conclusions of alternative theories of origins: 

And if you still want more scientific support for the Young Earth Creationist position, check out this amazing resource from Creation Ministries International, entitled: “Age of the Earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe,” at https://creation.com/age-of-the-earth. 

The point of this section is this: there is a mountain of evidence supporting the position that God created everything ex nihilo in six literal days, less than 10,000 years ago. 

Examining Other Positions

The closest alternative to Young Earth Creationism that still attempts to take Scripture seriously is Old Earth Creationism, best exemplified by Dr. Hugh Ross and his organization Reasons to Believe. Ross has pointed out that, in Scripture, the word for day, yom, can indeed refer to a long period of time or an era. Ross and his ilk also point out that the seventh day appears to still be in effect (see Ross’s article, “The Continuation of Creation Day Seven” here: https://reasons.org/explore/publications/rtb-101/the-continuation-of-creation-day-seven).
Old Earth Creation is certainly a viable option for Christians to hold. That is, holding this position will not cast a person outside the bounds of orthodoxy. Some of its arguments are, at times, rather compelling. 

However, it falls short by failing to interpret Scripture on its own terms. The two key questions for Christians are, What does the Bible say? And What does the Bible mean? Ross and other Old Earth Creationists, not to mention proponents of the kind of Theistic Evolution reflected at the organization Biologos, do not accurately interpret the Bible according to what its human authors (and Divine Author) intended to communicate, and therefore their theories of origins are found wanting. 

This is all in addition to the theological problem of God creating the universe with pain, suffering, and death in the beginning (rather than these being problems introduced by the Fall as Genesis 3, Romans 5 and Romans 8 indicate), as well as the scientific evidence for Young Earth Creationism, which as indicated above is significant.

Conclusion

The true story of our origins matters. Are we the products of time and chance acting on matter through an unguided process? No Christian can affirm this? Going further, can we trust the Bible’s historical writings to give us an accurate account? Can we trust Jesus to tell us the truth about the past? If the Bible is reliable, and every Christian must say that it is, then it is our job to figure out what it says, what it means, and what that means for us. 

If God created the world in the “recent” past (the last 6,000–10,000 years), then the Bible’s historical reporting is indeed reliable, and we can trust what it says happened 2,000 years ago, and what will happen in the future. Namely, we can believe with all our hearts that Jesus Christ, the descendant of Adam and true Son of God, died on the cross for our sins two millennia ago, He rose again, He ascended to the right hand of the Father, and He will come back. This is our hope, and it is absolutely certain. 

Young Earth Creationism is not the only allowable theory of origins that believers can hold, but it is the best. Whichever theory of origins we hold to, this is certain: God is our Creator, Jesus is our Lord and Savior, and God is sovereign over the past, present, and future. 

Worldview, ApologeticsJoel SettecaseCreation, theology, Bible, Young Earth CreationismComment