Tim Keller rejects the view of Richard Dawkins who “argues that you cannot be an intelligent scientific thinker and still hold religious beliefs.” But Keller believes the view of a six twenty-four-hour day creation is “fortunately…losing credibility with a growing number of scholars.” In both Dawkins’ and Keller’s view, science has undermined the interpretation of Scripture. Keller even says, “There is no necessary disjunction between science and devout faith.” Keller repudiates the literal interpretation of Genesis one and two in order to believe in theistic evolution: “it is false logic to argue that if one part of Scripture can’t be taken literally then none of it can be.” The theologians who hold to the different forms of theistic evolution contradict themselves in rejecting the creation of the universe in six twenty-four-hour days in order to accommodate the science of atheistic evolution.
The reigning Baptist theologian from the late 1800’s to Millard Erickson was Augustus Strong. He was a staunch conservative for the fundamentals of the faith. Strong, however, had his problems. He did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture nor in a six twenty-four day creation.
Millard Erickson, who replaced Strong as the reigning Baptist theologian, is a progressive creationist. Both Strong and Erickson believe God used the process of evolution to varying degrees. Strong believed that God used evolution to a greater degree than Erickson: “Evolution is only the method of God.” In Strong’s view, evolution brought brute beast to a certain development and then God miraculously intervened and created a soul in Adam, the first man. “We are compelled, then, to believe that God’s ‘breathing into man’s nostrils the breath of life’ (Gen. 2:7), though it was a mediate creation as presupposing existing material in the shape of animal forms, was yet an immediate creation in the sense that only a divine reinforcement of the process of life turned the animal into man” (Systematic Theology, pages 466-467). So, according to Strong, evolution provided the body and God the soul.
As a progressive creationist, Erickson, believes that “between these special acts of creation, development took place through the channels of evolution. For example, it is possible that God created the first member of the horse family.” In regard to man, unlike theistic evolutionists, Erickson believes that “when the time came for man to be brought into existence, God made him directly and completely, God did not make him out of some lower creature. Rather, both the physical and spiritual nature of man were specially created by God.”
Erickson argues against the theistic evolutionary view that the “dust” of Gen. 2:7 cannot be literal dust but must be symbolic for already existing creatures. Here is how Strong explains “dust” in Gen. 2:7: “The ‘dust’ before the breathing of the spirit into it, may have been animated dust” (page 465). Also from other statements of Strong the dust must have been evolved animals before God breathed into them and the animal became the first man. Erickson presents a good argument against this allegorical interpretation of Scripture. “The word dust occurs not only in Genesis 2:7 but also in 3:19, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ If we understand it in 2:7 to represent an already existing creature, we are faced with two choices: either the meaning of the term must be different in 3:19 (and in 3:14 as well), or we have the rather ludicrous situation that upon death one reverts to an animal. It should be noted that in those severe degenerative cases where a person becomes virtually subhuman, the change occurs prior to actual death. It would be better, then, to let the reference to dust in 3:19 (the clearer) interpret that in 2:7 (the less clear)” (Christian Theology, Vol. 2 page 483).
And yet, Erickson does not hold to a literal interpretation of “dust.” “The Bible tells us that God made man from the ‘dust’ of the ground. This dust need not be actual physical soil. It may be some elementary pictorial representation which was intelligible to the first readers” (Christian Theology, Vol. 2 page 482). To use Erickson’s logic against theistic evolution’s rejection of the literal meaning of “dust” then at death we do not return to actual physical soil but to some pictorial representation of death. Why cannot we just read the Word of God in the normal sense of language and except what it says? It is this refusal to take God’s Word at face value that has led to theistic evolution, progressive creationism and the age/day theory.
Gleason Archer, who believes in theistic evolution, in his discussion of Genesis has a section entitled Genesis 1 and Modern Scientific Evidence. In this section, he writes “From a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impression received is that the entire creative process took place in six twenty-four-days. If this was the true intent of the Hebrew author (a questionable deduction, as will be presently shown), this seems to run counter to modern scientific research, which indicates that the planet Earth was created several billion years ago” (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, page 181). Just because modern science contradicts the plain sense of Scripture, the literal interpretation of God’s Word is abandoned.
Science at times has been wrong, as Wayne Grudem reminds us: “For example, when the Italian astronomer Galileo (1564-1642) began to teach that the earth was not the center of the universe but that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun (following the theories of the Polish astronomer Copernicus (1472-1543), he was criticized, and eventually his writings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church….Galileo was forced to recant his teachings and had to live under house arrest for the last few years of his life” (Systematic Theology, page 273).
Ken Ham, who is with Answers in Genesis, in a taped lecture, tells about two Sunday school girls who were discussing the six days of creation and one asked the other, “Why did God take so long?” How would you answer that Sunday schooler? Six days were a long time for our all powerful God of the universe to create everything. Could not God have created the universe in six seconds, or six minutes, or in six hours? Why did God take six days? The answer is in Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:15-18. These two passages argue for six literal 24 hours days of creation and not ages. Just as God took six literal solar days to create the universe and then rested on the seventh, he has commanded us to labor six days and rest one. If God interprets Genesis one and two literally, why cannot we?
