Mark Noll declared that Creationism originated with a false teacher, Ellen White: “[Creationism] has spread like wildfire in our century from its humble beginnings in the writings of Ellen White, the founder of Seventh-day Adventism, to its current status as a gospel truth embraced by tens of millions of bible believing evangelicals and fundamentalist.”[1] Actually, Creationism originated with Moses in Genesis 1-2 and was confirmed by Jesus in Mark 10:6-7 and Paul in 1 Timothy 2:13-14. In a previous post on this subject, I document that the early Church Fathers (click to open) also advocated six twenty-four days of creation six thousand years ago. But let's move on to the Reformers who taught six twenty-four days of creation six thousand years ago.
To start with Martin Luther (1483-1546) is only reasonable. Dr. John George Walch, in his preface to Luther’s Commentary on Genesis, wrote that “Luther began this work at Wittenberg in his lectures to the university students in 1536, and ended it after ten years of labor, Nov. 17, 1545, only a few months before his death.”[2] Not only was Genesis important to Luther, but the historical-grammatical interpretation was important. Luther, in his Introduction to Genesis, wrote: From Moses, however, we know that 6000 years ago the world did not exist .... Hilary and Augustine, two great lights in the church, believed that the world was made of a sudden and all at once, not successively during the space of six days... With respect, therefore, to this opinion of Augustine, we conclude that Moses spoke literally and plainly and neither allegorically nor figuratively; that is, he means that the world with all creatures was created in six days as he himself expresses it.[3] The issue with Luther was not a debate of old earth versus young earth but nanoseconds versus literal days. Earth.
Second-generation Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) taught a young earth created out of nothing: “We are drawn away from all fictions to the one God who distributed his work into six days that we might not find it irksome to occupy our whole life in contemplating it .... From this history we shall learn that God by the power of his Word and Spirit created heaven and earth out of nothing .... albeit the duration of the world, now declining to its ultimate end, has not yet attained six thousand years.”[4]
John Diodati (1576-1649) was the successor to Theodore Beza as the professor of theology at Geneva, Switzerland. He was also one of the six divines who wrote the Canons of Dort in 1619. He reflected the views of Calvin and Beza on creation when he wrote, “It is likely that the light was at first imprinted in some part of the heaven, whose turning Sun, or of all the other stars; but in a different degree.”[4] He also wrote that God “ended the work of Creation on the seventh day ... by this rest God would not proceed in infinitum in creating, so would he not leave anything imperfect which he intended to make.”[5]
Francis Turretin (1623 -1687) was a professor of systematic theology at the Geneva Academy, which was founded in 1559 by Calvin. Turretin wrote Institutes of Elenctic Theology which was the standard text for systematic theology for two hundred years. It was finally replaced by Charles Hodges’ systematic theology in English because Turretin’s was written in Latin. Turretin wrote that “Nor does the sacred history written by Moses cover any more than six thousand years.”[6]
The Impact of Modern Geology
These views of creation and the age of the earth were the prevailing views until about 200 years ago when geology became an accepted science. Early geologists advocated a young earth and global Flood. Examples are Niels Steensen (1638-1686), John Woodware (1665-1722), Alexander Catcott (1725-1779), and Johann Lehmann (1719-1767). Neils Steensen (1638–1686) “in his geological book, The Proromus to a Dissertation Concerning Solids Naturally Contained within Solids (1669) proposed the now widely accepted principle of superposition. This states that sedimentary layers were deposited in a successive, essentially horizontal fashion, so that a lower stratum was deposited before (and is therefore older than) the one above it. He expressed belief in a roughly 6,000-year-old earth [in a footnote Terry Mortenson noted that Steensen ‘held to Ussher’s date of 4004 B.C. for creation.’] and that the global Noachian Flood deposited most of the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers.”[7]
One of the most influential geologists to deny a young earth and the universal Flood was Charles Lyell (1797-1875). His three-volume Principles of Geology was very influential: “His theory was a radical uniformitarianism in which he insisted that only present-day processes of geological change at present-day rates of intensity and magnitude should be used to interpret the rock record of past geological activity. In other words, geological processes of change have been uniform throughout earth history. No continental or global catastrophic floods have ever occurred, insisted Lyell .... The catastrophist theory [there had occurred local floods but not a global flood] had greatly reduced the geological significance of Noah’s Flood and expanded earth history well beyond the traditional biblical view .... Lyell’s work was simply the final blow for belief in the Flood.”[8] Lyell was antagonistic toward Scripture: “I have always been strongly impressed with the weight of an observation of an excellent writer and skillful geologist who said that ‘for the sake of revelation as well as of science --- of truth in every form --- the physical part of Geological inquiry ought to be conducted as if the Scripture were not in existence.”[9]
Specifically, Lyell opposed the writing of Moses which obviously contained the Scriptural geology of the Flood. Lyell corresponding to another geologist, wrote, “I conceived the idea five or six years ago, that if ever the Mosaic geology could be set down without giving offence, it would be in an historical sketch, and you must abstract mine, in order to have as little to say as possible yourself.”[10]
Lyell influenced Charles Darwin: A remark of Charles Darwin (1801-1882) shows how brilliantly Lyell succeeded: “The very first place which I examined ... showed me clearly the wonderful superiority of Lyell’s manner of treating geology, compared with that of any other author, whose work I had with me or ever afterwards read.” During completion of a major revision of the Principles of Geology in 1865 did he fully adopt Darwin’s conclusions.”[11] Contrast the Scriptural geologists who believed in the supernatural creation out of nothing, a universal flood and in the authority of Scripture with the secular geologist, like Lyell, who denied the supernaturalism with his acceptance of Darwinian evolution, the global flood, and wrote to undermine Scripture.
The results of rejecting the grammatical-historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11 is seen in the journey of Davis Young. Young evolved from believing in a global, tranquil Flood that affected no geological change, according to Young. Young espoused this view in his 1977 book Creation and the Flood. By 1992, Young was denying the historicity of Genesis 1-11: “Interpretation of Genesis 1 through 11 as factual history does not mesh with the emerging picture of the early history of the universe and of humanity that has been deciphered by scientific investigation.”[12]
The Impact of Rejecting Creationism
Conservative scholars like Walter Kaiser have documented that Genesis 1-11 is historical by noting that Genesis 1-11 contain “64 geographical terms, 88 personal names, 48 generic names and at least 21 identifiable cultural items.”[13] Also, in Genesis 1-11 the introductory formula “These are the generations of” is used in 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10; and 11:27. This same formula is also found five more times in the second half of Genesis (25:12: 25:19; 36:1; 36:9; and 37:2) revealing that the same author recorded not only the historical characters of Adam and Noah in the first eleven chapters of Genesis but also the historical characters of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph in the second half of Genesis.
One more tragedy resulting from a rejection of biblical creationism for evolution is Charles Templeton (1915–2001). Charles Templeton was a friend and fellow evangelists of Billy Graham. They met in 1945. For more than twenty years, Charles Templeton was a major figure in the church in Canada and the United States. During the 1950s, he and Billy Graham were the two most successful exponents of mass evangelism in North America. Templeton spoke nightly to stadium crowds of up to thirty thousand people.
He was generally acknowledged to be the most versatile of the new young evangelists. Templeton soon rose to prominence, even surpassing the dynamic young preacher, Billy Graham. In 1946, Templeton was listed among those best used of God by the National Association of Evangelicals.[14]
Newspapers and magazines carried reports of his meetings informing readers he was winning 150 converts a night. In Evansville, Indiana, the total attendance over the two-week campaign was 91,000 out of a population of 128,000. Church attendance went up 17%.[15]
Terry Mortenson shared that Templeton developed questions about evolution. He went to Princeton Seminary in the late 1940s looking for answers. But by that time this seminary, where the orthodox Charles Hodge, A.A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield had once taught, was immersed in liberal theology. Templeton’s professors convinced him that he must accept evolution and millions of years, thereby destroying his faith in the foundational book of the Bible and undermining his faith in the gospel. After seminary, he preached for a few more years. But finally, his shattered faith forced him to leave the ministry and go into journalism. He died in 2001 as a miserable atheist. But in 1996 he published Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. At the conclusion of that book he wrote, “I believe that there is no supreme being with human attributes — no God in the biblical sense — but that life is the result of timeless evolutionary forces, having reached its present transient state over millions of years.”[16]
To depart from the biblical teaching in Genesis and also from so many of the Reformers can have catastrophic consequences. Most tragically the denial of creation ex nihilo and a universal flood as described in Genesis 6-8 robs God of his glory as declared in Psalm 33:6-9: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made: and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth .... For he spoke, and
[1] Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids: Mi, 1994, 13).
[2] ] Martin Luther, A Critical and Devotional Commentary on Genesis, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Lutherans in all Lands, Co, 1904, Introduction to MartingLuther, A Critical and Devotional Commentary on Genesis, vol 1.
[3] Introduction to Martin Luther, A Critical and Devotional Commentary on Genesis, vol. 1, n.p.
[4] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, J. T. McNeill, ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.14.2., 20, 1: 160.
[5] John Diodati, Pious Annotations Upon the Holy Bible, (London, 1643).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vol. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterians and Reformed, 1992, reprint of 1679-1685 original and edited by James T. Dennison 1:438.
[8] Before 1750, one of the most important geological thinkers was Niels Steensen (1638–1686), or Steno, a Dutch anatomist and geologist. In his geological book The Prodromus to a Dissertation Concerning Solids Naturally Contained within Solids (1669) he proposed the now widely accepted principle of superposition. This states that sedimentary layers were deposited in a successive, essentially horizontal fashion, so that a lower stratum was deposited before (and is therefore older than) the one above it. He expressed belief in a roughly 6,000-year-old earth2 and that the global Noachian Flood deposited most of the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers (Terry Mortenson, Coming to Grips with Genesis (p. 81). (Function). Kindle Edition. Terry Mortenson “Deep Time” and the Church’s Compromise: Historical Background” in Coming to Grips with Genesis, Green Forest: Master Books, 2008, 81).
[9] Ibid., 85
[10] Martin J. S. Rubwick, “Charles Lyell Speaks in the Lecture Theatre,” The British Journal of the History of Science, 9.32 (1976), 150.
[11] Katherine M. Lyell, life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart, (London: John Murry, 1881), 1:268-271.
[12] Richard W. Macomber, “Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist” in Britannica n.d. n.p.
[13] Davis Young, “The Harmonization of Scripture and Science” (1990 Wheaton symposium) quoted by Terry Mortenson in “Deep Time” and the Church’s Compromise: Historical Background” in Coming to Grips with Genesis, 101.
[14] Walter Kaiser, “The Literary Form of Genesis 1-11,” in New Perspectives on the Old Testament, J. Barton Payne, ed. (Waco: Word, 1970), 59.
[15] W. Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story, , (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1991), 110.
[16[ Ken Ham and Stacia Byers, The Slippery Slide to Unbelief a Fanous Evangelist goes from hope to Hopelesssnes, Answersingenesis.org, June 2000.
[17] Charles Templeton, Farewell to God (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996), p. 232 quoted by Terry Mortenson Coming to Grips with Genesis (p. 105). Master Books. Kindle Edition. Coming to Grips with Genesis (p. 104). Master Books. Kindle Edition.