Creation Sunday School Series

The Hermeneutics of Genesis 1, Part II
by Matt Powell

1. Alternate Views - Gap Theory
   The Gap theory attempts to reconcile the claims of modern uniformitarianist geology related to the age of the earth with a literal view of the creation days. It inserts millions or billions of years in time between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, and say that 1:2 should read "became" formless and void. It is in this long gap that the rebellion of Satan is said to take place. There was said to be a flood, different than Noah’s flood, that occurred at the end of the age that preceded the six days of Genesis 1, because of great wickedness on earth, and that God restored the earth in Gen.1 to its perfection.
   Problems:
   
   1. No internal textual support for this view. Hard to understand why Moses would have left so much important detail to be inferred, and all hanging on one doubtful reading of one word.
   2. No external textual support. A few things are mentioned, such as 1 Peter 3:5, for support, but examination of these issues shows them to be specious at best.
   3. Fundamentally an isogetical reading. This reading is driven by the belief in the long age of the earth, not by internal textual considerations.
   4. Does not reconcile with Darwinistic requirements, since Darwinism has man on earth for many thousands of years.
2. Alternate Views - Long-day theory
   Requires a flexible reading of "day", or yom. For this theory to hold water, "day" needs to be able to mean virtually any period of time. As we saw last week, day can never be used in this way, and when used with cardinal numbers, never means anything but a literal day. Once again, this view also does not satisfy the demands of Darwin, since the sequences are all wrong.
   
3. Alternate Views - Liberal readings
   There are many views to the text proposed by liberal or neo-liberal thinkers (Ramm, Bultmann, Barth) that have, as their common point, the idea that Moses was a pre-modern thinker writing to other pre-modern thinkers, and God was revealing His creative act in terms that a pre-modern thinker could understand. It was, essentially, mythology, bearing relationships to the creation myths of other societies around them. Such a view is not likely to be too appealing to a Reformed Christian, but the obvious problem is that it therefore renders all of the history of the Bible suspect, and calls into question the veracity of God. Another obvious problem with this view is that there were premodern thinkers (Hindus) with a cosmology far closer to Darwinism than what God revealed to Moses.