What is old earth creationism?

That a long gap, of as many thousands of years as were necessary for the formation of the earth's crust, may be placed between verses 1 and 2 of Gen. 1. That Gen. 1:1 refers to the original creation of the heaven and earth out of nothing; that the different beds were formed with the varying objects that are found therein as fossils, occupying a very long period. Then in Gen. 1:2 another condition is found: the earth by some means had become without form and void.* It was then ordered in view of the creation of man; and the various things were arranged and formed in the six days as detailed in Gen. 1, as they are now found in and on the earth.

The other theory is that Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2 refer to the formation of the earth as matter, or that Gen. 1:1 refers to the creation of the earth, and that Gen. 1:2 refers to its being disordered by some means, as in the above theory, but that the various beds were formed with the fossils found therein during the six days recorded in Gen. 1; and that the days were of any needed indefinite length. It has been shown that the first things named as on the earth were grass and herbs, and these are always found in the lowest beds; and the other things created are found exactly in the same order upwards from the lowest, until man appears. These, in short, form three divisions: plants in the lowest beds; reptiles in the middle; mammals in the highest, with man the most recent. It is also asserted that no break has been discovered, as would be the case if after the beds had been formed destruction had come in, and an entirely new work of creation had begun again in what is recorded in Gen. 1. Many of the existing species are contemporaneous with those that we know have ceased to exist. It is maintained that the term 'day' is often used for indefinite periods of time in scripture, and therefore may be so in Gen. 1; that they refer to God's days, and not to natural days, seeing that 'the evening and the morning' are spoken of before the sun, which naturally causes the evening and morning. Also that it is not consistent to hold that God's rest on the seventh day only alluded to 24 hours.† It is true that the introduction of sin marred God's rest; but this is not there contemplated.

There remains the third, and as I believe, the really sound meaning of the chapter: in that it leaves room for all that God wrought, however protracted the time that elapsed between the "beginning" and the "six days" in successive acts of God in construction and catastrophe: cognisable by men of science, and left for their discovery in due time, but entirely outside the scope of revelation. The first two verses give the principle of creation and of chaos for the earth, the one as necessary as the other for man when created, not only to learn the facts from the earth's crust but to use the results according to God's beneficent provision. Thus scripture departs not from its supreme design and character, nor encumbers itself with teaching science which is man's pride. But it is untrue that it commits itself to "false science" or unreliable history, or any other insinuation of infidels. Hence, as in a scripture not poetic in any way but the simplest prose attributed to God by as true a saint as ever lived, there is no ground to doubt that the "six days" are literal, as "the evening and the morning" seems expressly meant to convey.

The evident immediateness of the first day's work applies throughout the other days. Whatever grounds there may be for scientific men to infer processes occupying vast tracts of time before the "days," there is no real reason to doubt, but plain and positive scripture to believe, that the work done on the several six days was not of long ages, but really within the compass of the literal evening and morning. How unnatural to suppose an age for light to act on the first day! And why suppose otherwise on the second day or any other? A long succession of ages may be true after "the beginning" and before "the days," which taken in their natural import have a striking moral harmony with man, the last work of God's creation-week.

In this way there is no contest between long periods of progressive character and successive acts of marked brevity. On the one hand, the record is so written as to leave ample space for the researches of scientific discovery over the evidence of successive states of the earth before man existed; on the other, details under the shape of divine fiats in the six days appear only when man is about to be created. There is thus truth in both views. The mistake is in setting them in opposition. One can understand, if God so willed it, immense times of physical action, with secondary causes in operation before man, not without the evidence of convulsion far beyond volcanoes or the deluge within the human period, which great geologists at home and abroad admit, contrary to the recent speculations of others. But there are those that feel the gracious (not belittling) condescension of God in deigning to work for six days and rest on the seventh, only when getting ready that earth where was, not only the first man to come under His moral government, but the Second man later to glorify God to the uttermost, give to such as believe eternal life, and prove the worthlessness of all who reject His grace and repent not of their sins; the true and intelligible and blessed reason why this earth, so insignificant in bulk when compared with the vast universe of God, has a position in His favour so transcending all other planets, suns, or systems, put together. If man was much to differentiate the earth, Christ is infinitely more: and He has yet to show what the earth and man on it are to be under His glorious kingdom, to say nothing of the heavens according to His grace and the counsels of God.

The antiquity of the earth may be as great as the shifting schemes of the most enthusiastic geologist ever conceived: there is absolutely neither here nor in any other part of scripture the least intimation that opposes vast ages before man was created, or that affirms man to be nearly contemporary with the original creation. It is ignorance of scripture to say that Moses assigns an epoch to the earth's first formation, such as fathers or commentators (not without worthier remarks) have imagined and made current in Christendom. The philosophers who have spent their time in the study of geology and kindred sciences will act wisely in reading with unwonted care the beginning of Gen. 1. They will thence learn that they have been precipitate in the conclusion that the inspired writing is at all committed to the blunders of its interpreters, theological or scientific. However vast the periods they claim, even for the strata nearest the surface, scripture is the sole record which, while revealing God as the Creator of all things, leaves room for all that has been wrought before the Adamic earth. "The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary: there is no searching of his understanding" (Isa. 40:28). While geology waits for its Newton, subjection to scripture meanwhile would be untold gain to its devotees as to all other men.

Yet the days being literal does not at all forbid the thought that the geological periods may be represented — find their type and similitude in the literal days. And the researches of geologists have really developed such a correspondence. They have shown us in the periods (1) the earth brought up from under the waters; (2) a progress in the development of life upon it; (3) man as the end of this progressive series. Thus the different views are not contradictory, save as they assume, on either side, to be exclusive of the other. It is quite according to what we know of the divine working, that the six days, though really that, should exhibit the same plan as the strata have disclosed to us. There is here a testimony to the truth of the record which challenges the reverence and faith of the true inquirer.

But, in creating, God created not a confused and disorderly mass; He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. The heavens, in fact, were never thrown into confusion — the earth was, as we see in Gen. 1:2; but this was after the beginning: how long is not said. Thousands or millions of years may have elapsed. It answered no moral end to reveal what science would investigate or conjecture. Only it is revealed, as befitting the divine character, that He is not a God — not a creator — of confusion. The confusion of the earth was subsequent, the reason or cause being unexplained as the interval or the history. The fact is distinctly revealed; and nobody would have failed to discern it, if philosophers had not misled the divines who are vain of standing well with the men of science. Geologists differ fundamentally to this day: some insisting on catastrophes, followed by renewals; others contending for continuous action of forces gradually operating. If there be a measure of truth in both, scripture leaves room for all, without straining the six days, which are wholly distinct from the immense ages that preceded man.

Geology would be for us but an enlargement of the first verse of the book of Genesis: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"; and the successive days in which the earth,which had been reduced to a formless void, was prepared to be the abode of man as head over the beautiful creation, will be found also to suggest those vast geologic periods which were connected with the original formation of the world.

Further, Principal Griffith-Jones says that geology has superseded the Mosaic programme of the creation of the world in six days. But the Bible never says it took six days to create the world. The creation of the world is stated in Genesis 1:1. There may have been millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the chapter, and geologists are welcome to all the time they demand for the formation of the rocks in their present order. The six days, whether literal days or long periods of time, were periods of re-construction.

For many years it has been appreciated by many Christians that the geological record is very largely one of the cataclysmic global flood as described in Genesis and referred to elsewhere in the Scriptures e.g. 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 2 Peter 3:3-6. (Men do not oppose long ages or a pre-creation view as such, they oppose any idea of 'God' and of 'judgment' as in Noah's flood.) Clearly such a flood would have left the remains of all types of life sorted by type in sediments soon hardened into rock. The earth in Genesis 1:1 was 'unformed and unfilled' — it is not necessary to understand it as 'wrecked'. These pre-creation ideas introduce even greater theological difficulties such as death before sin, and death operating where God had stated that all that He had made was very good. The fact that fossil creatures are either identical to modern creatures, including apes and men, or of a similar nature, point to the first creation pre-flood scene. It should also be mentioned that a long ages world view introduces more scientific difficulties than it seeks to solve, e.g. features of the universe which could not be as we now see them if there had been the long ages which are mooted. This is not the place to expand on this, but there is much literature available on the subject, both scriptural and scientific. Ed. STEM.]