This article was co-written with Jackson Waters.
Some Christians might think that a universe which originated in a “Big Bang” about 14 billion years ago is a very old universe. In reality, it represents a radical reduction of the age of the universe which many philosophers and scientists though was eternal, at least in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But whether eternal or a mere 14 billion years old, modern speculation about the age of the universe inevitably attempts to flee from the God of the Bible.1
For science to effectively displace theology, it must give a “theory of everything” or a “final theory” that will unite the strands of theoretical physics into a cohesive outlook that, in the words of Steven Weinberg, “will be able to trace the explanations of all natural phenomena to final laws and historical accidents.” This is his “most extreme hope for science.” But there is a problem. Weinberg explains, “Not only is it possible that what we now regard as arbitrary initial conditions may ultimately be deduced from universal laws—it is also conversely possible that principles that we now regard as universal laws will eventually turn out to represent historical accidents.”2
So, we are supposed to explain “all natural phenomena” (for Weinberg that means all that there is) by recourse to “universal laws” and “arbitrary initial conditions” or “historical accidents,” but alas!, we might not be able to distinguish between laws and accidents. Sounds like a bad dream.
Conspicuously absent from scientific speculation about “all that there is” is God himself. In other words, the question and the proposed answers are atheistic to the core. Somehow, determining “all that there is” does not even include a question about the existence of God. This anti-theological science sets the agenda for secular and many Christian discussions of the origin of the universe by assuming its conclusion in the premise. The universe began, we are told, with a Big Bang. What banged? Why did it bang? What was before the bang? Don’t ask!
Most prominent Christians doing science, history, or even Biblical theology, while objecting to the metaphysical and theological presuppositions of their secular counterparts, try to fit their work within a chronological framework provided by atheistic science, not to mention a large part of its scientific conclusions about the world. Stephen Meyer does suggest reasons for doubting Darwin, and David Berlinski believes that Darwin can be denied.3 But in most of Evangelicalism, Darwin must be given his credit. In other words, most evangelical Biblical scholars are reluctant to oppose Darwin head-on, even if they deny secular naturalism.
John Walton is a good example of contemporary evangelical scholarship in this regard. On the one hand, he insists that there can be no separation of a “natural” world from the Creator God or his activity while also insisting that the Bible does not give us an account of the origin of the material world. Discussion of the Bible’s chronology is notably absent from his work.4
It is true, the Bible is not trying to teach science, and the biblical and modern scientific worldviews are fundamentally different. That is not, however, the signal for a truce but a call for a worldview debate. Research and speculation relating the Bible to a theistic science is important for Christians to mature in their faith.
In 1989, James Jordan proposed that we insist on the embarrassing reality of biblical chronology.5 For Jordan, it is not enough for Christians to confess that God created the world, nor is it enough for Christians to confess that God created the world in six literal days in relatively recent history. Christians who believe the Bible to be God’s inspired Word must also confess that its chronology, so deeply embedded in the structure of Biblical revelation, is also inerrant and true. The biblical testimony has theological as well as historical value.
Chronology is the backbone of history; nothing in history makes sense without placing it in its context on the timeline. The same is true of the Bible. Jordan notes that the Bible’s chronology of the world from Adam to Jesus provides Christians with the Christian backbone to history from Creation. Of course, the embarrassing aspect of this is that the Bible’s chronology is extremely short compared to the Ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, the 19th century perspective of an eternal universe, or the present prevailing view that the universe is about 14 billion years old.
The more fundamental concern is what Rusty Reno calls Jordan’s “scriptural realism” and that “realism” stands not on scientific arguments, which pass with the wind of the current scientific trends, nor on philosophy or theology derived from Scripture, but on the concrete chronologies found in the Bible. Christians should believe in a young earth and recent creation not first because they can offer a thousand refutations of the theory of evolution (though they should, of course, offer those refutations), nor because they can construct scientific answer to every non-Christian objection to the biblical story (though answers of that sort, however imperfect, may be helpful).
Christians should cling to a young earth because we trust the biblical chronology is the structure of God’s work in history.
The text that God gave Moses concerning the Creation was not only a polemic about God’s power over other gods, but it was also about the shortness of time in which God created the world without human input. Genesis’ short chronology demonstrates God’s transcendence as well as his imminent and immediate working in human history.
This means Genesis 1–11 is not just a profitable account of key events of salvation told in a literary fashion but rather a glossary for interpreting events that will continue to recapitulate throughout history. The symbolic and spiritual world of Genesis is built upon the actual events as they really happened. There are no spiritual or symbolic truth which are scientific falsehoods.
We have a God-given foundation for understanding history and the world and we should stand on that foundation with joy.
Ralph Smith is a pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.
Jackson Waters is a Virginian-in-exile with his wife, Emma Leigh, and daughters, Elizabeth and Cordelia. He graduated Union University and is the former Executive Editor at the Theopolis Institute. He studies at Trinity Anglican Seminary. He is a 2021-22 Theopolis Fellow.
NOTES
- John Hick noted rightly that, for the most part, Christians in the West joined post-enlightenment unbelief: “In the nineteenth century, Western Christianity made two major new adjustments in response to important enlargements of human knowledge: it accepted that man is part of nature and has emerged within the evolution of the forms of life on this earth; and it accepted that the books of the Bible were written by a variety of human beings in a variety of circumstances, and cannot be accorded a verbal divine authority.” The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick (SCM Press, 1977), ix. Two adjustments: God is not the Creator, and the Bible is not His inspired Word. ↩︎
- Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (). ↩︎
- David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (Discovery Institute, 2009); Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperCollins, 2013). ↩︎
- Walton wrote a short paper for his students at Wheaton College entitled, “Is Genesis Real History?” The 2017 film of a similar name generated much discussion for advocating recent creation, but much of the debate is about the science and “pseudoscience” presupposed and presented in the film. Walton’s paper and an introduction to the film can be found here in an article appropriately titled, “The Gnostic World of John Walton.” ↩︎
- James B. Jordan, “The Embarrassment of Biblical Chronology” in Biblical Chronology, vol 1, no. 1, December, 1989. ↩︎