Harmonizing Scripture and Science: Avoiding Dogmatism in Christianity

I'm going to read for you a statement, and I want you to try and date it, whether you think it was written in the 20th century, or translated from another language into English, or perhaps 19th century, 18th century, 17th century, or what have you. It bears on our subject of today.

It often happens that a non-Christian derives from clearest arguments or from the evidence of his senses specific scientific knowledge regarding geography, astronomy, zoology, botany, or geology. It is both improper and mischievous for any Christian man to speak on such matters as if so authorized by scripture, and yet talk so foolishly that the unbeliever, observing the extravagance of his mistakes, is scarcely able to keep from laughing. The real trouble is not so much that the man is laughed at for his blunders, but that writers of scripture are believed to have taught such things, and are so condemned and rejected as ignorant by people outside the church, to the great loss of those whose salvation we desire. They find one belonging to the Christian body so far wrong on a subject that they themselves know so well, and on top of it, find him enforcing his groundless opinions by the authority of our holy Bible. So they come to regard the scriptures as unsound on subjects they learn by observation or unquestioned evidence. Are they likely, therefore, to put their trust in these scriptures about the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, or the kingdom of heaven? What trouble and sorrow some presumptuous men bring in their more careful brethren! When charged with wrong notions by non-Christians, they try to bolster their wrong assertions by the Bible, even quoting inaccurately what they think will suit their purpose, and putting forth a lot of talk without understanding what they're saying.

Now, would any student like to make a guess and date that for me? Yes. 180? No. That's right. That's a quotation from St. Augustine, in the 4th century. In the 4th century, and yet it's right up-to-date for today. I can't think of a statement that fits the case. I'll give you an example. Someone in Seattle showed me a textbook of Christian philosophy for schools, not in this institution, and one of the statements was this: Just as we Christians believe that when God created Adam, he made him about twenty-five years of age, but nevertheless with a navel, although he had no need of such, so can we not believe when God created this planet, he hid in the rocks the bones of the great reptiles, although such animals had never existed. Does that mean that God Almighty is the great hoaxer? That if someone digs up the skeleton of one of the great reptiles, with another reptile in his mouth that he was eating at the time death overtook him, that he never existed? The whole thing was, well, if God took the trouble to think that one up, why couldn't he have let it happen? That's the point.

Yet, I find people on our side of the fence, by that I mean people who wish to contend for the faith, who are so utterly naive that they queer the pitch with thinking students. So I'm prepared to speak quite strongly today, and provocatively. I hope that if you are stirred up, you'll ask questions, whether they're popular or unpopular, no matter how you feel about it. Now, if you go from Seattle Pacific College, with its congenial atmosphere, to a secular campus, you'll find lots of teachers who will make Christian faith a matter of ridicule. They'll tell you, you see, Christians believe that the world is flat, or rather, they used to believe the world was flat, until we've succeeded in convincing them it's round. Actually, Christians got that idea from contemporary science of several hundred years ago. And there's nothing in the scripture to teach any such thing. Now, it does say in Isaiah about the four corners of the world, but that's a figure of speech. You'll find in Genesis chapter 1, it speaks about the firmament, that above the earth is a firmament. I heard a professor say once, Christians used to believe that there was a solid vault above us called the firmament. It doesn't say anything of the sort in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word is rakia, R-A-Q-I-A, and the essential meaning of the word rakia is space or expanse. I think that's pretty up-to-date. But you see, you say, well, why is the word firmament used? The translators of the King James Version naturally used language they understood, and they used the word firmament, because that was a popular conception. So you see, you'll find so often people will misunderstand, and they set up a dummy and knock him down again.

What do Christians believe? I might as well tell you I don't know that I can set up anything dogmatic and say, you've got to believe along these lines. I might as well say that having gone as far as my master's degree in science, in geology, and being a preacher of the gospel, I've had to have some kind of harmony in my mind. But a harmony that would satisfy a student in the 1960s might be completely dated in the 1990s, if we live that long. Could you imagine me explaining my harmony to John Wesley, when he didn't even know what an electron was? You see the point. Don't waste time trying to reach an absolute harmony, because science is continually changing its mind about things and developing. Nevertheless, of course, it's good to have a working harmony, providing you're not dogmatic about it. I hope I've made my point clear.

Now rather than give you a dogmatic statement, I've put down six courses, six alternatives, and you can consider them for yourself. Pantheistic eternal existence of the universe. Atheistic spontaneous evolution of the universe. Theistic immediate creation of the universe. Deistic immediate evolution of the universe. Theistic, I've coined a word, restitutive creation. I don't know if that's in the dictionary or not. I could have put creative restitution, but I wanted to keep the nouns in line and the adjectives in line. And theistic progressive creation. There we have six choices, and we're going to consider, and I'll leave it absolutely up to you without saying you must do this, that, or the other thing.

I think I could say that for a careful evangelical scientific student, the first two are impossible. Pantheistic eternal existence of the universe is a popular Hindu concept. That the world never had a beginning, that it's just simply cyclical and it's going on forever. You see, pantheism is the idea that God is all and all is God, that if this universe were destroyed there wouldn't be a God, that God is the universe, that everything happens in the universe is God. You know something of pantheism. But the Hindu idea is that it never had a beginning. Look at it from a scientific point of view. This is flatly contradicted by the second law of thermodynamics, flatly contradicted by a majority, a consensus of the opinion of scientists today. In fact, scientists are agreed today that the earth is between four billion and four and a half billion, some say five billion. You find they try various ways of dating, but by putting all these methods together they have arrived at a fairly average date of over four billion years. Therefore the Hindu idea is impossible for anyone who wants to be careful as a scientist. But it's also utterly impossible for a Christian because the scripture begins by saying, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That is a fact of our Christian faith, that that is taught. So I will simply say that number one is out for an evangelical scientist. I was going to say a Christian scientist, but you might misunderstand that.

Now we come to the second, atheistic spontaneous evolution. That's the view that it all happened. Now I have already lectured on this subject, and I don't want to repeat my arguments. Perhaps you may remember the little device I used of asking questions about throwing dice. The chance of getting a six when you roll a dice is one in six. But according to the law of probability, the chance of getting two sixes in succession is one out of 36. It's a multiplied chance. Three sixes, 216. Four sixes, 1,296. Twelve sixes, 2,176,182,336. And I asked a friend of mine, a pilot, what would be the chance of getting dice to roll the same way all the time? He said, that's fantastic. I said, exactly. Now it brings us to the interesting thing that people keep on saying yes, but given an indefinite time, perhaps it would have happened. Well, when you begin to multiply the chances, it's staggering.

Le Contenouil, a famous French philosopher, wrote a little book called Human Destiny. It's dated already. I was advised recently, don't make a good deal of that argument, but it deals with this, and it's worth just squashing an argument at the moment. He worked out the probable time needed to produce a protein molecule. And he worked it out as 10 raised to the, I think it's 464th power. In other words, the figure one followed by zeros that would fill a page. Now I think I mentioned in chapel about the idea of getting a bunch of monkeys to type on typewriters, on the assumption that some people have that if they kept on typing indefinitely sooner or later, they'd produce all the great classics. And you can imagine after 17 years of experimentation, the supervisor phones the professor and says, two more monkeys have died of old age, but I'll give you a report on the others. He picks up one, he says, oh boy, and he picks up the next one, he says, oh boy, oh boy. And the third one, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Then he says, here's something, sir.

Here's something. Listen, listen. To be or not to be. That is the gazorn and plait. Isn't it a fantastic idea? Now I raised this question with Dr. Brian Sutherland, a famous Canadian physicist. He said, if I were you, Edwin, I wouldn't try to prove anything by that argument. You can show how ridiculous chance is as an argument, but he said the idea of considering chance is quite passé among scientists today.

At the American Scientific Affiliation in St. Paul last summer, a scientist said to me, we don't believe that the electron revolves around the nucleus of the atom by chance. He says, by law. We don't believe that atoms combine in molecules by chance. It's by law. He said, science simply says, well, what are the laws? And it leaves the unanswered question about the lawgiver. So you see, science doesn't tell us the answer. I'm not going to go into this further, but simply to say that from the scientific point of view, chance doesn't make much sense. And from the Christian point of view, who could be an atheistic evolutionist and be a Christian at the same time?

So now we've considered two theories. We come now to theistic immediate creation, or sometimes it's called fiat creation. And I'm going to consider with it, because it's a parallel thing, an opposite actually, deistic immediate evolution. We'll take theistic immediate creation. One thing you can say about these two theories is you can be a good Christian and hold either one of them. But you'll fall short in certain points.

Theistic immediate creation. My granny, God bless her, a wonderful Christian woman, converted in the 1859 revival in Ireland. She never had studied science. In fact, I noticed on my mother's birth certificate, my granny had signed her name with an X. Those days were not days of literacy, many, many years ago. But my granny, of course, had not many difficulties this way, and she was quite willing to accept Archbishop Usher's dates, that 4004 BC, in six days of 24 hours, God created the heavens and the earth. That's the most popular concept of theistic immediate creation.

Now follow the words carefully. Theistic means of God, immediate means like that, and creation rather than evolution. Now that's not the only view, of course. One of Archbishop Usher's friends was Lightfoot of Cambridge. He said that Adam was created at nine o'clock on the morning of the 23rd of October, 4004 BC, 45 degrees east of Greenwich time. As a careful scholar, he wasn't willing to commit himself further than that. He said that creation occurred between the 18th and the 24th of October, 4004 BC.

Now to show that this is not dead. I have been asked about this on campus at Seattle Pacific College by students. And some people will turn me to their Schofield Bible and say, well, there it is. I say, yes, there it is. But where is it? That's why I gave as a sort of provocative title, 4004 BC, Selah, which means, what do you know? He said, well, what's wrong with believing this? Let me assure you, you can be an out and out Christian and believe this. You can be fully surrendered to the will of God in your personal life. You can be sanctified as well as justified and believe this. You can be a great soul winner and believe this, but you won't be much of a scientist.

Just go down to Grand Canyon and you'll find that all the evidence suggests that the River Colorado has been cutting back there for more than 6,000 years. Go to Niagara Falls and you'll say the same thing. Or to Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone, and there you'll see successive layers of coal produced by great forests decaying, interlaid with great basaltic flows. And if that doesn't date it for you, I don't know what would. Now, of course, you can say that there could be explanations of that.

One of the most pathetic books I ever read was a book called Father and Son by Sir Edmund Guss, a great British scientist. His father was Philip Guss, who belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, a naturalist of the highest order, a man who could tell you anything you want to know about the habits of crabs or the golden eagle or anything like that in natural science. And Philip Guss taught, as his harmony of science and scripture, that probably God hid the fossils in the rock to test man's faith. In other words, his purpose in hiding these fossils in the rocks was to find out whether or not you were a real fundamentalist or not, you see. I think that was one of the causes of Sir Edmund Guss becoming an unbeliever.

You say, well, why can't we? Well, you see, you can't be a good scientist. Now, for instance, I'm going to tell you quite frankly, this business doesn't bother my wife very much. She's busy raising a family, taking care of the children in the home, taking care of my correspondence, and she's a wonderfully helpful person. But she doesn't have to face questions on university campuses as I do. There's your problem. So I would say, if you wish to choose to believe in theistic, immediate creation, you're utterly free so to do. You won't go far in science.

What about the 24-hour days? Well, the word day is translated 34 different ways in the Old Testament alone. To give you a popular idea of it, we talk about Queen Victoria's day. How long did that last? Sixty-seven years. We talk about the days of the Romans. We say every dog has his day. The scripture says a day with the Lord is a thousand years. Thousand is the word for multitude. It means a multitude of years. You can go right down the line there. Therefore, why should you be tied to somebody's interpretation of a most mysterious statement?

Air Commodore Wiseman, a very careful theologian, belonged to the Plymouth Brethren. I think he's dead now. His son, Donald Wiseman, is an outstanding man in the British Museum, which is the depository of all scientific findings in the British Commonwealth. He and I were classmates at Oxford. Air Commodore Wiseman struggled for a harmony about the six days, and he said they were dictation periods. Like supposing I had a lot of correspondence to catch up, and I'm asked in chapel, is there a girl here who does shorthand? I'd like to dictate about a hundred letters. Well, I'm going to be very busy, and you'll have to come between lectures, and I'll dictate to you. And so I said, do you think you'd manage to do twenty letters a day? She said, yes. All right, then. And I dictate my twenty letters and say, that'll do for today. Come tomorrow morning at ten o'clock again.

The theory held by Air Commodore Wiseman was that Moses, presumably, in writing this, revealed to him from God, writing this in clay tablets, said the evening and the morning were the first day, the second day, the third day, and so forth, in dictation periods. You say, do you accept this? No. It's interesting. It's intriguing, in fact. But just to show you the latitude.

Now then there's the other idea. The idea that the days of Genesis are great geological periods. A lot of Christians think that. But then you have difficulties of overlapping. For instance, would you have one day with plant life, and then next day with insect life? What about the trees that needed bees for fertilization? You begin to have problems there. You say, well, what do you think about it? Well, I'll mention another view, and it appeals to me. I would rather think of the days as the interventions of God between geological periods.

For instance, if you study the pre-Cambrian rocks, there isn't a trace of a fossil. Study the Cambrian rocks, suddenly all the primitive forms appear, suddenly, literally suddenly. And you'll find this in secular and even agnostic literature. Suddenly they appear. Suddenly the reptile life appears, suddenly. And there seems to be an almost complete dearth of the so-called missing links. Therefore I would say that the six days could be the days of God's intervention with development in between. Now that's what we call theistic immediate creation.

But now we come to the alternative, deistic immediate evolution. You say, what's that? Well, you see, deistic means, of course, there is a God, but he sort of set the ball rolling and then left it to roll. That's putting it in layman's language very much. Immediate means he let it take care of itself, and evolution, that all developed from the start. I'm putting it in very simple language. Now, you can be a Christian and hold this. You say, can you? James Orr held this. Augustus Strong held this. And if you read any fundamentalist literature, you find they were the great men. After all, James Orr wrote the book on the virgin birth of Christ. So he held this.

But I must say that if you hold this point of view, you're a little too respectful of certain scientific speculations and a little too careless about certain scriptural statements. Number three, theistic immediate creation is a very firm view on scripture, but a very weak view on science, and the very opposite is true here. You say, well, why do you say that? Why do you insist on that? Well, you see, when the evolutionary theory burst like a bombshell in the world, people found it very hard to answer all the things that were stated. Darwin's theory of natural selection swept the boards. But who believes in it today? Scientists have modified their views of evolution so much that if it weren't for the fight over the term, I think you'd have called it something else today.

Because Christians of certain strife keep on attacking the word just because it's a word, then you find that they keep on defending the word. So you could say that deistic immediate evolution is possible for the Christian, but not very possible for one who studies the scriptures, as evangelicals do. Now, I'll put a question mark at this and a question mark at this.

Now we come to two harmonies. Remember what I said about the harmonies. I might satisfactorily work out a harmony that would satisfy my knowledge of truth as it comes through the scripture, and my appreciation of science as it comes to me through scientific journals. But what might work out as a harmony in the 1960s might be utterly dated in the 1990s. Therefore, we'll treat harmonies in that way.

I put here theistic restitutive creation. That's the Schofield view, or the gap theory. I suppose most of you are familiar with this. The theory is that between Genesis 1 verse 1 and verse 2 is a great gap. The Genesis verse 1 describes a primal creation when God made a planet that became like the Garden of Eden. Then coinciding with the fall of Lucifer, a spiritual being, from his highest state came a great terrestrial disaster. And then God remade the world in six days. So you could say that the Schofield view, or the gap theory, permits one to believe in all of the evolutionary theory up to that point, but then insists on a completely new creation in six days.

Now you say, what do you think of this? Well, take it from the scriptural point of view first of all. I cannot find any linguistic, exegetical support for the view. I'm interested in it. I asked one of the leading British Hebrewists, an evangelical by the way, a Methodist, what do you think of the view that divides Genesis 1 verse 1 from Genesis 1 verse 2? He said, my dear Orr, we should first of all, he said, do you hold this? I said, no, I'm relieved. He said, my dear Orr, he said, in the original Hebrew there is no Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The verses were made just a few hundred years ago. He said, it's a single statement. You could state it, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and so on. Or else you could state it equally well, when in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void.

That amazes me that good Christians should fight so much for this, when science actually agrees with the original interpretation. Science agrees that the earth was without form and void. But we have to insist, no, no, you're wrong, and change it round this way. Quite recently, a student came up to me at one of the universities and said, well, what about the other reference to without form and void, in Jeremiah? I said, is there one dealing with creation? I was thinking of Lucifer's fall or something like that. No, no, he said, in Jeremiah chapter 4, does anyone here have a Schofield Bible? Would you turn up to Jeremiah 4, Jeremiah 4. I'm going to read what you have there, but you can read the footnote for me, because I don't have the Schofield footnote here.

In Jeremiah chapter 4, verse 23, it says, I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void, and the heavens, and they had no light. If you can find that, Jeremiah chapter 4, verse 23. The next verse says, I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. Now, what does Schofield say in the footnote there? Could you read it, please? Genesis 1:2, without form and void, describes the condition of the earth as a result of the judgment which overthrew the primal order of Genesis 1:1.

Now, you see, Schofield, may I repeat what was read, Schofield emphasizes that Jeremiah chapter 4, verse 23, which speaks, I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void, and the heavens, and they had no light, that that describes the state of the earth between Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, and Genesis chapter 1, verse 2. But I hadn't noticed this before, so I decided to read a little bit further down. It says in verse 25, I beheld, and lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heaven were fled. I beheld, and lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down. Cities. Talk about taking a text out of context. This is flabbergasting. If you read Jeremiah chapter 4, you can't escape the conclusion that he's describing Judah after its desolation by the invader. And to take this out of context and try and prove a theory dealing with the very first verse of Genesis really, to my mind, is far-fetched. It's really far-fetched.

Well, as I say, creative restitution doesn't have any support in Scripture as such. And second, science has absolutely no record of it. Now, science couldn't possibly have a record of everything. I know some people are always looking for things like, for instance, they'd like to think that Khrushchev actually discovered the Ark on Mount Ararat but burned it in case Billy Graham could make use of it or something like that. You read that sort of thing in the Herald of His Coming. Good people, God bless them, but not very scientifically minded. And then on the other hand, I knew of one man who told me that Adam's bones had been found. He said he had carved his initials, somebody had carved his initials on the bones or something. Well, that's just beyond belief, isn't it? How could science support some of these things?

Well, as far as science is concerned, you can't find much. I can't find anything to support the gap theory. Now you can believe in it. You can hold it. It's the most popular harmony among fundamentalists today. But it won't take you very far.

Now I'm going to mention another harmony. Theistic progressive creation. You say, what do you mean by that? I could also call it theistic interrupted evolution, but if I did, John R. Rice would be after me. It reminds me, I was lecturing at Queen's University in Belfast. I spoke along these lines to the students. Quarter to twelve that night, I had an urgent phone call. The man said, I've been trying to get you all evening. I said, I'm sorry, I was lecturing in the country. He said, Mr. Rohr, do you believe in evolution? I said, I thought I made it painfully clear this morning in Queen's that I absolutely condemn atheistic evolution. Ah, he says, that's good, that's good, that's good. He said, then he says, may I inquire, what is your view? Well, I said, I would hesitate to be dogmatic, but I'm inclined to some kind of view of progressive creation. Ah, he said, that's good, that's good, that's good. I said, of course, to be perfectly fair, here where I put my foot in it, I said, you could also call it interrupted evolution. Ah, he says, that's not so good. He just didn't like the word.

Now, if you can prove to me that the horse and zebra and donkey are descended from Eohippus, the dawn horse, which is the size of a greyhound, it doesn't bother me very much. Well, that's evolution. If you could prove to me that that horse evolved into something else, I'd be very much surprised. The scripture says, after his kind, and yet we can't be specific there. Do you mean species? There are all sorts of problems, dear friends. For instance, there's a finch in the Arctic. In Lapland, the finch will interbreed, you see, some people say a species is decided by breeding, if they can breed with each other, they're a species, some say this. This Lapland finch can interbreed with the Siberian finch and the Greenland finch, but not with the Canadian finch or the Alaskan finch, only the ones on either side. The Alaskan finch can interbreed with the Siberian ones and the Canadian ones, but not with the Greenland ones or the Lapland ones, yet they're finches. Why have they grown away from each other? I would say long centuries of isolation, they no longer interbreed.

I have seen a ligon, no, what's it called, a tigon and a liger, crosses between lions and tigers, but they're not standard, if you put it that way, yet I have no doubt that lions and tigers and leopards and cheetahs and even the domestic pussycat are all descended from the same type of cat, but separated by centuries, millennia. There's a great deal of difference between accepting that kind of evolution and believing that all by themselves the reptiles decided to become birds. Birds are warm-blooded, does it mean intermediate stages were tepid-blooded? Birds are feathered, does it mean that intermediate stages were not feathered? What use would some feathers be? If an enterprising lizard climbed a tree and jumped off with four feathers, natural selection would take care of that.

And let me give you this point, for instance, there is no scientist alive who can explain the appearance of life on the earth, there's one gap. There is no scientist on earth who can explain why Homo sapiens, reasoning men, our race, is completely different from all the higher mammals as conceded by Thomas Huxley. For I like to think we owe this to God. That's why I say interrupted evolution, or preferably progressive creation. You say, well, you think this satisfies everyone? No, I'm not satisfied yet. I don't know. You say, well, what about Genesis 1? Some Christians are always apologizing for Genesis 1. I'm very pleased with the first chapter of Genesis. Very pleased.

Some people say, well, my professor says that if you compare Genesis 1 with the Babylonian account or the Aztec account, they're all the same. That's utter nonsense. Genesis 1 has dignity, accuracy. It's pictorial language, undoubtedly. You say, what do you mean, pictorial language? Well, I'm a historian. History is comprised of the findings of eyewitnesses. You watch God made the world. Do you think Moses was there looking over his shoulder? No, no. It wasn't Moses' account. It must have been revealed by God, and God could choose any method he liked to reveal it. And I say he used pictorial languages, giving us a series of pictures. For instance, he said, let there be light. Well, how long did that take? I don't know. Yet scientists are agreed that light is the basic measurement of the universe.

As my professor of geology said, I'm astounded at the order of Genesis. You'd surely think that modern science would find out what was wrong with all these legends. But he said, I'm astounded at the order of Genesis chapter 1. So I believe it's pictorial language. You say, well, why didn't the Holy Spirit inspire the writer to write an accurate scientific account? Could you imagine some Jews in the hills of Judea during the Maccabean Revolt trying to work out all about electrons and protons and so forth? This was written in eternal language. I find a primitive savage can read it and get something out of it, and a scientist can read and get something out of it. So I'm quite happy to leave it as it stands.

You say, well, what about the ages of the patriarchs? Well, there's a problem for you. Maybe you'd like to write your PhD thesis on that. I've heard all sorts of people try to explain these things. I just say I don't know. A lot of things I don't know. I know one thing, that Archbishop Usher got his date, 4004 BC, by adding the ages of the recorded patriarchs together. But most evangelical scholars today would say that those men mentioned were heads of clans or dynasties. Yet they're evangelicals that say this. Now, I've said these things to be provocative, and I've discovered from experience that at Seattle Pacific I can anticipate interesting questions. So I'm going to turn the meeting over to you. Raise your hand to get my attention first, and then state your question. Perhaps you'd better stand to state it, and then I'll tell you what I think about it. I can't promise to give you the answer.

Yes. Have you heard about, or what do you think, did God reveal this to Moses, or do you suppose maybe it could have been stories handed down that Moses wrote up? The answer is yes. God could have revealed it to Moses, or it could have been handed down. I believe he was inspired to write it, that's the point. You see, now for instance, Dr. Luke, in compiling his account in the Gospel, didn't get it as a revelation from heaven. He wrote, he says, for as much as many have taken in hand to write an account of the things believed among us as they were given to us by eyewitnesses from the beginning, I also, Most Excellent Theophilus, decided to compile an account for you. That's what the Greek says. Therefore, Dr. Luke compiled his account of the Gospel from eyewitnesses and other sources the way you compile a thesis. But he was inspired so to do. Now I believe that Genesis is inspired, but the difference between Dr. Luke's account and the first chapter of Genesis is, as I said, that Dr. Luke's account is narrative from eyewitnesses, whereas there were no eyewitnesses of the creation. It's pictorial language.

Yes? In the Gospel, Luke or Matthew, which are one of the pieces of the Gospel, is that exclusive to King James, or is that exclusive to the Gospel? In Matthew, the begat, well, the word begat is an old Anglo-Saxon word, and it's a translation of a Greek word, which in turn translates a Hebrew word, or Aramaic word. And when it says begot, it doesn't necessarily mean father and son relationship. Now for instance, have you noticed the scripture which says, Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham? Take it literally. Jesus Christ, the grandson of Abraham. It's not literal. Now, as far as the 14 generations are concerned, these are what you call stylized, given the outstanding ones. That's the consensus of opinion I find today, even among evangelical scholars. But there are men who disagree with this. But I think we're traveling far away now from cosmology, although there's a parallel interest here.

Any other question? Yes. Why do we have this view that the theistic, immediate creation only goes back to 4004 BC? Why can't we run it back to the eons of age and say, God did it then, and then the interposing time? Yes, that's the point. But you see, here I find this, once your mind is liberated from 4004 BC, it doesn't matter whether it's 10,000 or 4 billion. You see the point? You say, well, how do you get 4 billion? Well, as I said, if you study, you can look it up for yourself in your textbooks, uranium, the planetary system, there are about five or six different things that are put together and they get an approximate agreement. Therefore, you see, when your mind is liberated from 4004 BC, I know some people who like to prove it was 6006 BC. What's the difference? What does it matter? Why argue for 2,000 years? If the scripture says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, that gives you latitude.

Yes. When I was studying 30 years ago, in geology, they used to guess the age of bones from the strata they were finding. Now they have a more exact measurement, carbon-14, and yet it's not an exact measurement. It can only tell approximate dates, and I've heard arguments about it, but the rate of decay of carbon-14, a radioactive carbon, in such living materials gives an indication of the age. That's why, for instance, they generally say that man is about 14,000 years on the American continent. That's what they say. Some people say, oh dear, isn't it a pity it wasn't 6,000 years? Like there they are, still subconsciously fighting for Archbishop Usher. I asked Bernard Ramm that question, that's, where do you place Adam? Bernard Ramm's a very honest man, and he said, well, sometimes I place him earlier and sometimes later, which doesn't answer the question. I myself, as a Christian, see no reason why I cannot accept Adam as a historical character. The language of subsequent stories about Adam is so vivid that, to my mind, it reads like history. But science will never be able to substantiate this. Science could never substantiate this.

Now, some people make the argument that the word Adam means of the earth, or red, therefore perhaps it's a type of early man. I myself feel that there must have been some change between non-reasoning man or non-God-conscious man, the hominids, the anthropoids, of whom we have definite traces in the rocks, and reasoning man. And if God, for instance, should choose to use material that was already there, but breathe into man's nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul, that may satisfy us there. But I feel that the theological arguments must be also considered. We believe that Jesus Christ is a second Adam, therefore I'm conservative in this point rather than liberal. Do you see the point?

Yes. Does Genesis 1 just cover the creation of our own earth or the creation of the whole universe? It's written, and I'd better repeat that, does Genesis 1 deal with just the creation of our earth or the creation of the whole universe? I think the first phrase explains that. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But it's written from an earth or geocentric point of view. After all, the view that's been held that this little planet of ours is unique has not been shattered yet. All sorts of people are saying that there ought to be other planets with life and so forth. That doesn't follow. That's a guess. It doesn't follow. It's not a logical sequel.

Yes? You said there's possibly a distinction between reasoning and non-reasoning. In the fossil records they have early Neanderthals. How could you tell which is Neanderthal and which is Neanderthal? Scientists, for instance, make a big distinction between Neanderthal men and Cro-Magnon, for instance. And I would say those humans who produced rock carvings and art are quite distinct from anthropoids or hominids. You say, well, the Bible doesn't say anything about the anthropoids and hominids. No, no, certainly not. But that's one of the problems. The Bible doesn't profess to be a scientific account of everything, but it tells us of God placing man on this planet. It's not only geocentric, but anthropocentric.

Yes? Now, let's go back to Adam just for a moment. God brought unto Adam the beasts of the field and he named them. Evidently, Adam must have been a reasoning creature. Yes. So how does this fit in with the non-reasoning creature? Did they come after? Did they come before? No, I said my view, which is a theological view rather than a scientific one, is that Adam was the first reasoning man. Now then, if we have evidence of non-reasoning man... Yes? ...then are they degenerations? Rather, degenerative product of reasoning man? According to the scientific record, no. Because thousands, hundreds of thousands of years before, there are fossils of ape-like, man-like creatures. Not degenerate. Like, for instance, do you think Adam walked among the dinosaurs? I don't think so. I think the dinosaurs all died off before he got on board. Yes. I think the dinosaurs all died off. You say, why? Well, change of climate, for one thing. Yes?

Well, how do we look at Adam then when God said he created man? He looked over all of his creations and said, it is good. I'm trying to get the correlation here between what we think of as a person being good today and this non-intellectual being, supposedly. I can't see the correlation between intellectual Adam and the progressive evolutionary process of the dinosaurs and then the non-thinking man.

Don't you think, for instance, that it was necessary for the planet to be partly covered in a tangle of impossible forest growth in order for us to have coal fields today? Yet those forest growths were utterly uncongenial to human life. See, some people have the idea, if God made it, he must have made it perfect at the beginning. Whereas with God, time doesn't mean a thing. For instance, take the human being today. The human body is a remarkable work of perfection. But now, wouldn't you say from what you know of biology that the fetus is an ugly little thing? That an embryo is a very imperfect thing? Yet that was a stage in the development of your life.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, if at one time there were dinosaurs chewing each other up, and it must have been really a sight, mustn't it? If what the geological record shows is true, and there's no reason to doubt it, if there were dinosaurs chewing each other up and pterodactyls flying around here and chopping each other up to pieces in the air and so forth, it must have been quite a thing, mustn't it? You couldn't say it was the Garden of Eden. It would have been like Dante's Inferno.

Now, for instance, I mentioned the coalfields. Where did they come from? Any geologist will tell you, well, there were great forest ages on Earth. Carboniferous era. But when did that? That was a long time before Adam. But geologists are agreed, paleontologists are agreed, that the first stage is here and here and here and here and here and then. Man appears quite suddenly and then finally is reasoning man. They call him Homo sapiens. That's the same thing as reasoning man.

You know, it's interesting, the Bible is so often sustained in every other way. You know, there's a lot of racial prejudice in the world. And yet the scripture always insists that God made of one blood all the nations of the Earth. Now, that doesn't say of one blood type. It doesn't say we're all type A or type O or anything like that. But it says of one blood. That means that we can interbreed because we're of one family. Science has substantiated that. The Bible's held that all along.

I don't know the answer about Adam. I mean, I wasn't there and I don't know. But I say theologically I believe in the personality of Adam. Yes? Do you believe then that there were two creations of man? Or that Adam was a recreation of the first man? What do you mean by two creations of man? I would say this. My own view is, from a theological point of view, that Adam was the first Homo sapiens. And to me, Homo sapiens is man. That the creatures before that, although some scientists call them man, were actually man-like creatures but not man. Do you understand me? We use the word hominid. We use the word anthropoid. For instance, we talk about the Don man in South Africa. But he wasn't a man in our sense of the word. No scientist was right in mind. We say he was.

Of course, scientists who don't believe in the Bible at all, they're not, shall I say, influenced by our view from a theological point of view. Yes? Well, in Genesis 1 or 2, I'm not sure which, when it refers to making of Adam, it says God re-punished the earth and giving the idea that there was something there before. Now, is this non-reasoning man, is he completely off the earth at the time of Adam? Just as the dinosaurs had died out, it's quite possible that the anthropoids and hominids all perished. But this idea of replenish, you've really got two questions in one there. Replenish is an Anglo-Saxon word borrowed from the Latin. The only reason the word replenish is used is because the word plenish doesn't exist in English. Read the Hebrew, and it's quite different.

Yes? Do you believe that Adam was created? Special creation? Well, you see, the thing is that I don't know how God made Adam special. For instance, my granny, as I told you, she believed that God got down on his hands and knees and put his mouth over Adam's mouth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul. She took it literally. I take that as figurative language. How he did it, I don't know. But I will say this, that God made Homo sapiens different to all creation. And I think Adam must have been the first.

Now, it's very interesting. Very few scientists today hold the view of spontaneous evolution of man that in Australia and Alaska are places that man evolved simultaneously. That supports the biblical point of view. For instance, if you ask any scientist about North America, they say, well, we believe that man came to North America over the land bridge of the Bering Straits. Why do they say that? Well, the evidence points to that, and that substantiates Scripture, too. In other words, that the human race had a cradle. My inclination is to think that the cradle was Mesopotamia. But from a scientific point of view, I've heard good arguments for Central Asia, I've heard good arguments for the Sahara, which at one time was a fruitful land.

Why do we have to put the dinosaurs and all those different types of creatures after the creation of Adam since there is a mention of dinosaurs, dragons, etc., in the Psalms? There's no mention of dinosaurs in the Psalms. There's mention of dragons. Well, dragons are lizards, big lizards. As far as the dinosaurs are concerned, I don't place them after Adam. I don't think Adam was contemporaneous with the age of lizards.

Well... Yes? How about this? They could have been in a different part and could have been destroyed by the Ice Ages. Yes? I mean, I see no incongruency there at all. Neither do I. I mean, I don't see the point. Well, I was trying to think of why would they have them before Adam in this stage of... They're before Adam because, for instance, they've been found in Strata that were way before Homo sapiens was found. You see the point?

Yes? What would you say if a high school teacher or a high school student would ask about the story of the Ark of the Flood or any of those types of all-incandescent creatures that are destroyed and the students would run off the pitch? I know. I know. But we're getting a little further along now. What do I think about the flood? I think there's good scientific evidence for a great flood. You'll find, I think it's 17 foot of clay over Ur of the Chaldees. There's some debate as to whether or not it was a planetary flood. Some think it was the Mesopotamian basin. You say, well, but why shouldn't it be all the world? It says the Earth. Yes, it says in the days of Caesar Augustus all the world was taxed. We know the Chinese weren't in that. The word world was used of the culture or civilization. Therefore, I would say that a Mesopotamian flood would fit the bill regarding the flood.

But again, I don't know whether the Ark contained all the domestic animals or wild animals of the Mesopotamian basin or whether there were kangaroos there. There wouldn't be any kangaroos as far as I know, there never were any kangaroos in the Mesopotamian basin. Therefore, I would rather take it that it's the story of this flood that overwhelmed civilization which at that time was confined to the Mesopotamian basin. But again, who can dogmatize it so long back?

Yes? Why has it been all the different nations throughout the whole world that have a legend of the flood? That, I think, is a strong point. But on the other hand, we believe that all the nations of the Earth, the Aztecs and the Chinese emigrated from the Mesopotamian basin. Therefore, carry it with them.

Yes? A year and a half ago I read an article that put forth clearly that one time that the landmass of the Earth was all one continent. That's more than a year and a half ago. That's the Wegener theory of Continental Drift which is, I think, about a century old. I mean, it was probably in a magazine article you read this a year and a half ago and it said that there was... It was probably in a magazine article you read this a year and a half ago. It's been continually revised and disputed. For instance, they noticed that the bulge of Brazil fits just into the big bay of Benin in Africa and North America fits into Europe and so forth. That's one view and one of the difficulties is this: what if the continents float on? They say they float on the magma, the liquid part of the Earth under the seas. But now they've got troubles because there's a big range of mountains so they're saying now did it bump over that or did that arise since? So they're not quite sure.

But even if all the continents were together, it's interesting the center would be Mesopotamia or the fertile crescent. Could you explain something about the early families such as where did Cain and Seth get their wives? I don't know. For instance, I've heard half a dozen explanations. It says the sons of God and daughters of men that they were fair.

I've heard some people, Sir Ambrose Fleming for instance, an evangelical, said they were remnants of pre-Adamic races and intermarriage, which was forbidden of God but which they did. That's one theory. Other people say that the sons of God were angels and the sons of God married human women. How an angel could marry a woman, I wouldn't know if an angel is a spiritual being. If in heaven there's neither marriage nor giving, and we'll all be like angels, then I'd take it that angels don't marry. How could an angel marry a woman then? So I can't follow that theory.

As far as Cain was concerned, if, for instance, Adam and Eve were the only people there at that time, it's quite easy to work out that if he lived this long, Cain could have married one of his sisters far removed. You see, intermarriage of people related to each other is not dangerous unless there are weaknesses. For instance, in perfectly good stock, cousins can marry, but where there's TB in one side or something like that, mental disease in the other, there's always a risk then, you see. That's when new blood is needed. So the popular view is that Cain married a sister of his or a niece. Or you might say, well, where did he get the niece from? Who got married? Who married who? Well, I don't know. It doesn't say that Cain was the first son, but it does say that, well, yes, it does. It says that Eve brought forth a son and called him Cain. No. I don't know. I'm inclined to think they were the first born because the scripture doesn't mention any other. But again, you can never have more than this because what could science tell you about it?

Yes, I think I already said God could have taken existent material. On the other hand, God could have made a special creation. I don't know. Now there's time for one more question because the hour is up. One more question. Yes.

There is, in current cosmology, the continuous creation theory. I would like to know if you would have a comment concerning not just restricted to the earth but the general universe concerning this continuous creation theory. How does it apply today? Well, if what you refer to is Fred Hoyle's view, I was just using that as a springboard for thought. I read a little book recently I picked up. I like to pick up something to read on planes sometimes when I want to read something but not too profound. I picked up a little bit of science fiction by Fred. He suggests that it's coming into the solar system from outside and cosmic rays and so forth. However, his book was a very interesting one. It was called "The Black Cloud," predicting that in 1965 a black cloud from outer space would come between the sun and the earth. The temperature would drop 300 degrees, everything would be frozen up, and it goes into all the scientific aspects. It wouldn't be 300 degrees right away, but it would mean with the intense cold, the sun not rising or its light being shut out, that all the moisture would drop out, and then it would get intensely dry. And of course, desert air, you know, the drop of temperature in the desert at night until it would be 300 degrees. I read it in a very interesting way.

Now, for instance, here's an unanswered problem: how did the mammoths get frozen stiff in Siberia? There's a return to catastrophism in science today, which is support for scriptural views. Maybe the flood was caused by such a catastrophe. I don't know, but you see, you can't say dogmatically. You see, we're talking about the carcasses of mammoths frozen in deep freeze, the meat so good that the dogs have eaten them on the spot, and inside the stomachs of the mammoths, buttercups fresh. So whatever disaster overtook those mammoths, it must have happened very suddenly. Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a book some time ago called "Worlds in Collision." It's a fantastic book, but it's fascinating. He says that this catastrophe was caused by the invasion of the solar system by a comet which became the planet Venus. Scientists were just agape at this, and then you'd have to study all your life because he had things drawn from the legends of the Aztecs and so forth. Well, I don't accept Velikovsky. I'm not qualified to accept Velikovsky, but I'll tell you this: why is it that between Mars and Jupiter, floating all around, why? Well, there must have been some kind of disaster. Well, that's an argument for catastrophism.

For instance, what about Pluto? I'm not referring to the dog. I don't know when I speak to college students whether or not apparently this has been overdone to a certain extent. There are only parts of about 13 that I recall that have ever been found, and rather than saying the dogs were so fresh to eat them, actually it was so smelly that nothing but the dogs would go. Well, I read that reviewed in the Saturday Evening Post in which that view is also criticized as not being satisfactory, and it's a very debatable point, the whole thing. But I will say this: that I'm only mentioning in passing that there have been or could have been great catastrophes in the history of our planet which would explain things that science has no record of at all, things recorded in scripture that could only be recorded by catastrophes of some sort. Isn't it interesting that even the Chinese have a legend of an extra long day at the same time of Joshua's long day? Very interesting. I don't know any explanation of it though, whether it was apparent or real, but I find this: the more that's discovered, the more our scriptures are substantiated. Well, thank you so much. Class dismissed.