Over the years, I’ve heard a repeated refrain from many of my brothers and sisters in Christ that can be summed up as “I believe the Bible, but we’ve got to face the facts of science when interpreting Scripture.” And this hasn’t only come from the Christian layperson but also from many great men of God who proclaimed to defend biblical authority.
For example, Charles Hodge, a systematic theologian at Princeton seminary who championed biblical inerrancy and wrote several books defending the truths of Christianity, rejected a plain meaning of the six-day Genesis creation (approximately 6,000 years ago) because of what he considered undeniable facts in geology that proved the earth was millions of years old.
Reinterpreting the days of creation as undefined time periods and the global Genesis flood as a local event (despite the unjustified manipulation of the text, a practice he vigorously condemned elsewhere), Hodge stated,
It is of course admitted that, taking this account [Genesis] by itself, it would be most natural to understand the word [day] in its ordinary sense; but if that sense brings the Mosaic account into conflict with facts, [millions of years] and another sense avoids such conflict, then it is obligatory on us to adopt that other.
He was not alone, and I could quote preacher after Bible professor, after Christian author and expositor, and still to this day, buckets of ink have been spilled producing dissertations on how Genesis doesn’t need to be taken as plainly written. This is not primarily because of what the Bible actually says but because of what science has supposedly proven.
The Mosaic Account
However, I’ll use Hodge to demonstrate my cautionary tale against attempting to interpret Scripture through the lens of “settled science,” as he lived at a time (1797–1878) during which the whole age of the earth debate (and later the creation/evolution controversy) was emerging, and the idea of an ancient earth was being established in western academia.
And, in particular, because his quote above addresses the conflict’s key issue, the “facts” supposedly conflicted with the plain reading of the Mosaic account.
Of course, he is referring to the account of Noah’s flood in Genesis, contained within the five books of the Torah, as there is no other area of Scripture within the Mosaic writings that could directly relate to the geologic record (the deluge as a mechanism to create vast sedimentary deposits), and therefore the idea of millions of years.
What he was alluding to in his quote is the fact that prior to the ascent of deep time, uniformitarian interpretations of the rock layers seen around the world, the majority consensus within Christendom was that they had been laid down at the time of the universal deluge recorded in Genesis 6–9. Therefore the six days of creation were literal 24-hour periods.
This was described as Diluvial, Noachian, or “flood geology” in simple terms. However, although championed by several other geologists before him, this was most severely challenged by one man in particular—Charles Lyell.
Charles Lyell’s Uniformitarianism
Lyell’s Principles of Geology (first published in three volumes from 1830–1833) brought deep-time concepts into mainstream scientific thought within geology. In it, he championed the concept of uniformitarianism with its ever-present catchphrase, “the present is the key to the past,” firmly established as the unifying principle of geology for the next 150+ years after its release.
Uniformitarian thought states that processes observed in the present must have always operated that way (uniformly) throughout history and, therefore, could be extrapolated backward to arrive at accurate conclusions about occurrences in the unobserved past.
For example, if one observed lakes, one might see a layer or two of clay or silt sediment deposited during the summer/winter cycle; by assuming a consistent rate throughout time, one could arrive at the number of years of deposition that must have taken place to account for that amount.
By applying that rate to rocks within the geologic column (with thousands upon thousands of layers within it), it was declared as scientific proof that the earth was millions of years old based on a simple mathematical formula and that the Genesis account, as plainly written, had been falsified through scientific means.
And this slow and gradual concept was applied to fossils, of course. There was hardly a student that went to state-run public schools that didn’t see some rendition of the classic example demonstrating how the average fossil supposedly formed.
Most readers likely remember—it would typically show a dead fish on the bottom of a lake/river/ocean, slowly being covered up by sediments and finally turning into a fossil. All of this supposedly occurred over hundreds of thousands of years, convincing the general public that fossils indicate deep-time processes.
Where to Add Millions of Years?
Logically, if one were to insert the concept of deep time into the Bible, there would only be one place to do it. As the genealogies in Scripture (beginning with Adam to Jesus) could never justify the addition of millions of years, the six days of creation would have to be reinterpreted as undefined periods (with the millions of years inserted among them) and, of course, then the Genesis flood couldn’t be the cause of the rock layers.
And this concept is exactly what Charles Hodge’s statement was referring to. If that sense [literal days in Genesis] brings the Mosaic account into conflict with facts [rocks and fossils demonstrating millions of years of earth history], and another sense avoids such conflict [assign the millions of years to the six days of creation and downgrade the Genesis flood to a local event], then we must adopt that other sense.
Facts or Interpretations of Facts?
One could see how this idea of uniformitarianism could be misconstrued as true science akin to the scientific method, where one sets up a repeatable, observable experiment and arrives at the same conclusion each time.
One example I’ve used is testing the temperature at which pure water boils at sea level. Every time we run the test, it yields a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. One could assume that the same result would have been achieved should the experiment have also been done in the unobserved past.
However, in our water boiling temperature example (as in all scientific experiments), it is vital that the same conditions be repeated each time the experiment was done to achieve the same result. Because if the conditions were changed even slightly (i.e., the water contained many minerals or the experiment was done at a much higher/lower altitude), the results could vary.
Similarly, assuming earth’s geologic history was somehow completely uniform was an unwarranted presupposition on Lyell’s part, one that could not be proven. And yet uniformitarianism eventually became the dominant view in geology. People saw millions of years as established scientific fact, and the idea of a global flood was quickly considered unscientific and laughable by most.
Even the mention of catastrophism (the idea of a huge event that would have caused rapid geologic change) became so directly equated with the Genesis flood that the concepts were juxtaposed as scientific versus religious viewpoints.
And somehow, fearing to be categorized as unscientific (the modern term being a “science denier”) and belittled as unintellectual, even staunch Christians such as Hodge began bending the knee to what was considered consensus or established science over a plain reading of Scripture.
Of course, this opened up biblical authority to the heaviest criticisms possible. If one were to apply the same logic to other historical biblical events, they could also be reinterpreted or outright abandoned under the “unscientific” label.
How many dead people have we observed fully resuscitated after being buried for three days? None. How many times has the “walking on unfrozen water” experiment failed? Every time. How many times have we seen a donkey talk? Not even once.
So, if we extrapolate our present-day experiences back in time, what should we conclude under the same interpretive method? That none of those events happened the way they are plainly written in Scripture.
Maybe Jesus swooned and resuscitated, and people naively believed he rose from the dead. Maybe he was walking close to the shore, and it was foggy, so the disciples (expert fishermen?) just thought he was walking on water by mistake. Maybe the miracles in the Old Testament are just analogies or teaching parables. Or maybe the whole Bible is just plain wrong!
These proposals came flooding in as soon as Christendom signaled that “science” had more authority than a plain reading of Scripture because the creation account in Genesis could be reinterpreted freely. If the earth is incredibly old, perhaps creatures did evolve. Maybe Adam and Eve were mythical? Which parts are real history or not? But didn’t Jesus and the apostles believe in the Old Testament?
As Thomas Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog,” said,
If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive ‘type,’ comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic. And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksand?
However, despite the massive damage and fallout we see in the church today, many Christians still hold firm to the idea that science should dictate our interpretation of Scripture to bolster their credibility among their unsaved family, friends, and the world in general.
Some even claim that not letting science dictate our view of Scripture actually hurts the Christian’s ability to share the gospel, and biblical creationists are one of the main reasons the church is ineffective in reaching the world. If only these simple-minded Christians would just accept the facts of science like men such as Hodge did!
RECOMMENDED — When Biblical Authority Is Broken, Christians Cast Compromised Nets
Re-establishing biblical authority by showing people God’s Word can be trusted from the very first verse—and showing how all men are going to be rightfully judged by a holy and righteous God by his moral law—is absolutely vital when sharing the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in today’s culture.
