Old Earth or Young Earth?

 

Introduction

Modern science, while not an authority to override the revealed word of God in the Bible, works within the laws of nature established by God and designed for us to be able to understand God's marvelous creation. A stumbling block for many seekers as well as believers is the assertion that the Earth and, in fact, the entire universe is only 6000 years old, despite the evidence suggesting an age on the order of billions of years.

While a plain, modern reading of the creation account in Genesis chapter 1 implies a young earth, is that necessarily the only Biblically supported way of understanding the text? Did God create the universe intentionally to appear to be older than it is?

Scriptures

Genesis 1:1-2:3 (ESV)

The Creation of the World

​In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The Seventh Day, God Rests

​Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Young Earth

Scriptural Evidence

Genesis 5 (ESV)

Adam's Descendants to Noah

​This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters.  Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters.  Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.

When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.

When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters.  Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters.  Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Genesis 11:10-26 (ESV)

Shem's Descendants

These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Genesis 21:5 (ESV)

Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

Genesis 25:19-26 (ESV)

These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, 

"Two nations are in your womb,and two peoples from within you shall be divided;the one shall be stronger than the other,the older shall serve the younger."

When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.

Scientific Evidence

Layers in the sandstone could have been formed during a global flood, not necessarily requiring millions of years. Fossils on mountaintops could have been deposited during a global flood, not necessarily a result of the bottom of a former sea floor rising due to plate tectonics. The ark carried two of every kind, not two of every species.

Arguments For a Young Earth View

The words "evening and morning" are used for each day during creation, words in Hebrew used to denote change from one day to the next, strongly suggesting literal 24 hour days. That means the universe began five 24-hour days before Adam was created.

The genealogies, starting with Adam and continuing through to Abraham (and beyond), specifically follow a pattern of "When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered...Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years...Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died." This seems to clearly indicate that this is a continuous list with no gaps and so can be used to calculate a specific amount of time from Adam to Abraham.

Challenges

The strongest challenges to the Young Earth view are the following:

1. Scientific evidence for age in the universe as demonstrated by visible objects farther away than light could travel since God created man.  The counter arguments vary, but most common and strongest is that God created the light en-route to the observer in order that we could see the vastness of His creation.
2. Light appeared on day 1 before the sun and the moon on day 4.  The counter argument is that God produced the light without need of the sun, as is the case in Revelation 22:5, "There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever."
3. The amount of work that Adam completed in the latter part of the 6th day, naming all the animals before God created Eve.  The counter argument is that Adam would have only needed a few hours because there was one of each kind in the garden, and that is only a small portion of the number of creatures on the Earth at the time.

Old Earth

There are two prevailing Old Earth views of creation, one which sees the days of creation as epochs of time, often referred to as the "day-age view", and one which sees the elaborate symmetry of the creation account and still holding to six literal days but in a different sense, often referred to as the "framework view."

Scriptural Evidence

Deuteronomy 2:7 (ESV)

Remember the days of old;
    consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
    your elders, and they will tell you.

Psalm 19:1-2 (ESV)

The heavens declare the glory of God,

    and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

    and night to night reveals knowledge.

2 Peter 3:8 (ESV)

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Scientific Evidence

The speed of light has been empirically tested and confirmed countless times. The distance to the farthest stars can be shown to be billions of light years away.

Arguments For an Old Earth View 

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork."  We were created in a universe that was designed to reveal God's power and majesty. When science and mathematics are applied to understand God's creation, it reveals much about our Creator. He created a universe for us to discover, with physical properties that reveal incredible fine-tuning, not just for life but also for discovery. The biblical record allows us to trace backward to when Adam was created, while the book of nature, authored by God, reveals to us that the universe did have a beginning in an instant, and the speed of light lets us calculate that instant to be about 13.8 billion years ago. 

The 11th century rabbi Nachmanides, writing well before any modern scientific discoveries could have influenced his perspective, commented on Deuteronomy 2:7 by saying, "Why does Moses break the calendar into two parts -- 'The days of old, and the years of the many generations?' Because, 'Consider the days of old' is the Six Days of Genesis. 'The years of the many generations' is all the time from Adam forward." 

In other words, by separating the six days of creation from the genealogical timeline that starts with Adam, history is broken into two periods, which allows for flexibility in understanding the amount of time that passed prior to the creation of Adam.

Getting back to Genesis chapter 1, it is helpful to reference the Talmud to see what Jewish rabbis have said throughout history about the days of creation, since the creation account was written in Hebrew and first given to the Jews by Moses.

Here's an excerpt from an extensive article entitled Age of the Universe on the Jews for Judaism website that sheds light on how the rabbis in the Talmud have understood Genesis 1 since long before modern science uncovered evidence for an ancient universe:

The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2), in trying to understand the subtleties of Torah, analyzes the word "choshech." When the word "choshech" appears in Genesis 1:2, the Talmud explains that it means black fire, black energy, a kind of energy that is so powerful you can't even see it. Two verses later, in Genesis 1:4, the Talmud explains that the same word -- "choshech" -- means darkness, i.e. the absence of light.

Other words as well are not to be understood by their common definitions. For example, "mayim" typically means water. But Maimonides says that in the original statements of creation, the word "mayim" may also mean the building blocks of the universe.

Another example is Genesis 1:5, which says, "There is evening and morning, Day One." That is the first time that a day is quantified: evening and morning. Nachmanides discusses the meaning of evening and morning. Does it mean sunset and sunrise? It would certainly seem to.

But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The text says "there was evening and morning Day One... evening and morning a second day... evening and morning a third day." Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned. Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is only mentioned on Day Four? There is a purpose for the sun appearing only on Day Four, so that as time goes by and people understand more about the universe, you can dig deeper into the text.

Nachmanides says the text uses the words "Vayehi Erev" -- but it doesn't mean "there was evening." He explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet -- the root of "erev" -- is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is "there was disorder." The Torah's word for "morning" -- "boker" -- is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously and remains orderly. Order always degrades to chaos unless the environment recognizes the order and locks it in to preserve it. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement. The Torah wants us to be amazed by this flow, starting from a chaotic plasma and ending up with a symphony of life. Day-by-day the world progresses to higher and higher levels. Order out of disorder. It's pure thermodynamics. And it's stated in terminology of 3000 years ago.

So, there is good reason to understand "evening and morning" to mean "chaos to order" instead of "sunset to sunrise".

Arguments for the Day Age View

2 Peter 3:8 (ESV)

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

After the Big Bang and billions of years, the creation account starts with God forming the Earth. After that, there were six long periods in that eventually resulted in the creation of man 6000 years ago.

Arguments for the Framework View

The author of Genesis relishes patterns of seven.

1. The nodal term “good” occurs seven times
2. The the opening sentence has seven Hebrew words
3. Creation is divided into seven days
4. Each of the first three stichoi (verses of poetry) of the seventh day contains seven words (2:1–2:2a). 

Creation Kingdoms	Creature Kinds
Day 1: Lights (Genesis 1:3-5)	Day 4: Luminaries (Genesis 1:14-19)
Day 2: Sky, Waters (Genesis 1:6-8)	Day 5: Birds, Fish (Genesis 1:20-23)
Day 3: Land (Genesis 1:9-13)	Day 6: Land animals, Vegetation, Man (Genesis 1:24-31)
The Creator King
Day 7: Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3)

Also, heavens and earth with the article occur in 2.1a in the same order as in 1:1; thus the two lines form an inclusio*.

​In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

​Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  (Genesis 2:1)

The universe started billions of years ago with the Big Bang, a creative event only possible by someone eternal and all powerful, outside of time and space.  Everything in creation is the result of God's handiwork. Man was created 6000 years ago in the Garden of Eden.

*inclusio: a literary device based on a concentric principle, also known as bracketing or an envelope structure, which consists of creating a frame by placing similar material at the beginning and end of a section.

Challenges

The biggest challenges to the Old Earth views often cited are the following:

1. The Hebrew word "yom" (day), as well as the words "erev" (evening) and "boker" (morning), describe a day as if it must be a literal 24 hour day on Earth for all days except day seven.  This is countered by pointing out that the biblical author uses the Hebrew word "yom" in a few different ways, referring to the daylight portion of the day in Genesis 1:3-5, a 24-hour day in Genesis 1:14-19, and the entire creation period in Genesis 2:4, so the meaning is not always the same, leaving room for a broad range of possibilities. In addition, as medieval rabbi Nachmanides pointed out, from "erev" to "boker" can also be a poetic way to describe a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. Also, early Christian commentators agree, including Augustine, who wrote, “What kind of days these are is difficult or even impossible for us to imagine, to say nothing of describing them."*
2. How could death have taken place among animals before sin entered the world through Adam and Eve?  This can be addressed in many ways, but the strongest counter argument is that just as through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus men of faith were saved both forward and backward in time, so through the first Adam, sin entered the world, both forward and backward in time.

Literal 24 hour days in an old Earth cosmology

There are various approaches to accepting six literal days of creation without denying the evidence for and old Earth and older universe.

Days in Heaven

If the creation account is told from a heavenly perspective, the events that unfold on earth over a long period of time take place in Heaven over the course of only six days, culminating with the creation of man before God figurative rested from the activity of creation.

Days of Revelation

God may have revealed the creation account to Moses over a period of seven days, with the revelation following the framework view, poetically showing the majesty of God's creative handiwork in a memorable fashion.

Implications of General Relativity

According to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which has been bolstered by significant amounts of empirical study, the speed of light is a constraining factor that is essentially the fulcrum point of the balance between time and space.  We observe at the speed of light an expanding universe that began with a singularity where space and time emerged from a single point at which there was initially nothing and suddenly everything exploding and expanding into an unfathomably large and complex universe. Due to the doppler shift stretching the space through which light is traveling, when we look out billions of light years to observe the early universe we are looking across a greater distance than that same space stretched when the universe was much younger.  Careful calculations of the first several days of expansion and how far light would have traveled as the space was expanding and how much that space would have further expanded since then actually aligns to an age of 13.9 billion years.  The math is explained well in an article by Gerald Schroeder entitled simply The Age of the Universe.

Conclusion

Could God have created everything in six days? Of course! He could have done it in an instant. In fact, the Big Bang happened in an instant. 

St. Augustine of Hippo noted:

"When we reflect upon the first establishment of creatures in the works of God from which he rested on the seventh day, we should not think either of those days as being like these ones governed by the sun, nor of that working as resembling the way God now works in time; but we should reflect rather upon the work from which times began, the work of making all things at once, simultaneously."

Theistic evolution makes no sense to me, as Darwin's theory of macroevolution has turned many from the faith. God could have given the universe the appearance of age, but that also has placed much doubt in the minds of people in a modern age. 

The day age view has appeal, but personally I find the framework view more satisfying both intellectually and spiritually. The literary character of the creation account, with its incredible symmetry, seems to suggest that. However, I also find the idea of creation taking place over six literal days compelling, and the explanation of how that could be possible within Einstein's theory of General Relativity, might be the best of all, as it allows for the revelation God has given us in nature that suggests a very old Earth and much older universe to occur over a short period of time from the perspective of the origin point for God's creation as described in the creation account.

The Bible is not intended to be a science book, but rather a book that communicates to us what God wants us to know about Him, about the reality of His creation, about His plan of salvation for us, and about how to live our lives.

Of course, we will all find out once Christ returns, unless God chooses to reveal it sooner to those who die before that glorious day.

Resources

THE G3N3SIS DEBATE: Three Views on the Days of Creation (by J. Ligon Duncan III, David W. Hall, and Hugh Ross)

The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World (by William A. Dembski)

Did Augustine Read Genesis 1 Literally?

Age of the Universe (by Dr. Gerald Schroeder at Jews for Judaism)

Answers in Genesis