Old Earth Re-Creationist Models that Interpret the Days of the Creation Week Literally

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Over the past two Monday evenings in our Biblical Creation class, we started covering old-earth creation models that interpret the days of Genesis 1 literally. More specifically we started looking at the Gap Theory by describing and evaluating this hypothesis.

Description of the Gap Theory

    Though gap theorists disagree on some details of this hypothesis, all advocates of the traditional gap theory agree that Genesis 1:1 describes a perfect and complete creation of the heavens and the earth, that 1:2 records the ruin of the originally perfect earth, and that an elapsed period of time between the originally perfect earth and its restoration set forth in 1:3???31.

Evaluation of the Gap Theory

    In class we looked at five of of my criticisms against key arguments supporting the gap theory: the use of “create” and “make” to support the gap theory, a grammatical allowance for a temporal gap, retranslating “was” as “became” to support the gap theory, “formless and void” as a reflection of judgment, and “darkness” as a reflection of judgment. This was followed by addressing three theological deficiencies with the gap theory. Since my class notes are an update of a paper that I previously wrote, I will not describe it in this post any further. If you would like to check out my arguments against the gap theory as an example of how not to interpret the Bible, go to “What about the Gap Theory?

This evening in our class, we will finish looking at old-earth re-creationists models followed by a presentation of arguments for young-earth creationism. I hope to post about this later on the week.

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