‘Created a creationist’
Interview with theologian Dr John Whitcomb
by Robert Doolan
Author and theologian Dr John Whitcomb says he looks back in amazement at the way
God used the book The Genesis Flood—which he co-authored with Dr
Henry Morris more than 30 years ago—to spark worldwide revival in creationism.
‘We look back in absolute amazement and humbleness before God for the way
he chose a tiny instrument like this to accomplish what we view to be truly amazing
and great things in the Christian world’, Dr Whitcomb says.
He fondly recalls the ‘amazing providence of God’ that brought him together
with Dr Henry Morris, who is now President of the Institute for Creation Research
in California. They met at Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, in
1953, where Dr Whitcomb was teaching theology and Old Testament. Dr Morris had come
to present a creation lecture. ‘God brought us together in a marvellous way’,
Dr Whitcomb says. ‘I was preparing a doctoral dissertation, which turned out
to be 500 pages long, on everything the Bible teaches about the Genesis Flood.’
Dr Morris at the time was also preparing a lengthy manuscript on the predictable
hydrodynamic effects of such a Flood. They combined efforts, which eventuated in
the creationist classic, The Genesis Flood, in 1961.
‘We were afraid that the book would not sell at all’, Dr Whitcomb says.
Moody Press had rejected the manuscript because they thought it was too long and
technical. So Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company decided to publish it.
‘They were overwhelmed, and so were we, at the immediate response to the book—expensive
as it was as a hard-back volume.’
Conferences, talks, and requests to speak at churches, schools and elsewhere flowed
in from around the world.
It surprises many to learn that in Dr Whitcomb’s early days he was far from
being a creationist.
‘I was an evolutionist’, he says. ‘I was taught evolutionary ideas.
My father, mother and grandparents were not believers.’
He took courses at Princeton University in earth history, palaeontology and historical
geology, ‘to grasp the evolutionary scenario more clearly.’
‘At the end of my first year, and the completion of those studies, by the
infinite mercy and grace of God, through the patient, prayerful, gracious witness
of a handful of Christian students and a missionary, I came to know Jesus Christ
as my Lord and Saviour.
‘At that moment I was “created a creationist”. I became a new
creation in Christ. Old things passed away, and evolution vanished for ever from
my heart and mind.’
There was one problem however. His spiritual instructor at the time taught him the
‘gap’ theory. (The ‘gap’ theory holds that a ‘gap’
of millions of years occurred between the first two verses of Genesis.) But when
he began to teach Old Testament at Grace Theological Seminary, the students challenged
his basis for believing the ‘gap’ theory.
He read Lutheran scholar Dr Alfred Rehwinkel’s book, The Flood, then met Dr
Henry Morris, and began to work out both biblically and scientifically that the
only logical way to accept Genesis was the straightforward way with no gaps and
no compromises.
Dr Whitcomb says that belief in compromise positions such as the ‘gap’
theory and ‘day-age’ theory has declined dramatically.
‘We are finding in America very few Christian leaders hold the “gap”
theory any more. God in a sense phased it out as an inadequate, ineffective attempt
to compromise Genesis 1 with the geologic time-table.’
He says the ‘day-age’ theory too, which attempts to harmonize the days
of creation with geologic ages, is barely struggling to survive, because it simply
doesn’t fit the facts. He says that the only option to accepting the straightforward
reading of Genesis seems to have become plain old theistic evolutionism, in which
you take Genesis 1 ‘as some kind of poetic, imaginative, visionary presentation
of God as Creator with no realistic relationship to chronology, history or science
at all.’
Dr Whitcomb believes the strength of the creationist movement is in God-honouring
churches where the pastors and pastoral leadership support, explain and teach biblical
creationism, and its corollary scientific creationism, to the rank and file of God’s
people.
‘We can’t just, as it were, pound away at the major universities and
hope they will surrender, or that they will even listen. That does not seem to be
God’s way. It’s through the local churches that bring people to the
Lord, and ground them in the whole counsel of God, including creationism, that provides
the hope for strength and healthfulness in what we call the modern creationist movement.’
Health problems have caused Dr Whitcomb to slow down slightly in recent years. When
he was in France in 1989 teaching an extension program in theology in graduate school,
he was stricken with phlebitis (inflammation of vein walls) in his right leg, and
an embolism, which was nearly fatal.
‘Seventeen days in a French hospital was a marvellous time for God to speak
to me about a few things,’ he says.
He now has to be careful to get the right exercise. ‘I thank God that my wife
Norma is one of God’s wonderful instruments to help me survive a little longer.’
Dr Whitcomb believes the creationist movement will continue to grow in effectiveness.
‘I feel it will have a bright future to the extent that it recognizes the
priority of God’s infallible Word as illumined by the Holy Spirit, rather
than mere technical scientific studies—valuable and important though they
may be. It always has to come back down to what God has said.’
This is reinforced by his favourite Bible verse—2 Timothy 2:2.
‘That’s the command that God gave through Paul to Timothy—“The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the
same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
Notice that it says “the same”, not “less than”.
‘That’s the chain reaction, the dynamic, for world evangelism—if
it is handled humbly and reverently and in total commitment.’
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