Davis Young: why he abandoned the day-age theory
The long-ager compromiser Dr Davis Young, was once a staunch advocate of the
day-age theory. But he eventually abandoned this nonsense because of the
eisegetical gymnastics required to harmonize the Genesis order with the order of
events of long-age geology (see also Two worldviews in conflict).
The Day-Age hypothesis insisted with at least a semblance of textual plausibility
that the days of creation were long periods of time of indeterminate length, although
the immediate context implies that the term yôm for “day”
really means “day”. Having devised a means for allowing Genesis 1 to
be in harmony with an ancient planet, Day-Age advocates needed to demonstrate that
the sequence of creative activities of Genesis chapter 1 matched the sequence of
events deciphered by the astronomers and geologists. Well, Day-Agers outdid themselves
in constructing impressive correlations. Of course, these correlations …
all differed from each other. While a fairly convincing case could be made for a
general concord, … specifics of these correlations were a bit more murky.
There were some textual obstacles the Day-Agers developed an amazing agility in
surmounting. The biblical text, for example, has vegetation appearing on the third
day and animals on the fifth day. Geology, however, had long realized that invertebrate
animals were swarming in the seas long before vegetation gained a foothold on the
land. This obvious point of conflict, however, failed to dissuade well-intentioned
Christians, my earlier self included, from nudging the text to mean something different
from what it says. In my case, I suggested that the days were overlapping days.
Having publicly repented of that textual mutilation a few years ago, I will move
on without further embarrassing myself.
Worse yet, the text states that on the fourth day God made the heavenly bodies after
the earth was already in existence. Here is a blatant confrontation with science.
Astronomy insists that the sun is older than the earth. How do Day-Agers worm out
of this? The usual subterfuge involves the suggestion that the light originally
visible on earth was sunlight that was obscured and diffused by the thick atmosphere
that began to dissipate with the separation of the waters on the second day. Not
until the fourth day, however, had the mists thinned to the point where the sun
became visible from the earth. …
Genius as all these schemes may be, one is struck by the forced nature of them all.
While the exegetical gymnastic manoeuvres have displayed remarkable flexibility,
I suspect that they have resulted in temporary damage to the theological musculature.’
Further reading
Reference
- Young, D., The harmonization of Scripture and science, science symposium
at Wheaton College, 23 March 1990.
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