Do I have to believe in a literal creation to be a Christian?
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by Russell Grigg
By this I mean believe that God created the world in six
normal days, that there was then a real rebellion against God by an actual
Adam and Eve, followed by the entry of death, suffering
and carnivory into a once-perfect world, and that the first chapters of
Genesis are a literal, historical account of
all this. So does one have to believe this to be a Christian?
Becoming a Christian
In the New Testament, a Christian is seen as someone who does two things:
- Believes that Jesus Christ (who was fully God and fully
man), through His death on the Cross and His
Resurrection, has paid the penalty for our sin. Cf. ‘If
you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised
Him from the dead, you shall be saved’ (Romans
10:9).1
- Obeys the command to repent (literally, changes one’s mind—about
God and sin), that is, to acknowledge that one has lived and acted in rebellion
against God, and to ask God’s forgiveness for this.2 Cf. ‘God … commands all men everywhere
to repent’ (Acts
17:31a).3
There is a slippery slope into unbelief that accompanies disbelieving any part of
the Word of God.
Is it then enough just to believe in Jesus and repent? Well, these two things imply
that there exists a holy God against whom we have rebelled and so incurred the penalty
for doing so. But why does our disregard for God and our failure to keep His laws
merit any penalty at all, let alone the death penalty?
Answer: When we read the first three chapters of Genesis, we see
that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were created with a holy, godly nature and
they lived in fellowship with God. However, they chose to rebel against Him and
so became corrupt in themselves, hostile to God, and guilty before Him. Their rebellion
was an affront to the holiness of God who had created them, and it earned them the
death penalty (Genesis
3:17–19), about which they had been warned (Genesis
2:17,
3:3). This corruption, hostility and guilt involved the whole human
race (Romans
5:12–19),4 and we have
inherited their death penalty also (Romans
6:23), which we deserve.5
It is true that one can go through the steps of becoming a Christian
without accepting or even knowing the Genesis account of Creation and the Fall.6 However, such a minimal belief
system misses out on the full measure of what God has provided as the basis for
our coming into a right relationship with Him. This includes the totality of His
Word to us, incorporating the logical foundation which Genesis supplies to the whole
doctrine of Salvation.
This leads to a shallow faith that has little root in the Word of God and so has
little foundation to resist the attacks and ridicule of sceptics, atheists, liberal
religious leaders, fellow students, or work-mates, etc. In the parable of the sower,
it was because they had no root that the seeds which fell on stony ground
withered away when they sprang up and were scorched by the sun (Matthew
13:5–6,
20–21).
Today Genesis is under attack as never before—not only by sceptics who ridicule
it, but also by ‘Christian’ teachers who, in their books and sermons,
blatantly misrepresent what the text says, to try and make it conform to the conclusions
of some of modern science, with its antitheistic presuppositions. So then, how can
one tell what any part of God’s Word, and in particular Genesis, actually
means?
Answer: The key to understanding the meaning of any book of the
Bible is to ask, ‘What was the intention of the author?’ When we do
this with Genesis (e.g. by comparing the style of the first chapters with that of
the rest of Genesis),7 it is very
evident that Moses’ purpose, under God, was to write an authentic, historical
and factual account, beginning with the creation of the universe and Earth, and
then narrating the history of mankind from the creation of Adam to the death of
Joseph (Genesis
50:26).8,9
Living as a Christian
Let us now examine some of the problems faced by a Christian when he or she does
not accept what Genesis says about a literal Creation.
1. There is a slippery slope into unbelief that accompanies disbelieving any
part of the Word of God. If some part of the Bible is not true because it does not
mean what it says, how do we know that other parts, such as the
Virginal Conception of Jesus or the forgiveness of sin,
are true? In the 1940s and ’50s, American evangelist Charles Templeton’s
preaching helped lead thousands of people to profess faith in Christ, but then he
began to compromise with long-age evolutionary concepts. As a result, he had no
answer to the spurious claims of evolutionist scientists and their atheistic theories
about the origin of the Earth, life, etc., and no answer to the problems of suffering
and evil in the world.
In his autobiography, Farewell to God, Templeton tells how this compromise
led him into total apostasy. He came to deny the accounts of Creation,
Noah’s Flood, and the supernatural origin of the
Ten Commandments.10
He also ended up denying the Virginal Conception of Jesus,
miracles, the
Resurrection, the Ascension, Salvation, the efficacy
of prayer, and the existence of the Trinity.11 He concluded:
‘I believe that there is no supreme being with human attributes—no God
in the biblical sense—but that all life is the result of timeless evolutionary
forces, having reached its present transient state over millions of years.’12
It is important to note that some of those who profess faith at mass evangelism
rallies are like Templeton, and make an emotional decision without a proper foundation.
Thus it is not surprising that many professing converts ‘fall away’,
like Templeton did.
Evangelism
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2. As a Christian, how do you propose to share the Gospel with those who hold the
worldview that there is no God because matter formed itself in a ‘big bang’
billions of years ago, and life began spontaneously from chemicals in some primordial
pond where the conditions were ‘just right’? How are you going to convince
them that there is a Creator God to whom we must give account, without first showing
that their worldview is incorrect? How are you going to do this, if you say that
Genesis allows for everything to begin with a ‘big bang’?
An essential part of the Gospel is that there is a coming Day of Judgment.
How will such people be convinced of the relevance to them of the death of a man
on a cross 2,000 years ago, and of their need to repent, if they are not first given
good reasons to abandon their atheistic worldview and to replace it with one based
on the existence and claims of the Creator God of Genesis? An essential part of
the Gospel is that there is a coming Day of Judgment. Genesis shows us not only
that God has the authority to judge us, but also that He has the power to enforce
our attendance!13
In fact, chapters 6–8 of Genesis show that God has already judged mankind
with the global Flood, and Jesus (Luke
17:26–27) and the Apostle Peter (2
Peter 3:5–7) said that the coming judgment would be just as real.
However, if Noah’s Flood was just mythical or local, why should we believe
in judgment to come? Thus those who teach that Genesis describes a ‘big bang’
and a local Flood undermine the urgency of God’s coming judgment.
3. How do you propose to share the Gospel with those whose worldview says that there
is no such thing as sin because there is no absolute difference between right and
wrong? [See also Q&A: Morality and Ethics] How are
you going to convince them that they are lost and need a Saviour? Without the Genesis
account of the rebellion against God by our first parents, and the Curse that followed,
there is no basis for the origin of sin, or the fact that sin needs to be atoned
for, or that Christ did this by His death on the Cross and His subsequent Resurrection
(1
Corinthians 15:21–22).
4. If you believe only what you choose to believe in God’s Word, how will
you wield the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians
6:17), when it is blunted or broken by non-acceptance of its total truth?
5. How are you going to share the Gospel with those who see the pain and suffering
of people and animals, and say that if God exists He cannot be a God of love as
the Bible says (1
John 3:8)? Without the Genesis account that the world God originally made
was ‘very good’ (Genesis
1:31), and the Genesis account of the Curse that fell on the Earth as a
result of Adam’s sin (resulting in death and suffering), so that the present
world is not the way God made things, there is no answer.
Long-age compromise views, even if anti-evolution, undermine the Gospel
at this very point.
In fact, God made man ‘in His own image’ (Genesis
1:27), so that He and man could have communion together. When man turned
away from God in disobedience, God was grieved, so much so that in His love He gave
His Son to be our Redeemer and win us back to Himself (John
3:16).
Conclusion
Do you have to believe in a literal Creation to be a Christian? The short answer
is ‘No’. The long answer is ‘No, but …’.
Related articles
References and Notes
- See also
John 11:25;
Acts 16:31;
1 Corinthians 15:1–4;
Ephesians 2:8; etc. Return to text.
- Not just being sorry that one has been found out for some immoral
or criminal act. Return to text.
- See also
Mark 1:15;
Acts 3:19;
2 Peter 3:9; etc. Not all ‘salvation’ texts in the Bible
contain both instructions, but they are often used synonymously, as each implies
the other. Thus faith in Christ’s death for us involves our acknowledging
that He died for our sin, and repentance in the Biblical sense involves there being
a means whereby we may be justly forgiven, namely that Jesus has paid the penalty
for our sin. Return to text.
- This shows the error of those who teach that sin is a feeling of
low self-esteem. Not everybody has low self-esteem, but the Bible says that ‘all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans
3:23). Return to text.
- See Grigg, R.,
Why did God impose the death penalty for sin? Creation 15(1):32–34,
1992. Return to text.
- Many missionaries begin Bible translation with one of the Gospels
and many tribal people have been converted as a result. However, many more genuine
(i.e. persevering) conversions usually occur when missionaries begin their evangelism
by teaching about Creation and the Fall from Genesis. See McIlwain, T., Firm Foundations:
Creation to Christ, New Tribes Mission, Sanford, Florida, 1991. Return
to text.
- One of the main themes of Genesis is the sovereignty of God. This
is seen in four notable events (Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and Babel), and in
God’s relationship to eight notable people (Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and Joseph). There is thus a unifying theme to the whole of Genesis,
which fails if any event is not true history; each event reinforces the historicity
of all the other events. Return to text.
- It is true that the Bible contains poetry (as in the Psalms), parables
(as recorded in the Gospels), and metaphors (as when Jesus said, ‘I am the
bread of life’). However, Genesis is not written in any of these distinctive
styles. See Grigg, R., Should Genesis
be taken literally?, Creation 16(1):38–41,
1993. Return to text.
- Genesis 1–50 gives the foundational history of the Jewish
people; other nations are covered only as far as the end of chapter 10.
Return to text.
- Templeton, C., Farewell to God, McClelland & Stewart,
Toronto, pp. 37–71, 1996. Return to text.
- Ref. 10, pp. 89–153. Return to text.
- Ref. 10, p. 232. See also Ham, K. and Byers, S.,
Slippery slide to unbelief, Creation 22(3):8–13,
2000. Return to text.
- See Grigg, R.,
Curse and catastrophe: the four great judgments of God on all of sinful humanity,
Creation 16(2):42–44, 1994. Return to
text.
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