What does the New Testament say about Creation?
Special Creation, theistic evolution or Progressive Creation?
by Russell Grigg
Genesis chapters 1–3 is the biblical record of Creation and the
Fall.
Young-Earth creationists (YECs) believe that it is straightforward history,
with the events of
chapter 1 being revealed by God (possibly directly to Moses, but more likely
to Adam), and the events of
chapters 2 and 3 being experienced by Adam, who passed it all on to his
descendants in either written or oral form (see the articles on the authorship of
Genesis under Who really wrote
Genesis?).
YECs take it as the author intended, i.e. that it means what it so clearly
says, namely six ordinary-length days, with an evening and a morning (and in
chapters 6–9 a global Flood)—with only thousands of years from
the creation of all things to the present (see
Should Genesis be taken literally? for the principles of biblical interpretation,
hermeneutics).
All positions (e.g. theistic evolution, progressive creation) that claim that fossils
were being laid down millions of years ago put death, suffering, bloodshed and disease
before Adam.
Evolutionists, both atheistic and theistic (TEs), as well as Progressive Creationists
(PCs), reject this because it disagrees with their beliefs about the time, the order
of events, and/or the method involved for the origin of the universe, Earth and
life, as proposed by many (but certainly not all) scientists. Theistic evolutionists
believe that God used the process of evolution, so that death and survival of the
fittest were part of the process whereby man appeared. (See the articles under theistic evolution
for its many theological and scientific problems.)
Progressive creationists believe that God intervened (in the processes of death
and struggle for survival) to create millions of species at various times over millions
of years. PCs claim
Genesis 1 means what it says but, in fact, they ‘re-interpret’
the Genesis days to be long periods of time, the Flood to be local, and place death,
disease and suffering before sin. (See the articles under
progressive creation for its many theological and scientific problems, and
the book
Refuting Compromise for a detailed rebuttal of its leading representative,
Hugh Ross.)
Could a Genesis ‘day’ equal 1 million years?
Answer: Adam lived 930 years and died (Genesis
5:5).
930 yrs = 930 x 365¼ days =
339,692 days
339,682 x 1 million yrs =
339,682,000,000 years!
Could 1 million years equal one day?
Answer: 930 yrs = 0.00093 of 1,000,000 yrs
0.00093 of 1 day = 1 minute 20 seconds
In Genesis, 1 day is not 1 million years, nor 1 billion years. It means what it
says, ~24 hours.
Long-agers generally teach that
Genesis 1 means something other than what it says, such as that it is theological
poetry, or an allegory involving metaphorical people. Many used to claim that there
were gaps, although most see the futility of this (see refutations under
Gap Theory); and a few claimed that the days were ‘days of revelation’
to Moses, but this has little support because of its faulty linguistic support as
shown in Days of Revelation or Creation?
The most common compromise, at least in ostensibly conservative colleges, is that
Genesis is a non-literal description of God’s creation in terms understandable
to human minds, called a ‘framework’ (see also
What is the Framework Hypothesis? Is it Biblical?). In all of these,
Genesis 1 is taken to mean something other than straightforward history.
Liberal theologians have always admitted that Genesis was intended to be taken straightforwardly—they
simply disbelieve it (e.g. James Barr
and Marcus Dods), and usually
promote the discredited documentary
hypothesis of authorship.
The New Testament
However, there are a number of churches and seminaries which profess to be ‘New
Testament churches’ and ignore creation as ‘Old Testament’. So
what do the New Testament writers say about Genesis? (Indeed, does the New Testament
teach ‘New Testament onlyism’?) Did they believe that Genesis, as written,
is real straightforward history, or did they believe it to be poetry or myth? Were
they YECs, PCs, TEs, or something else? Note: in the following discussion, the issue
is not the age of the earth,
but biblical authority—whether
we can trust the Bible.
The Gospel writers
Matthew, who wrote his Gospel to show that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy,
records that an angel told Joseph that Mary would have a son who would save His
people from their sins. This son would be conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit in
fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew
1:22–23). The immediate prophecy is that of Isaiah 7:14, but the first
prophecy (sometimes called the Protevangelical promise) about this was given to
Adam and Eve as a real historical event in the Garden of Eden (Genesis
3:15). (See The Virginal Conception
of Christ for detailed analysis of these prophecies).
The New Testament tells us that the Creator of the universe was Jesus Christ (John
1:3;
Colossians 1:16;
Hebrews 1:3; see also:
In
Matthew 4:3 there is a most unusual testimony to this fact—that of
Satan.
During the temptation of Christ, Satan said: ‘If You are the Son of God, command
that these stones become bread.’ Or, in short, ‘If you are God …
create!’ Satan was challenging Christ to duplicate in miniature form the instantaneous
and fiat (i.e. commanded) creation that happened during Creation Week.
For this temptation to have had any meaning, Satan must have believed that Christ
was able to do it. Why? Because it would have been no temptation at all to any of
us!
At the right time, Jesus did use His creative powers, inter alia, wine
from water (John
2:1–11); lots of food from a little (Mark
6:35–44;
8:1–9); healthy organs in lepers (Luke
5:12–13), the blind (Matthew
9:27–30), and paralytics
Luke 6:6–10); and life from the dead (Luke
7:11–16;
8:41–42;
49–55;
John 11:1–44). These miracles
all happened immediately,1
as would be expected from the God who is the creator of time and thus not bound
by it, and in response to Christ’s command (whether spoken or just willed).
Not one happened through any chance random evolutionary process.
In
John 1:1, 3, 10, John refers to Jesus as the Creator of all things, including
the world. John calls Christ the Word (Greek: logos). One reason for this
is that Genesis 1 records that the Creator God called all things into being by means
of His spoken word—not by any evolutionary process.
What did Jesus explicitly teach about creation?
An especially significant confirmation of the historicity of Genesis is seen when
Jesus was asked about divorce.
Mark 10:6 records that He replied by quoting from
Genesis 1 & 2. ‘But from the beginning of the creation, God
“made them male and female” (Genesis
1:27). “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and
be joined to his wife, “and the two shall become one flesh”’ (Genesis
2:24). The Lord Jesus Christ was no evolutionist! He was there at the beginning,
and He says that man and woman were there ‘from the beginning’ too,
i.e. within six days of the beginning, not billions of years later. (See also Jesus and the age of the world
and the more in-depth But from the beginning
of … the institution of marriage?).
Notice that Jesus was quoting from
Genesis chapters 1 and 2 in the one context. And unlike liberal theological
institutions, He did not regard these two chapters as contradictory accounts but
as complementary (see also
Do Genesis 1 and 2 contradict each other?). So here the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, as recorded by Mark, affirms the literal, historical accuracy
and fundamental authority of the Genesis record of Creation, i.e. that it means
what it says.
Luke 3:23–38 traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam through some
42 ancestors. The ages of these people given in the Old Testament amount to a few
thousand years, not millions of years (see
Biblical chronogenealogies).
Luke 11:50–51 also records Christ’s reference to ‘the
blood of Abel’, with Abel the first in a long line of martyred prophets whose
blood ‘was shed from the foundation of the world’, not billions of years
later. Jesus, as reported by Luke, thus affirms that Adam’s son, Abel, was
a real person, and that Genesis is a literal historical record that means what it
says.
The Apostle Paul
In
Acts 17:24–31, we have the record of Paul’s sermon in Athens
to the Epicurean philosophers, who were evolutionists.2 Here Paul says that God created the world and everything
in it; that He gives all men life; that every nation has come from one man; that
we are God’s offspring and will one day be judged by God; and that the proof
of this is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Notice that Paul was using ‘creation
evangelism’ to first change the worldview of these evolutionist Greeks. He
tells them that God is the Creator, and that there will be a Day of Judgment. The
result: several converts (v.
34), who eventually turned their culture around. Could Paul have said any
of this, unless he believed that Genesis means what it says about origins? And unless
he believed that the Creator God is also Saviour, as well as Judge?
In
Romans 1:18–25, Paul says that the things we see in nature (rather
than suggesting evolution) witness to God as Creator, and that ignoring this evidence
leads to idol worship and deviant sexual behaviour. If we have evolved from animals,
why not worship animals or engage in deviant sexual activity? The answer is that
the God who is Creator is also Lawgiver, and He forbids idol/animal worship, as
well as all deviant sexual behaviour (Exodus
20:3–4;
22:19;
Leviticus 20:13,
Romans 1:26–27;
1 Corinthians 6:9–10).
In
Romans 5:12, Paul says: ‘…through one man sin entered the world,
and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned’.
The man was Adam, who sinned by breaking a command from God. Death came as a judgment
from God because of this act of Adam’s. This invokes the historical truth
of
Genesis 2:16–17;
3:6, 17–19.
[Jesus’] miracles all happened immediately, as would be expected
from the God who is the creator of time and thus not bound by it.
Jesus… thus affirms that Adam’s son, Abel, was a real person, and that
Genesis is a literal historical record.
Paul goes on to present Adam as a contrasting type of Christ, calling Him ‘the
last Adam’ (1
Corinthians 15:45; see First Adam—last
Adam Both are vital to the Gospel ... but exactly how?). The sin of
Adam, which brought condemnation to all men, is contrasted with the righteousness
of Christ, which makes redemption available to all. However, if Adam is a metaphor,
and Genesis is figurative rather than historical fact, and if death is a part of
nature rather than the penalty for sin, the death of Christ on the cross is no longer
needed as a sacrifice for sin (cf.
Romans 6:23).
In
1 Corinthians 15:26, Paul refers to death as ‘the last enemy’.
If death is an enemy, and the result of sin, it could not have been the process
over millions of years by which God created Adam. See also how this
explains why an all-powerful, loving God allows suffering and death.
In
1 Corinthians 11:8, Paul writes that ‘man did not come from woman’.
In
1 Corinthians 15:21–22, Paul irrevocably links the resurrection of
Christ to the fact that Adam was the man through whom death came, and in
15:45, 47 he twice refers to Adam as the first man. In
2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul refers to Eve as a real person who was deceived
by ‘the serpent’s cunning’. Then in
1 Timothy 2:13–14, Paul again refers to the Fall as a historical event—that
God made Adam first, before Eve, and that Eve was the one deceived. These are all
literal readings of
Genesis 2:18, 21–22 and/or
3:1–6.
Other New Testament writers
In
Hebrews 4:4 &
4:10, the writer refers to God’s rest on the seventh day of Creation
Week as a real historical event. Cf.
Genesis 2:2–3. (See also Is
the Seventh Day an Eternal Rest?)
James 3:9 says that we have been made in God’s likeness. This applies
to all men and women, both believers and unbelievers, and means that people have
a spiritual dimension which animals do not have. James is here taking
Genesis 1:26 to be literally and historically true.
In
1 Peter 3:20, Peter treats the Flood as a real historical event, with a
real man, Noah, and literally ‘eight people saved’. Likewise in
Hebrews 11:4, 5, & 7;
1 John 3:12; and
Jude 14, the writers all treat Abel, Cain, Enoch and Noah as real
historical people and not as metaphors.
Conclusion
Every New Testament writer mentions the events or the people recorded in
Genesis, and every New Testament writer sets forth these events and people
as real, straightforward history, not as camp-fire stories, allegory or myths. Every
writer takes the view that Genesis means what it says, not something different from
what it says (see also the summary article
Genesis: Bible authors believed it to be history).
We can believe the Genesis record with confidence. The Gospel is that the first
man whom God created sinned and brought judgment upon mankind, but God, in His love,
provided His Son to pay the penalty for our sin on the cross. This Gospel has its
foundation in the literal, historical truth of Genesis. Christians who tamper with
this foundation undermine and sabotage the very Gospel itself.
Related articles
References and notes
- In the case of the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida
in two stages, both of which were immediate, Christ first caused him to see, and
then healed his perceptual incapacity, known medically as agnosia (Mark 8:22–25).
See Grigg, R., Walking trees …
Modern science helps us understand a puzzling miracle, Creation
21(4):54–55, Sept. 1999. Return to text
- And to the Stoics, who were pantheists. The Epicureans
followed the teaching of Epicurus (342–270 BC), who taught that everything
on Earth had evolved directly from the earth material itself. Other Greek evolutionists
were Empedocles and Aristotle. See Grigg, R.
A brief history of design, Creation 22(2):50–53,
2000. Return to text
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