Gap Creationism
Gap creationism (also known as ruin-restoration creationism, restoration creationism, or “the Gap Theory“) is a form of old Earth creationism that posits that the six-yom creation period, as described in the Book of Genesis, involved six literal 24-hour days (light being “day” and dark “night” as God specified), but that there was a gap of time between two distinct creations in the first and the second verses of Genesis, which the theory states explains many scientific observations, including the age of the Earth. It differs from day-age creationism, which posits that the ‘days’ of creation were much longer periods (of thousands or millions of years), and from young Earth creationism, which although it agrees concerning the six literal 24-hour days of creation, does not posit any gap of time.
Gap creationism
History
Main article: History of Creationism
Gap creationism became increasingly attractive near the end of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, because the newly established science of geology had determined that the Earth was far older than common interpretations of Genesis and the Bible-based flood geology would allow. Gap creation allowed religious geologists (who composed the majority of the geological community at the time) to reconcile their faith in the Bible with the new authority of science. According to the doctrine of natural theology, science was in this period considered a second revelation, God’s word in nature as well as in Scripture, so the two could not contradict each other.
From 1814, gap creationism was popularized by Thomas Chalmers, who attributed the concept to the 17th-century Dutch Arminian theologian Simon Episcopius. Chalmers became a divinity professor at the University of Edinburgh, founder of the Free Church of Scotland, and author of one of the Bridgewater Treatises. Other early proponents included Oxford University geology professor and fellow Bridgewater author William Buckland, Sharon Turner and Edward Hitchcock.
It gained widespread attention when a “second creative act” was discussed prominently in the reference notes for Genesis in the influential 1917 Scofield Reference Bible.
In 1954, a few years before the re-emergence of young Earth flood geology eclipsed Gap creationism, influential evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm wrote in The Christian View of Science and Scripture:
“The gap theory has become the standard interpretation throughout hyper-orthodoxy, appearing in an endless stream of books, booklets, Bible studies, and periodical articles. In fact, it has become so sacrosanct with some that to question it is equivalent to tampering with Sacred Scripture or to manifest modernistic leanings”.
This book by Ramm was influential in the formation of another alternative to gap creationism, that of progressive creationism, which found favour with more conservative members of the American Scientific Affiliation (a fellowship of scientists who are Christians), with the more modernist wing of that fellowship favouring theistic evolution.
Religious proponents of this form of creationism have included Oral Roberts, Cyrus I. Scofield, Harry Rimmer, Jimmy Swaggart, Perry Stone, G. H. Pember, L. Allen Higley, Arthur Pink, Peter Ruckman, Finis Jennings Dake, Chuck Missler, E. W. Bullinger, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Herbert W. Armstrong, Garner Ted Armstrong, Michael Pearl and Clarence Larkin.
Interpretation of Genesis
See also: Genesis creation narrative
Some gap creationists may believe that science has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the Earth is far older than can be accounted for by, for instance, adding up the ages of Biblical patriarchs and comparing it with secular historical data, as James Ussher famously attempted in the 17th century when he developed the Ussher chronology.
For some, the gap theory allows both the Genesis creation account and geological science to be inerrant in matters of scientific fact. Gap creationists believe that certain facts about the past and the age of the Earth have been omitted from the Genesis account; they hold that there was a gap of time in the Biblical account that lasted an unknown number of years between a first creation in Genesis 1:1 and a second creation in Genesis 1:2-31. By positing such an event, various observations in a wide range of fields, including the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, dinosaurs, fossils, ice cores, ice ages, and geological formations are allowed by adherents to have occurred as outlined by science without contradicting their literal belief in Genesis.
Biblical support
Because there is no specific information given in Genesis concerning the proposed gap of time, other scriptures are used to support and explain what may have occurred during this period and to explain the specific linguistic reasoning behind this interpretation of the Hebrew text. A short list of examples is given below:
- The word “was” in Genesis 1:2 for some adherents is more accurately translated “became”. Such a word choice makes the gap interpretation easier to see in modern English.
- God is perfect and everything He does is perfect, so a newly created earth from the hand of God should not have been without form and void and shrouded in darkness. Deuteronomy 32:4, Isaiah 45:18 1 John 1:5
- The Holy Spirit was “renewing” the face of the earth as he hovered over the face of the waters. Psalms 104:30
- Angels already existed in a state of grace when God “laid the foundations of the Earth”, so there had been at least one creative act of God before the six days of Genesis. Job 38:4-7
- Satan and his angels caused war in Heaven and had fallen from grace (Isaiah 14:12) (Luke 10:18) “in the beginning” which, since the serpent tempted Adam and Eve, had to have occurred before the Fall of man. Isaiah 14:12-15, Ezekiel 28:11-19, John 8:44
Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia