Creationism

Creationism, in its most widely used sense, is a set of religious positions opposed to modern materialistic views of the origin of the Earth and of living things. In a different and much older sense, creationism is a particular theological position on the origin of the human soul. Both senses are described here.

In the first sense, creationism (not to be confused with the doctrine of creation) has various meanings. Most broadly, it can mean simply that the universe (and perhaps the first living things) were divinely created. Even Charles Darwin could have been called a "creationist" in this sense, since he concluded The Origin of Species (from the second edition on) with the statement that life was “originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.” But Darwin believed that the evolution of living things after their initial creation could be explained without God’s further involvement, and “creationist” is usually used to describe someone who rejects this aspect of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

In modern controversies over cosmic and biological origins, creationism takes two general forms: old-Earth creationism (OEC) and young-Earth creationism (YEC). The former accepts geological evidence that the Earth is many millions of years old but holds that God created it and living things through a long process of change. The latter interprets Genesis to mean that God created the universe and the basic kinds of living things in a short time (usually six 24-hour days) a few thousand years ago.

In the second sense, Christian theologians have debated for centuries whether the human soul is created directly by God (“creationism”) or produced by human parents (“traducianism”). The former is more consistent with the immaterial and eternal nature of the soul, while the latter makes it easier to explain the transmission of original sin.

Old-Earth Creationism

Before 1800, Western scientists generally took for granted the chronology of the first chapters of Genesis, which describe the creation of the universe in six days, and of biblical genealogies that seemed to establish the creation of human beings about six thousand years ago. With the rise of modern geology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, Christians began to re-interpret biblical chronology to accommodate the growing evidence that the Earth is much older than six thousand years.

In the nineteenth century, there were two common ways of interpreting scripture in the light of geological evidence. The first was the “gap” theory, according to which the original creation of the universe recorded in Genesis 1:1-1:5 was followed by an indefinitely long interval before the subsequent days described in Genesis 1:6-2:3. The second was the “era” or “day-age” theory, according to which the six days of Genesis represented six periods of indefinite duration.

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 it generated considerable controversy, but not over the age of the Earth. Princeton geologist Arnold Guyot (1807-1884) and Canadian geologist John William Dawson (1820-1899), both of them Christians, accepted the evidence pointing to an old Earth but rejected Darwin's theory in favor of a progressive form of evolution in which human beings were created by God. Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge (1797-1878 ) also rejected Darwin's theory, not because it contradicted a literal reading of Genesis but because it denied divine providence and design.

In 1909, the widely used Scofield Reference Bible promoted the gap theory. When The Fundamentals (from which "Fundamentalism" gets its name) were written between 1910 and 1915, they ...

Old-Earth creationism is sometimes confused with intelligent design (ID), but the most prominent OEC organization in the U. S. has publicly distinguished its views from ID and criticized the latter for not being based on the Bible. While applauding the “efforts and integrity” of intelligent design advocates, Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe wrote in 2002: “Winning the argument for design without identifying the designer yields, at best, a sketchy origins model. Such a model makes little if any positive impact on the community of scientists and other scholars... The time is right for a direct approach, a single leap into the origins fray. Introducing a biblically based, scientifically verifiable creation model represents such a leap.”

Young-Earth Creationism

Young-Earth creationism, like old-Earth creationism, is sometimes confused with intelligent design (ID), but the two largest YEC organizations in the U. S. have publicly distinguished their views from ID and criticized it for not being based on the Bible. Henry M. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research wrote in 1999 that intelligent design “even if well-meaning and effectively articulated, will not work! It has often been tried in the past and has failed, and it will fail today. The reason it won't work is because it is not the Biblical method.” According to Morris: “The evidence of intelligent design… must be either followed by or accompanied by a sound presentation of true Biblical creationism if it is to be meaningful and lasting.” In 2002, Carl Wieland of Answers in Genesis (AiG) criticized well-intentioned design advocates who “left the Bible out of it” for unwittingly aiding and abetting modern rejection of the Bible. Wieland explained that “AiG’s major ‘strategy’ is to boldly, but humbly, call the church back to its Biblical foundations… [so] we neither count ourselves a part of this movement nor campaign against it.”

Origin of the Soul

Early Christian thinkers had several different opinions about the origin of the human soul. Tertullian, a third-century Latin theologian, maintained that after God first breathed a soul into Adam each subsequent soul was generated by human parents in the same act that produces the body. After the fall, the descendants of Adam and Eve still had free will but inherited original sin as a stain on the soul. Tertullian’s view was known as “traducianism.”

Origen, a third-century Greek theologian, taught that souls pre-exist their bodies—a teaching that was compatible with the Manichaen view of bodies as inherently evil and was later formally condemned by the church. Other Greek and Latin theologians taught instead that each soul is created independently by God when the body is produced by its parents, a view known as “creationism.” This view was held by Pelagius, who maintained that we are all born sinless but become sinful when we succumb to the evil circumstances that surround us. For Pelagius, Christ was an example of how all of us can save ourselves if we act morally.

In opposition to Pelagius, Augustine of Hippo taught that we cannot save ourselves because our souls are tainted with original sin, inherited from the fall of Adam and Eve, and that original sin can be removed only by Christ. Augustine regarded his view as more consistent with traducianism than creationism, though he never fully embraced the former or rejected the latter.

Most later theologians, including Roman Catholic Thomas Aquinas and Calvinist Francis Turretin, defended creationism and rejected traducianism on various philosophical and theological grounds, though the issue was not completely resolved. In Unification Thought, a newborn soul is produced through the four-position-foundation by God acting through the souls of human parents. According to this view there is an element of truth in both creationism and traducianism: A soul is created with an original mind that reflects God’s image, but it is also tainted by original sin that is passed down from Adam and Eve and can be removed only by the Messiah.

Select Bibliography

History Books

P. J. Bowler. 1989. Evolution: The History of an Idea. Revised Edition. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.) ISBN 0-520-06385-6.

C. C. Gillispie. 1951. Genesis and Geology. Reprinted 1996 with a foreword by N. Rupke. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) ISBN 0-674-34481-2.

E. J. Larson. 1997. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. (New York: Basic Books.) ISBN 0-465-07509-6.

J. R. Moore. 1979. The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America 1870-1900. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) ISBN 0-521-28571-8.

R. L. Numbers. 2006. The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design. Expanded Edition. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) ISBN 0-674-02339-0.

Pro-OEC Books

R. C. Newman and H. J. Eckelmann, Jr. 1989. Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth. (Hatfield, PA: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute.) ISBN 0-944-78897-1.

F. Rana. 2005. Who Was Adam? A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man. (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress Publishing Group.) ISBN 1-576-83577-4.

H. Ross. 2001. The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God. (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress Publishing Group.) ISBN 1-576-83288-0.

H. Ross. 2006. Creation as Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/Evolution Wars. (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress Publishing Group.) ISBN 1-576-83578-2.

D. W. Snoke. 2006. A Biblical Case for an Old Earth. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.) ISBN 0-801-06619-0.

Pro-YEC Books

L. Brand and D. C. James. 2005. Beginnings: Are Science and Scripture Partners in the Search for Origins? (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press Publishing.) ISBN 0-816-32144-2.

D. DeYoung. 2005. Thousands... Not Billions. (Green Forest, AR: Master Books.) ISBN 0-890-51441-0.

K. Ham (editor). 2007. The New Answers Book. (Green Forest, AR: Master Books). ISBN 0-890-51509-3.

J. Perloff. 2002. The Case Against Darwin: Why the Evidence Should Be Examined. (Refuge Books.) ISBN 0-966-81601-3.

J. Sarfati. 2004. Refuting Compromise: A Biblical and Scientific Refutation of 'Progressive Creationism' (Billions of Years) as popularized by Astronomer Hugh Ross. (Green Forest, AR: Master Books.) ISBN 0-890-51411-9.

K. P. Wise. 2002. Faith, Form, and Time: What the Bible Teaches and Science Confirms About Creation and the Age of the Universe. (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman.) ISBN 0-805-42462-1.

Anti-Creationist Books

B. J. Alters and S. M. Alters. 2001. Defending Evolution: A Guide to the Creation/Evolution Controversy. (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.) ISBN 0-7637-1118-7.

N. Eldredge. 2001. The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism. (New York: Owl Books.) ISBN 0-8050-7147-4.

M. Pigliucci. 2002. Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science. (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.) ISBN 0-87893-659-9.

M. Ruse. 2005. The Evolution-Creation Struggle. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) ISBN 0-674-01687-4.

E. C. Scott. 2004. Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.) ISBN 0-520-24650-0.

External links

Pro-OEC Internet Sites

• Reasons to Believe
• Answers in Creation
• New Creationism

Pro-YEC Internet Sites

• Institute for Creation Research
• Answers in Genesis
• Creation Research Society
• The True.Origin Archive
• Creation Moments
• Creation Ministries International
• Midwest Creation Fellowship
• Geoscience Research Institute

Anti-Creationist Internet Sites

• National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
• TalkOrigins
• The Panda’s Thumb
• Creation & Intelligent Design Watch
• Talk Reason
• The Secular Web
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• British Centre for Science Education (U.K.)