geocreationism.com

If you haven’t noticed, I took a break from Day 5.  Between long hours, cub scouts, and family, well, something had to give, and it’s usually this blog.  (By the way, my son’s raingutter boat took 3rd place in the races for the cubs, and 3rd place for painting overall.  I am quite the proud papa right now. )

Well, in between the hecticness, I have been writing a review (not posted) of an article by Paul H. Seely on Concordism.  The article can be found here: The First Four Days of Genesis in Concordist Theory and in Biblical Context.  It caught my eye because the summary of the article singled out the first 4 days of Creation, which in my own writings is key to understanding the geological formation of the earth.  I started reading the article, just to realize that Geocreationism had answers to many of the problems this article was pointing out.

Usually, I like to do article reviews in one sitting, capturing my responses in a blog.  However, this one is just too rich.  It’s a great article, and hits on several topics. These include: Concordism, the literal nature of scripture, science in scripture, and more.  So, instead of reacting to the article from top to bottom, I think I will post my reactions topic by topic.  This post will discuss the topic of Concordism.

Let me start by quoting Seely’s summary of Concordist Theory, which gives a name I am unfamiliar with to a theory that I am quite familiar with:

According to current concordistic theory (Moderate Concordism) each day in Genesis 1 sequentially initiates a geological epoch, with some epochs overlapping. The purpose of the theory is to maintain the belief that Genesis 1 portrays a reliable history of creation in basic agreement or concord with modern science. This theory has been accepted by a number of conservative theologians; but, it is primarily promoted by devout geologists and astrophysicists.

I realize now that I talk about Concordist Theory all the time, but never had a name for it.  Well, that is not quite accurate.  I have historically lumped all Concordist Theory under the banner of Day Age Theory, and included Geocreationism under that banner.  But, is Geocreationism also Concordist?

On the surface, Seely’s definition above describes Geocreationism very well; dig a little deeper though, and maybe not so well. Taken point by point:

• “each day … sequentially initiates a geological epoch”
  This seems like a good description of Geocreationism, but the wording gets at the heart of something that I have need to formally define for a while.  You see, other Concordist theories define their epochs in the same manner that a Geologist would.  Geocreationism however does not.  For example, Day 1 lasts from about 3.9 billion years ago to maybe 3.85 billion years ago.  No geologist would define that to be a geological epoch.  However, it is an “age”, which is why Geocreationism is a Day Age theory.  However, if Seely’s definition is firm, then Geocreationism is not Concordist.
• “with some epochs overlapping”
  Geocreationism is firmly defined to prevent creation days from overlapping.  The initiation of a given Day requires the previous Day has ended some time before.  Again, assuming a firm definition, Geocreationism is not Concordist.
• “Genesis 1 portrays a reliable history of creation in basic agreement or concord with modern science”
  In this respect, Geocreationism is Concordist.

As you can you, while Concordist theory seems at first glance to include Geocreationism, Seely’s generalizations of Concordism do not.  What isn’t clear is whether his generalizations are part of the definition.  Well, a little Googling first showed nothing but Paul H. Seely’s excellent article, and numerous links to it.  This suggested that the term could in fact be Seely’s, meaning he can define it any way he wants to, in which case his definition does not include Geocreationism.  However, with another try, I found the following on a Wikipedia page on Interpretations of the Creation Account:

Concordism, formulated in the 19th century, is the view that the biblical account of creation, when properly understood, will be in concord (agreement) with the correct scientific cosmology.

Well, Seely’s article was written 1997.  So, unless he is something like 150 years old, I can see that I was simply ignorant of the term.  Okay, I can accept that.  In fact, you may have scoffed at my ignorance already, assuming you read this far.  That is fine because today I am a little less ignorant.  The passage goes on:

In other words, Concordists see Genesis 1 as ultimately compatible with geology. Typically, concordists have used two approaches. They either squeeze geological time between verse 1 and verse 2 of Genesis 1 (the gap theory), or interpret the days of Genesis as a pictorial representations of geological ages (the day-age theory).

This is more clearly a generalization than Seely’s definition was, though I am sure it was already obvious to many of you.  Well, that’s because I think too much sometimes.  That’s okay though, because in my quest for truth, I found the following, in the next paragraph of the Wikipedia article.  I wish I had written it:

Concordism proposes “that the conflict arises from imperfect interpretation of factual geology and paleontology on the one hand, and imperfect interpretation of the Bible on the other. Get them both right and, for the first time, a symphony of thrilling music will resound in the halls of intellectual investigation - comprised of researchers under rigid, scientific protocol and Bible lovers with a sound understanding. Today, sadly, a dissonance prevails instead, coming from a multitude of views from both sides of the orchestra.” — The Age of the Universe, Chapter 1

Boy, does that resonate with me.  I remember when my pastor was going to teach about Creation in church, before I coined the term Geocreationism.  I expressed my concern and he asked if I wanted to do it.  It would be a two-week lesson.  I jumped at the chance.  The first week, I remembered about 2 hours after I was supposed to be there… embarrassing for me, awkward for my pastor.  He showed me a lot of grace however, and told me to be on time the next week!  Well, the second week, I showed up, and closed with the following statement:

“I won’t tell you what I believe, whether the earth is old or young, or how to reconcile it with science, because I do not believe that is God’s point.  His point is that He loved us enough to create us, and to have it recorded, and to have it point at His Son who would die for our sins.  But I will tell you this.  I truly believe that when we die and we get to see it all from God’s perspective, we will look at science, look at the scripture, and say, “I get it now!  It makes total sense!  Now I know why scripture says what it says, and science says what it says!”  And we’d find that we were all wrong in our flesh to some extent, and that God’s point hadn’t changed: that He loved us enough to create us and then die for our sins.”

And you know what, I still believe that.  If we miss that point, then it won’t matter what we believe about creation, or whether we’re correct.

Well, that night, I went home and got the idea to see out of curiosity if I could find eras in the earth’s past that actually match the literal picture of creation recorded in Genesis 1.  It was the start of a great journey, and that brings me back to Concordism.  Apparently, Geocreationism is a Concordist Theory.

There is one more paragraph from the Wikipedia article that I want to post, because it makes an excellent point:

There has been little consistency in the various ways of reconciling Genesis 1 with geological history; and concordism still attempts to find scientific data in a passage that is pre-scientific. Critics contend it is still asking the wrong questions, and getting the wrong answers. In concordism, the tendency is to reinterpret Scripture consistent with the very latest scientific theorizing. But according to the grammatico-historical method, you interpret Scripture consistent with original intent.

And that is exactly Seely’s approach in discrediting Concordist Theory, but I will talk about that more in another post.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 8:14 am and is filed under Creation Week, The Science, Creationism, Evolution, Day Age Theory, Concordist Theory, Creation Theories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.