Theology in the Raw - 807: How Old Is the Earth? Dr. Tremper Longman

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

Tremper is one of the top evangelical Old Testament scholars alive today, and he's an evolutionary creationist. In this conversation, Tremper explains why he believes that the science clearly shows that the universe and the earth are old and that this fits perfectly fine with Genesis 1-2. Genesis is simply uninterested in the age of the earth. We discuss the meaning of "day," the phrase "evening and morning," the problem of the sun and moon being created on the 4th day (i.e. how do we determine a "day" without a sun or moon?), and the connection with the Sabbath command in Exod 20/Deut, which seems to assume a literal 24 hour day in Genesis 1. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Watch the podcast on YouTube Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. We are going to dig into the Old Testament for this conversation. In particular, we're going to look at Genesis 1 and its relationship to science. How old is the earth? How does evolution fit into the creation account? Are the days of Genesis 1 literal? And on and on it goes. Tremper Longman, Dr. Tremper Longman III is one of the top evangelical scholars in the country today.

He used to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary and also Westmont College in California. And it's just absolutely brilliant. The dude has written more books than I've read. And I'm talking about like high powered, academic, engaging, thorough, thoughtful books. His specialty, which we don't get into, is on love poetry in the ancient Near East. He has written the definitive, I think the definitive commentary on the Song of Songs, but we don't get into that. We just talk about Genesis 1, science and creation.

Tremper is my go-to guy because he is thoroughly committed to the authority of scripture. And yet he is also thoroughly aware of outside things like science and how we should pay attention to both special revelation and general revelation. And then we're going to do another podcast where we discuss specifically the historicity of Adam. Okay, so for this episode, we're talking about creation and the age of the earth. For the next episode with Tremper,

we're going to talk about the historicity of Adam. Is Adam an actual historical figure that every single human being come from Adam? How does that square with the human genome project led by Francis Collins and other scientific issues that seem to present some issues with the way Genesis one to three presents human origins. If you'd like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash the algae in a raw support show for as

little as two, not two, five bucks a month. And you can give two bucks a month. You're just not going to get anything for it. Um, but if you give five bucks a month, you can get once a month podcasts, uh, 10 bucks a month gives you a podcast and a blog a month, uh, $25 a month. It gives you two podcasts and a blog a month. It's all behind a paywall.

Um, let's see. Oh yeah. If you would like to check out this conversation on YouTube, you can go to my YouTube channel, Press and Sprinkle, and subscribe to the channel. And a lot of these podcasts, the last several podcasts that I've been releasing, were previously released on my YouTube channel, because a lot of people like YouTube, and they don't watch, listen to podcasts, a lot of people listen to podcasts. They don't watch YouTube. So I am trying to produce this material on both platforms. So if you hear us reference YouTube, you hear us reference a visual. I think Trevor

did hold up one of his books during the filming. So you can go to my YouTube channel and check out what book that was. Okay. Without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time, my friend and mentor from a distance, the one and only Dr. Tremper Longman III. Hey friends, I'm here with my friend, uh, Tremper Longman. Um, me and Tremper go back several years. I'll never forget having to come out to eternity Bible college. You drove down from Santa Barbara and taught a class on the song of songs, which was interesting. You know, you didn't hold back anything, man.

And our students really appreciated it. So yeah, if you guys don't know who Tremper is, I mean, I would consider Tremper. I mean, I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I mean,

at least one of the top evangelical Old Testament scholars of our, of our day, you might, you're, you're humble and you'll probably resist that. But I mean, yeah, Tremper's written just dozens of books, like high quality books. And whenever I have hard questions about the Old Testament, I mean, you're kind of my go-to because you have a very high view of scripture and yet you don't have an overly like literal,

literal, yeah, I'll say an overly like fundamentalist approach to scripture while maintaining a very high view of scripture knowledge. You have a vast knowledge of science in the Bible and how that intersects. So let's start there. Well, first of all, thanks for having thanks for coming on my show. Hey, Preston, it's my pleasure. It's great to see you again. It's been a while. Yeah, I know. It has been a while. So yeah, I've just been wrestling with several things related to the Bible and science. I am not knowledgeable in this area. I mean,

I've read a couple of things here and there, but I just need help navigating this whole old earth, young earth debate. So why don't we start? Where do you come out? How would you describe your view of science and creation? And then we'll just start going through kind of the top questions that often come up. Sure. Yeah. So first of all, like you, I have a caveat, which is I'm not a scientist. You know, I am a biblical scholar who has worked in this area and thought about these issues and have been in conversation with really some of the leading Christian scientists in the world. world and through interaction at the BioLogos Foundation and the AAAS Science for Seminaries program and other ways. It's been a great opportunity to interact with world-class scientists. But where I come down, maybe I'll just say where I come down on the old Earth, young Earth, and then we can go from there as to why.

But I'm very solidly in the old Earth that the universe is what? Sorry, like 14.2 billion years old and the Earth is 4.2 billion years old. 4.2 billion years old. And so, and I don't see any conflict between the Bible and science on this matter. Okay. Okay. Well, so let's just, why don't we start with science or Bible? Let's start with the science. Would you say that the age of the earth, age of the universe, the stats you gave, would you consider that a more or less consensus? I mean, I almost use the analogy of like, you know, that the earth is round, you know, but yeah, we also have a flat earth society or, you know. So there's always, obviously, there's always gonna be exceptions but is the age of the earth much of a debate among scientists these days i mean um it's not a debate at all i mean uh don't ask me to name them all right uh there are uh something like 12 13 14 different

lines of evidence scientific evidence that support these views, things like various types of radiometric dating, you know, as well as, you know, measuring the distance where we get, I think, the 14.2, maybe off on that by a few hundred million. But, but, but I think that, you know, as terms of how the furthest celestial light that is hitting the earth, they're able to measure that. And unless you take the view that god created the earth to look old and there are those who do that or that god created the stars with the light touching which i think is both unnecessary and uh and and kind of imputes to god the idea that he's going to give us a false impression of reality. Okay. And I think that's something important to highlight here.

The Bible is God's most clear and specific self-disclosure to us, revelation, to be sure. But he also reveals himself to us through nature, right? So Psalm 8, Romans 1, 20, I think it is. And the Belgic Confession talks about, you know, what commonly is called a two-book theology. So I think what that means is when we look at nature we can find out true things about god and about creation itself and that god is not going to mislead us in nature any more than he's going to mislead us in scripture yeah and so um so you know i i i will often – Pope John Paul II has a great quote, which is that science can refine religion. Well, religion keeps science from idolatry and false absolutes. So to me, what he's saying is,

sometimes science can help us read the Bible better. Right. Yeah. Witness the Galileo moment, you know, which is more complicated than the church versus secular science. But still, there were some theologians who felt that the Bible taught that the world was the center of the cosmos and resisted the science. And the science at the time of Galileo about that was less confident than the science about either the age of the earth or, as we'll talk about maybe another time, evolution. as we'll talk about maybe another time, evolution.

There's a lot more evidence in favor of the age of the Earth and evolution than there was at the time of Galileo for the fact that the Earth isn't the center, the unmover center of the cosmos. Well, you just mentioned evolution, and the phrase, if I can remember it right, that you prefer is you're an evolutionary creationist? Correct. Yeah. Can you unpack that for us? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it used to be referred to more often as theistic evolution.

But the reason why many of us prefer evolutionary creationism is because we want to emphasize the fact that we're creationists. We believe God created everything, including human beings. We just don't think that while the Bible does tell us that God created everything and got including human beings uh it's not telling us how he did it okay uh and I could get into why I think that's the obvious and right conclusion but for that reason we can you know look at science and uh and it's particularly uh you know, I'm not saying that whenever some scientific theory arises that it's absolutely right. thinking over a long period of time that the church ought to be attentive to it and not immediately in a kind of knee-jerk reaction say, that can't be right because the Bible teaches otherwise. So what would you... Yeah, go ahead. Well, yeah, what are some,

if you can get inside of the person who would hear so far, everything you're saying is have major like problems with that biblically speaking, what are some of the main pushbacks biblically to your view of both the age of the earth

and just even the idea that evolution is part of the earth and, um, and just even the idea that evolution is part of the means by which God has used to create the world and humanity. Sure. Um, I'll be prejudicial when I respond to this. Uh, a, a, a lack of recognition of what Genesis one through three, and perhaps also the genealogies when it comes to the age of the earth issue, uh, what they're trying to teach us, um, and reads it in the it and tends to read these texts as if they were written in the 21st century, A, and B, very woodenly without any kind of appropriate literary or historical sensitivity. sensitivity. So, so as you know, I'm talking about issues of genre, recognizing that the Bible was written to an ancient audience in a language Hebrew and with

styles and means of communication that were familiar to them. So to understand, and maybe it's just one example, you know, the fact that as you read Genesis 1 and 2, you should be struck by the highly figurative nature of the description of the creation of the cosmos and human beings. Let me give you two examples. The first one is the fact that you have days in Genesis 1, but the sun, moon, and stars aren't created till day four which then should in a sensitive reader signal to you that we're not talking about 24-hour days because you need a sun moon and stars to have a 24-hour day uh and i'm aware of some of the and I think they're very desperate attempts to say things like, well, it's really talking.

The sun, moon and stars were created on day one, light and darkness. But on day four, the clouds disappeared. You could see the sun, moon and stars from the earth. And you kind of go, who's on the earth at this time that that would have that perspective? Or the other one is, you know yeah there's some other form of light that god kind of switches on and off in a 24-hour period um so um so i i think and then of course there's also a lack of sensitivity to the kind of parallelism between the first three days which talk about the creation of realms that are filled by the inhabitants of those realms in days, you know, four through six.

So the sun, moon and stars fills the realm of light and darkness. The fish and birds fill the realm of the sky and the waters. The land animals and the human beings fill the realm described on day three, which is land. one and Genesis two, that has often been, that has been observed widely, um, where you have, for instance, the creation of vegetation after the creation of the first human being, there's some interesting, you know, all translations are interpretive. Um, and so I'm not being critical of the principle here, but I find that versions like the ESV and the NIV and even the NLT, which I was most closely so it's, it's an intentional kind of harmonization to try to gain more sequence concord than I think. And most scholars think is really there. But then the second example, oh, and by the way, while I'm on the days, let me, let me

quickly point out that this is an ancient view. You know, it's not like people have noticed this for the first time because people are talking about the age of the earth. I mean, scholars like Augustine and Origen also recognize that the days were not literal 24-hour days. Augustine says, of course, these aren't solar days. days and Origen said who would be so foolish as to think that these days are 24-hour days uh when you don't even have a sun moon and stars until so I'm just making yeah I'm just making I'm making the case that has been made since the early church about this yeah and um yeah so and then the then another example of what I think is an obvious

figurative depiction of an actual event. Again, the actual event is God created human beings, but it's depicted in Genesis 2-7 by describing him taking some of the dust to the ground and breathing on it. And of course, we know, you know, God doesn't have lungs. So you have to, you know, but then there are other people who say, well, you know, this is Jesus. I'm going, wait a minute, Jesus became flesh at the time of the incarnation, eh? And secondly, no Old Testament reader would have ever understood that way.

So, so when it comes to genealogies, you know, and that's how the young earth is often constructed by adding up Genesis 5 or no. First of all, people mistakenly read the ancient genealogies as if they are modern genealogies. You don't skip generations. You know, my wife's stepfather insisted that I become a member of various organizations like the Sons of the American Revolution. So he had to provide a genealogy for me. He also made me a life member because he knew I'd never pay for it. But, you know, you can't skip a generation, et cetera, et cetera. But if you study ancient genealogies, and we have some from Babylon etc they're they're much more flexible in many different ways than modern genealogies including skipping generations and and genealogy served different functions in the ancient world than it did in the modern world. And so, you know, B.B. Warfield and Timothy Green, his associate at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 19th century, particularly Timothy Green,

has a really good, and I mentioned that because they're kind of, you know, Warfield's considered the architect of the modern doctrine of inerrancy. And Green agrees with that view. But Green points out as he compares different genealogies like genealogies in Genesis with comparable genealogy in Ezra that that generations can be skipped. that generations can be skipped. So, so all those things lead me to say the Bible is really not interested in telling us when everything began. And so because of how we can say, well,

what is, as we look and study nature, what does that tell us? What, what about the phrase that they eat the repetition of evening and morning like i've heard people say and honestly i it sounds like a good argument even if everything you said is is correct that emphasis on evening and morning seems to really drive home this idea of we're talking about a literal day here oh yeah well i let me it's a little, in my opinion, a little bit more complicated, a little bit more complicated than that.

Again, there's no question that 24 hour days are being described there, evenings and mornings. But because of the fact you don't have sun, moon and stars, you can't have an actual historical evening and morning for the first three days. So what's going on is, I believe, and so did Herman Bovink, by the way. I like to cite these old – These old reform guys. Old reform guys. You know, it's it's it's taking a literal week in order to describe the creation. And but it's using a literal week in a metaphorical way.

OK. days and rests on the seventh and saying, let's take a work week and let's use that as a figure of speech to communicate the fact that God created everything and then rest. So, um, so, um, John Collins, I don't know whether you know him, uh, John, the one that teaches at Covenant Seminary, has a really good presentation of, I think it's called the Analogical Day's View, which he accepts. And he's the one who cites Bobbink. That's how I know Bobbink held it. one who cites bobbing that's how i know bobbing killed it what what i guess this you might have already answered it but the other thing i often hear is that you know the sabbath command which is a literal day in deuteronomy exodus is built on the creation account right so um since since the author of those laws are talking about a literal Sabbath and a literal work week. Therefore, we can assume he's drawing on a literal week of creation.

How would you respond to that? Is that another big argument you often hear in favor of a Yom Kippur? Yeah, that is an argument. And, you know, these arguments have some punch to them, to be sure. some punch to them, to be sure. And but I because, of course, I always forget whether it's Exodus or Deuteronomy in the Ten Commandments that appeals back to the creation as a mandate. I think often, though, these appeals back are not are are appealing back to the story in order to communicate a theological truth.

Again, there's history in Genesis 1 to 11. I call it theological history where it talks about historical events using figurative language. OK, so but there's real history behind it like God created the cosmos like like when human beings were first created we'll talk about that a little bit later perhaps they were morally innocent. Like there was also what I would call a historical fall, you know, that human beings rebelled against God, and that's what introduced sin and death into the world. God didn't make us, and we only learned this, by the way, that's where the other half of only learned this, by the way, that's where the other half of Pope John Paul's comment comes in about how the Bible keeps us from idolatry and false absolutes. We learn important things that

we can't learn from science, from the Bible. Things like, we could never learn from science, from observation or experience, that there was a time when human beings created in the image of God were morally innocent. OK. Or that there was a historical fall. And I mention that because a friend, a very, very close friend of mine, former student, colleague, drinking buddy, Peter Ends, you know, wrote a book called The Evolution of Adam, where he says, essentially, science precludes the idea of original moral innocence or historical fall. And I say, no, that's an incorrect capitulation. It's not a capitulation to science.

It's a misuse of science, I think. And by the way, I'll have to promote it in this book, Confronting Old Testament Controversies, Impressing Questions About Evolution, Sexuality, History, and Violence, which, by the way. You haven't seen this yet? I haven't seen that. I need to get a copy of that.

I didn't hear Preston. The violence section. We appeal to your vanity to finally get it. But the book is largely a loving pushback toward some primarily, you know, of Pete's ideas on evolution, but also loving pushback against young earth creationism and the evolution part. And yeah, so yeah, so that um i forgot how we got there i've lost no no it's fine yeah so um in in uh promoting my book so i i here's i i have a question that i and i'm trying to figure out the best way to word this um Let's flip it around. Well, it's kind of a twofold question.

Number one, do you think the author of Genesis 1 and 2 was trying to get at a literal, like, do you think he believed it was literal? Or do you think he or she just didn't even have that question in mind would be another. Let's just start there, and then I've got another kind of related question. Yeah, sure. Well, let me answer that, at least to start by saying when I make a claim about what a text means, I'm making a claim about what the author intended.

Right. Okay. Right. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. So when I say – I would put it more bluntly then by saying the author does not want us to read Genesis 1 to 2 to try to discover how God created creation. And how do we know that? We can't get into the author's mind, of course. But Kevin Van Hooser, also a former student, by the way, back in Westminster days, Pete

and Kevin. Kevin Van Hooser has this great book, Is There a Meaning in this text? And he talks about authorial intention, not as it's often conceived as trying to get into the mind of the author, because we have no independent access to the author's intention, except through the text. So we're analyzing the author's, you know, uh, the author's, uh, you know, writing in order to make hypotheses about what the author intended his readers to intent on praising God for creating everything, for creating human beings, and many other things.

Also telling us very important things about our relationship to creation, our relationship to each other. Um, but what it's not interested in and, and, you know, I think it's a fair point to say that the author wasn't interested in this topic is how this happened. Um, and so, um, so yeah, yeah. So the, so the follow-up question is let's, let's flip it around and say that the overwhelming scientific evidence was for a younger, let's just, let's just picture that world for a second that almost every scientist on earth said, man, this created six to ten thousand years ago the science is overwhelming do you think that would change the way you read genesis or or would you say like well yeah obviously the bible agrees with that

or would you say man now we have a conflict in the other direction because the bible clearly is not talking about a young earth or do you order well yeah i'll let you finish i think i know what you're gonna say that's really good i got i i really like that question i think that's right because uh or even let's talk about what if evolution turns out to be a false hypothesis right uh so would uh scientists affirming um a uh a young earth with scientists saying no, evolution's a false hypothesis? Would that change my view of Genesis? And the answer is clearly absolutely not. My point is that the Bible's not interested in talking about these issues. So in other words, I'm not what is commonly called

a concordist. A concordist is somebody who thinks that you can actually discern modern scientific ideas in the Bible. Like Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe is probably the most well known concordance today he'll talk about Psalm 104 where it says God stretches out the heavens and he goes see it teaches the Big Bang Theory

you know and I to me no that's a that's a tent metaphor. So don't look at the Bible to, you know, and it's tempting because you want to say, hey, look, the Bible was written thousands, hundreds, thousands of years ago. And we just discovered this 75 years ago, the Big Bang Theory. Yeah. That must be, therefore, the Bible must be of divine origin, you know.

Yeah. Because only God could have had that perspective. Or, yeah. So, but those are, in my opinion, mistaken, apologetic uses of the Bible. Just like that's also a problem I have with the intelligent design movement, which is they sort of trade on gaps in our scientific knowledge and say science will never explain this. And therefore, that's the finger of God. The problem with those types of apologetic arguments is all too often down the road,

science does discover, you know, an explanation for it. And famously, William Paley at the end of the 18th century said, look at the rainbow. Look at the rainbow. No one can scientifically describe how the rainbow appears. And notice in Genesis 9, God puts the rainbow in the sky. This is, and of course, you know, we can sort of explain much. Yeah. You know, we can sort of explain much.

Yeah. So for you, it's not, you wouldn't say that the Bible argues for or even is trying to say the earth is old. Or, yeah, it's like it just doesn't, it's just not interested in that. So, yeah. So it really depends on this because the overwhelming evidence of the science says it's this age. The Bible allows for both okay yeah yeah yeah so they're compatible yeah that's what i mean by they're compatible okay yeah um and by the way on on this matter uh let me see i i quote calvin in here really i think uh

Really, I think something that I think modern Christians should heed. Sorry, it's going to... You're getting all your reformed... All my reformed guys. Yeah. Yeah. So between you and me, I consider myself very soft reformed these days.

Yeah. That's about where I'm at. That's about where I'm at. Yeah. Yeah. I just haven't been interested in some of the classic questions in traditional reform. Traditional, I would say, late 20th century reform

debates and stuff i just and not and not that there's not valid issues they're wrestling with i just personally haven't been that interested in those but i agree i agree i'm having trouble coming up with this quote but basically what he said well let, let me try – well, ask me another question. I'll find it and come back to it. Okay, okay, okay. So what do you think is – and we might have already covered it. What do you think is the strongest argument in favor of the young earth? Do you see the evening and morning repetition? Like if you were going to – yeah.

If you're on stage in a debate or something, what's that one main argument where it's like, I'm going to have a little tougher time kind of refuting this one in a convincing manner, or is there one? Oh, no. Well, I, yeah, I, to be honest, I don't think there is a real strong argument to be made in favor of young earth creationism. But the question you asked about the Sabbath is probably the most difficult one.

Actually, let me – so can we make a distinction between the literal day question versus the age of the earth? I think I read – I think john lennox in his little book oh yeah right says these are often conflated together but they're kind of two different questions and it might come down to the relationship between genesis what one one and one two and following i forget the precise nature of it but he said we can't just you know we can't just lump them all together would you would you agree with that that i mean you could in theory could have a literal well maybe it's the maybe it's the age of the universe you can have the age of the universe

really old but if you believe in a literal 24 hour a day you kind of have to have a little young earth or how do you see the relationship but to be honest i hadn't thought about it but when you mention it i think you can probably divide those questions um into two different questions i mean i can imagine an old earth and of course there's there's so many different permutations of various viewpoints but i I think one of them is that there are periods of time between the days even. I forget the technical term. Okay.

But yeah. Well, we have to, we're going to close this one out, but I want to come back and talk to you in another video about the historicity of Adam because we haven't even really we're just kind of lingering in genesis one so let's um yeah let's uh save some

energy we'll talk about adam maybe in a shorter video this one went a little longer than i intended um so the the for my watch my viewers and listeners so we're going to come back and talk about whether or not adam is a historical figure and also just the nature of the Garden of Eden and how much of this is myth, how much of its history. I know these are live questions. So thanks so much for joining me on the show, Tremper. Thank you, Preston. I know some of you did not agree with Tremper's perspective, and that's OK. not agree with Trumper's perspective and that's okay I hope that you still

enjoyed hearing the perspective of an evolutionary creationist I like that he put the emphasis on creation quite honestly I still have questions about it I have not engaged the scientific material I will say as I

said in this conversation or when maybe it was offline I can't remember that most of the people that I respect that know the science of this whole conversation and also are clearly committed to the authority of scripture. Most people that I personally know and that I personally respect are young earth creationists along the lines of Tremper. They may not say everything exactly how Tremper said it, but they would line up in the same general camp. And so that would be my kind of default position.

So I do, I would line up with Tremper's position. I would hold that very lightly because I don't have not done a lot of study on it. That would just be, I guess, my default position. So whatever your position is, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If anything, it forces us all to go back to scripture, go back to science, and think, what does the Bible actually say about these things? I hope you enjoyed this conversation,

and please do stay tuned for the next conversation with Trevor Long, where we discuss the historicity of Adam and Eve.