Truth Unites - Disagreeing on the Flood Isn't Heresy (Responding to Rosaria Butterfield)

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Gavin Ortlund responds to Rosaria Butterfield’s criticisms by defending the legitimacy of non-global flood interpretations within historic Christianity and calling for greater humility, charity, and discernment in Christian disagreements.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

At a recent answers in Genesis event, Rosaria Butterfield criticized a number of people by name, including myself. So when Christians tell you, you don't need to believe what the Bible says, from Andy Stanley claiming you can unhitch the old from the New Testament, to Kirk Cameron denying that hell is conscious eternal torment, to Preston-Sprinkle denying that homosexual desire is the sinful lust prohibited in the Tenth Commandment, to Gavin Ortland accommodating the idea of a local flood, to Francis Collins endorsing Eve, evolution, two Matthew Vines, who my friend Megan Basham talked about before from the Reformation Project, who in his book, God and a gay Christian can somehow read Romans 1 and say, in Romans 1, the gospel has really nothing to do with what Paul's talking about. It just makes me think that that man is not only an unconverted wolf, but he also has a reading comprehension problem. As a

former homeschool mom, I have sympathy, but not a whole lot. And yes, I just named names. And That is because false teachers need to no longer threaten you, your households, and your children. You see, I am not part of the wolf rehoming business. I am not interested in running a humane association for heretics. If they repent, I will welcome them with open arms. And until they do, I do not trust any of them or their ilk. Now, I don't have anything against Rosaria. I don't know her personally.

I'd be happy to talk and work on our differences. she was willing to do that. I'm not responding to put the focus on her so much as I want to reflect on what she's saying and the impact it has upon the body of Christ. Particularly, the bundling of these different issues together and then the use of terms like wolf, heretic, and false teacher in connection to them. I think this kind of language does not just damage to the body of Christ. I think it actually strengthens the real wolves and heretics and false teachers because of the boy who cried wolf dynamic, as I will explain more at the end of this video. So, for example, as one who holds to a traditional view of marriage and sexuality and agrees that

that issue is a hill to die on, I think it weakens our defense of marriage and a Christian view of sexuality when that gets mashed together with these other various issues, like in my case the extent of the flood of Noah. However, I am aware that many onlookers may simply not realize. Maybe they've never studied the issue of the flood. they're not aware that this is even a debate throughout church history, and they may not realize that the position that I hold has been held by many conservative and even fundamentalist Christians, and it has a sound exegetical basis in the text of Scripture.

So I want to take this opportunity as a teaching moment to try to help those who may be wrestling with this, and basically ask the question, when should we use the category of wolf and heretic and false teacher? Let's go in three steps. First, I want to look at what the scripture teaches about the flood of Noah. Second, I want to look at the history of interpretation of that topic. And then I want to reflect upon disagreements in the body of Christ because I long for a better way in the way we conduct conversations like this, a way that reflects the beauty of Christ.

I think that's worth thinking about. That's actually my deepest heart in making this video. First, what does the Bible teach about the extent of the waters of the flood of Noah? I understand how people can look at the Bible in English translation and say, well, it's just obvious. Why is there even a debate? Genesis 8.9, for example, says the waters covered the face of the whole earth, and throughout Genesis 6 through 8, there's a lot of comprehensive and universal language. But when we interpret the Bible, our goal is to ask about its meaning in its original context. We read the Bible in modern English in a translation coming from a modern perspective.

So, for example, when we hear the English word Earth, especially if it has a capital E, we think of a round object between Venus and Mars rotating around the sun. That is not how ancient Hebrew language worked. The Hebrew phrase Cole Arets used in Genesis 6 through 8, and often translated all the earth or all the land or all the territory, is used about 207 times in the Old Testament, and it might mean all of planet Earth in only about 40 of those. So in the wide majority of cases, Cole Arets has a more contextually bound meaning. And if we try to put ourselves back into an ancient mindset, we can understand why

seemingly universal language could be used to describe the known world. What for them would have been the whole world or all the land, everything they've ever known. So, for example, in Genesis 41, all the earth, Cole Arets, comes to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph. And we don't need to posit that the ancient Mayans are sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to get there. In 1 Kings 10, all the earth, Cole Arets, comes to Solomon to hear his wisdom. This doesn't mean that the Aboriginal Australians traveled to the Middle East. In Daniel 4-1, King Nebuchadnezzar writes to all people's nations and languages that dwell in all the earth, Cole Arets. This is not addressing people in Alaska or New Zealand.

Zealand or even Madagascar. The biblical authors and the original readers were not aware of these distant continents and islands, and so they had no reason to use language that would reflect entities that they were not aware of. They spoke in a very sensible way. Hopefully people could sympathetically try to understand this point. It makes sense once you realize it. It's like they meant by all the earth, they meant all the earth. It was in everything we've ever seen, everything we've ever known. And something similar is true for the other various phrases throughout Genesis 6 through 8 that might initially seem comprehensive. For example, language about, you know, the highest mountains under the whole heaven. Part of the issue there is the word mountains can mean hills or highlands,

but more basically, we just look at the rest of the Hebrew Bible and we find similar language used to convey something other than modern planetary totality. For example, in Deuteronomy 2.25, We are not required to think that the Native Americans living in the Western United States were afraid of Moses. Or when Elijah is told in 1 Kings 18 that there is no nation or kingdom where my Lord has not sent to seek you, we are not required to imagine that Ahab's spies extended into Scandinavia or out to the various islands of the world like Hawaii and Japan and so forth. This is how ancient language works.

And that includes also references to all flesh, all animals, everything on the face of the earth, we find other judgments like this, for example, the first few verses in the book of Zephaniah that are not talking about a global judgment. Now, some object that if the flood was regional, what about God's promise in Genesis 9? But that promise is that God will never again destroy all flesh in the manner of Noah's flood. You can believe that the flood was universal with respect to humanity, even while recognizing it was not global in extent. In fact, one reason why many interpreters see the flood of Noah as a regional or civilizational event, those are also terms we can use,

is because they're reading Genesis 6 through 8 in close coordination with Genesis 10 to 11, where you have the Table of Nations listed, which has all the descendants of Noah, and that is regional, and then you have what's very significant. Genesis 11-1, all the earth, Cole Arets, has one language, but this is prior to the subsequent dispersion of humanity in verses 8 through 9 throughout the rest of the world, as you can see on screen. So very clearly, Genesis 111 is using the phrase, Cole Arets all the earth to describe the regional human civilization prior to dispersion. To be not yet dispersed is to be local. And yet that is explicitly Cole Arets, all the world.

Now, I've made this case more fully elsewhere as I worked over my menu. script heroes, trying not to get two in the weeds and lost, but I also want to be able to make the point sufficiently. I'm just giving the briefest fly over here. You can see this previous video for a fuller case, and I won't even cover in this video the biggest reason why many exegetes think the global flood was not literally universal, and as a modern person looks at planet Earth, and that is the problem of multiplying miracles that are not in the text in order to make a global flood possible. extremely rapid evolution after the flood, the formation of continents and mountains during the flood, and many other issues like that. But hopefully what we've said here gives you a basic sense

that there's a legitimate exegetical question being worked through here about ancient Hebrew language. And whatever conclusion you come to about that, this is not a matter of simply rejecting the Bible or disbelieving the Bible. We're trying to interpret the Bible in its original meaning. And one way you can see that is by looking at the history of interpretation. What I'm pointing out about how ancient Hebrew language worked is widely recognized throughout church history, including in conservative evangelical and even fundamentalist contexts. Without trying to go too down the weeds, because I've done more work on this elsewhere to give fuller documentation, let me give you a representative sampling here, first from conservative evangelical scholarship

and then widening out to global and historic views, especially throughout the modern era. If you look at an evangelical study Bible, like the ESV study Bible, for example, a very faithful and amazing work of conservative evangelical scholarship, you turn to Genesis chapter 6 and you read verse 17, where everything that is on the earth shall die. What T. Desmond Alexander comments is this, everything that is on the earth shall die, although God intends the flood to destroy every person, and his remarks have a strong universal emphasis, this in itself does not necessarily mean the flood had to cover the whole earth. Since the geographical perspective of ancient people was more limited than that of contemporary readers,

it is possible that the flood, while universal from their viewpoint, did not cover the entire globe. Indeed, Genesis implies that prior to the Tower of Babel incident, people had not yet spread throughout the earth, and then it goes on to give other various reasons for that. By the way, you can find this in many other study bibles as well, like the NIV study Bible. What these biblical scholars are helping us understand is not that there's an error here in the Bible. They're helping us think about how ancient Hebrew language worked. A similar point can actually be made about some New Testament Greek language as well, like Acts 2 and every nation under heaven and what that really means. It's actually Mediterranean. You could also go to Genesis Commentaries

by conservative evangelical scholars like Derek Kidner, who writes, Little Reasonable Doubt Remains, although some would dispute this, that the events of Genesis 6-8 must have taken place within a limited, though indeed a vast area, covering not the entire globe, but the scene of the human story of the previous chapters. Or you could look at Meredith Klein's commentary on Genesis, which says that the Bible's non-committal on the extent of the flood, as you can see on screen,

initially Klein had been more harsh against the global flood view, calling it precarious, and then he later softened his position simply to say, quote, sometimes scripture uses universal-sounding terms for more limited situations, and a local perspective is evident at the critical descriptive point in the flood narrative. He's talking about Genesis 7 there. Meredith Klein is not a liberal. He taught at places like Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, very conservative institution.

He was in the OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a very conservative denomination. You could also look at journal articles in the Westminster, theological journal, for example, a very reputable conservative evangelical journal, like this one from Paul Seeley, which argues that the language of Genesis is targeting the world as then conceived, and therefore, in his view, not only would not include the American continents, but wouldn't even include all of Africa or Europe. What Seeley is arguing in that article is that we have to submit to biblical language and what it intends to convey in its context. rather than take terms in English translation and jam them into contemporary debates and contemporary

categories. When ancient people who didn't know anything about the American continents or Australia spoke of the Cole Arets, what did they mean? That's what these interpreters are wrestling with. In addition to study Bibles, commentaries, journal articles, you could look at books written by conservative evangelical scholars like this comment from Vern Poithras, a very good biblical scholar, in the Zondervin Counterpoint's book about creation, where he basically says, everything within range of human observation was covered with water, and all the animals within range died,

the Bible simply does not say whether the flood covered the entire globe. Now, I could give so many more examples. Those are a few representative examples of evangelical scholarship on this topic. I'm not saying you have to agree with that. I'm not saying that these scholars are always right and those who have a different view are always wrong. I'm just trying to buttress the first point I made that this is a legitimate issue of interpretation.

That's why you find those who uphold the inerrancy of Scripture on both sides. They're wrestling with how to take this Hebrew language. To step out of the contemporary evangelical scene and look more broadly at church history and globally, we might start with this comment from Herman Bovink, the Dutch Reformed Theologian. I've discussed this at length elsewhere. He says, exegetes argued about a partial versus a universal flood, an issue that has always been in discussion. In context, Bavink is discussing how all modern views have to change in response to the discovery

of the New World, the American continents, for example. And then Bavink continues to say in recent times, most geologists and theologians, and he gives a bunch of examples, believe the biblical flood was very different from the deluvium of geology and therefore also was to be viewed as partial. It can only be called universal insofar as the entire human race perished as a result of it, and he gives some examples of people who dispute that. So Bavving is saying two things there. Number one, this has always been an ongoing dispute in the church,

and second, most theologians in his day accepted the partial flood. Both of those things are true. I've documented that more fully in my previous video, just to give you a sample here. This passage on screen is probably written by Theodoret of Cyber. in the 5th century, in dialogue format, he writes, if as many say there was no flood in every place of the land, but only in those places where humans now live, how is it true that the water was raised above the highest mountains

to a depth of 15 cubits? Response. Indeed, it does not appear that the deluge did occur in every place, unless perchance the places were low-lying, in which the deluge took place in certain places of the earth. What's interesting about that passage is not just the answer given, but the fact that he stipulates, this is a question or a position affirmed by many. And in my previous video, I talk about Josephus as an example of a Jewish interpreter who appears

to take this view of a partial flood. And also Philo, he's a great example of, again, the issue of how in church history and in Jewish interpretation, many of those who speak of the whole world, you have to say, well, what did they mean by the whole world? Because Philo speaks of the whole world is going to the Straits of Gibraltar. Okay, he says the flood went all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar, therefore the whole earth was filled. Well, the Straits of Gibraltar refers to where Europe and Africa almost touch in the western edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

Spain and Morocco will come very close there. And so what we can see, again, is the danger of not imposing modern categories upon pre-modern terms. When ancient people and other pre-modern people spoke of the whole world, we need to ask, what did they mean by that, given what they knew? The second point that Bavik made, though, is not only as there's always been a debate in the church, but in his own day, most theologians held to a partial flood view. That is also true by my lights from everything I can tell. So in the early modern era, people are coming to terms with, okay, now we know how big the world is. And in light of that, people are asking, well, what did coal arerets all the earth mean to people back in the ancient world when they had no idea of places like what we call Mexico and Russia and Indonesia and so forth?

How did they speak prior to the awareness of these regions? When they spoke of coal arrests, what did they mean? And everybody is coming, so everybody has got new information now and they're trying to make sense of this. And the global flood theories are adopting speculative mechanisms not in the text itself. which isn't to say they're wrong, but they're not clear in the text. Like the formation of all mountains and continents during the flood,

extremely rapid evolution after the flood. You have various other theories that very few people hold to today, like the idea of a subterranean abyss of water that cracks open and water spills out because that's the only way you can get water to fill the whole world and things like this. So everybody's responding

and trying to figure out how do we make sense of this now that we know about the American continents and so forth. But throughout the modern era, many faithful Orthodox Christians responded by recognizing, well, maybe Colorets meant something different for ancient people. Maybe it meant all the world, all everything we've ever known, everywhere where human civilization is. And I'll put up just one example from the 17th century English nonconformist theologian Matthew Poole. There's just one representative example. In my previous video, I go through so many others. And if anyone wants to chase this down,

Again, I don't want to take too long on this in this video because my deeper burden is to get to the end and talk about how we should work through this if we end up disagreeing. Right now, I'm just trying to show you this isn't a matter of just disbelieving the Bible. But I would encourage you to read through if you want to chase this down more, chapters 7 through 16 of this book by Davis Young, who taught for many years at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. and what he does is give you, he goes through, you know, generation by generation in the modern era, and he gives example after example after example of conservatives and even fundamentalists who on the one hand are staunch opponents of liberalism, they are defending biblical inerrancy, they are opposing higher critical scholarship, and at the same time they've zero difficulty accepting a local flood.

So that by the time you get to the late 19th century and the early 20th century, and the early 20th century, the local flood view is widely held in conservative Christian circles, hence Herman Boving, saying most theologians. And that continues into the early 20th century. I'll just give you Young's summary, quote, by the early part of the 20th century, few biblical scholars any longer endorse the notion of a universal or geologically significant flood. Conservatives had matured in their thinking about the implications of science. They maintained an intense commitment to an infallenged Bible and to the historic Christian gospel. I've given a lot more from Davis-Young in my previous video as well. So the point is to come to this, to help to make an appeal to onlookers who might

be confused and working through this. I am advocating a view that was common and even predominating in many conservative circles 100 years ago and 150 years ago. But today, it gets labeled as heresy without even an argument. And I think what has happened is this, in the latter decades of the 20th century and up to the current moment, the conversation has really changed. The Overton window has shifted

on issues like creation and the flood. And the Young Earth Creationist Movement has really had so much success that many people are simply unaware that there are even other options. And they don't realize that many of the opponents of theological liberalism throughout the modern era

were not Young Earth Creationists. And I often give examples like Jay Gresham-Machin, who wrote the book, Christianity and Liberalism, B.B. Warfield, who perhaps did more than anyone in all church history to uphold the authority of scripture against modern higher critical scholarship. The great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, R. A. Torrey, who helped found Biola University and was a pastor at Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles. And so many others we could mention, even as conservative things like the Schofield Reference Bible. which advocated for a gap theory, which is a species of old earth creationism, William Jennings Bryan, who represented the prosecution at the Scopes trial.

He had a day age view, that's old earth. Herman Ritterboss, Norman Geisler, James Montgomery Boyce, Edward J. Young, Gleason Archer, on and on we can go. And the reason I mention this is that I think people have lost a sense of bearings and are not aware of how different these issues played out even 100 years ago. In the current climate, and I'm concerned this is even increasing, a global flood and a young earth have gotten bundled together as tests of orthodoxy with all these other issues like marriage and sexuality.

And people, in many cases, may not be aware that that is an eccentric movement out of alignment with historic Christianity. That leads to my final comment, which is really what is at my, in my heart in this video, and that's how we do our disagreements today. I'm not directly that worried about the flood issue. I'm not trying to, I mean, I'm interested in that from an apologetic standpoint. I'm interested in trying to understand what the text means, but I don't lose sleep wondering about that.

I think it's kind of interesting. But what most grieves me, as I look out at the church today, even stepping off of this particular video topic and just looking at the state of the church right now, is the way Christians conduct disagreement with each other. and I feel that we desperately need more humility, more charity, and in many cases, just more carefulness and study and patience as we work through things. Now, by all means, we need to debate our differences, and we do need to use the terms wolf and heretic. But we should not use these terms recklessly. We should be slow to use the Bible's most severe categories for

issues where faithful Bible-believing Christians have long disagreed in good faith. A wolf is not someone who gets Genesis 6 through 8 wrong, nor is a wolf someone like who holds to annihilationism like Kirk Cameron. Even though I don't agree with the annihilationist view, I hold to a eternal conscious torment, it doesn't make you a wolf. And to say this with all love and respect, I need to say, I think this kind of category bundling, throwing those kinds of issues together with marriage and sexuality reflects in ignorance of how these issues have tended to work in the past, or at least it gives that impression. I don't know in every case. That's the best case scenario. Otherwise, people are intentionally throwing issues together

that are so different. May I just put it as blunt as to say, a wolf is someone who devours the sheep of Christ. Recklessly throwing around that word strengthens the real wolves. And the reason for that is the boy who cried wolf phenomenon, when we use these words wolf and heretic and false teacher too broadly, we end up diluting their meaning. And that's a danger. There are real wolves in the church today. Let's use the term wolf for them.

There is a real thing called heresy. Let's use the term heresy for that. Now, two objections to finish off with. Someone might say, no, there is simply no good faith disagreement about Genesis 6 through 8. It is so obvious that it's a global flood that anyone who disagrees with my interpretation about that cannot possibly be acting in good faith, and therefore they are refusing to submit to the Bible, and therefore that is just as serious as other heretical issues. And I don't think someone would say that, but I have to say I can understand how someone can feel that.

And the appeal I would like to make that I think is better for the body of Christ is to appeal for more humility in our interpretation of Scripture. The Bible is infallible, but our interpretations are not, and sometimes something seems so obvious, but we are still wrong. And let me just give an example that I hope could be, I'm not saying this is the exact same as these current debates. No analogy is perfect, but I hope this can show the need for humility in our interpretation, and that is how many Christians opposed heliocentrism in the early,

modern era for a fair amount of time. And I've documented this more fully in other videos, just to summarize it here at the very end, many Christians said, well, it's just obvious that Copernicus and Galileo and those who accept their theories are wrong, because Psalm 93-1 and Psalm 104-5 and several other verses clearly say, the earth shall not be moved. And so trust the word of God, God never heirs, you either believe the Bible or you don't believe it, the earth shall never be moved, means the earth shall never be moved, case closed. And hopefully introducing that can help us all realize we need to be careful. We need humility in correlating God's two books of special revelation and general revelation, interpreting these two take, should, it does involve careful scholarship.

We do need to look, go into it and say, what does the text mean? We can import things on to the text sometimes without realizing it. That's just a plea for humility in our use of scripture. Here's a second objection. Someone might say, well, Rosaria didn't explicitly say that all of the people she named are wolves and heretics. And I was kind of shocked when I watched that clip. Again, I don't really take it that bad.

I don't, at this point, I'm kind of used to just, you know, it's another week, another day in the life. But I'll put up her words. This is why I use the adjective reckless. She said, quote, and yes. I just named names, and that is because false teachers need to no longer threaten you, your household, or your children, I am not part of the wolf rehoming business. I am not interested in running a humane association for heretics. So these words imply that the names named are the false

teachers, the wolves, and the heretics. Even if that's not what she meant, when someone uses such severe terms like wolf and heretic, it is their responsibility to be clear and to take responsibility for the effect of your words on your hearers, because those words are tarnishing the reputation of fellow Christians. And that way, as I say, they are not only damaging the body of Christ, they're actually strengthening the real wolves by diluting the severity of these terms. What I would plea for is more care and love in our disagreements within the body of Christ. Here's the thing to remember whenever you're criticizing someone, and I'm trying to bear that in mind even as I defend myself and speak into this situation, when it's a fellow Christian with whom we

disagree, your disagreements might be so severe. I understand someone might have wounded you and you need to separate and have distance and accountability. All of that can be valid. But you have to remember, Jesus died for that person. He hung on the cross for them. And so what I long for is a situation where Christians work through our disagreements in a way that reflects the beauty of Christ and reflects the love of Christ. I think we desperately need that in the church right now. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for watching, everybody.