Truth Unites - How "Is Genesis History?" Harms Christian Witness

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

In this video Gavin Ortlund shares three concerns about the film, "Is Genesis History?" and its case for young-earth creationism. My interview with Jack Collins: https://youtu.be/c5s7v0PlMho?si=kJ0vpIJ4cYKpYHkx Jack Collins' book: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Genesis-Well-Navigating-History/dp/0310598575 Jack Collins/Al Moher debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGETfOQgNI4 Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

In this video, I want to offer a review of the movie, Is Genesis History? It's been out for several years now, but the sequel was just released called Is Genesis History, Mountains After the Flood. I hope to review that as well, but I thought I'd start with this first movie. This had a huge impact, within Christian circles. I'm sure the sequel will bring fresh attention to it. If you haven't seen it, basically, it's a case for Young Earth Creationism. This is the view that the days of Genesis 1 are 24-hour periods of time, the universe and Earth are relatively young. maybe six to 10,000 years old. And so it's just working through these interviews with 13 different

young earth creationist scientists. Now, I appreciate the intention of the film to uphold a biblical doctrine of creation. The people involved are my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I'm sure they're sincere in their views and in their efforts. And I'm aware of the fact that lots of people who watch this video, a lot of my viewers probably loved the film and so forth. But I need to share my concerns about the film and why I think it ultimately harms our witness as the church and puts a lot of stumbling blocks in people's pathway. Let me explain why I say that. It's not just because I hold a different view than Young Earth creationism, though that's true. But even if I was a young Earth creationist, I think I would still have these concerns. Because the way is Genesis

history makes its case has three fundamental problems. First, it acts like Young Earth creationism and naturalism are the only two options to choose for. Second, it equates a historical reading of Genesis 1 with a literal reading of Genesis 1. And third, it gives what is occasionally a very misleading account of what the scientific evidence indicates. Let me run through these real quickly. You can also see in the video description in my written review. First, the film acts like there's two options. Young Earth creationism or naturalism, take your pick. So at the climax of the introduction, There's a series of contrasts. Was the world made in a few days or over billions of years?

Are we descended from apes or created instantly in God's image? Was there a global flood? Or is the flood story a myth? In other words, is Genesis history? Did God create the world in a few days or billions of years? Is mankind descended from apes or did God create us instantly in his image? Was there a global flood that destroyed the earth? Or is that a myth?

In other words, is Genesis history? Now already, if you're listening carefully, you might be having a worry about a false dichotomy, having to choose between two options when those aren't the only two options. But ultimately, what comes into view in the second interview of the movie is these two options, what are called the conventional paradigm, which involves strictly physical processes. So this is full-blown naturalistic evolution.

So God is out of the picture. Naturalism means there's nothing beyond nature. Versus the second option is the historical genesis paradigm. And this is Young Earth Creationism. Everything is very recent. And those are the two options that are put forward. On the one hand, we have the conventional paradigm. In the conventional paradigm, you've got deep time, 13.7 billion years.

along which this gradual process, beginning with primal simplicity, ending in what we see today, all the complexity in life has to be built bottom up by strictly physical processes where no mind, no creator, no design is present. The second view we can call, let's say, the historical Genesis paradigm. Everything starts with a divine mind, a creator, an intelligence that plans and super intends and brings into existence reality. Events are happening on a much more recent time scale. The universe, the solar system, our planet, life itself,

all of that begins fully formed as a functioning system. It's not hard to see there's a radical difference between those two in terms of time. Now my concern is that is a false dichotomy. That's what we call the law of the excluded middle, where you're basically just making people choose between two extreme options. It'd be like somebody who says, well, I can't be a theist anymore because I'm not a fundamentalist. And you just think for one second, you realize, wait a second, those aren't the only two options.

You could just remain a theist and not be a fundamentalist. There's all kinds of options in the middle between those two. Similarly with creation, the film, you know, someone watching this film is just not going to be aware of how many conservative and even fundamentalist Christians have accepted some form. of old earth creationism, where they believe God is creating, even doing supernatural creation processes, but they don't think the universe is a few thousand years old. That a whole slew of different positions is just completely excluded from visibility for viewers of this film. In my response to Ken Ham, another video I made recently, I pointed out some of the examples of this, you know, I think we just don't realize today. A lot of people, and that's why I'm making

this video, I'm burdened about this. A lot of people don't realize that it's only in the second half of the 20th century up to the present day, that Young Earth Creationism has taken on the particular kind of role that it has right now, where it's so prominent. But like, if you go back further, the Schofield Reference Bible advocated for the Gap Theory. That's a species of old earth creationism. William Jennings Bryan, who represented the prosecution at the Scopes trial, held to a day age view. That's Old Earth Creationism. In that video, I went through so many examples like this. Jay Gresham-Machin, who stood against theological liberalism, old earth creationist. B.B. Warfield, who upheld the authority of Scripture against higher biblical criticism,

old earth creationist. We talked about Charles Spurgeon and so many other examples. You just think of like faithful Christians throughout the 20th century who advance the gospel, whether it's Billy Graham or C.S. Lewis or Johnstott, so many people are excluded from visibility if you just have these two options, the historical Genesis paradigm and the conventional paradigm. So this is a real problem because it's forcing people to choose between these, two options when they're not the only options that exist. It'd be one thing if the film referenced other perspectives on creation and then worked through them and argued that they were wrong. But unfortunately, they're hardly discussed. So people watching this film won't even be aware of how

widely represent, or they may not even know that those options exist. I actually made a lot of people like this. They've never heard of anything other than these two extreme options. Interestingly, the philosopher of science who introduced those labels in the second interview, Paul Nelson subsequently dissented from his role in the film. And I really appreciated him speaking out. I appreciated the integrity that that took and his honesty. What he basically said is we should organize the range of current opinion about origins around the deepest or most significant differences that separate positions,

and that isn't the time scale involved. That is exactly right. We don't want people to think that I have two options either. The universe is extremely young, and I have to find some way to deal with starlight and all these things, or God wasn't involved. That's not helpful. And presenting those two options is a false dichotomy. Second concern is the film equates a historical reading of Genesis with a literal reading of Genesis. Now, the word literal is a complicated word. I've talked about that elsewhere. I'm just using it for convenience here in a simple sense to refer to the 20.

24-hour-day interpretation. Now, basically, here's what I want to say about this. Like the creators of this film, I believe the Genesis account is historical. That simply means it describes what happens in real history. It's telling us about events that happened in the spacetime history of our universe. I also believe it's true. It's completely trustworthy. I believe in biblical inerrancy, basically.

But the problem is the Bible uses different literary genres to tell us history. not all true historical narration in the Bible is literal. Now this is a simple point, but again, this is in some respects kind of a basic video, but I'm making it because I think sometimes people need to have these basic points introduced, just based upon my conversations with people, you know. So not everything in the Bible is literal. You have to look at the literary genre in question, and if you turn to the table of contents in the scripture, you're going to find whole books that are devoted to telling you true history, but not in a literal way. You know, in the wisdom and prophetical literature and the apocalyptic books like Daniel

Revelation, the Night Visions of Zechariah, so many other things. So, you know, you'll even have times where the same historical event is given in a more narrative fashion and then in a poetic fashion, like the song of Deborah and Barack and Judges five describes true historical events, but in a very different way than how they're described in Judges Chapter 4, just one chapter earlier. So the simple point, exceedingly simple point here is we just have to read texts according to the author's intent, and that involves literary genre. What kind of literature is it? Unfortunately, is Genesis history kind of bypasses this question. You even see what the title of the film, is it history? Well, lots of people believe it's history,

but don't interpret it in the same way as the scientists interviewed in that film. But again, readers are being given these two different options. The biggest problem here was the failure to discuss the differences between Genesis 1 and the rest of the book of Genesis. Basically, all interpreters recognize there are significant differences of tone, style, and language between, more specifically, Genesis 1, 1, 2, 3, and all the subsequent material. There's also some pretty important differences between Genesis 1 through 11 and Genesis 12 through 50. They're both historical, but there's differences in how history is narrated. And I've gone into that a little bit with giving some of J.I. Packers' views of Genesis 1 through 11 in my written review, but just to make

the basic point here, it's really problematic to equate one particular literary style of historical narration with historicity itself. In other words, you can't just assume that a text being historical means these are 24-hour literal days. Because the debate we have is about not whether it's history, but how it is history, how it's communicating. To try to gain some sympathy for this point, when Exodus 3117 says that on the seventh day, the Lord rested and was refreshed, I might press to the point and ask you, is that talking about a historical event? And you might say, well, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's literal. There's a difference between historical and literal. So this is a major problem with the film because, again, it's giving a false contrast. If the film had argued that

the Young Earth interpretation of the nature of the text's historicity is the correct one, over and against, like a J.I. Packer or Herman Bovink or all these other people with different views, then at least the viewers would get a sense of the different interpretative options. Unfortunately, the impression given is that the choice is basically between 24-hour days and a recent universe or its myth or poetry. Those are the kind of options that keep. coming up throughout the film. Again, it's a false contrast. Okay, my third concern is that, unfortunately, at times the interviews give misleading claims about the strength of the scientific evidence for a young earth. Now, I want to try to be as charitable as possible here. I'm sure many

of these people are just wonderful Christian people, and certainly this is not true of all the interviews. You know, there's lots of interviews where I appreciated. You can feel the honesty sometimes when someone's functioning in good faith, like when Todd Wood is addressing the question of human evolution, for example, I really appreciated the fact that he made his position very clear and that he admitted that there's some unanswered questions. To me, when someone does that, that means they're functioning in good faith, or it's a sign of that. Or when Danny Faulkner is talking about rapid maturing to explain the challenge of Starlight, at least the difficulty is apparent in his discussion, and he's not claiming a false authority for his answer. You know, he's functioning in good faith and so

forth. And I assume all of the interview, the people being interviewed were not doing anything intentionally misleading. But one way or another, some of these comments are really problematic. Just to give two examples in the first interview, the geologist Stephen Austin is discussing the Grand Canyon and how it was formed. And he says, the story that we all learned in grammar school, Colorado River, over tens of millions of years cut the Grand Canyon, most geologists have jettisoned that idea. The fact that we have all of these layers, um, with, be unknown to us if we were standing on them, you know, somewhere else, but they're known to us because they've been cut out. How did that happen? Well, it was the story that we all

learned in grammar school, okay? Colorado River, over tens of millions of years cut the Grand Canyon. Most geologists have jettisoned that idea. And then he asserts that this view, that that view, tens of millions of years, Grand Canyon's impossible, and he proposes an alternative view. His own view is catastrophic erosion by the drainage of lakes. Now, this is really misleading. There is some debate among scientists about how many millions of years the formation of the Grand Canyon took. 70 million years did it start, or just five or six million years ago, and so forth. There was it like two stages and that kind. There's some debate about that. But I don't know anybody outside the Young Earth camp who would question that it was the

Colorado River that did the carving and that it took millions of years. So it's very misleading to give viewers the impression that that is what is being jettisoned by most geologists. That's what a lot of viewers are going to walk away thinking. It's very problematic. Another example comes in the third interview when the Hebraist Stephen Boyd is asked whether the days of Genesis 1 are literal or poetic. And again, I would say those are not the only two options. I would say it's not literal and it's not poetry. I would call it a stylized prose. But that's a separate issue for now. His response is to emphatically assert that the world's greatest Hebraists all affirm that, that this is narrative.

Well, you're talking about days here. Do you see these as literal days? Is that what the text is telling us? Or you know what other people think? That this is just a poetic different kind of view? Well, first of all, it's not poetry. The world's greatest, Abraeus, all affirm that this is a narrative. In the context of a question being asked here about literal days versus poetry,

this is going to give people the impression that 24-hour literal days here has this massive support from Hebraists. That means scholars of Hebrew. And that might be rhetorically impressive, but it's not representative of truth. In fact, it's not at all true that the world's greatest Hebraists all hold to 24-hour days as to a way to interpret it. That's not even true for how Christians throughout history have interpreted this text. I've gone through that in my video response to Ken Ham, where I talk about pre-modern Christians like Athanasius and Augustine and others. So this, again, it's going to give viewers a misleading impression of the truth. Okay, to conclude, why is this important?

Why do I address this on my YouTube channel? I know that it's kind of painful in a way for me, honestly, because I know a lot of my viewers love this film, and this might be painful for them. But I address this because I have deep in my heart a sincere worry of the... Honestly, I just see this happening so much. I see the harmful effect so much. The whole point of truth unites, my ministry,

is to help people find assurance in the gospel. And I think films like this put stumbling blocks in people's way. Let me give a scenario to demonstrate this concern. Suppose someone's a freshman in college, and they're in a geology class. And the extent they were raised in the church and they're a Christian, and the extent of their engagement in creation issues has basically been maybe a couple sermons, hear about it a little bit, and then watching this film is Genesis history, and they're not aware of anything beyond that.

So basically, in their mind, they're thinking the universe is either 6 to 10,000 years old, and that's simply what the historic reading of Genesis is or it's naturalism. God wasn't involved at all. And then they were struggling with their geology textbook, and they're kind of surprised at how versatile and subtle and strong the evidence for an older Earth is. It doesn't feel, it kind of feels conspiratorial to think all of this data is wrong. And she's starting to wonder, is the universe, maybe the universe is a little bit older. Now, here's the question is what's going to happen to her faith, if those are

her views of the options. You know, it'd be one thing if she had this sense of, okay, you know, the Young Earth Creationist view is the best interpretation of Genesis, but there's other people who are Christians who still take the Scripture seriously who all do a different view. But if she's been told that the Young Earth Creationist view is the only Christian view that upholds the historicity and truthfulness of Genesis, this will lead to a crisis of faith, in many cases, a loss of faith, and that is what I see happening over. over and over and over.

And those are the very kind of people that my YouTube channel exists to try to help. So I'm burdened. I'm not so much burdened to get people to always agree on the details of how to interpret Genesis 1 or other issues of creation. I'd actually like for us to put more focus on the more basic classical issues in the doctrine of creation that distinguished a Christian view from other views in the early church, like creation out of nothing, the goodness of creation, the contingency of creation. but I am concerned when people make the Young Earth paradigm like the option, like that's what you have to believe.

And since there's a car alarm right outside my window, oh, it stopped. Okay, I guess I get 30 more seconds here just to finish by saying this. Basically, I would say for pastors and other leaders considering should we use this film, is Genesis history in our churches, I would just plead with people to at least include other perspectives as well. You know, let people know about these debates because actually, actually, I mean, I've been studying this since I was a sophomore in college when I went through one of those kind of moments. And basically, I would have to say this is actually complicated. And it's complicated enough that actually there is room for godly Christians to disagree about it.

After about 21 years or so of struggle, that's one conclusion I definitely have landed upon. There's space for Christians to see the details of creation in terms of how long it took. differently. Now if you want more resources on this, again, this is where my YouTube channel exists. The first interview I ever did was with Jack Collins, who's written a fantastic book called Reading Genesis Well. I'll link to that interview, also to his book, highly recommended. It's a more academic book, but, you know, people can get into it. He's using C.S. Lewis to help us understand the nature of literature and how it works. You could also see his debate with Al Moller. This would be helpful to watch because it gives you a sense of two different perspectives on

creation, and it's good because you can see they both still regard each other as Christians, and you can hear Al Moller talking about how he even hires people for his faculty that don't hold to his same view. So it's helpful. That's the kind of thing people need to be aware of, and increasingly there's this polarization on this issue, and that's unhelpful. So I hope this video will be helpful. I'll continue to do things on creation. I also have videos coming out on the flood, on Adam and Eve, and on hopefully if I can get a chance to watch it and find the time amidst our move. The next, the sequel to is Genesis history, the one about mountains after the flood. So all that is still to come on my channel. So keep your eyes peeled for those things.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for watching, everybody.