Truth Unites - Is My Local Flood View HERESY?

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

In this video I respond to 6 criticisms of my video advocating that the flood of Noah may have been local, not global. See the original video here: https://youtu.be/Rq5tUg4SWzs?si=tE4hy9dwrowXGKAl Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. 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/

Recently, I put out a video on the flood of Noah, arguing that this can be responsibly read the story in Genesis 6 through 8 as describing a regional event or a local event rather than something that was strictly global. You may have heard about this. Lots of responses. Some positive, lots of neutral or just onlookers, especially on Twitter, lots of negative responses. So two of the most common ones, number one, was basically saying this is heresy. you know, sometimes that word was used. Other times it would just be implied by statements, you know, this is rejecting the biblical teaching. It's like in Genesis 3 when Satan says, did God really say this idea? You know, or the thought of, if you reject what God says in Genesis

6 through 8, what's going to fall next? So this is a way of thinking. Even concerns about adopting higher critical scholarship, stuff like this. I thought about compiling some of these and putting them up, but I thought you can find them pretty easily. The other common criteria, was about bad motive. You know, the idea here is, oh, you're, you're caving into the pressure, you're trying to get the applause of the world, you're compromising to the, to the sociological dynamics right now in the world, this kind of thinking. Megan Basham has blocked me, so I can't see her tweets, but a friend texted me this comment, I don't think it's God's reputation you're worried about. I just have to laugh. Most were not as snarky as that,

but there were lots of judgments of motive like this, where, you know, another person talked about embarrassment or anxiety over what outsiders may think. So it was actually a sociological learning experience for me just to realize kind of what's out there. But also it's interesting to try to gauge that because on Twitter, I'm just going to call it Twitter, it's easier to call it Twitter than X. On Twitter, it's very different from other contexts. So that's interesting too. But I've been reflecting on all this. Obviously, you always want to to be open to learning and receiving criticism and saying, okay, am I missing? You know, especially if you get a large volume like this. Other times, though, you just have to, like Martin Luther

at the, you know, here I stand, after some prayer reflection, reading several more books, thinking about this, I just want to push this further. I think it really needs it. I've been studying this for a couple of decades now, and I'm really concerned about creation issues in general, the flood issue, but also just how we talk about. this. Like when we have a disagreement that comes up in the body of Christ, how we work that through. So I'm thankful for just this whole experience. I think it gives us all an opportunity to give this issue more attention. And I think it's worthy of that. And basically I think both in the criticisms and just in the general state of the discussion around this topic, I think there's a

lot of ignorance about the history of this issue, the context for it. A lot of people have just never studied this, and yet it doesn't hold people back from these strong judgments, which is really unhelpful. So I would like to extend a response here. And in particular, I'll just address six of the concerns that came up. Number one, does the local flood view amount to heresy or rejection of the biblical teaching? Number two is the motive for a local flood view liberalism or compromise to the world? Those two things would be most of this video. probably 95%, maybe 90%. And then four more questions I want to address that are more specific questions that have come up that I think could be helpful.

So the third topic, what about other passages like 2nd Peter 3? Number four, what about the fact that flood stories are all over the globe? Number five, if it was local, why couldn't Noah just move out of the way? Why do we even need an ark? Isn't that a waste? And number six, what about God's promise to never flood the earth? again. If it's a local flood, hasn't that promise been falsified? So those last four will be real brief. I'll put timestamps and we'll dive right in. At the conclusion, I want to talk about theological

triage on a topic like this and why I'm so concerned about the way theological triage is now more controversial than it was five years ago. We need that more than ever right now. Before I dive in, let me just summarize my argument. I made two arguments. First, I said we should interpret the ancient language of Genesis 6 through 8 in its context. And I just pointed out that this seemingly universal language in the flood story is used very commonly throughout the Hebrew Bible to refer to all of the known world. In the famine of Joseph, with respect to the wisdom of Solomon, the fear of Moses, the pursuit of Elijah. There's other things. There's other passages we could go into too. I'll put up two others here that I've been thinking about. Daniel 4-1,

King Nebuchadnezzar. He's not writing to the Native Americans or the Aboriginal Australians in this note, in this decree. A friend sent me Zefaniah 1, 2, 3. Fascinating passage. It's about a local judgment, despite its reference to everything from the face of the earth, animals and humans, etc. I pointed out it's the same in the New Testament with the gathering of Pentecost and all the nations listed there, which are basically Mediterranean with the spread of the gospel in Colossians 1 and so forth. This is a completely normal use of language. This is how ancient people spoke because they didn't know about the South Pole and Australia and the American continents and so forth. So they had no reason to use language that would reference entities that they didn't

know existed. In other words, there's no point talking about a global flood if you don't even know about a globe. And divine inspiration doesn't circumvent ordinary human language. John Frame has a good article about this. He talks about how there can be imprecision in certain scriptural idiom without it being an error. Because I have a high view of scripture. I think the scripture is infallible without error. But Frame says, for the most part, the scripture is ordinary language rather than technical language. That's true. The typical idiom and phrasing is used, and that's not an imperfection in scripture. So we just have to Again, the whole thing is here, we're trying to submit to the text and basically accommodate ourselves to what it is trying to say rather than draw it too quickly into our categories today.

Additional support that I mean, I'm just summarizing my argument still. Additional support comes in Genesis 10, where you have the Table of Nations, the descendants of Noah, and this is regional, but then right after this, the whole earth, Cole Arets, same words as used throughout Genesis 6 through 8, is described as speaking one language, and then only subsequently in Genesis 11, 8, through 9, the people are dispersed from that region into the rest of the world. So right there in the immediate context, you've got the whole earth describing a local region, where human civilization is before the dispersion throughout all of the planet in Genesis 11. So one way to think of it is we're just trying to interpret the language that sounds so

universal, every single phrase that sounds so universal. We're trying to interpret that consistently with the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the same way we interpret Genesis 11, 1, and right there, Genesis 10 and 11 generally, and in the way that ancient people thought of the whole world, because they didn't know about planet Earth as a round globe. Okay, we talked about other things like the Nephilim. But that was the heart of the first point. The second point was the problem of multiplying miracles not in the text. I gave five examples. I won't go as long on my summary here, but just real quick, getting animals to and from the ark, especially from, because if you believe in a radical restructuring of the planet, you still got to get them back to, you know,

how did the how do they get to the kangaroos get to Australia, the poison dart frogs to the rainforests and the Amazon, you know, so forth. Second problem is fitting all the animals on the ark. Basically, most people have to have a lightning speed evolution to explain this to get all genuses and species of land-dwelling vertebrate animals in less than 5,000 years since the ark. Not everyone does that, but then you have to get more animals on the ark, and you can only fit so many. The problem of eight people taking care of all those animals for over a year, the quantity of water that exists on planet Earth. Number five, the mixing of fresh and salt water, the survival of plants and insects.

Talked about all that kind of stuff. Now, again, the point there was that global flood proponents have explanations for this, but those explanations go way beyond the text. sometimes by positing ad hoc miracles to get around the problems. And those ad hoc miracles are often, often they're not in the text. Sometimes they're even seemingly at odds with the text, like the wind of Genesis 8.1, you know, seems to be, that seems to be the cause for the flood abating. And there doesn't seem to be any hint of this kind of massive geological restructuring, like a lot of global flood proponents believe in today.

I'm summarizing. See the video for all that, but the point is you have to add in all these additional miracles that go beyond and possibly against the text. So that's my argument. My argument is basically, this is the best way to read the text based upon its concerns,

its usage of language, its sphere of awareness, etc. And too often we make assumptions by filtering it through the modern debates. Okay, so now let me respond to the concerns. So the first thing is, is this a rejection of the Bible? Is this heresy or just rejecting what the Bible clearly teaches? And here what I want to do is just survey this view.

You know, I'm just kind of amazed that people are willing to throw out the heresy word so quickly, and it's clear they haven't read books about this. Because here's the thing. If there's a criticism of my initial video, it's that it assumed too much knowledge. Because I've been thinking about this for a long time, and what I probably should have done is just trace the history of it. So to help people see, this is an exceedingly common view among conservative Christians. And those who go the global flood route, that view is, the modern version of that view is different

from what Christians who affirmed a global flood believed in throughout history. I'll show that in this video. But basically, I think, so a lot of the charges of heresy are, it seemed like they're just coming from ignorance because people are just not aware that that classification for a local flood view is a historically eccentric way to evaluate that position. If you want to say this is a rejection of the Bible or something, you need to give an argument or some kind of engagement with or awareness of this whole body,

this whole tradition of conservative Christian thought that is advocated for that view. Let's just survey that a little bit. Again, this whole episode is good. It gives us an opportunity to give this some attention. So let's work through a little bit of evangelical scholarship. I already mentioned people like Michael Heiser and Hewiser, and Hugh Ross in my initial video.

Extending out from that a little bit, you could look at study Bibles. The ESV study Bible, a wonderful resource for the church. This is not a liberal work of scholarship. This is what I turn to each morning for my devotions. It's a great work of scholarship, very conservative. You turn to the note on Genesis 617

and the phrase, everything that is on the earth shall die, and you read that, although God intends the flood to destroy every person and his remarks have a strong universal emphasis, this in and of itself does not necessarily mean that 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.

And then basically it talks about the Tower of Babel, and then after that, which you can't see on the screen, it gives contextual reasons for that view. You could also see the NIV study Bible. It's a similar note saying the same thing. Some scholars see this as universal. only from Moses's limited standpoint. Then you could go to commentaries, leading evangelical commentaries on Genesis. My favorite commentary on Genesis is written by Derek Kidner.

He basically says, if we didn't have any scientific evidence, we could read the text either way, local or global. Local, again, local meaning like, you know, human civilization, Genesis 111, where human beings live, this huge portion of the Middle East somewhere. But he says, so he says you could read it either way apart from the science, but in light of the geological evidence, little reasonable doubt remains, although some would dispute this, that the events of Genesis 6 through 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.

Meredith Klein, in his commentary on Genesis, says the Bible is non-committal on the extent of the flood. Initially, he calls a global flood view precarious, but later he, he calls it. he kind of softens his position and basically says, 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. Now, Meredith Klein, again, so just to be real clear here, I always try to ward off misunderstandings. I'm not saying this is everybody, okay? Certainly not. It's probably a minority position within like the last 50 years of evangelical scholarship, though it's changing. But it's widely represented among conservative evangelical scholars. Klein is not a liberal or a heretic.

Klein, he taught at places like Westminster Seminary. He was in the OPC, Orthodox Presbyterian, very conservative. You could see the same view in those kind of circles in journal articles. If you look into this, this is a great article from Paul Seeley in the Westminster Theological Journal. He's basically saying the account is accommodated to the geography of the times. So it's the whole world as then conceived, which would cover a huge portion of the Middle East that would not include the American continents or even all of Africa and Europe. And basically, Celi is making this same point that we have to, we have to accommodate to the language of the text rather than jam it into our categories, our debates, our interests, etc.

In addition to study Bibles, commentaries, and journal articles of which I'm just trying to give a couple of representative examples, you could look at books written by evangelical scholars. The older Zondervin Counterpoint's book on Creation and Evolution has this passage from Vern Poitreus, who's a very capable and conservative biblical scholar. He's basically saying, I won't read all these. It gets a little tedious if I'm constantly reading, but you can just pause the video and read. Basically, he's saying, same thing.

Basically, saying the Bible isn't addressing what's outside of its purview of interest and typical language. And we could give many, many, many more examples like this among conservative, even evangelical Christians with a high view of scripture. And that view has generally not been classified as heresy or a rejection of the Bible. And again, I just think people are sort of ignorant of this state of scholarship on this. I don't mean to be offensive. I just, I need to say that because of how strong these reactions are to try to, again, there are moments in life when you kind of realize I need to, I need, sometimes a criticism you have to kind of receive and really sit with.

other times you have to kind of stand your ground and even crank it up a notch to help people. Because again, I think there's modern American evangelical reflection on this topic is eccentric in comparison to just general Christianity. And we'll see that more and more as we go. Okay, so let's get out of the American evangelical scene and look at the broader sense. Christians in the modern era. I can say so many positive things about the non-Protestant traditions in this video, which I love to do because I'm not just trying to defend Protestantism in all my

videos. I think there's lots of Christians, lots of great Christians outside of Protestantism, and they actually have some things that are a lot better at than, especially sometimes American evangelicals. But let's talk about some other Protestants outside of the evangelical tradition, kind of in our recent times. So here's a fascinating inroad. This is a good entry point from Herman Bovink. If you want to find a great modern theologian who just will help you think things, he's extremely knowledgeable, great instincts, just a wonderful theologian. Herman Bovink's a great person to study. Now, I don't read Bovink himself as affirming a local flood. But nonetheless, just listen to how he categorizes this view. So basically in context, he's trying to harmonize, he's listing different

ways you can harmonize Genesis 1 with geological science. He gives through three options, basically kind of old earth creationist type readings. And then he gets to his fourth option, which is what we would call young earth creationism, and he calls it the anti-geological theory. And he says, from ancient times already, the flood was regarded as very important in this connection. Exegetes argued about a partial versus a universal flood, an issue that has always been in discussion about the construction of the ark and about the height of the flood. But the flood acquired geological significance only after Newton. Now, then he goes on to talk about this 1682 work by Thomas Burnett, which basically argued,

that work of Burnett's argued that the flood was responsible. for radically altering the world. I'm going to call this global reshaping. That's our term for the rest of the video for this idea that basically mountains, continents, and oceans, as we now know them, are the result of the flood of Noah. Global reshaping. The Himalayan Mountains didn't exist 5,000 years ago. That's this idea. So he describes that view, and then he says, this holy new theory. And so he's classifying it as a new idea. And he, he, he, points out it's, he says it has, it's very controversial, and he's pointing out who affirmed it, who didn't, he's tracing out the discussion. Then he says, in recent times, most geologists and theologians, he gives a bunch of examples, believe that the biblical flood was very different from the diluvium of geology, and therefore also has to be viewed as partial. It can be only called universal insofar as the entire human race perished as a result of it. Now, okay, so let's just, let's think about what Bovink is saying here. Three observations. Number one, he

this has always been an ongoing discussion in the church. That's true. The global flood is definitely like the mainstay, mainstream view, but it's not universal. There's always been people who've talked about this. You can see Augustin affirming the global flood view and opposing people who are advocating for a local flood in the city of God. I don't know who he's talking about exactly, but, you know, there's these, he talks about people who are saying, oh, the flood didn't go all the way up to Mount Olympus, and he's opposing that view. But there were people who had advocated for that. I mentioned Josephus in my last video. Let me give another example here. This is from a text falsely attributed to Justin Martyr, but probably authored by Theodoret of Cyrus in the 5th century.

And it's in a dialogue format. He said the question is, 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 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 this passage is not only the answer that's given, which is just an explicit affirmation seemingly of a local flood, but the fact that he stipulates this position is affirmed by many. Also, among those who affirm a global flood, sometimes you can tell that what they're really talking about is the

known world, the Mediterranean world. So let me give an example of this, because in the early periods, the pre-modern periods of church history, you have the same issue of the language, where we have to be careful to understand how they meant these terms. So Philo, the Jewish philosopher in his commentary on the flood, basically says it was not a trifling outpouring of water, but a limitless and immense one, which almost flowed out beyond the pillars of Heracles, the Straits of Gibrales, the Straits of Gibraltar and the Great Sea, therefore the whole earth and the mountainous regions were flooded. Now, think about what he's saying there. The Straits of Gibraltar are, that's where Europe and Africa almost touched, kind of

western edge of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain and Morocco almost touch. And so he's referencing the Mediterranean Sea here, and he says, you know, it almost went beyond that, therefore the whole earth was flooded. David's Young comments, in one breath, Philo characterizes the cataclysm as limitless and immense and also appears to limit its extent to the Mediterranean basin. Again, we see the danger here of imposing later categories upon pre-modern terminology. When the ancients spoke of the whole world, we have to just ask, it's not a dumb question to ask, well, what did they mean by the whole world when they didn't know that planet Earth was a globe

and they've never heard of places like North America and so forth? So the point we made about the language of scripture also applies to a lot of the testimony of church history, but even so, Bavink is correct to say that a partial versus a universal flood has always been in discussion. That's the first point. Second point about this Bavink passage, significantly, Bavink sees the idea of a massive geological restructuring, creating mountains, continents, the current oceans, etc. as Burnett argued for, what I called global reshaping, as whole, new. This is an extremely important point. While pre-modern exegetes tended to assume that the flood was global, they didn't attribute to that to the flood a cataclysmic restructuring of planet Earth like the contemporary view does, nor did they have any notion of rapid evolution. So, you know, that was what Burnett was arguing, is that, you know, basically, you know, they're all trying to figure out, how do we get enough water? You know, Even if every cloud in the sky rained, you're not going to cover the Andes Mountains and the Rocky Mountains and the Himalayan Mountains and so forth.

We don't have enough water on planet Earth. So he posited from passages like Psalm 24-2, Psalm 136, the idea of a subterranean abyss. Basically, a bunch of water stored under the earth. And then this emerged during the flood, and this solves the mystery of how you can flood the entire planet. And basically what he's saying is when the flood is over, the water drains back into the subterranean abyss, and through that process, planet Earth was just remade. Huge slabs of the crust of the earth were tilted, slid down into the abyss, and that's how we have

mountains. That was his proposal. And so you see Boving saying that this is initiating a new position, and that's correct. Anything like that, any kind of global restructuring, that's not the view that I can detect. Maybe it's out there. I don't see that in the mainstay for the early and medieval church. For example, the basic assumption seems to be that planet Earth is pretty much the same in its basic geography before and after the flood.

So Jerome, for example, when he defends the historicity of the four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2, he claims he's personally seen one of them and drunk from another. The assumption seems to be these same rivers existed before the flood and after the flood. You don't see this idea of a geological reshaping, nor do you see the idea of the idea of extremely rapid evolution, generally speaking as the mainstream view of the pre-modern church. What I'm trying to say is the modern version of a global flood is every bit as much a response to modern geology as a local flood. Here's the thing. If people could have an open heart to hear me here, I really think I have something to say in this video. I'm trying to say with love, but I think

I think we got a blind spot here as American evangelicals. Please hear me, okay? Many evangelical Christians today are so against having our interpretation of scripture influenced by science or anything outside the text. They're saying don't let modern science change how we read the Bible, but they're unaware how much their own position is also shaped by developments in the modern era, especially in the 20th century and especially in the U.S. the scripture is our chief authority, but none of us read it in a vacuum.

All contemporary views of the flood are responses to, A, the discovery of the new world in the early modern era. Now you're like, oh, there's whole continents we didn't know about. That's a lot more animals. How do we deal with that? You need a lot more water now. And B, later geological discoveries and scientific discoveries throughout the modern era that are making the global flood view basically just, really difficult to maintain. So you just have to start adding all these miracles. These additional miracles

like geological reshaping, rapid evolution, that wasn't characteristic of the pre-modern church, generally speaking. So while the global flood view as such might be old, it had to be radically recast in the modern era. You've got a lot more animals you have to explain now, hence the rapid evolution. You've got a lot more places you've got to flood now, hence the geological reshaping. So this is my second observation from Bobing's comments. Both the local flood view and the contemporary global flood views are attempting to come to terms with the world that we now know exists in the modern era. I hope I explain that okay and that makes sense. Every now and again when I'm talking fast in a video, I'll watch it later and realize I misspoke.

So please give grace if I sense the wrong word. Okay. The third comment from Bovink is this. when you do get into the modern era, Bobbink says most theologians hold to a partial flood. This is also true. Once greater awareness

of the size of planet Earth emerges, Christians quickly began saying, oh, well, the flood probably wasn't global. Now, let me be careful not to overstate my case here, not all. I mean, it was definitely controversial at first. Like in the 17th century, you find some Orthodox Christians

like Matthew Poole, I'll put up a statement from him. Isaac Voss and Edward Stillingfleet would be two others. you can Google their names and look up their views. These are Orthodox, conservative Christians in the 1600s advocating explicitly for a local flood. But it's controversial. So I'm not trying to say it was like everybody just got on. No, this has remained a contested area. But what I am trying to say is progressively throughout the modern era, the local flood view grows more and more prominent, including among very conservative, theologians, scholars, ministers such that by the time you get to the late 19th century and at the dawn of the 20th century, the local flood view is now the predominating view among conservative Christians. Hence, you have Boving saying most Christians. The idea at this time is Charles Lylell had this idea

of the Caspian Sea hypothesis. This became very popular. Basically, he was a 19th century geologist and devout Christian who thought that the local flood was connected in some way to what we called the Caspian Sea today. And among educated Christians in the 19th century, late 19th century, early 20th century, it's a huge option. Lots of people think that. It's then in the 20th century, as you're moving throughout the 20th century, that the local flood view has a recession, and the global flood view reemerges and gets the upper hand. I started compiling documentation of this. About four feet over there is this great book. I'll have to put up a picture of it so that I don't get up and upturn my table here. But it's a really fantastic book, Davis Young, who taught for many

decades at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. Every now and again, you find a book, and it's really well-crafted and it fills a gap. It's wonderful to find books like that. Read chapters 7 through 16 of this book. If you want documentation for how common the local flood view became among fundamentalists and conservatives in the 19th century, early 20th century, these are people who are staunch opponents of liberalism. They are defending biblical inerrancy. They are defending miracles. They are opposing higher critical scholarship. And they have zero anxiety about acknowledging and accommodating to the scientific evidence that there's never been a global flood and a global reshaping. Rather than some document all of this, let me just give you, because honestly,

it would take about, I said chapter 7 through 16, it would take about 20 minutes to do. Let me just give you Young's summary. Speaking of conservative Christians, he says by the early part of the 20th century, few biblical scholars any longer endorsed 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 infallible Bible and to the historic Christian gospel, but they also took science seriously, dealt honestly with the data, and refused to make appeals to miracle to help them out of intellectual impasses. They recognized that a mounting volume of scientific evidence consistently indicated that no universal deluge had taken place. When they began to

propose non-traditional ways of interpreting the deluge story that reflected this awareness, there were no cries of alarm that the Bible was being abandoned. Now, when I'm making a video like this, by the way, I really try to pray and put my heart in the right place before. I'm not trying to be defensive. I'm not trying to just, you know, stick it back at anybody like that. I'm really not, sincerely. I know enough to know the kingdom of God doesn't roll forward through that kind of human assertion. It comes through the Holy Spirit flowing through us. But so what I'm, I'm trying to do this for like the good faith onlookers, because I'm really concerned about the general changes that have happened on these science issues. I do think, and as I'll address in a second, believe or not,

I'm still on my first point. Second point in a second, I'll get to this, but I do think, think it's totally legitimate to be concerned about putting a stumbling block in people's pathway on issues like this. What's basically happened is, in the latter decades of the 20th century, and up to the present time, the Young Earth Creationist Movement was launched, and it has had unbelievable success. Many Christians appreciate the Young Earth Creationist Movement because it feels like it's defending Christianity, and especially these days amidst the fear and uncertainty of our world. I can understand the appeal. But in fact, the Young Earth, I can put it this song, this strongly. The Young Earth Creationist movement has been so successful that many, many Christians

I meet have never even heard that there are other views of creation or the flood. Many Christians don't even know that. They don't know that the leading opponents to liberalism five generations ago, like the old Princeton scholars, Warfield and Hodge and so forth, J. Gresham-Machian, who wrote Christianity and liberalism, Bavink. These people were not Young Earth creationists. That wasn't the traditional response. The sociology has changed. So, you know, I'm advocating a view that was predominating in many circles 100 years ago,

but today people think you can just call it heresy without even giving an argument. That's how much the bandwidth has contracted. and the instincts of modern American evangelicalism are just out of alignment. They're eccentric in comparison to historic Christianity. Here's an anecdote. Do with this what you will. This is fascinating. Harold Lenzel, the man who literally wrote the book, The Battle for the Bible.

Even a lot of the mid-20th century neo-evangelicals were much less anti-intellectual than certain strands of contemporary evangelicalism. He wrote the book, The Battle for the Bible. Okay. When Harold Lenzel initially published his notes on the Harper, in the Harper Study Bible in 1964, I think this was the first edition. He didn't think the flood was universal even with respect to human beings, let alone with respect to the whole globe. You can see his position in his own words.

But in the later 1991 edition, he changed his position and then edited that to affirm a global flood. It's fascinating. as it's like as we're going forward it this issue the bandwidth is contracting and so much so that many people this is why I make this video many people don't even know that they have options and they literally think it's either I'm I'm a I'm a Christian or you know I've the only basically they think the only way to be a Christian is to believe in a global flood they just don't know the options I'm really passionate about this guy I see the damage it does

And I just think we need to basically get a little historical perspective and theological wisdom, if I may say. All right, that leads me to my second. That's already kind of pushing into my second concern here. This is the other one that I want to spend some time on. This is so important. Is my motive for a local flood view, liberalism, pleasing the world, you know, and the related question, compromising to the spirit of the age? And the related question here is, is it wrong for things outside of Scripture to influence our interpretation, including science?

The first thing I want to say about this is insofar as this criticism projects motives onto me, this is really unhelpful just as a general way to do dialogue and disagreement in the body of Christ. I'm sincerely grieved, like Megan Basham's tweet and others, they get all these likes. I sincerely don't understand how people find that to be productive or godly or helpful to anyone in any way. why don't we deal with people's arguments and not just project bad motives onto them? Because even if it were true that I don't care about God's reputation and my advocacy for a regional

flood is the result of this liberal instinct, just saying that doesn't help anyone. Second of all, so far as I know my own motives, the charge of kind of compromise here is the opposite of the case. It's precisely my concern about the way it impedes the gospel and puts stumbling blocks in people's paths that makes me speak out on this. Basically, I want to be faithful to God's calling on my life. I've come to the conclusion, and it's been the most vulnerable thing I've embraced, is to do the things I'm doing on YouTube and embrace my current calling. My basic mission in life is to help people experience assurance in the gospel amidst all the anxieties and uncertainties of the modern world. want to be a force against all the deconstruction and disintegration out there. I want people to just fall in love with Christ more and more. That's my mission in life. That's why I'm speaking on this issue.

That's why I hold the view I do. I put this in the video I recorded just prior. Here's how I put it. And my next few videos are going to be about whether the flood of Noah was local or global, and then Adam and Eve. And oh man, I go into it with fear and trembling, but I was praying about it. I think, I don't want to be the kind of person who shies away from something if we need to talk about it because it's causing a lack of assurance in the gospel. And the purpose of my channel is to give people assurance in the gospel. So, caution to the wind and we'll dive in. So there's a real irony here when people say, I'm caving into the pressure. Just think about this.

Some people, they're so focused on the liberal pressure out there in the broader culture. They're so naive about the subcultures and the sociological dynamics within conservative, sub-suffer. cultures. I am not a scientist functioning in academic or secular contexts. I'm a minister and a theologian within conservative evangelical contexts. All of the sociological pressure that I am consciously aware of is away from a local flood view. Not one person is pushing me toward that, and I gain nothing from talking about it. I'm entirely going against all of the sociological pressure that I'm aware of. There is only one thing that leads me to me to the view that I have, and that's my conscience after studying and reading books and going to

museums and I'm just really curious about it. So the idea that I'm caving into the pressure when I talk about this is totally backwards. Here's a metaphor. Suppose you have to go through a jungle, and so you have two pathways. Option A is to be escorted on a well-paved road in an SUV, and there's plenty of bottles of water if you get thirsty. Option B, is slogging through the jungle with a machete while being hunted by jaguars. If you choose option B, the one criticism that doesn't make sense is, oh, you're just caving into the pressure. You're just taking the easy route. My motive for addressing this topic is, you know, this is the other thing. People are saying, I'm embarrassed by the Bible or something. Not at all.

I'm not embarrassed by it. I'm just interested in what's true. And I don't think, it's true that you had lightning speed evolution and the Himalayan mountains are 4,000 years old and all these other additional things that most, though not all, global flood proponents have to posit just to try to make it work. But let me address the deeper concern here that allows me to speak to what I see as a very worrying weakness among conservative Christians and a blind spot. I think it's a blind spot. In my initial tweet, I had mentioned concern about the church's unity and witness, and this really triggered some people. So you have people saying, like this, I'll put up with this example.

These are just representative examples. People are saying things like, well, I'd respect it more if you just thought this was true, but it seems like you're trying to broaden the tent. But of course, I'm trying to broaden the tent because this is what I believe is true. More basically, though, the concern here to cut to the chase is it's so dismaying how many Christians right now are suspicious about concerns about our witness as though it were a bad thing to be concerned about how we're coming across to the world and when we put stumbling blocks in people's way. And I think basically what happens is because there's immediate suspicion.

You talk about witness, and immediately people associate this with liberalism. And I think what happens is people have seen an appeal to witness or to unity abused, and so they start associating that with any kind of concern about our witness. The problem with this is there's different kinds of concerns about our witness and some are totally legitimate. To give two obvious examples, extreme examples. Example one, someone says, stop teaching that the Bible forbids sex outside of marriage, because if you say that, that will damage our witness. This is a bad concern about witness because it's a compromise of truth. Example two is, someone says, stop teaching that the Bible requires geocentrism. That's the doctrine

that the sun orbits around the earth? Because saying so will damage our witness. Well, that's a good concern for witness, because it's not a compromise of truth, it's premised in truth. So the only way you can make distinctions between different kinds of concern about our witness is investigating what is true.

And my concern is that many people are so focused on example one compromise that they're undersensitive to the damage from example two scenarios. Let me give a historical anecdote. I mentioned it's in my previous response to Ken Ham from St. Augustine of the legitimate concern we should have about our witness. He says, this is Augustine.

There is knowledge to be had, after all, about the earth, about the sky, about the other elements of this world, about the movements and revolutions, or even the magnitude and distances of the constellations, about the predictable eclipses of moon and sun, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones, and everything else of this kind. This is science. He's talking about science. I talk about this passage a lot in my book on creation. It frequently happens that even non-Christians will have knowledge of this sort in a way that they can substantiate with scientific arguments or experiments.

Now, it is quite disgraceful and disastrous, something to be on one's guard against at all costs, that they should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature as to say about these topics and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter. And it goes on to say, basically, the problem here is that not that Christians are laughed at, but that people assume scripture is teaching that. People assume because Christians are foolish, Christianity is foolish. And I hope you feel how urgent that concern is for Augustine. In the original Latin, let's just say the words disgraceful and disastrous are a mild translation

of those Latin words, okay? He's very agitated about this. What he's talking about is when there's an arrogance combined with an ignorance among Christians, which in combination are quite deadly to our credibility, because you have people just spouting off about things arrogantly, but not knowing what they're talking about. And I think Augustine's concern is very relevant to the current flood debate, not because Augustine is a liberal,

not because Augustine is caving into pressure, but not because he's compromising or something, but because he knows that when we're foolish, that's bad. So let me underscore this point with a historical example, because some might have balked a moment ago when I mentioned geocentrism. And people might say, well, obviously geocentrism damages our witness. We all know that. But I would like to point out how many generations it took the church to warm up to that and to realize that. Galileo Galilei

in defending his advocacy for heliocentrism quoted Augustine more than 10 times regarding this passage specifically I just quoted. He pointed out that the more dogmatic we are regarding our interpretation of scripture, the more we risk impugning it if we are wrong. This is why humility is so important because the scripture is infallible, but our interpretations are fallible. So we need humility in harmonizing general and special revelation. When we equate our interpretations with the scripture itself, we can do enormous damage. And of course, Galileo is a great kind of example of this. He was famously condemned by the Inquisition for his views. And let me say two things. First of all, I'm going to put all the pressure on Protestants here because I often criticize Roman Catholic theology, and I would like to point out this is not a Roman Catholic issue. All the Protestants were of the same mind. You know, Luther and Calvin, I talked about this in my response to Ken Ham, but basically, you know, Luther called reportedly Luther called Copernicus a fool. Calvin had even stronger language. You see this pretty much everywhere. And I had the other thing,

just to be clear, I know that secular people misuse the Galileo episode and Copernicus and the rise of heliocentrism against religion and against the church. Fair enough, that's an overuse. We can push back against that, but not to miss the point. We still can learn about humility and our need for humility and relating science and scripture. Let me give an example from John Owen. among the greatest of the Puritan theologians, one of my personal heroes, an amazing theologian, a brilliant and godly man, and yet, note this passage I put up. This is about a hundred years after the science for heliocentrism had emerged, and he's talking about, he's opposing it on grounds that it's against the evident testimonies of Scripture. Now note that word evident.

This is John Owen. He's not, he's a brilliant theologian, but he's saying, Oh, the Bible's obvious. It's clear. It obviously teaches geocentrism, and they had their verses, like Psalm 93-1. Another verses Psalm 96105, First Chronicle 1630. They used the Joshua 10th story, all to say, because these verses all basically say those first four, the earth shall not be moved. And they said, look, it's as plain as the noonday sun. That's geocentrism. The earth shall not be moved. case closed. More humility was needed in interpreting the scripture in dialogue with the science because many times we impose later ideas onto the text. And what that historical vignette brings up is the need for humility in this process of relating these two different sources of

genuine knowledge that we have, general revelation, special revelation. In general, Christians throughout history have not been as opposed to learning from science in how we interpret scripture as Christians today, especially evangelical Christians. Here's how Young puts it. So in that fantastic book I mentioned, he goes through a 300-page survey of historical interpretation of the flood narrative in Jewish and Christian thought, pointing out how they're constantly trying to harmonize, going to painstaking efforts, not just putting in ad hoc miracles, but painstaking. taking efforts to harmonize the two. And he says, those who deny the propriety of using extra-biblical evidence as a tool in understanding the flood story fly in the face of the general

tendency of church history. In rejecting such evidence, they implicitly condemn the approach of many of the church's premier minds from Augustine through Luther, Archibald Alexander, and Kyle to Bernard Ram. Those are all people he's been discussing. For all their different views, they're all trying to have this harmonization. So the point here is basically this. The concern about damage to our witness and our credibility when we cling to certain interpretations of scripture without humility, without consideration of legitimate science, is totally valid. And it's very much on my heart on this topic of the flood. Okay, now let's finish by addressing some more specific questions that people raised. But I try to be helpful here. So one of them, third,

question in this video is, what about other passages in the Bible like 2nd Peter 3? And here again, basically with this passage and with others, we have this same issue of needing to interpret the language and being careful not to impose modern categories onto the text. Except here, the phrasing that Peter uses suggests that the word world is referring to evil human civilization, not planet Earth in its literal land and geography. So you see that in the qualifiers here, the world of the ungodly, and then the world that then existed, or that's just Tota Cosmos, the then world or the world at that time. These qualifiers don't make as much sense if Peter is thinking in terms of modern geography.

That's why local flood proponents like Hugh Ross use these phrases to further their position. It's like this, not to get too into this, but if you were to say, God will judge the world. when you say that, we don't really mean like planet Earth as distinct from the moon. We're not trying to make a geographical designation. The word world has less to do with geography and more to do with the fallen world of human evil. And this is a common way to take 2 Peter 3 and 2 Peter 2. I'll put up one more example of that kind of interpretation. A fourth objection that comes up is, but there are flood stories from all over the world.

Now I'm going to be brief on some of these because a lot of these responses you can tell they're coming from someone who may not be very familiar with local flood views, so I'll just say it real quick and we'll move on. But typically people who are informed in this debate on both sides don't appeal to this because both sides explain it equally well, particularly if you believe in a local flood that is still universal with respect to humanity. A lot of local flood proponents still think that the flood was universal with respect to humanity. Now, even if you didn't, you could still explain this broader awareness throughout the world of a huge flood. But obviously if the flood is universal with respect to all human beings, then its memory will persist

among all different human cultures. This is where I am open to considering different terms. I mean, the terms local and global have been the customary ones, but maybe it will trip people up less. I've heard local flood proponents say, you should call it a universal flood. And then just clarify, you mean, oh, universal with respect to humanity or something like that, or maybe regional flood. maybe that will help. Okay, fifth objection is why couldn't Noah just move out of the way. Now, again, this came up a lot. Again, though, this does reflect kind of a lack of awareness. Of course, local flood proponents have thought about this. I addressed this a little bit right up front, just saying local doesn't mean small. Okay, it's still a huge, sudden and calamitous flood,

unique in scope and significance, and perhaps covering some huge portion of the earth. So all the animal life in this region cannot be simply excavated without something comparable to a huge arc. Just because the flood is not covering Alaska and Indonesia doesn't mean it's necessarily escapable by land or by some easy, easy process, especially if you have to care for all the animals in that region. Okay, sixth objection is, if the flood was local, then wouldn't that make God a covenant breaker? And basically, he says, I'll never flood the earth again. It's just nine, but there's been lots of local floods. But again, a local flood view can still be a unique event in human history

that is potentially universal with respect to human civilization. Again, think of Genesis 111. The whole earth had one language. In the biblical storyline of Genesis 1 through 11, the flood of Genesis 6 through 8 was a unique and unrepeated event. There hasn't been anything like that. So this verse is true. God has kept this promise.

Again, a lot of, if you, I think if people try to understand and read the literature on the other side, a lot of these issues go away pretty quickly. Okay, final conclusion. I want to offer an observation about the importance of theological triage, kind of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. It's good to ask, why does a conversation play out like this, like it did on Twitter, which was very different from YouTube comments? Why does this happen where there's so much heat and so little light, where you can, tell that lots of people haven't even watched the video, let alone study this topic, and yet they're very content to label something heresy or to judge your motives and this kind of thing. Basically, I'm concerned that there's an increasing amount of dogmatism in the

world right now. A friend recently made a very insightful remark about the relationship between trauma and dogmatism, and I wonder if part of the reason we're seeing more extreme views and more sort of kind of an uptick of fundamentalist instincts is because of these. amount of trauma in the world right now. Like, here's an interesting little fact. Flat earthism is increasing. There are more people who believe in a flat earth today than 10 years ago. So you say, well, why would that be?

It's not like there's scientific knowledge that has evaporated or something. There's sociological reasons for that. And basically, in the times in which we live, theological triage, the ability to see things in proportion is more important. I believe that. I believe theological triage is more important today than it was five years ago. And yet I'm seeing a lot of people acting like theological triage is this liberal idea. I hear that more and more. First of all, theological triage is profoundly biblical. You think of Jesus speaking of the weightier matters of the law, or Paul speaking of the gospel as of first importance. Or Paul, on other topics, he'll talk about mere opinions, like in Romans 14.

All throughout the scripture, you have a triaging of different kinds of sin, different levels of punishment. You see this in the Westminster Shorter Catechism as well. This is why I'm concerned. People are, there's a lot of rejection of theological triage evident in the responses to me. Here's one of the responses, someone saying, did God really create the universe in six literal days? Did God really destroy the whole world in a flood? Did God really keep a man in a fish's belly for three days? did God really become a man, die on a cross, and rise from the dead?

And the concern here is that this is seeming to flatten all these issues. What this string of questions implies is, if you have a different interpretation about how literal to read the days of Genesis 1, then this is like questioning God, just like if you question the incarnation of Christ or his resurrection from the dead or something like this. I mean, all these things are kind of put together with this implication that if you don't adopt this interpretation, you're questioning God. Lots of things like that. Lots of comments were like that.

And of course, this simply bypasses the question of, does the Bible teach a universal flood and literal creation days? You can see the problem here if you were to substitute it like this. Did God really send a global famine in Genesis 41? Did God really raise Jesus from the dead? Now you see what I've done there is I've assumed a particular interpretation of Genesis 41, and then I've clumped that together with the resurrection of Christ. And this is why theological triage is so important to prevent us from doing this

where we take every disagreement about an interpretation of Scripture as though it were a rejection of Scripture on the other side. Another example of this kind of reaction here, I just picked a couple of representative examples. I was dismayed because there's so much like this. And I'm thinking, we've got to do better. In the church, we've got to do better. This person said, literal six days, literal flood. The real question is, is God's word authoritative or not? Is it sufficient or not?

Is it inerrant or not? Is it true or not? There's no middle ground with truth. It either happened the way God said or God is a liar and God is no liar. And this kind of binary, you know, imagine you could do this with geocentrism. bypassing the question of interpretation and just say the question is not whether Psalm 104-5 is literal. The question is, is God's word authoritative or not? You know, God says the earth shall not be moved.

Is he a liar or not? And this is really problematic because it's attaching so much significance to the interpretation of this relatively tertiary question of interpretation. so then if someone disagrees with you about that, it's as though they're rejecting God and calling God a liar. And more humility is needed in the way we parse. So finishing off, I know I'm rambling a bit here at the end. The heart behind these comments at the end here about theological triage is we have to see these different issues in proportion, an issue like the global flood versus local flood debate. We, quite frankly, in the church right now, we have bigger fish to fry.

we have bigger problems. This is not a primary doctrine. The only reason I address this is for people who find it a stumbling block. But when the world is in chaos, we need to put our focus on the gospel and do everything we can to promote that. That's what I want to give my life to. It's basically radical focus on the gospel. I only talk about something like the local flood because I know it's a stumbling block for people in connection to the gospel. And so triage is needed now more than ever on a topic like this or others.

All right, here's my final thought. What should we really land the plane on whenever we're thinking about the flood? What's the main point of this story? The flood story should point us to Christ. This is the whole imagery. There will be another flood. None can escape. And just as Noah was preserved in the ark, we can be preserved if we are in Christ.

That's where the focus should be. You know, that's the main point of this story in the Bible. And it's important to talk about these other matters, but let's not lose sight of that in the midst of it all. All right, I hope this will be helpful for people out there, and I will continue. I would just say, let's just continue to talk about these things. Nothing bad can happen if we just continue to hang in there with each other and work at this with sincerity.

You know, the only loss is if there's bad faith criticisms, but I'm making this video with a view to good faith onlookers and critics. And as long as we keep talking and keep working at it, it can only be good. So I hope these conversations can continue. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Longer video, hope it was helpful. If you stayed with me to the end, let me know in the comments and let me know what you think. Thanks, everybody.

God bless.