Truth Unites - Ken Ham is Tweeting About Me Again

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund responds to Ken Ham about the interpretation of Genesis 1. Is the Young-Earth Creationist reading of Genesis 1 the only faithful reading? Do all other views "start outside the text?" Ham's post: https://twitter.com/aigkenham/status/1763067659036573772 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/

Ken Ham is tweeting about me again on Genesis 1. No offense taken. Honestly, I'm sort of flattered that he feels it's worth his time to engage with me. But I wanted to respond. There was one paragraph in the tweet that I'm about to read to you that I thought it just represents such a flashpoint, such a clear point of demarcation in this debate of how Christians disagree about Genesis 1 and creation more generally. I thought this would be helpful to speak to this, just as one specific point more briefly. I've done other videos. I'll put up on the screen, one of them, and maybe the follow-up one that I've done. I've done a few others as well. I'll try to remember to throw up on creation. So you can see those for like a fuller, more expansive case. I'm just going to make one observation on his tweet.

And I've addressed this in my writing, too. If you're interested in my book on Augustine, I talk about it there more briefly. In this book, I'll put up on theological triage. The reason I want to talk about this is because I think basically young earth creationists are winning the battle of rhetoric. So many, so at the Pew level, so many Christians have just no clue about the history of this issue, about the fact that there have been so many conservative orthodox options other than Young Earth creationism, because people have been told and sort of browbeaten into thinking, this is the only faithful Christian option. They have no idea that people like Jay Gresham-Machan, the great opponent of theological liberalism in the early 20th

century said, it is certainly not necessary to think that the six days spoken of in that first chapter of the Bible are intended to be six days of 24 hours each. We may think of them rather as very long periods of time. Machen is just one example of dozens of others, stalwart conservatives upholding the line against theological liberalism, and that was not even that controversial back then. I've talked about this in my previous videos. The sociology has changed. I think that's unfortunate. I think it creates stumbling blocks for people. To me, this is an issue of apologetics. And so I've talked about all that more. So, but here I just want to address, there is something that Ken Ham said that I think it's worth interacting with. It represents kind of just a nub of where we,

where we differ. So I'll start at the beginning of his post because there was a point of agreement right out of the gate. He starts off saying articles appeared recently in various news sources about theologian Gavin Ortland and his belief that scripture teaches Noah's Flood was just a local event. He lists some examples and he says, the news articles reminded me of this verse. There is nothing new under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1-9. It was amazing to me that the articles and various responses on social media seem to suggest his views are a big new controversy. But certain theologians claiming Noah's flood was local and not global is nothing new, he goes on talking about it. And he says this is false teaching we've been opposing for a while.

but it was actually kind of therapeutic to say, oh, thank you, Ken Ham. This is what I've tried to help people understand as well. I continue to think that a lot of the responses about the whole flood issue, I try to say this respectfully, but I guess I think I just need to say this. I think a lot of the, I need to say it because of the level of just the way it comes at you. Not all, but a lot of them, I just think, are just coming out of sheer ignorance. They just have not ever studied this. They've not looked into it.

They're just sort of reacting emotionally. and instinctively based upon what they've all been familiar with in their little orbit, but they've never, you know, someone like Machen, they've never picked up a book by him. Or I mentioned Bavink, you know, Herman Bavink, the great Dutch reformed theologian and just have talked about how, you know, when he gets to the local flood, he says the universal versus local question has always been debated, and then, and he's right, and I've given examples Josephus, pseudogastin, etc. in my previous videos on that, the flood issue, but he also says the, the, the, the modern global flood view is also a response to modern geology. It's changed as well.

So anyway, I've been through all that there. But Ken Ham is right about this. You know, this is not a new issue, the local flood thing. But here's what he then said. So then he's, he's criticizing me and saying, I start with the fact that I'm committed to millions of years, and that drives my reading of Genesis. And then, so here's what he says. Here's the crucial paragraph. What Orkland does to the Genesis text is isegesis, driven by his commitment to an old earth universe. What we do at answers in Genesis is exegesis, starting with Scripture and letting the words speak to us in context. We don't impose ideas from outside of Scripture, as Ortland does. So here's the basic concern.

If I could sum it up in one sentence, I would say, Ken Ham and others that he represents who have a similar perspective tend to make their interpretation of Genesis 1 of equal authority with the text itself. They seem to be functioning as though their reading of the text is itself infallible, just as we agree the text itself is infallible. Because if you say, you know, basically I'm doing exegesis, you're doing isegesis, which is a way of saying, I'm getting my view from the text, you're importing your view onto the text.

That is both projecting a motive onto the other party, as well as being naive about your own influences, because every act of interpretation involves our fallible brains. Nobody takes the text of Scripture, the infallible text of Scripture, and just, you know, dumps it into our mind or something like that. None of us can bypass the process of thinking about what it means. and yet it seems like Ken Ham wants to sort of give his own view a pass, but I'm not just trying to respond just to get into it with him. I think this is a huge issue, maybe the root issue on these questions. People are assuming that there's only one possible faithful way to read the text.

So let me respond to that and explain why. I don't think it's true that I'm imposing the idea of an old earth onto the text or I'm committed to millions of years, and that's why I'm reading the text this way. That's the conclusion I have derived, not my starting point that I impose. So my basic position that I get from the text of Scripture to the best of my awareness, all of us are fallible in this, and we're not always even aware of our background presuppositions and so forth. But basically, my view that I've arrived on is that the scripture just doesn't tell us how old the universe is, any more than it tells us its exact size or the placement of our world within our galaxy or other questions like this. There's so many questions the Bible doesn't answer. It's not universal in its

interests. And that's, again, extremely common sentiment among 19th century and 20th century fundamentalists, even. Lots of people looked at Genesis 1, 1 through 2, the first two verses and said, this looks like it's before day one. Therefore, we can't really say how old the world is. I'm not saying that's correct. I'm saying that's extremely common. But the things like that and other features in the text are what lead me to my view. So far as I can tell, I'm not starting with millions of years. I'd be happy to believe anything about that. I'm just trying to read the text faithfully. There's lots of features in the text I'll cover in just a moment. Some of the ones that were big for Augustine are also significant for me, the light before luminaries issue, the discronology issue in Genesis 2-4, the issue of God resting, the elevated kind of liturgical language in which the whole narrative is cast. That's clearly different from like Genesis 2 and 3, as recognized by everybody. I'll cover, I'll review those points in just a moment. Right now, I'm just trying to say, so far as I can tell, I'm not starting and imposing that. I'm working with the text. And so when Ken Ham is saying,

well, I'm starting with millions of years and importing that onto the text, it is a way of projecting motives. As far as I can tell, I'm just trying to read the text responsibly. However, the other point is, even if there were an outside influence, that's not necessarily wrong. The Bible is infallible, but our interpretations are fallible, and therefore it's actually a virtue, not a vice, to be willing to reconsider our interpretation of a text based upon new information. that comes in, whether that come through science or something else, that's not wrong. And in my videos, I've given the example of the church's opposition to the rise of heliocentrism as a clear historical example of that. We can interpret scripture wrongly. We can think,

oh, it's so obvious, but we're actually assuming it's addressing our question rather than asking, well, what is its question? What is its concern? So forth. So I've talked about all that elsewhere. Now, someone might say, but they might say, okay, yeah, I guess we all have to interpret the text, and none of us are just doing straight up exegesis. Maybe we all bring some assumptions, even if we're not fully aware of them when we interpret the Bible. Maybe we're fallible and how we're going about this, and the Bible's infallible. But this, in this case, Genesis 1 is so obviously the correct interpretation that to insist upon it is practically the same thing as insisting upon the Bible. itself. Now, what I want to just observe briefly is how different that mentality is from so many other godly Christians throughout church history. I'll give Augustine as an example, and I've done

this before on Twitter. Bear this in mind, okay? Augustine's the greatest theologian of the early church, arguably the greatest, arguably the, well, I don't even need, I think I can say this without saying arguably, the most influential theologian in the entire history of the church in the east and in the West, certainly in the West, but also in the East, I would say. I think that's a fair statement. I used to qualify that more. Now I'm like, then I realize, no, you don't even need to qualify. Augustine is an absolute mammoth figure in church history. His influence, I mean, all of medieval theology. This is why when people try to, when people realize Augustine's view, they try to chip away at his credibility and say, well, he had the influence of Greek philosophy and other things

like this. The problem is if you throw out Augustine, you throw out basically huge swathes of the medieval church, which followed him and many other church fathers as well. On this issue, you throw out origin and Clement of Alexandria, didomest the blind, Athanasius. I'll give you a quote. Let me quote Athanasius first, because I haven't quoted him yet. He, as many others did, held to instantaneous creation. The Genesis one days are not literal. It's not actually telling you that what happened in that 24-hour period of time. It's a framework. Athanasia said no one creature was made before another, but all things originated subsisted at once together upon one and the same command. That view is incredibly common throughout church history. Here's how Augustine thinks about it. Oh,

by the way, not only is Augustine so significant himself, but the doctrine of creation is arguably one of the most central interests of his entire life. He wrote five commentaries on Genesis. If you include city of God and confessions, the long sections of those as commentaries because they functionally are. In his final, summative commentary, he's still wrestling with Genesis 1 uncertain exactly how to proceed. And you feel the humility and restraint in his thinking as he's working with this. The issue that he's wrestling with probably first and foremost is where do you get the light before day four? He's really strange. that's in the text.

It's not an imposition onto the text. It's right there in the text. And he's saying, how do I understand that? Where does the light come from? If I'm trying to picture it in my mind, where is this light coming from? If the light is traveling this way or that way, where did it originate from? There's some answers to that, but that's a totally valid question and a question generated from the text.

And so you can hear how in his own words, he's struggling with this. He says, who can fail to see how problematic is there is. implication, that's the sequence of days, that times began on the fourth day, as though the preceding three days could have passed without time. He's really struggling with this. He's going on and on. It calls it a mystery. He calls it a secret. He thinks every interpreter is going to struggle like this. What mind, therefore, is capable of penetrating the mystery of how those three days passed before times began, times which are said to have begun on the fourth day, or of whether indeed those days passed at all.

I'm just giving you tiny snippets. I quote all this in my book on Augustine, but the point is you feel his wrestling, his genuine angst. I like to think of him there, the greatest theologian of the early church in his final summative treatment of the matter, still agonizing his way through the text.

One of the reasons that he thinks we should be careful is because creation is by its very nature a unique and unrepeatable event, completely removed from our ordinary experience. Quote, the sensible thing to do is to admit our ignorance about what is so remote from any experience of ours and say that we simply do not know how that light, which was called day, if it means bodily light, affected the alternations of light and day. When people act like interpreting Genesis 1 is so obvious, like, oh, anybody who's doing that, it's just jamming their view into the text if they don't take 24-hour days.

we are the ones who are just reading the Bible. Word is reading it, what it obviously means, you're jamming your view into it. My mind goes to Augustine, you know, here at the end of a lifetime of struggle with this passage, still hemming and hawing about these various textual details. And there are many details that he agonized over. The light before luminaries is one of them. Another was relating Genesis 2, 4 to 6 to Genesis 1, and especially the, the different use of the word day and the when no shrub had yet appeared in Genesis 2.5.

And here Augustine says it's beyond a shadow of doubt and limpedly clear that the days of Genesis 1 are not normal or sequential. And he says the details of these verses, Genesis 2, 4 to 6, are such that if readers should happen to understand here one of our ordinary kind of days, they would be corrected. Another issue was divine rest. whole bulk of book four of his literal commentary is devoted to this. He thinks it's the height of folly to take this language literally, and for him, that proves that the days of creation are in a manner quite beyond what we are used to in our experience. In them, neither evening nor morning, nor light itself, nor darkness, presented the same alternations as they do in these days

through the circling round of the sun. Another reason that he had for his view was how busy day five is. He basically thought, I don't think you can fit all these events into one day. And he says, here, surely, anyone slow on the uptake should finally wake up to understanding what sort of days are being counted here. He's indignant with those who are dismissive of this concern. Now, Augustine could be wrong about all of this, but if he's wrong, it's not because he's starting outside of scripture. See, that's the point I'm trying to hammer home in this video. This video is not as intricate and going on and on as my previous videos. If you really want a more systematic work-through of something, watch those videos. I'm just trying to make one simple point that it's so

unfair and naive to assume that those who don't interpret the days as 24-hour periods of time are starting outside the text. How could you know that? How could anybody know that? Augustine seems to be working from the text. He didn't have any pressures from modern science. about millions of years. The problem for him was not that the days are too short, but that the days were too long. He thought creation was instantaneous. It just happened like that.

So he's not sort of being pressured from that direction. He seems to be wrestling with the text. If he's wrong, he's not wrong for importing some alien system. People will sometimes try to say that, but having given his literal commentary a careful read, I don't think so. But if you, fine, let's say someone finds a way to dismiss Augustine. Okay, fine. What about Athanasius?

The great church father I just quoted who staunchly defended the deity of Christ, was he also starting outside of Scripture when he read Genesis 1 that way? What about did it amidst the blind? He was very clear in his view. And we just go through other church fathers. What about the huge swath of the medieval church that basically adopted Augustine's view wholesale as it was qualified by Gregory the Great? What about the J. Greshamachians of the world and B.B. Warfield and Hodge at Princeton

and so many others. Are they all doing isegesis? Are they all starting outside of scripture? You see, I know that for a lot of my viewers, this video might be somewhat basic, and you're like, yeah, yeah, we get it. Why do you keep saying this? Okay, here's why I keep saying this. What I'm trying to say in this video has not trickled down to the masses.

The masses are taking Ken Ham's more simplistic way of thinking. My view is exegesis, your view is is isegesis, that way of thinking. Unfortunately. And I see this just coming up again and again and again, causing a stumbling block for people when they're trying to work through this issue. Now, here's a final objection. So in other words, I'm just going to keep talking about this until it gets out there more. And people realize like, okay, maybe we shouldn't be so dismissive of this if it's actually

a well-represented option throughout church history to think that these days aren't referring to literal 24-hour periods of time. Okay, one final thing. someone is going to say, oh, you know, what's next? You're going to not, if you make this passage just a matter of interpretation, then what happens when you make the resurrection of Christ just a matter of interpretation? Is everything up for grabs now? But this is all or nothing black and white thinking. Not every issue is the same. Not every passage is the same. So let me respond to this, and I'll quote how Kenham makes this criticism of me later in his post. He says, frankly, Ordlin suffers from what I call

intellectual schizophrenia. He has one way of interpreting Genesis, isegesis, starting with man's belief of a million of years, millions of years, but then a different way, exegesis, starting from Scripture for the rest of Scripture, for example, virgin birth, resurrection, etc. Okay, now I would say that that is not correct. I am interpreting the passages that have to do with Christ's resurrection and the virgin birth the exact same way. I am interpreting Genesis 1, namely, seeking to understand and submit to what they mean. Okay? But it's really problematic to act like 24-hour days is as clear and as important as the

resurrection of Christ, such that you're schizophrenic if you don't affirm both. There are at least several reasons for that. One has to do with the genres of the literature that are in question. So, you know, we get to these passages in the Gospels. The Gospels, Richard Burrage argued the Gospels are biographies, ancient biologists. biographies, whether you follow that exact classification or not, it's clear that this is a different kind of historical narration from Genesis 1, which is much more broad stroke and elevated. Genesis 1 is even very clearly different from Genesis 2-4 and following.

It's a very clearly different kind of passage. Secondly, you look at the historical record on these issues. The virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ are in the Apostles' Creed. These are fundamental Christian doctrines that have been universally affirmed among Orthodox Christians. The days of Genesis 1 being 24 hours is not that. It's not in any of the major creeds. In fact, when Augustine advocated for his views, I am not aware that it even led to huge controversies. As I say, a lot of people just took it on wholesale and church just kept moving, you know, it's no big deal. You also have passages like 1st Corinthians 15, where Paul says,

if Christ is not raised, then our faith is useless. And may I just point out, there is not a verse in the Bible, it ever says, if the days of Genesis 1 are not 24-hour periods of time, then our faith is useless. And yet, so to elevate these two issues as though they were the same, issues like the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ, and the days of Genesis 1 being 24-hour periods of time, is really problematic. All right, I had a few, one or two other points, but that's sufficient. That is sufficient. Here's my final thought. I'm a Christian. The most important thing in my life is following Christ. I believe Genesis 1 is an absolutely thrilling, glorious text. It's like light shining into darkness. It's like here we are as human beings walking around this world. We're ignorant. We don't know what's

going on. What are we all doing here? Genesis 1 is like shining a light into our hearts and minds, teaching us how the true story of how this world came to be, our unique status as human beings, as God's image bearers. And ultimately, who created our world, the God at the Bible. there is so much more to Genesis 1 and to the doctrine of creation than just the question of how long did it take? And it just grieves me to no end when these glorious riches of the gift that we have in Genesis 1 become a stumbling block for people because people are honing in on this very specific question of this very narrow reading of how long did it take. So that's why I'm going to continue to advocate for what I believe will serve the church

in our time on this matter because I don't want to hear one more story of people who adopt the mentality, you know, there's just one way to think about this as a Christian, and then they weighed into the real complexities that are involved in the issue, in a real honest engagement with the issue, listening to the other side, and they lose their faith. I do not want to hear one more story like that. Then I hear it over and over and over and over. I will hear more stories like that, but I'm going to keep talking about this to try to reduce that and try to help people see. I don't even care if you agree with me on creation, but if we can just work together to oppose this more hard line, you know, everybody who doesn't agree with this way of thinking, I mean,

the words false teaching came up in his post. If we can work together to oppose that, we will see less collateral damage for the kingdom of God. I have no doubt. I'm very convinced of that. All right. So this is just a short video. I'm trying to make one specific point here. For a fuller treatment of some of these things, see my previous videos. Thanks for watching everybody. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe, all that kind of fun stuff. My next video that I'm going to come back, well, mainly the very next, probably the next one. I'm going to talk about what do we do when there's fallen pastors in the church? I didn't want to make that video. But I was talking with a friend and I thought that is a major pastoral issue of our time and a major apology.

logistics issue of our time, so you can be on the lookout for that soon. All right, thanks, everybody.