Truth Unites - What Ken Ham Misses About Creation

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

In this video I respond to Ken Ham's claim that young-earth creationism is only denied for unbiblical reasons like the pressure of modern science. Get the book The Augustine Way here: https://bit.ly/41Kn6xn See the original interview on Allie Beth Stuckey's channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Jd1SK5Ahk 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: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

All right, it's time for a controversial video. It won't even be that controversial, but I do, I'm going to disagree with Ken Ham on creation here, but I offer this in a spirit of sincerely hoping this is helpful for people in the church today thinking about these topics. Recently, Ken Ham was on Ali Beth Stuckey's show Relatable, and he was talking about Young Earth Creationism, which is the idea that the days of Genesis 1 are 24-hour periods of time, the Earth and the universe are very young, and so forth. This is a topic that's of great interest to me personally, life the way it's affected me. Maybe I'll share about that. It's also something I've done a lot of work on in academic contexts. So I'm looking out and I'm noticing that in the popular level space,

the voices that are being successful in influencing the greatest number of Christians, in my opinion, are more extreme and polarizing and unhelpful. And I'm sincerely burdened about that from a sort of pastoral angle. So I want to try to offer a response and make my case. hear me out if you're on the defensive already. I'll try to give reasons for my case. The reason I'm doing this video is it fits well with the purpose of my channel. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. The idea is we go a little deeper into theology, church history, apologetics, the whole thing, and the goal of all of that is that we'd have a more secure understanding of Jesus and the gospel.

That's the point, because we need that in a time of anxiety like we live in. and it's very much in line with that to address this kind of issue. So, you know, pray for me as I do my channel. You always see people who get onto YouTube or other forms of social media, and they kind of veer off into ways. I am committed to making my YouTube channel a service to others what is helpful and edifying for the church. And so that means not avoiding something that,

just because some of my viewers will disagree with me, just as much as it means not chasing controversies for clicks. And I know some people will disagree with me on this, but I just kind of go into it like, you know, you almost have to die to yourself every video you make and just put it out there in your sincere conscience what you think is helpful in honoring to Christ. And it's okay if we disagree, you know. Part of my, in fact, I can say my biggest concern is not what Ken Ham argues for, though I disagree with that, but how he argues. To get into it, throughout the interview, Ken Ham lumps together, acceptance of, of an older earth and older universe with atheism and liberalism as expressions of rebellion against God and lumps it all that together with all manner of sins in our culture and so forth.

This is the position that he takes throughout his ministry to take a characteristic quote from one of his pamphlets. You can see how he sets the stakes here with regard to the age of the earth. In a follow-up video I'll be addressing this phrase true literal history that he uses here. But in this particular video, there was one comment that he made that I thought I could address. I'm going to share the clip. I won't actually show the video. I don't want to have any copyright issues. Air on the side of caution with that.

I'll just show you the audio and then I'll respond. You know, if you think about it, you know, within Christenum, there can be a lot of different positions theoretically in regard to baptism, eschatology, speaking in tongues, Sabbath Day. And we understand that. And people say, well, that's why you can have lots of different positions in. Genesis, but it's not the same thing. The reason we have these different positions of, you know, baptism and so on, when you're talking to people, I say, well, because over here, scripture says this, yeah, but here it says this. Yeah, but in context, it says this here. You're

arguing primarily from Scripture. And obviously, somebody's wrong, right? But nonetheless, they can be different positions because people are arguing from Scripture. But as soon as it comes to Genesis, they're always saying, yeah, but because of what the scientists are saying, because of millions he is. Because of evolution, they're starting outside of scripture with man's ideas and then bringing that to scripture. That unlocks a door. So you hear there, he's explicitly denying that the age of the earth is a matter of theological triage, which is where we rank doctrines like baptism or speaking in tongues. He's saying it's different. And the rationale is an openness to an older earth is the result of an external influence, not the text of scripture. Whereas

those issues, it's Christians arguing on the basis of Scripture for their views. That's the claim I want to argue against in this video, and I want to show basically, no, it is the text that is causing Christians to interpret this passage differently. First, I want to show that from pre-modern examples. Second, I want to show that from modern examples. I'll conclude by putting a heart out on the table and sharing why I'm so burdened about this topic and what I see practically happening in the church as a result of perspectives like like Ken Ham's. Before I dive in, since I'm going to be criticizing Ken Ham's approach, let me say, well, first of all, let me just say, I don't mean this is a personal thing on him,

on Ali, or anyone else. I really don't have an axe to grind at a personal level. It's really not where I'm coming from. I accept him Ken Ham as a brother, a Christian, even though I'm concerned about his approach, he's a Christian. But since I'm going to be criticizing his approach, let me offer a counter example that I think is more helpful. This book has recently come out. It's called the Augustine Way, retrieving a vision for the church's apologetic witness. And it's basically asking the question, how can we learn about apologetics from Augustine? Apologetics is not new. We can learn from the great voices of the past.

I love this book. It's talking about the importance of the local church. It's talking about the importance of spiritual formation, two things often neglected in apologetics, but most insightfully, I think. It's talking about how we have to understand our culture to do apologetics well. So if you're a Christian, you'd like to grow. in apologetics and knowing what does public engagement look like now, what does it look like to be faithful? What's a good model for that? Let me encourage you to consider someone like Augustin of

Hippo as a great example of how to do public theology. It's kind of what I'm trying to do on my YouTube channel now. It's like neither, it's so interesting doing a YouTube channel. It's like different from being a pastor and an academic. It's like a third thing I'm now trying to figure out, which is different from both of the two things. Most of my life, I was trying to figure out which of those pathways to go in. It's interesting. This book is great. It's short. It's easy to read. It'll give you a helpful guide to his thought. A link is in the video description. Check it out if you're interested in apologetics, church history, theology, anything like that. This is a great investment of your time. Link in the video description. All right, let's talk about pre-modern Christians. One is basically, the only reason you'd ever read Genesis 1 differently is because modern science is putting pressure on us. And in his writings, he basically says, Young Earth Creationism is the Orthodox view. that basically everybody held prior to the year 1800, it's only external influences that are now causing us to change our minds. Now, this is something I just want to show is not true.

All throughout church history, well before the scientific revolution, many Christians, many of the church fathers, for example, were pretty vigorous in saying that the days of Genesis 1 are not 24-hour periods of time. They did not read the text in a literalistic, way. They did not, and they were very amazingly open to adjusting interpretation of particular passages in response to what today we call science. I've written a whole book on Augustine on this topic. He's kind of amazing. He's such a helpful figure on this. He wrote five different commentaries on Genesis throughout his career. Creation, I argue in that book, is central to his whole thought. And his final commentary is a literal one. He calls it. He calls it.

it literal. And this is unrivaled in the early church for its detailed, you know, after a lifetime of struggle, he's giving you, here's my kind of summative take on the early chapters of Genesis. Most of the book isn't about the nature of the days or the time frame involves, more on that at the end of this video. But after a lifetime of struggle, he comes to the question of the days. And he says, it is indeed an arduous and extremely difficult task for us to get through to what the writer meant with these six days. However, concentrated our attention and lively our minds. And basically he's saying, so in other words, already you're kind of, already that's instructive that he's saying, this is a tough question.

You know, after a lifetime of struggle, the greatest theologian in the early church, the most influential theologian of all church history, on the topic he spent more time than anything else, arguably addressing, he gets to the end, he says, this is tough. Ultimately, he says the relationship of 24-hour days to the days of Genesis 1 is such that we must be in no doubt that they are not at all like them, but very, very dissimilar. Basically, Augustine holds the view that creation happened simultaneously, instantaneously. It all happened in one moment. And so the days of Genesis 1 are not ordinary 24-hour periods of time. Why did God put it like that? Well, basically, he says it's an accommodation to human understanding. He also talks about it having to do with

angelic knowledge of creation. That starts to get really complicated. I go into that in the book. just think of it. I'm trying to popularize and condense this down. Think of it as a kind of extended metaphor of sorts. Basically, Augustine is saying, I'm going to, God communicated his work of creation in the form of a human work week to help people understand. Okay, why does Augustine hold that view? Because of the text. There was no external pressure. It's the text. And in my, in chapter three in my book, I go through lots of examples of this. The main three are the problem of light in day one prior to the luminaries of day four. He really is pulling his hair out about that. He is, you could feel the anxiety he has to try to understand that. The problem of discronology introduced in Genesis

2, 4 through 6. So basically, where are the shrubs? How do the shrubs coming now when we just already had them? Discronology has to do with things being put out of order. And then the presentation of God's rest on day seven. And he's saying, this is not literal. God does not rest. In Exodus when it says God rested and was refreshed on the Sabbath day, Augustine is saying, you can't take that literally. Now, you can disagree with Augustine, but the point for now is just to say he's not caving in modern science because he lives in the fourth and fifth century, and it's, according to his own testimony, features of the text that are causing him to say, this passage is a little more complicated. It's tricky. I don't think these are ordinary days. Now, someone might say,

well, August, people love to throw Augustine under the bus and say, well, he didn't know Greek well, he was influenced by Platonic philosophy. They'll find all kinds of ways to say, well, there's problems with him. Here's the problem with that approach is this is not just Augustine. Before Augustine, you have Clement and origin down in Alexandria. You have Didomis the Blind. You have Athanasius. Lots of people love Athanasius for his defense of the deity of Christ. They may not be aware. He's another one who doesn't think that Genesis 1 is a literalistic account, the days or 24-hour periods of time and that kind of thing. Now, you also have some who do read it as more 24-hour periods of time, like the Cappadocian fathers, for example. That's how Luther and Calvin will go later, the Protestants.

But after Augustine in the West, this idea of an instantaneous creation is qualified a little bit by a later theologian named Gregory the Great, and then it's propagated out by Isidore of Seville and Bede. These are two great influences upon the medieval reception of Augustine and just medieval theology in general. And basically, Augustine's view, as qualified by Gregory, becomes one of the dominant views throughout the Western medieval tradition. It's not universal, but it's extremely common. So, and by the way, if you want a good book on that, Andrew Brown, the Days of Creation, this is a cool, too little known book. He just goes through, just start to finish, just chronicles. You know, it's one of those really plotting books that's really helpful.

It just kind of does the basic work to exegete the texts. And you can just read through how, you know, how different Christians have read Genesis 1 throughout history. If you want to deep dive in Basel and Augustine, you could read this book by Craig Allert. You could also read the Augustine Way. It talks about creation a good amount too. So this would be a good one to start with, maybe.

But so in other words, this is not just Augustine. Lots of Christians had no trouble. reading the text differently than this, than Ken Ham's approach. It's just not true that everybody saw it one way until external pressure came. Things within the text caused people to read it differently. You can also see this in the way people treated animal death before the fall. Lots of people, so today Ken Ham and others will insist that basically the only way that you can explain animal death is as a result of the human fall. And the only way, he says that you know, one point that basically the only reason someone would see that differently is the

pressure of modern science. That is also not true. I'll put up a quote from Augustine, and I address this in chapter four of my book. There's so much to uncover here. He says, he's really vigorous in opposing this idea. He's saying carnivores are good. He talks about insects as good. He talks about rodents and spiders and frogs and all these. I mean, it's amazing how detailed he gets. Augustine would have loved the planet Earth documentaries. He loved creation. He delighted in spiders. There's great passages I found.

I just scoured through Augustine's writings on this kind of stuff in 2017, 2018, found all these passages where he's delighting in spiders. And, you know, I mean, it gets pretty grisly, actually, because he's talking about the blood and guts of creation. And he's vigorous in rebuking people who sit in judgment on it. He's saying, this is good. This is a fitting way for God to make the world. and there's so much to get into there.

You can buy my book to see that unpacked. I'll just give you my favorite metaphor he uses of basically a layperson walking into a mechanics shop, not knowing how the instruments work and cutting their hand on one of the instruments. Now, if that lay person then said, well, these instruments are evil, that would be the result of their ignorance. Similarly, Augustine says, if we sit in judgment on God's creation because carnivores, we think they're evil, that reflects our own ignorance. of God's purpose in making them. And Augustine, again, is not alone. Ambrose and Basel in their

famous treatment of the creation days have the same thing. They're vigorous in opposing this tendency to sit in judgment on carnivores, and basically they're saying, no, this is the way God set up the world. I'll put up a quote from Basel here. You can see. He talks about venomous animals. I'm not misrepresenting them. There's lots of quotes like this where basically they're saying, God has a purpose in creating the world like this. Carnivores are good. Later in the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas maintained that the nature of animals has not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature, now it is, to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs like the lion and falcon. Lots of more passages like this. You see my book, for examples, here's the point.

You can disagree with Basel, Ambrose, Augustin, Thomas, and everybody else who took that view. But it's not true to characterize the idea that carnivores are good as only something you'd derive upon. from modern science. It's things in the text that drove these Christians. If they're wrong, they're not wrong for that reason. Okay. So I'm really burdened about this because when Ken Ham basically tells people, oh, the entire pre-modern tradition is on my side, people might take him at his word, and they need to know. It's really not true, and they need to take a look at this themselves. That's why I wrote that book on Augustine, hoping it could be helpful for people. Okay, second part of this video, let's talk about modern interpreters of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and 3.

In a follow-up video, I'll get a little bit more into Genesis 2 and 3. This is an initial video. Since 18th and 19th century discoveries, indicating an older Earth and an older universe, most conservative Christians, including fundamentalists, have not insisted upon Young Earth Creationism as a kind of necessary criterion for Christian faithfulness in the way that Ken Ham does. Some do maintain Young Earth Creationism. That's a very common view. but usually, so not always, it's not by insisting this is the only way to uphold the authority

of scripture and making this a kind of wedge issue like Ken Ham does. And a surprising number of conservative Christians have been open to various kinds of old earth creation and even evolutionary creationism. So let me just give examples. The Schofield Reference Bible, hugely popular in the 20th century, had 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 also old earth creationism. So the gap theory, popularized by Thomas Chalmers in the 19th century, basically says

there's a gap of time between Genesis 1-1 and Genesis 1-2. The day-age view thinks the days are symbolic of long periods of time. The book The Fundamentals by R. A. Tori. About half of the contributors were young earth, half old earth. The young earth people generally didn't think the old earth people were compromising. The leading figureheads of opposition to liberalism in the early modern era had no trouble, for the most part, accepting an older earth and an older universe and reconciling that with Genesis 1, J. Gresham-Machan, who wrote the great book, Christianity and Liberalism, B.B. Warfield, who upheld the authority of scripture against higher criticism. You think of evangelical leaders in the United States like Carl Henry or in Great Britain like J.I. Packer, John Stott,

people like this. You think of the Reformed Dutch theologians like Herman Bavink. Basically, everywhere you look, you find a lot of the like leading conservative Christians advocating for some kind of older Earth model, sometimes even openness to evolution in various forms. Here's Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher as an example. He's preaching a sermon about four years before Darwin published the origin of species. He quotes Genesis 1, 2, and has no anxiety, no hesitation to affirm millions of years before Adam and doesn't seem to anticipate that he's going to need to argue for this, or this is going to be really controversial. Well, Charles Spurgeon's pretty faithful, conservative Christian. Now, you can disagree with all of these figures,

but I'm trying to show some context here to this issue, because this idea that Young Earth creationism is a kind of litmus test for faithfulness. as a Christian is really more of a 20th century idea and especially late 20th century idea than a 19th century idea. You can find it earlier, but it's less common. That's why I'm so burdened about this. People don't know this. They just accept what Ken Ham says and go with that, but the fact is that the bandwidth of what's being acceptable among faithful Christians keep seeming to shrink, and the options seem to be polarizing. And you see that just over time, I think the scopes trial in the 1920s is a factor, you know, throughout the 20th century, you're starting to get the creation

evolution debate as kind of a flashpoint in American culture. And so it starts to become more intense. And then really in the 1960s, you have the book, The Genesis Flood by John Wickham and Henry Morris published, 1961. That was really the launching of a new era where Young Earth creationism began to be put forward as kind of this more like, just more emphasized. You know, again, a lot of the 19th century fundamentalists. They just didn't fight over this as much. And so it's interesting to note that when that book was published, even as conservative and evangelical publisher as Moody Press, could decline to publish it out of a concern that firm insistence on six literal days could offend their constituency. That little anecdote is a good example of how the bandwidth has changed,

how the feeling associated with this issue has changed. And what we sort of instinctive think of as conservative has changed from earlier times to now. And from both of those points, the pre-modern testimonies and earlier modern testimonies, I'm trying to make an appeal. It's not just caving into modern science that causes Christians to be open to different interpretations of Genesis 1. Its features in the text, and many godly, faithful Christians have been open to interpret that passage differently. Now, in a follow-up video, I'm going to address three common counter arguments, maybe more. If you put one in the comments and it gets a lot of likes, I'll address more than these three. If there's other things for me to speak to, I'm fascinated

by this topic. I'll talk about it all day long. I'd be happy to do a dialogue with Ken Ham, if he wants to. I try to model ironic dialogue where we disagree and have concerns about each other. But I'm going to address these three at least in a follow-up video. Number one, does this compromise that Genesis 1 through 3 is teaching us true history? Number two, doesn't the Bible teach that death came through the fall in passages like Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. And number three, is being open to an older earth, an older creation, taking man's science over God's truth? Those are three appeals.

Probably a week from putting out of this video, probably on a Monday, that video will come out so you can look for that. But let me close by putting my heart out on the table for my practical concern, because there are really two reasons why I want to speak to this and try to offer what I hope. is a helpful contribution to the church as we wrestle with this topic. I'm really burdened about it. And it's not just that we interpret the passage correctly, though that's great, but there's two even deeper things. Number one, I think focusing so much on the question of how long creation took causes us to miss the larger, more historically controversial and more distinctively Christian

aspects of the doctrine of creation. The doctrine of creation has so much more to it than just how long it took and the processes by which it came about. Creation X. Nihalo, from nothing, the goodness of creation, the contingency of creation, that we're made in God's image, our embodied existence, the importance of vocation. On and on we can go. There's so much to a doctrine of creation. You know, in the church, we often emphasize being a sinner and have under-emphasized being a human being. What does it mean to be a creature of God? The most important thing is not when the world was created, but that it was created. The whole category of createdness is a miracle. This is what I focus on in chapter one of my book, the ontological implications of createdness. What it means for human

happiness that we're dependent, that we're not self-sufficient. I could go on, but the point is, If we over-focus, we're fighting on this one thing, we just miss the context. We miss so much of the rich contribution of a Christian idea of creation. The second reason I'm so burdened about this topic is I am sincerely concerned about people losing their faith. I just see this story play out over and over and over again. And if you're watching this video and you're still disagreeing with me, as I know many will and that's fine.

Please just hear me that I'm telling you I see this happen again and again and again. buy into this way of thinking that Young Earth creationism is like a hill to die on. And then they go off to college or they go into a different scenario. This is kind of similar to Augustine's story, though it wasn't the same particular interpretation, but an overly literalistic reading of Genesis 1 caused him to lose his faith for a season. I talk about that at the beginning of my book. But over and over this happens. People suddenly realize, oh, this is more complicated than I was told. The strength and versatility of the evidence for an older earth is like crushing on us from every possible angle. It's really strong. I know a lot of my viewers don't agree with that, but I do. I just think

it's really overwhelmingly strong. And what happens is people have a crisis of faith. Often they leave the church. Often they leave their faith. At the very least, they have a lot of angst over it and have to deconstruct some things. And I'm burdened about that. And I would really, just encourage us not to make the specific question of the age of the earth and how literalistically we read Genesis 1 a wedge issue in the church. We can coexist within the church amidst differences on this issue. I have no acts to grind. I'm not going around with the club trying to find the young earth creationists and hit him on the head with the club. God bless them. That's not really the most pressing concern. We can peacefully coexist and just talk about it and argue about it.

Our unity in the gospel is not at stake here. Think of it like this. If you make the authority of scripture and a foundational Christian worldview and opposing liberalism and all these things that Ken Ham makes bound up with Young Earth creationism, if you follow that way of thinking, if you triage it like that, St. Augustine of Hi, Charles Spurgeon, J. Gresham-Machian, B.B. Warfield, down the line, they're all out. They're all liberals. They're all unfaithful. You see, that's unhelpful. This is an issue on which there's space for us to disagree within the church and argue about it and care about it and study it and pursue the truth about it, but not make it a criterion or a litmus test of fidelity to scripture. Now, if you have particular questions about that, I'll follow up on some of them next time. Like I said, let me know in the comments if there's a particular question that you'd like me to address.

Thanks for watching this. I hope this video will be received in the intent it is offered and be constructive even where we disagree. because that's a large part of why I have a YouTube channel, because we've got to talk about these things. I hope people will be aware. Not everyone who believes in biblical inerrancy, as I do, thinks just the same way as Ken Ham about these things. And, you know, being in academic context most of my life, I'm realizing, wow, I've been blessed to see all these, been to be exposed to these other views. A lot of people haven't. They've just never heard. You know, that's why I'm trying to weigh in on this. All right. Thanks for watching, everybody. If you like the video and

subscribe, that always helps. I don't say that too much, but that does actually help. My subscriber number is growing a lot these days, so that's kind of cool. I don't do it to grow a really big channel. You probably have figured that out by now. I'm pretty, I do, it's more intellectual and it's not, it's not like flashpoints all the time, but it does help when people subscribe and follow along and like videos and that kind of thing and share the videos. So thanks for all of you who do that. All right, let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for watching. follow-up video coming out in one week on this topic.