The
Gap View. Gen 1:1
We
have had introduced four questions which must be addressed as we begin to move
beyond the first verse of Genesis one into the remainder of the chapter. These
questions are important because there has been a tremendous amount of pressure
for the last 200 years on Christians to somehow assimilate what is found in
science with what the Bible says, that somehow to put the two together to make
them harmonize. And there are a number of assumptions associated with that
attempt that at least need to be pointed out, and many of them are somewhat
dangerous. The primary pressures come from the idea that science has somehow
discovered Truth, absolute truth, about origins and so make the Bible fit what
apparent conclusions from science are. We have to first of all understand what
the Bible does teach. This is important because there have been a number of
things that have occurred over the centuries where people have not been clear
on what the Bible teaches. They come to a false conclusion of what the Bible
teaches and then that is juxtaposed with science. The classic case is Galileo
being tried by church courts because he wanted to shift from a geocentric solar
system, an earth-centered solar system, to a helio-centric or sun centered view
of the solar system, which we know is correct.
Just about any time you bring this subject up, when you are
talking with a proponent of evolutional science, they will say that this is a
case of science versus the Bible, a case of science versus religion. And that
is a completely false construct and it betrays the ignorance of the
evolutionist as to what was going on, or he is just unwilling to face the
historical reality of what took place during the middle ages. Also the fact
that Christians cower when they are faced with this indicates that they are
pretty ignorant of the situation too. What had happened in the middle ages,
going back to about the 11th or 12th century, especially
as the Moslem hordes were putting pressure on the Byzantine empire, is that as
that pressure developed people were fleeing from the Eastern Orthodox Church
and from Greece up in to Europe and they were bringing their libraries with
them. They were bringing with them the ancient Greek MSS of
Plato, and specifically Aristotle. Aristotle
made tremendous impact, an Aristotilian view of science and the universe and on
the western church. And what happened was that the western church began to
assimilate their view of Scripture and to begin to interpret their Scripture
within an Aristotilian framework. So what we actually have taking place in the
middle ages is not a view of science and a view of the solar system and the
universe as being something that was purely biblical, but it is the Bible being
reinterpreted within this framework so that you end up with a geocentric view
of the solar system. This is because they were taking the Bible plus Aristotle,
so it is not a purely biblical interpretation.
Furthermore, there were problems with things in language.
Another example would be that Job talks about the four corners of the earth.
The Hebrew there for corners is one of many words that are used. Actually it
means the four directions on the earth or four dimensions of the earth, it is
not necessarily the technical word for corners, that is, a right angle. So
because it is a mistranslation and a misunderstanding of the Hebrew word it let
some people to believe that to take the Bible literally leads to a flat-earth
theory. The Bible does not have this view of either a flat earth or of that the
heavens are some sort of solid mass, neither does it teach an earth-centered
solar system. But when you have a lack of correct understanding of the original
languages, and when trying to take a biblical view and interpret it within a
human viewpoint philosophical framework, this will always come up with
erroneous conclusions.
It
is important for us to make sure we accurately understand just what the Bible
says and what it doesn’t say, and then once we formulate and understanding of
creation based on what the Scriptures say, then we can on that model can have a
framework for correctly interpreting the empirical data that science develops.
Of course, modern man wants to do it the other way around. We want to conclude
that science and empiricism correctly discerns the way things actually are, and
then we want to bring that in to govern the interpretation of Scripture. As
long as we believe in the sufficiency and inerrancy of Scripture we will always
start with Scripture, and no matter how real or how clear something may appear
according to science today we know that we walk by faith and not by sight.
Walking by faith doesn’t mean that we are going to believe it despite the
evidence, but it does mean that the evidence can clearly be falsely interpreted
by modern science, and so the Word of God, which is clear, is going to be more
real to us than what our experience may bring to bear.
The second question we need to address is, Could there be
millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and could this not be the time
frame for historical geology, the dinosaurs and cavemen? This is an important
question. There are really two questions here. One is: Is there a gap between
Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and how long is it? The second is, Can we cram historical
geology, the dinosaurs, the fossils, everything that doesn’t seem to fit into
the Bible, into the gap between these two verses? Yes, there is a time gap
between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. First of all, we know that God is perfect and His
work is perfect. Genesis 1:1 is a complete sentence syntactically in the
Hebrew. Then 1:2 tells us that the earth was empty, deserted, distorted. The
way the verse is punctuated in the English Bible is wrong. There are three
circumstantial clauses. The main verb doesn’t actually come until verse 3. The
point we make is: How does the earth become “without form and void”? Where does
the darkness come from? And why is it necessary for the Spirit of God to
generate a flutter over the face of the deep? To answer this we have to compare
with other scriptures.
- Because God is perfect, His work is
perfect. God does not create something less than perfection. Deuteronomy
32:4, “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment:
a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” In Genesis 1:2
we are told three things about the condition here. It is formless and
void; it has no form, it is chaotic, and it indicates that something
disastrous has happened. In other places, as we will see, it indicates
judgment and chaos. This is not a case of God just creating the random
parts of the universe.
- Elsewhere in Scripture “heavens and
earth” are used of a completed, working universe. The retort to this is
that Genesis 1 is distinct so we are going to have to use all of these
terms different from the rest of Scripture. The problem with that is that
it would be fine if this were actually recording revelation that was given
at the beginning of creation. But remember, this was Moses writing down
the Scripture in 1446 BC. So the Jews on the plains of Moab
already have a history of biblical or revelatory terminology and they are
going to interpret words on the basis of that. Everywhere else in
Scriptures words like light and darkness, imply light is good; darkness is
evil. “The deep” has an evil connotation; tohu waw bohu has a connotation of
judgment. So if the second verse in Genesis has these three phrases and
that is being written for people living in 1440 BC who already have an
oral tradition that has given certain baggage to those words, then when
they hear those words at the beginning it is going to have that
connotation for them. Same thing with “heavens and the earth.” You can’t
just come along and say this is different because it is the starting point
in creation. So what we have here is a specific Hebrew syntax or grammar
that indicates a change; it indicates a break, a disjunctive waw.
When you have a disjunctive waw it is not action that is consecutive
to the preceding action. It doesn’t read, “In the beginning God created
the earth and the earth was without form and void.” That would be
consecutive, and it is how some people want to read it. You read it as a
break, and it should be translated, “In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth, but the earth was without form of void.” Then coming to
the main verb, the perfect of the Hebrew verb hayah, it normally indicates a
state of condition, and since it is not the original state of 1:1 we can
translate it “became” – “the earth became formless and void, and
darkness was on the face of the deep.” Since these are circumstantial
clauses that relate to the main verb of “said” in verse 3 we should
translate, “Now the earth was without form and void,” because it is
stating the condition the earth was in when God spoke in verse three. It
is not the same condition of verse one; the waw consecutive breaks the action.
So it is clear from the grammar that you have an original creation inverse
one and then there is this break where there is some sort of introduction
of chaos between v.1 and v. 2. Then verse 2 takes up what is happening in
terms of six days of more accurately stated restoration.
- Then there is a lexical argument from
word meaning. This is based on three terms that are used here. Tohu waw
bohu basically means formless or shapeless, or something that is
completely out of its original design. Bohu means empty. These words are used
together. Tohu
is used a few times by itself but bohu is never used apart from tohu.
Looking at a couple of passages that are related to this you see that
there is a sense of judgment that is in the context of these passages.
Jeremiah 4:23-26 is a passage where Jeremiah is warning the Jews of the
southern kingdom of the coming judgment of Babylon on Judah. In order to
portray the destructiveness of this judgment he borrows imagery from
creation. Isaiah 34:11 is another passage, the judgment of the nations at
the time of the Lord’s vengeance—the end of the Tribulation. Now
where did the judgment of tohu waw bohu come from in Genesis 1:2? Here we have to make a
theological deduction. Job 38:4-7, when God laid the foundation of the
earth the angels of God shouted for joy, they were all united. They were
present. It seems that there has to be a time period for the fall of
Satan, described in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. When did Satan and the
angels fall? There are only two options. They either fall between Genesis
1:1 and 1:2 or they fall after the creation week. The judgment terminology
in v.2 suggests that what we are talking about here is the aftermath of
the fall of the angels. So what we have here is chaos, which is the result
of Lucifer’s fall and the angelic rebellion. As a result of that there is
a judgment on the angels. Their abode prior to the fall was on the planet.
Earth became the scene of Satan’s rebellion against God and his judgment,
so God basically turned the lights out in the universe. God exists in
unapproachable light, and when you come to Revelation at the end of the
Bible there is no darkness. Where does the darkness come from? It is
something that is added, it is not just there. A completely dark universe
is going to be frozen because there is no light and no heat. It is during
this time that God judges the angels who fell, and it is at this time that
Satan raises the challenge to God’s ability to rule His creation and that
God had not given him a fair chance and opportunity to prove what he can
do. It is at this point, then, that God is going to restore the earth and
set up this new universe in which He is going to set forth a test case on
planet earth to give Satan the opportunity to demonstrate what he can do,
and for God to demonstrate that no creature can live or operate
independent from the creator. The concept of darkness in Scripture always
has a negative connotation. E.g. Exodus 10:21, 22; Psalm 35:6; Joel 2:2;
Matthew 4:16; John 3:19. Then the third word that is used is the Hebrew
word tahom,
which means “deep,” and is often symbolic of chaos and death. For example,
in Exodus 15:5, 8 related to the Red Sea: “the deeps covered them.” Then,
Ezekiel 26:19, “ … I shall bring up the deep over you, and the great
waters will cover you.” When we look at these texts we should infer that
there is something radically different that has taken place here as a
result of some action that is not mentioned in verse 1 that describes the
circumstance on the earth when God spoke in verse three. This indicates
that there is some kind of time gap. It is based on grammar, on
vocabulary, and on theology.
Then the second part of the question: Can we put into this
time gap the geological ages?
- That
idea was set forth in the 19th century. A little history of
this interpretation: It can be traced back to at least the 9th
or 8th century AD. So the idea
that there is a time gap between 1:1 and 1:2 didn’t originate in the 19th
century, it goes back to the early church.
- It
was not there in order to ram, cram and jamb historical ages in there. It
was understood to be the time frame when Satan fell. It was the only use
of that view up until the 19th century. This was the view
expressed by Milton in Paradise Lost: that this was the time within which
the angels were created and Satan fell. At the end 1700s there was the
rise of historical geology. This is in the period of the Enlightenment,
and in the Enlightenment man’s reason reigns supreme and there is a
definite anti-biblical slant to man’s thinking. There is a rejection of
God’s Word. Up to that point scientists almost without exception held that
there was a literal Noahic flood that lasted a year and that all of the
fossils were formed in the flood. There was a clear belief in flood
geology. But starting in the late 18th century there was a
rejection of the Bible, a rejection of Noah’s flood as a reality, and that
fossils were formed gradually over a long period of time. There was the
development of the uniformitarian view of geology, which now,
incidentally, is falling out of vogue with modern geology. As a result of
that historical geology was postulating a date of the earth of 45,000
years. At that time there had already been the influence of science and
Enlightenment thinking on he church for about 150 years; that somehow you
could come up with Truth apart from Scripture. So science is developing its
reputation that this is true, they know what they are talking about, and
they have accurately interpreted the data and that we have a 45,000-yr-old
earth. A man by the name of Thomas Chalmers who was a Presbyterian pastor
in Scotland, one of the foremost Scottish Presbyterian theologians at that
time, set forth the theory that all they needed to come up with is 45,000
years. So it was decided to put the fossils into this gap between Genesis
1:1 and 1:2. Notice that the pressure is coming from a secular interpretation
of geology that the earth is only 45,000 years old, and so he is trying to
come up with only 45,000 years. By the end of the 19th century
the talk was something like a million years or several million years, and
now it is up to about 300-million years. It keeps getting larger. It is
one thing to come up with 45,000 years but quite another to come up with
300-million years. Chalmers’ view was very popular and by the end of the
19th century there was a man by the name of G.H. Pember who
wrote a book called “World in Chaos.” He holds the same view, and he tries
to put the geologic ages in between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. This became known
as the gap theory. What they really did was hijack the theory that had
been around since the early church in order to try to assimilate and
compromise with the findings of science, thinking that the findings of
science were accurate. Remember we have already seen the fact that dating
systems may be extremely flawed, but they were assuming that the dating
systems were accurate. So they began to shift the interpretations of
Scripture in order to fit the conclusions of science. But there are some
basic and fundamental problems with that view. First of all, if you have
some form of pre-Adamic race and all of animal life prior to Genesis 1:2.
When the judgment occurs, what happens to all this life? It’s dead. This
presents some serious problems to theology. Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned.” In that passage “death” has the
definite article emphasizing a unique death. But it seems that with Romans
5:12 you can place an argument from context that this is spiritual death.
Spiritual death is the penalty for sin and physical death is the
consequence for sin. So even though a lot of people want to use this verse
as a argument here, it doesn’t work because Romans 5:12 is a passage that
deals with spiritual death primarily. But there is still the passage in 1
Corinthians 15:21, 22 to deal with, “For since by man came death, by man
came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive.” In order to do that attention must be
paid to the context of chapter 15—physical resurrection. E.g. v. 20,
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them
that slept.” What kind of death is in view in v. 20? It is physical death,
not spiritual death. Then Paul states a principle in v.21: by a man came
death; by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. So it is clear
that the death here is not spiritual death. Furthermore, death here does
not have the article in the Greek, which indicates it is the qualitative
idea of death, death in principle came through man. So we are talking
about the principle of death. It cannot, according to this verse, precede
Adam. If you have anything die physically before Adam then Christ did not
need to go to the cross. If death enters into the world before Adam
sinned, then death, even in the animal kingdom, is not the result of
Adam’s sin, and therefore it would mean the cross was not necessary. And
that is heresy. That is why evolution is a subtle attack on the necessity
of the cross. Furthermore, if there was physical death before Genesis 1:2
and the fossils were there, then the contention is that Adam is put in
perfect environment, but a perfect environment that is a graveyard! That
is not perfect environment. Then, the contention is that you could have
two catastrophes, one before Genesis 1:2 to form fossils, and another at
the flood. This is impossible. Fossils don’t always flow in the same
pattern; they are all mixed up. All the fossils have to be formed by the
same catastrophic event. It is either the catastrophic event of a judgment
in Genesis 1:2 or it is a catastrophic event at Noah’s flood. If it is a
catastrophic event at 1:2 then you have a world-wide flood where the
waters swirl around the earth with incredible power for an entire year in
Genesis chapter six, and there is no trace left of it in the geologic
record. That’s absurd. All the fossils are found in sedimentary rock. What
lays down sedimentary rock? Water. So if all of those fossils were laid
down in Genesis 1:2, all of that evidence would have been destroyed by the
flood in Genesis 6. So the only option we are left with is that all the
fossils had to have been formed by the Genesis 6 flood. Furthermore, there
are examples of tree trunks in multi-strata deposits. That is, there is
one tree trunk going through several strata, indicating it was all laid
down at one time. Then there are those who presuppose that dinosaurs
couldn’t live on the earth with man. But that is assuming that they lived
on the same piece of real estate. Lions and tigers do not co-exist
compatibly with human beings, but we don’t occupy the same piece of real
estate. There are many animals alive today that do not live compatibly in
the same environment with man. So what we have is the existence of these
creatures but they didn’t exist in the same area as man. Then there are
fossilized evidences in Texas that are dinosaur footprints fossilized in
the same strata as human footprints. What happened to the dinosaurs? They
died out after the flood.
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