Series - YEC

From DBSJ. Read the series.

From DBSJ. Read the series.

Are the Essentials Really Essential?

Up to this point in this essay, I have argued for the importance of each of the nine elements to young earth theology. The collection of these elements and their cohesion together define young earth theology. If any of these are taken away, the view ceases to be a young-earth view.

From DBSJ. This installment discusses the seventh, eighth, and ninth of nine essentials of YEC. Read the series.

(7) Sin as the Cause of Death

Somewhat paradoxically, the evolutionary model makes death an important ingredient for life even though it cannot really explain why death came about or why it was necessary to begin with. Without continued death of the unfit and repeated “experiments” that result in death, life cannot arise or continue. Biblical theology teaches an entirely different idea. The creation was initially perfect, but then sin intruded.

From DBSJ. This installment discusses the fifth and sixth of nine essentials of YEC. Read the series.

(5) Young Age

Creation was, in a word, recent. The universe is young relative to the standard scientific model. The earth, and all of creation, is on the order of 6,000 to 10,000 years old. We don’t have detailed information to provide more significant digits to those numbers. But we can provide a couple of important details.

From DBSJ. This installment discusses the fourth of nine essentials of YEC. Read the series.

(4) Six-Day Duration

One of the most repeated and universal experiences of human existence is the passing of a day. It is natural that God would define what a day is in the portion of his self-disclosure that describes his creation; there would be no better place to do so, in fact.

From DBSJ. This installment continues consideration of the first of 9 Essentials of YEC: the literal hermeneutic, then takes up Essential 2 and Essenetial 3. Read the series.

By Matthew A. Postiff, from DBSJ. Read the series.

Non-Essentials of Young Earth Theology

Although various authors over the past decades have expressed strong beliefs in one or the other details of young earth theology, many such details are extraneous to the system, mainly because of limited biblical revelation. In this section, I briefly list a few such details that are not essential to young earth creationism.

For instance, it is not necessary to believe in an exact age of the earth, such as 6,000 years, or to adhere to Ussher’s Chronology. Dogmatism on the precise age is not necessary as long as the age is “young.”¹³ It is not required that one be dogmatic on an absolute absence of gaps or missing names in the Genesis genealogies.

From DBSJ. Read the series. Part 2 continues the Spectrum of Views on Creation begun in Part 1.

Scientific Creationism

Compared to biblical creation views, scientific creationist views expand the role of science in the understanding of creation. The views that fall under this heading are normally connected with a uniformitarian view of earth history that extends billions of years, punctuated by occasional catastrophic events.⁹ These are old-earth understandings of creation. The scientific views are different in another way from biblical creation: most do not posit a completed creation. The processes of creation (evolution) are ongoing today in most of the following views and therefore there is no “completion” or “cessation” of creation as there is in the biblical creation views.

The day-age view is an old-earth explanation that teaches that the six days of creation were not regular days but rather were a sequence of geological ages, giving time for the several-billion year age of the earth taught by secular science.

From DBSJ 21 (2016): 31–58. Republished with permission.

Matthew A. Postiff¹