The Modern Creation Trilogy. Dr. Henry M. Morris

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СКАЧАТЬ Gap Theory

      The Christian who desires to accommodate the geologic-age system in his theology must somehow fit it into the creation record of Genesis 1. Since the first chapter of Genesis covers the creation of all forms of life, including man, it is obvious that the geological ages could not have occurred after the creation week. In the preceding section, dealing with the day-age theory, it was shown conclusively that the ages of geology did not occur during the creation week. The only other possibility, if they occurred at all, is that they took place before the creation week. This latter theory is popularly known as the “gap theory,” since it places the geological ages in a supposed gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.

      There are a variety of views on the gap theory, but in its usual form it assumes primeval creation as stated in Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This creation, coming directly from the creative hand of God, is supposed to have been complete and beautiful in every respect. Genesis 1:2 is then said to describe a different condition of the earth, many eons after the primeval creation. It is argued that the connective word, waw, at the beginning of verse 2, can be translated as either “and” or “but,” and that the verb, hayetha, can be translated as “became,” instead of “was.” Furthermore, the phrase “without form and void” (tohu va bohu) is translated by some as “ruined and empty.” Putting all this together, Genesis 1:1–2 becomes: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; but the earth became ruined and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

      The geological ages are then placed in the interval after the primeval creation and before the ruined condition of the earth described in verse 2. It is usually held that some gigantic cataclysm terminated the geological ages, leaving the earth shattered and uninhabited and surrounded by darkness.

      Then, according to this theory, God proceeded to “re-create” or “re-make” the earth in the six literal days described in Genesis 1:3–31. Those who advocate the gap theory are, of course, anti-evolutionists and believe that God created all things in the present world by special creation in the six-day creation week. However, they do not hold to a recent creation of the earth itself, since it dates from Genesis 1:1, the date of which presumably could be any number of billions of years in the past. A rather common cliché among these fundamentalists has been to this effect: “Let the geologists have all the time they want; the Bible does not give the date of the earth’s creation. All the vast expanses of geologic time are irrelevant to the biblical record, since they occurred before Genesis 1:2.”

      Many holding this theory, though not all, have found it convenient to place the fossils of dinosaurs and “ape-men” and other extinct forms of life in this great gap, hoping thereby to avoid having to explain them in the context of God’s present creation. Others have tended to postulate only a partial pre-Adamic cataclysm, allowing plant seeds from the pre-world to survive, and even certain pre-Adamite hominids to survive in order to provide a wife for Cain (Gen. 4:17) and mothers for the “giants” (Gen. 6:4). For the most part, however, expositors advocating the gap theory believe the cataclysm to have devastated the whole world, leaving it completely waste and empty.

      1. Death before Sin

      This interpretation does seem superficially to provide an easy solution to the problem of the geological ages. The difficulty is that it is much too superficial. It solves the problem by ignoring it.

      The geological-age problem is more complex than merely accounting for five billion years of time. Much more important is what took place during those years. Five billion years of geological ages means four billion years of organic evolution, accompanied by universal suffering, struggle, and death. As already pointed out, the very existence of the geological ages is based on evolution, and the identification of their various subdivisions depends on the supposed stage-of-evolution of the fossils found in the corresponding sedimentary rocks. Furthermore, whatever the fossils really say about evolution, one thing is sure, they speak of death — and violent, sudden death at that!

      If the geological ages are real, then the evolutionary succession of life on earth that identifies those ages is also real. The gap theory does not settle the evolution problem for the fundamentalist; it merely inserts it in the gap before Genesis 1:2, and indeed makes it even worse. Not only is the entire evolutionary system still intact, but the added problem exists as to why God suddenly terminated the evolutionary process and then began again with six days of special creation — especially since the plants and animals and men that He created all had their counterparts in the world He had just destroyed.

      There seems no way of avoiding the conclusion — if the geological ages really occurred before Genesis 1:2, that is — that God was using the same processes which exist in the present world to develop the pre-Adamic world. Sedimentation, volcanism, and the other present geological processes are clearly evident throughout the geological column. So are disease, decay, and death! And yet, this was supposedly ages before man brought sin into the world, and death by sin. Is God actually the author of evil and death, as the gap theory suggests?

      2. The Fall of Satan after the Geological Ages

      The great pre-Adamic cataclysm, which is basic to the gap theory, also needs explanation. It needs scientific explanation, for one thing, but more importantly it needs theological explanation. Why would the Creator spend billions of years developing a world and then suddenly reduce it to chaos in a shattering cataclysm? Or why would He allow it to develop on its own, then destroy it and re-create the same plant and animal types that had evolved?

      The explanation commonly offered is that the cataclysm was caused by Satan’s rebellion and fall as described in Isaiah 14:12–15 and Ezekiel 28:11–17. Lucifer — the highest of all God’s angelic hierarchy, the anointed cherub who covered the very throne of God — is presumed to have rebelled against God and tried to usurp His dominion. As a result, God expelled him from heaven, and he became Satan, the great adversary.

      Satan’s sin and fall, however, were in heaven on the “holy mountain of God,” not on earth. There is, in fact, not a word in Scripture to connect Satan with the earth prior to his rebellion. On the other hand, when he sinned, he was expelled from heaven to the earth. The account in Ezekiel says: “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee . . . therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground [or ‘earth,’ the same word in Hebrew]” (Ezek. 28:15–17).

      There is, therefore, no scriptural reason to connect Satan’s fall in heaven with a cataclysm on earth. He was banished to the earth as a defeated foe. It seems much more probable that his expulsion to the earth was directly connected with man’s presence on earth. It seems plausible that Satan first became resentful and envious because of God’s great plan for man, and that this was a major factor leading to his rebellion. God cast him to the earth, where he was permitted to test man’s faithfulness to his Creator, to see whether he, too, would desire to “be as gods.”

      That Satan was not on earth, at least not as a wicked rebel against God, prior to Adam’s creation is quite definite from Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and . . . it was very good.” As a matter of fact, the next verse indicates that this observation included “the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them,” so that everything was good in heaven! Therefore, Satan’s sin must have occurred after man’s creation.

      It has occasionally been suggested that man’s creation was God’s response to Satan’s rebellion. The idea is that God is teaching a great object lesson to Satan and his angels; since they had not kept their first estate, God created man in Satan’s place. Then, when Satan brought about man’s fall also, God decided to redeem man in order to СКАЧАТЬ