Thus, evolution is the basis for interpreting the fossil record, and the fossil record is the basis for establishing and identifying the geological ages. The geological ages, with their fossil sequences, provide the basic framework and the only evidence of any consequence for evolution. Here is one of the most classic and subtle examples of pseudo-scientific circular reasoning in all the complex history of metaphysical opposition to biblical creationism. The Bible-honoring Christian needs to realize that the geological ages are merely one component in the whole evolutionary package. If one wants to have the framework (geologic time), the glue that keeps it together (evolution) must also be accepted.
Again, however, even if one deliberately rejects or ignores the evolutionary implications of the geological ages, one must still face the massive problem of why God chose to use five billion years of chance variations, mutation, natural selection, geological upheavals, storm, disease, extinctions, struggle, suffering, and death as an inscrutable (but seemingly savage) prelude to His creation of man right at the very tail-end of geologic time. “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33). Yet, He is said to have surveyed the whole monstrous spectacle and pronounced it all “very good” (Gen. 1:31). The Bible is quite explicit in teaching that there was no suffering and no death of sentient life on the earth before man brought sin into the world (Gen. 3:14–19; Rom. 5:12; 8:20–23; 1 Cor. 15:21–22; Rev. 21:4–5; etc.). But if the rocks of the earth’s crust were already filled with fossilized remains of billions of animals, and even of hominid forms that looked like men, then God himself is directly responsible for creating suffering and death, not in judgment upon rebellion, but as an integral factor of His work of creation and sovereign rule. And this is theological chaos!
4. Variants of the Day-Age Theory
Some expositors, acknowledging that exegetical honesty compels recognition of the “days” of Genesis as literal days, have tried two other devices for harmonizing the geological ages with literal days. One method is to suggest that the literal creative days were each separated by vast spans of geologic time. The other is that the six days were six days of revelation, rather than creation.
As to the first theory, it should be noted that the six widely separated days of creation included creation of the earth, heaven, the stars, sun and moon, oceans, lands, plants, fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals (all of them), and man. Nothing much is left for the vast spans of time between the days, so why are they needed? (This theory is essentially the same as the “progressive-creation theory,” which has already been discussed.)
As for the revelatory-day theory, there is not a single word in the entire record that suggests such a thing. Visions and revelations of the Lord are frequently encountered in Scripture, but the writer always says so, when it is so. In refuting such an extraneous idea, God himself said, “In six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day” (Exod. 20:11). (Why should He wish to rest on the seventh day, if all His actual work on each of the previous days consisted of about one minute of speaking to some unidentified vision-recipient?)
In addition, all the previously mentioned scientific contradictions and theological fallacies apply in exactly the same way to the isolated-day and the revelatory-day theories as they do to the standard day-age theory. The conclusion is, therefore, that the day-age theory in any form is unacceptable biblically, scientifically, and theologically.
The 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