Page 49 - Foundations

There is a division between Biblical creationists today. Some are young earth creationists. They
believe that the entire creation is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old. They hold to the present majority
view of Genesis verses 1:1-2. They allow for no gap to exist. They refuse to entertain any notion that
the earth as we presently know it may have been judged and destroyed in an age before Adam, and
that it could be much older than 6,000 years.

There is another group who are at present in the minority who perceive a gap between the earth’s
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first creation, and its re-creation whose account begins in the 3 verse of Genesis. Both hold to a
literal six day account of the creation, but differ on other matters. Those who hold to the
ruin/reconstruction doctrine of the creation are able to allow for the existence of dinosaurs on that
more ancient, original earth. When it was judged and destroyed, so too was all life on the planet.
They also are able to account for past ice ages, for when God judged the earth and sealed it up in
darkness, blocking the light and warmth of the Sun, this could very well be what precipitated a
global ice age.

Since the Bible does not tell us how long the original earth existed before it was destroyed, and it
does not tell us how long it lay in a state of being formless, void, and covered in darkness, those who
hold to the ruin/reconstruction doctrine find no difficulty in allowing for various geological ages to
have passed.

If there were no more to the matter than it being possible to translate “and” as “but,” and “was” as
“became,” we might all just stop now and take a vote as to which rendering we think is the more
plausible. This would be a very poor way to establish truth, and it would likely devolve into a matter
of personal opinion, a mere popularity contest. Yahweh, however, has not left us without further
evidence to test this matter. Before I present that evidence I want to address some of the criticism
of the ruin/reconstruction doctrine.

Young earth creationists frequently refer to the ruin/reconstruction doctrine as “the gap theory.” The
employment of the word “theory” instead of the word “doctrine” reveals their bias in the matter.
There is a tendency for men to seek to control the language in which ideas are discussed in order to
favor their view of a matter. We see this in the struggle over abortion. Those who are defenders of
life in the womb prefer to call themselves “pro-life,” but their opponents have labeled them as “anti-
abortion.” The prefix “anti” carries a negative stigma. It paints the person as someone who is seeking
to restrict another person’s freedom. This is blatant hypocrisy, for their can be no greater curtailment
of a person’s freedom than to murder them while they are still in the womb. It is similarly
disingenuous for young earth creationists to speak of their “doctrines” while labeling opposing views
as “theories.” They are all doctrines.

One of the false charges made by young earth creationists against the ruin/reconstruction doctrine
is that it is of fairly recent origin and is merely an attempt to reconcile evolutionary theory with the
Bible. I have read the oft repeated charge that Thomas Chalmer’s Bridgewater Treatise that
popularized this doctrine in the mid 1800s was the starting point of this doctrine. The claim
continues by asserting that the ruin/reconstruction doctrine was devised as a way to find some
agreement with geologists who were beginning to present evidence for a much older earth.