Christians have always believed in creation. There was little debate about nature or the date of creation until the last two centuries. However, science began to gain credibility through great advances in the so-called Era of Reason (also called The Enlightenment or Modernism) developed in the 18th century. Science was increasingly identified with the naturalistic worldview, which was directly opposed to the theistic worldview.
Scientific evidence became a weapon used by opponents of Christianity to attack the biblical worldview. We are now going to explore the question that is at the heart of all of this. What does Genesis 1 say? He bluntly says that one God created everything out of nothing and that he did it in six days and then rested on the seventh day. He spent three days shaping the world and then three days filling it.
And, finally, he created humanity uniquely in his image. Many Christians understand this as evidence that human beings have dominion over God's creation. This could suggest that human beings have the power to use the world and its resources however they want, but it doesn't mean that humanity should exploit the Earth's resources. A group of Christians who use the name “evolutionary creationists” or “theistic evolutionists” (TE) believe that God created the Earth with the potential for life to develop by naturalistic methods.
Christians believe that God appointed human beings to be in charge of what He created and to care for the world as responsible guardians. While tertiary issues often differentiate one Christian denomination from another, most Christians agree on the main issues found in historical creeds. On the contrary, science is not competent to draw conclusions about the supernatural and, therefore, has nothing to say about the role of God as creator or about the Christian view that man is the pinnacle of creation and, therefore, is neutral with respect to the question of God. Christians have a countercultural, distinctive and uniquely biblical view of the world that should lead us to live and act differently from those who do not recognize Christ as Lord.
In this post, I am going to discuss three Christian views on creation (young-earth creationism, old earth creationism, and theistic evolution) in order to identify points of agreement and points of tension between them and with the vision of science discussed in my previous publications. This third category includes all Christians who do not believe that the days of Genesis mean periods of time of any kind. As the debates unfolded, controversies arose about the date and nature of creation among biblical Christians. Before I became a Christian, I made this assumption in my research and continued to make the assumption after becoming a Christian.
A group of biblical Christian scholars published a series of books called The Foundations in an attempt to define and defend biblical Christianity against this widespread commitment to liberalism. Let's look at three common interpretations of the Genesis creation story, evaluate the importance of the topic for the Christian faith, and examine how a similar controversy was resolved several hundred years ago in a way that complies with the commandments of Christ and the Apostle Paul regarding Christian unity. While I think this point of view is certainly within the realm of Christian orthodoxy, I don't find it particularly useful, while the other two points of view are better representations of what the passage says.
