Tool Alpha
Genesis, the Beginning
What the first eleven chapters say, what they do not say, and where the real arguments are.
How old is the earth?
The question everyone brings to Genesis 1. Both poles conclude the chapter does not answer it, for different reasons.
Genesis 1:1-2:3, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: does the Bible tell us how old the earth is? A family album starts with the wedding. It does not tell you how old the house was when they moved in. If you want the age of the house, you need a different record. Whether Genesis 1 is that record is the question.
The young-earth position holds that Scripture fixes the age of the earth at thousands of years. The two poles in this tool both reject that, but neither does it by bending the text to science.
Nothing in the Hebrew of Genesis 1 states a date. The dates people derive come from three steps added together: reading the days as one 24-hour week, treating verse 1 as part of day one, and adding up the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11. Each step is a separate judgment.
Lennox's route is textual first. Verse 1 can stand before day one, so the age of the universe is indeterminate on the text alone, and the age of the earth may be a different question from the length of the days. He also argues from history: the church changed its reading of the earth's foundations and pillars once the motion of the earth was settled, and it is no shame to do the same about age. He quotes two young-earth authors, Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds, who concede that over the long term their position is not tenable as things stand scientifically, and adds that he is not convinced the old-earth reading is any less natural, since the text separates the initial creation from day one.
Walton's route is that Genesis 1 is about functional origins, so it contributes nothing to the age of the earth. He is careful: this is not a claim that the Bible supports an old earth, only that there is no biblical position on the age of the earth. If the earth turned out young, so be it. But believers have no biblical obligation to defend a young earth against science.
The young-earth case, stated in the MacArthur Study Bible, holds that creation was recent, out of nothing, and in six consecutive 24-hour days, and that Scripture does not support a date earlier than about 10,000 years ago.
The young-earth reading has to account for the evidence of great age, which Walton notes it does with alternative science, light created in transit and appearance of age. The two poles have to explain to young-earth readers why Exodus 20:11, "in six days the LORD made," does not settle the matter. Lennox's answer is that God's week is a pattern for ours, not identical to it.
Not a concession to evolution. Lennox stresses that the cosmological evidence for an old universe is independent of biology, and that accepting it does not commit anyone to an unguided evolutionary account of life.
- Lennox, Seven Days that Divide the World (2021), chs. 3 and 4, including Nelson and Reynolds as quoted at ch. 3, n. 77
- Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009), propositions 10 and 12
- The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Genesis 1:1
