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Many evangelical leaders today, unfortunately, have capitulated to the evolutionary timescale of modern unbelieving geologists and astronomers. They feel that they must somehow reinterpret the Genesis record of creation to allow for billions of prehistoric years, which the evolutionist must have in order to make cosmic evolution and biological evolution seem feasible. This compromise is necessary, they say, in order to win scientists and other intellectuals to the Lord. Old Earth Creationism is an umbrella term for a number of types of creationism, including gap creationism, progressive creationism, and evolutionary creationism. Old Earth creationism is typically more compatible with mainstream scientific thought on the issues of physics, chemistry, geology and the age of the Earth, in comparison to young Earth creationism. Two popular theories concerning the creation days of Genesis are the "day-age" theory (that each "day" represents long ages), and the "gap" theory (that the geological column was formed before the creation week, leaving the Earth ruined and empty, after which God "remade" the Earth in six literal days). Old Earth creationists believe that evolution has occurred, but only with God's help. He either set it in motion (theistic evolution), or else stepped in repeatedly to move it to the next level whenever it reached a dead-end on its own (progressive creation). Since they believe in the standard evolutionary scenario, they also believe that pre-men "hominids" existed. At some point they were infused with a soul by God to become the Adam and Eve of Genesis. Old Earth creationists do not believe a global flood occurred which scoured the Earth down to its basement rocks. Noah's flood, if it did occur, was either merely a local flood or a widespread tranquil flood.
Essentially, old Earth creationists
have a view of history which is the same as that of secular science.
They simply supply God as the answer to the difficult questions of
how the universe got here, how was the first life formed, and as a
necessary driver of biological evolution. Types of Old Earth Creationism Gap Creationism or Gap Theory Progressive Creationism Theistic Evolution Hindu Creationism Approaches to Genesis 1 The Framework Interpretation Day-Age Creationism Cosmic Time Supernatural Processes Intelligent Design The Biblical Flood according to Old Earth Creationism
Gap Creationism Not to be confused with the God of the gaps
Some people argue that the events occured during real days, but that long gaps existed in between those days. This view is also sometimes referred to as the "Intermittent Day" view and allows for both an ancient earth as described by science and special creation as described in the Bible without having to stretch the meanings of the words or develop metaphorical interpretations. Gap creationism states that life was immediately and recently created on a pre-existing old Earth. One variant rests on a rendering of Genesis 1:1-2 as:
This is taken by Gap Creationists to imply that the earth already existed, but had passed into decay during an earlier age of existence, and was now being "shaped anew". This view is more consistent with mainstream science with respect to the age of the Earth, but still often resembles Young Earth Creationism in many respects (often seeing the "days" of Genesis 1 as 24-hour days). This view was popularized by the famous Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909 and still in print today. In some versions the earth was ruined as a consequence of a battle between God and Lucifer - in more complex forms of the myth the destruction resulted in the death of the dinosaurs as well. There is, of course, zero geological evidence for any of this. After the supposed "gap" many believers add beliefs about Young Earth Creationism; others follow it up with concepts associated with Progressive Creationism. Progressive Creationism Progressive Creationists accept most of modern science, including modern physics. Modern biology, however, is rejected in favor of special creation of each "kind" of organism. Progressive creationism is the religious belief that God allows certain natural process (such as gene mutation and natural selection) to affect the development of life, but has also directly intervened at key moments in life's history to guide those processes or, in some views, create new species altogether (often to replenish the earth). This view of creationism allows for and accepts fluctuation within defined species but rejects transitional evolution as a viable mechanism to create a gradual ascent from unicellular organisms to advanced life. Progressive creationists point to multiple destructive events in the Earth's history (such as meteoric impacts and large-scale global volcanic activity) and geological evidence for rapid subsequent speciation as evidence for distinct, typically limited intervention by a Creator. This view can be applied (as it often is) to virtually any of the other old Earth views. The main thrust of progressive creationism is that there were a series of individual biological creation events and consequently the concept is incompatible with common descent. There are a number of subdivisions and various combinations are possible.
Typically, although Progressive
Creationists believe in an old earth,
they are unable to bring themselves to accept the evidence for
evolution by natural selection. Instead they believe that each
species was the subject of a separate individual creation
event-without evolving from a previous species. In order to do this
they have to ignore the incontrovertible evidence of common descent. Theistic Evolution Evolutionary creationary creationism, or theistic evolution, asserts that "the personal God of the Bible created the universe and life through evolutionary processes." According to the American Scientific Affiliation: A theory of theistic evolution (TE) - also called evolutionary creation - proposes that God's method of creation was to cleverly design a universe in which everything would naturally evolve. Usually the "evolution" in "theistic evolution" means Total Evolution - astronomical evolution (to form galaxies, solar systems, . . .) and geological evolution (to form the earth's geology) plus chemical evolution (to form the first life) and biological evolution (for the development of life) - but it can refer only to biological evolution. Theistic Evolution is similar to long-timescale versions of Progressive Creationism - but now with the added belief in evolution. The hypothesis of theistic evolution suggests that God first created life and then:
Hindu Creationism
According to Hindu
creationism, all species on earth, including humans, have
"devolved" from a state of pure consciousness. Hindu
creationists claim that species of plants and animals are material
forms adopted by pure consciousness which live an endless cycle of
births and rebirths. Ronald Numbers says that: "Hindu
Creationists have insisted on the antiquity of humans, who they
believe appeared fully formed as long, perhaps, as trillions of years
ago." Hindu creationism is a form of old earth creationism.
According to Hindu creationists the universe may even be older than
billions of years. These views are based on the Vedas, which depict
an extreme antiquity of the universe and history of the Earth. Approaches to Genesis 1
Old Earth Christian creationists
may approach the creation accounts of Genesis in a number of
different ways. The Framework Interpretation
According to the Framework Hypothesis used by some Old
Earth Creationists, the entire story of "days" is
really a literary device which should not be interpreted literally.
The framework interpretation (or
framework hypothesis) notes that there is a pattern or
"framework" present in the Genesis account and that,
because of this, the account may not have been intended as a strict
chronological record of creation. Instead, the creative events may be
presented in a topical order. This view is broad enough that
proponents of other old earth views (such as many Day-Age
Creationist) have no problem with many of the key points put
forward by the hypothesis, though they might believe that there is a
certain degree of chronology present. Day-Age Creationism See Our Main Page on Day-Age Creationism here
Some Old Earth Creationists
argue that the "days" during which events happened were not
"days" as we know them - they may have been millennia or more. "One day with the Lord is as a thousand years" to justify the idea that "day" in the biblical text need not mean a 24-hour day in our understanding. Day-age creationism is an effort to reconcile the literal Genesis account of creation with modern scientific theories on the age of the universe, the Earth, life, and humans. It holds that the six days referred to in the Genesis account of creation are not ordinary 24-hour days, but rather are much longer periods (of thousands or millions of years). The Genesis account is then interpreted as an account of the process of cosmic evolution, providing a broad base on which any number of theories and interpretations are built. Proponents of the day-age theory can be found among theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists. The day-age theory tries to reconcile these views by arguing that the creation "days" were not ordinary 24-hour days, but actually lasted for long periods of time-or as the theory's name implies: the "days" each lasted an age. Most advocates of old Earth creationism hold that the six days referred to in the creation account given in Genesis are not ordinary 24-hour days, as the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) can be interpreted in this context to mean a long period of time (thousands or millions of years) rather than a 24-hour day. According to this view, the sequence and duration of the creation "days" is representative or symbolic of the sequence and duration of events that scientists theorize to have happened, such that Genesis can be read as a summary of modern science, simplified for the benefit of pre-scientific humans.
In a variant of this old
Earth view of creationism, Jehovah's Witnesses stated in a
1985 book that Genesis shows the correct order against enormous odds.
TalkOrigins archive states that this shows an incorrect order of
events, the odds are incorrectly calculated, and the order shown
contradicts what Genesis says. Cosmic Time
Gerald
Schroeder puts forth a view which tries to reconcile 24-hour
creation days with an age of billions of years for the universe by
noting, as creationist Phillip
E. Johnson summarizes in his article What
Would Newton Do?: "the Bible speaks of time from the
viewpoint of the universe as a whole, which Schroeder interprets to
mean at the moment of 'quark confinement,'
when stable matter formed from energy early in the first second of
the big bang." Schroeder
calculates that a period of six days under the conditions of quark
confinement, when the universe was approximately a trillion times
smaller and hotter than it is today is equal to fifteen billion years
of earth time today. This is all due to space expansion after quark
confinement. Thus Genesis and modern physics are reconciled. Hugh
Ross's Reasons to Believe
claims that Schroeder puts the creation of the Earth approximately
eight billion years earlier than modern scientific theories and it
may be incorrect with respect to the viewpoint of creation.
Schroeder, though, states in an earlier book, Genesis and the Big
Bang, that the Earth and solar system is some "4.5 to 5 billion
years" old and also states in a later book,The
Science of God: The
Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom Supernatural Processes Those who advocate the Gap theory or progressive creationism claim that God did not just perform a single act of creation but many (even as many as millions) over long periods of geological time, each time creating new species or higher taxonomic groupings. During the intervals when God was not creating, microevolution was taking place, to allow minor adaptations within species. The progressive creationist Alan Hayward (1923-2008) proposed the process of "successive creation" that "God has been at work ever since the universe began, performing a great number of creative acts at intervals".
The Gap theorist Arthur
Custance (1910-1985) proposed the hypothesis of supernatural
selection as a process for how new species originate. Both
"successive creation" and "supernatural selection"
are supposed to be supernatural replacements for known natural
evolutionary processes. The problem with the supernatural processes
of Custance and Hayward is that they are not testable and are really
no different than just saying God did it. Intelligent Design
The more scientifically minded
believers in intelligent design take on board all ideas about the age
of the earth and even common descent, but maintain that evolution
is controlled and managed by "somebody". The less
scientifically minded include-well-less science. There is zero real
evidence in support of any of the Intelligent Design variants. The Biblical Flood according to Old Earth Creationism Some old Earth creationists reject flood geology, a position which leaves them open to accusations that they thereby reject the infallibility of scripture (which states that the Genesis flood covered the whole of the earth). In response, old Earth creationists cite verses in the Bible where the words "whole" and "all" clearly require a contextual interpretation. Old Earth creationists generally believe that the human race was localised around the Middle East at the time of the Genesis flood, a position which is in conflict with the Out of Africa theory. Daniel E. Friedmann in his book The Broken Gift, presents an interpretation of Genesis which agrees with the Out of Africa theory and further explains, with scriptural references, that the Genesis Flood was local and is thus compatible with the scientific record of human history. Beliefs in a biblical flood tend to vary amongst Old Earth Creationist's. While some-perhaps especially those who hold to the "Gap Theory"-may maintain that a full global flood occurred, others scoff at the idea and point out its many failings. They prefer to believe in a smaller localized event (or events) and claim this inspired the various flood stories around the world. Yet others will prefer the pseudoscience of Hydroplate theory.
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that the Sun is 4.6 billion years old. 
