Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 90:358 (Apr 1933)
Article: Genesis And Flood Theories In The Light Of Their History
Author: E. T. Brewster

BSac 90:358 (Apr 1933) p. 220

Genesis And Flood Theories In The Light Of Their History

E. T. Brewster

This whole problem of the “days” of Genesis as geologic periods or as common days, and the problem of the stratified rocks and Noah’s Flood—which is really the same problem in another form—has got itself into so great a confusion in most men’s minds, that if it is ever to be straightened out, we shall all have to drop most of the aspects of it that we have been dwelling on and start over from the bottom. That often happens with such questions.

But a problem of this sort, where the facts are complicated and the issues confused, is often best attacked by taking it up from the purely historical side. We may profitably, for the moment, forget all about our own opinions—and prejudices—and ask ourselves simply: How comes it about that men have, at different times and now, held such diverse views on the basis of what look like the same facts. I purpose, therefore, without in any way taking sides on disputed matters, to outline the history of Creation and Deluge Theories as Christian thinkers and Christian students of nature have actually held them. When we know just why men did or do think thus and so, we have taken a long step toward finding where the truth most probably lies.

We must, however, in all this, not forget—as too many of us do—that we people of the past—early times and the Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well—were exactly such men as we ourselves are. Their minds worked in the same way. They had the same Bible to consult. But they did not have the same facts of nature.

This last is, I think, obvious enough. It makes a vast difference what one thinks of the stars whether one looks at them with the naked eye or through the great hundred-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson. So with all the rest of science. So in particular with the data of geological science which especially concern us here. Quite aside from

BSac 90:358 (Apr 1933) p. 221

polarizing microscopes and chemical analysis, we now have mines and quarries and railway cuts and oil wells and tunnels which give us fresh cross-sections of the earth’s materials which our elders did not have. Besides, we have explored the earth and seen regions and rocks that our fathers did not know. If the great thinkers of the Middle Ages had possessed our facts, most certainly they would have reasoned to our conclusions. If we now had only their evidence, with equal certainty should we reason to their opinions. We can then understand both the opinions of the past and the wisdom of the present by following through the process by which doctrines and theories, entirely reasonable in their own day, have had to alter as more facts came in vi...