How Old is the Universe? (Part 1)

       I’ve decided to write about an issue that has divided many Christians. Some of you will disagree with what I say below. However, while I will briefly defend my own viewpoint at a later time, my primary goal here is to set the entire dispute in a larger context and discuss how I feel we ought to approach it, regardless of our own opinions. 

This topic is the debate commonly referred to as “young earth vs. old earth” debate, though it actually deals with the age of the entire universe. The beginning of Genesis (according to its most straightforward interpretation) appears to claim that God created everything within six literal, 24-hour days. James Ussher, Archbishop of the Church of Ireland born in the 16th century, conducted an analysis that included (among other things) the length of time covered by the genealogies in the book of Genesis. This brought him to the conclusion that creation occurred in 4004 BC. Actually, Ussher suggested a very specific date (and even time) for creation, although most believers in a young earth allow for a range of 6,000 to 10,000 years old. The opposing view, held by the majority of scientists, is that the universe is roughly 13.7 billion years old, and the earth itself about 4.6 billion years old. 

       There’s no doubt it would be entertaining and stir things up quite a bit if I were to write extensively on the merits of each viewpoint and defend my own particular conclusion. However, besides the fact that this would take much too long for a blog post, I’m nowhere near qualified to do this. For the sake of full disclosure, I personally believe in the old universe model. I believe there is very strong scientific support for this position, but like I said, I won’t be getting into that here. There is still much I would like to say on this topic, however, and I plan to divide it between two blog posts. In the first, I will discuss why I believe this is an important issue for Christians to discuss and why we need to keep an open mind. 

       Often, when this topic is debated, Christians will briefly disagree but then conclude that it doesn’t really matter in the end, as long as we’re all followers of God and believe He is the creator. Besides, we’ll find out the answer in Heaven, right? 

       I agree and disagree. Certainly our salvation and relationship with God do not depend on our beliefs regarding the age of the universe. However, it is an important issue for us to discuss (and on which we ought to seek a reasonable conclusion) for two reasons: 1: A big deal is often made over this issue, and 2: Our credibility, and the credibility of Christianity, may be at stake. 

Interestingly, if we had been born in the sixteenth century, we wouldn’t be concerned about the age of the universe at all. Rather, the primary controversy would be whether the earth moves or is fixed at the center of the universe. As Galileo discovered, the church was very adamant that the Bible teaches a geocentric universe, and the suggestion that the earth orbited the sun was not taken very well. The church’s geocentric view was based on verses such as the following: 

Psalm 104:5:
“He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”

Psalm 93:1:
“The LORD is king. He is clothed with majesty and strength. The earth is set firmly in place and cannot be moved.”

These verses seem pretty clear, but do we take them to mean that the earth doesn’t move? If not, does that mean we are ignoring what the Bible teaches, preferring finite science over God’s infinite knowledge? Of course not. We have no problem accepting the conclusions of science regarding the solar system. In fact, it is because of the advancement of our scientific knowledge that we are better able to understand the intent of these verses. They are referring to the fact that we are firmly established and secure in a figurative sense. They were never meant to make a statement about astronomy. 

       Our knowledge and observations, scientific or otherwise, are not enemies to our understanding of God and should not be disregarded, but rather embraced as aids to our understanding. Without knowledge of the world to provide a context, information in the Bible would practically be useless because we would have no way to understand or apply it. This may be a simplistic example, but it will serve to illustrate my point. When Jesus says in John 10:9 that He is “the door”, we only know what this means because we are familiar with doors. Since we know not to take it literally, we understand what the metaphor actually means. 

       Regarding the creation account, it is possible to accept the overall truth of what the Bible says (that God is the creator of everything) while also acknowledging that it’s not meant to be a science textbook. We can expect it to use general rather than technical language, as well as to skip over or simplify unnecessary scientific details. And this shouldn’t surprise us, because the account of creation needed to be intelligible to people from different millenniums with varying levels of scientific understanding. An account that would be scientifically complete and precise to us today would be gibberish to people who lived thousands of years ago. 

       Still, those who believe in a literal six-day creation may have some remaining concerns. One is that if we allow some flexibility on this issue, it may open the door for us to interpret everything in the Bible however we want, based on our own preferences or biases. Whatever we don’t like could be dismissed as “symbolic.” I would reply that like it or not, we will always have biases based on our worldview and experiences. We may do our best to overcome these biases, but it’s impossible to view anything entirely objectively. This means that the six-day view of creation may be the result of biases as much as any other view. Why should we assume that the simplest interpretation, or the one that comes to mind first, is the correct one? 

       A second concern may be that if we allow flexibility when interpreting the six days of creation, we open the door to assuming that events such as the resurrection, which are foundational to Christianity, may be disregarded as myths. But I believe this fear is unwarranted. In the case of the resurrection, for example, there is an abundance of evidence that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the dead. We know we can trust the Biblical account because of the historical evidence that the Gospel writers were eyewitnesses who recorded accurately what they saw. Therefore, regardless of what we believe about creation, an objective analysis of other events recorded in the Bible will show that there is good evidence to back up a literal understanding of the way they were recorded. Even if one there is symbolism or generalizations in one portion of the Bible, this doesn’t mean we must understand every other portion the same way. 

       Ultimately, we must differentiate between the trustworthiness of the Bible and the trustworthiness of our own interpretation. Our interpretation is not infallible. And by not allowing any flexibility in our interpretation, we weaken our position by making it unnecessarily vulnerable to new scientific discovery. 

       This issue is most important when interacting with non-believers, because there may be people who would otherwise be open to the Gospel, but are deterred because of the stance of some Christians on the age of the universe. This is because they are put into a position in which they feel they have to choose between Christianity and science (a false dichotomy), and rightly feel uncomfortable dismissing what they consider to be established facts for the sake of religious belief. Furthermore, they may be uncomfortable with a belief system that does not appear to base its beliefs on evidence, and in fact seems determined to hold onto its beliefs despite growing evidence to the contrary. They may wonder why they should trust what the Bible says about God and salvation if it doesn’t seem to them to be correct even about the material world. Therefore, we should avoid trying to make the Bible say more than it does by insisting on our own particular interpretation, especially if doing so creates the illusion of a disagreement between the Bible and science.

       None of this means that the universe is young or old. That is a fascinating question, but as I said, my intent was not to debate that here. My point is simply that we shouldn’t be so dogmatic about a young universe that we risk ruining the credibility of Christianity or imply that one particular interpretation must be accepted in order to believe the Bible or be an authentic Christian.

       As the title implies, this is only part one. Next week, I will address further possible concerns of those who believe the Bible plainly teaches a literal six-day creation, and I will attempt to argue that, upon close inspection, Genesis itself may support an older view of the Earth and universe.