Wittenberg Gate

Angels and the Gap

This is yet more follow up on the discussion of my earlier post The Problem of Death Before the Fall. (Be sure to read the interesting comments.) Yesterday's post, More on Death Before the Fall dealt with what I call a natural reading of the text and the problem of interpreting the Scriptures in light of scientific assumptions rather than vice versa. This post is in response to the comments regarding angels.

The issue of angels is a subject of much confusion and often wild speculation. I think perhaps this has always been the case, as the writer of Hebrews begins his book by correcting a view of the angels as far more spectacular and powerful than they really are. As we are not privy to the goings on in the spirit world, except for the rare glimpses of it that Scripture gives us, we are very ignorant on the subject. I think it wise, then, that we not engage in too much speculation beyond what Scripture gives us. The Scriptures are sufficient for us, so I assume that some of these things are things we just don't need to know right now.

The Creation of the Angels

One of the issues raised was the creation of the angels, with the suggestion that the Gap Theory gives us a period of time in which the angels were created and some of them fell.

We are not given an explicit statement of the day on which angels were created, but we do have some clues. Genesis 2:1 concludes the six-day account of creation with this statement, "The the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished." Notice it does not say, "and all the host of it," with it indicating the host of the earth alone. It says, "the host of them," meaning the heavens and the earth. Which are the created host of heaven? I would argue that this refers to the angelic host.

In Job 38:4-7 we have what seems to be the angelic host singing, "when I laid the foundations of the earth." When were the foundations of the earth laid? The earth was formed on day three. Hence it is reasonable to assume that the angels were created on either day two or three. Day two seems a likely candidate, as that is the day when heaven is created, but that is mere speculation and goes beyond what we are given.

A Tangent on Day One

Some might say that the foundations of the earth were laid on day one. At the risk of going off on an unrecoverable tangent, I want to say a few things about day one. The description of day one of the creation is a beautiful example of how inspired Biblical truth is in complete harmony with scientific truth. It was the 20th century after Christ before science began to understand the relationship between space, time, matter and energy. Einstein gave us his famous statement of that relationship, E=mc².  In the equation E relates to energy, m is mass, a measure of the amount of matter, and c is the speed of light, which is an expression of distance (in 3-d space) over time. These four things (time, matter, space and energy) are foundational to the physical universe. No physical thing could exist without all four.

Yet while it took mankind 30 centuries to see this relationship, the inspired text of Genesis has all four created on the first day as the physical universe is established. In the beginning, (Time is created.), God created the heavens, (Space is created.), and the earth without form, (Matter is created.). The He said, "Let there be light." (Energy is created.) You gotta love it.

My point in that tangent (besides pointing out a spine-chillingly really cool thing) was that the nature of God's works on the first day of creation was more of a calling the physical into existence, while it is day three that the earth we live on was formed--an event at which the angels seem to have been present.

The creation of the angels, then, does not require a gap. Though we are not given a specific day on which the angels were created, the Biblical record is consistent with the theory that they were created within the creation week.

The Fall of the Demonic Angels

The next issue that was raised was the fall of the non-elect angels.

The Problem of Death Before the Fall

Many Christians are willing to accommodate the claims of evolutionary theory by adding millions of years of history into the creation story by means of scenarios such as the Gap Theory or the Day-Age Theory. These alternatives to a natural reading of the first chapter of Genesis have in common a belief that God was the agent of creation, but He did so over a long period of time, rather than in six normal days.

What concerns me about these theories is another thing they all have in common: death before the Fall of man. These theories present the animal world as having been created over millions of years prior to the creation of man. During these years animals are thought to have lived and died and in the process, many became fossilized. Yet we are told in Scripture that death entered the world through Adam's sin, and that not only mankind, but the whole creation was corrupted through sin. (Romans 5:12-16; Romans 8:18-23)

What these theories propose is a created world, one in which all is declared by God to be good, and in which death and destruction are natural processes, rather than corruptions. The Bible does not record the death of any animals until immediately after the Fall when God Himself clothed Adam and Eve in animal skins. Many theologians presume that at that time Adam and Eve were instructed in the use of animals as a symbol of the sacrificial "Seed," of Genesis 3:15, the Redeemer who would one day come in human flesh and undo the curse brought on by Adam's sin. (This is the sacrifice Cain rejected.)

If adherents to these theories also include mankind in the evolutionary process, a host of other theological problems are introduced. Adam becomes a figurative man rather than an actual man. The doctrines of Original Sin, of the headship of Adam and hence the respective headship of Christ, of the institution of marriage, even of the promised Redeemer of Genesis 3:15 all suddenly lack an historical foundation. The basic doctrines of the faith and of the Gospel are compromised.

Why are we willing to compromise these things? It seems we are intimidated into doing so by the claims of science.

Don't get me wrong. I love science and have a scientific bent. I spent two years of college as a biology major before I switched to education. I married a biochemist. I am not anti-science. However, we must keep science in its place. We must acknowledge that the further science gets from directly observable phenomena, the less useful it becomes and the less assurance we can have in the veracity of the conclusions we draw from it. I was surprised when teaching my son chemistry this year to find the Bohr Model of the atom, with which I spent a lot of time working in my college days, was now briefly discussed in the history section of my son's textbook, and replaced by a model that was just beginning to gain some recognition way back then. (Am I that old?)  Many similar examples could be given, such as the ever-changing and hotly-debated theories of astronomy.

Christians, then, ought to consider very carefully whether they should be willing to throw out the foundations of our faith for the shaky claims of science--claims that can be and are disputed even on strictly scientific grounds, and cannot be tested because they deal with historical, rather than present, phenomena. Macro-evolution, that is, evolutionary change that resulted in the production of new species and explains the existence of the diverse flora and fauna present on the earth today, is no more a sure fact than theory of circular orbits of all electrons was in the 1970's. A theory prevailing in public or scientific opinion, does not make it necessarily true. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, will we compromise the foundations of the Gospel for a popular scientific theory?

Note: If you wish to further explore the scientific debates on the origins of life, see the Answers in Genesis site. Their material ranges from simple presentations writen for children, to materials for non-science professional adults, to a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is suitable reading for science professionals or others with a high level of scientific background and understanding.

Was Darwin Wrong?

If you saw National Geographic's article, "Was Darwin Wrong?", ("NO!" says Nat. Geo.), you will want to see Rusty Lopez's comments on the article at the New Covenant Blog. He does a good job of exposing the poor science and logical weaknesses of the article.