Creationism - National Center for Science Education

course insist on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account (including the
Flood, Adam and Eve, and other aspects of the Genesis account), but they do not interpret
every passage in the Bible literally—only “literal where possible.” Inerrancy is the
absolute principle; literalism is a matter of interpretation regarding the intent and “plain
meaning” of the passage (and, consequently, results in considerable disagreement at
times). Many inerrantists, though they emphatically reject evolution as opposed to the
plain Word of God in the Bible, do not insist that creation was recent. Passages which
imply that the earth, or man, was created recently need not, they maintain, be interpreted
literally. The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, for instance, consists largely of
old-earth creationists. Gleason Archer, an ICBI member, writes:
To be sure, if we were to understand Genesis 1 in a completely literal fashion—which some suppose to be
the only proper principle of interpretation if the Bible is truly inerrant and completely trustworthy—then
there would be no possibility of reconciliation between modern scientific theory and the Genesis account.
But a true and proper belief in the inerrancy of Scripture involves neither a literal nor a figurative rule of
interpretation. What it does require is a belief in whatever the biblical author (human and divine) actually
meant by the words he used.
An absolute literalism would, for example, commit us to the proposition that Christ actually meant to
teach that a camel could go through the eye of a needle. But it is abundantly clear that Christ was simply
using the familiar rhetorical figure of hyperbole... (1982:58-59]
Proper exegesis, Archer continues, requires careful consideration of the meaning God
intended to convey in each section of the Bible. “Is the true purpose of Genesis 1 to
teach that all creation began just six twenty-four-hour days before Adam was ‘born’?”
No, says Archer, along with many of his fellow inerrantists; its purpose is to affirm
divine, special Creation—but not necessarily in six literal days. The inerrantists of the
Institute for Creation Research, the Bible-Science Association, the Creation Research
Society, and other major creation-science organizations, however, insist that the clear
intent of Genesis is that creation was recent.
PERSPICUITY OF THE BIBLE
Another principle in standard fundamentalist exegesis and interpretation is that of
“perspicuity” of Scripture. The correct interpretation is the plain meaning of the verses.
This is related to the Common Sense tradition, which held that nature was perspicuous:
things were what they appeared to be, and could be perceived directly as such. This
attitude was extended to the Bible. As William Jennings Bryan put it: “The one beauty
about the word of God is that it does not take an expert to understand it.” This notion in
turn complemented distrust of scientific elitism, and the competence of parents, taxpayers
and schoolchildren to decide on the validity of evolution. In response to questions
whether the jury at the Scopes Trial was competent to judge on evolution, Bryan
commented: “According to our system of government, the people are interested in
everything and can be trusted to decide everything, and so with our juries” (quoted in
Hofstadter 1962:128). Requiring the teaching of evolution is simply the subversion of
the will of the majority.
G.M. Price, in his Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism (1926:318)
quotes approvingly an anonymous 1857 book Voices from the Rocks; or Proof of the