Page 16

ETS 2001: Boundaries on creation and Noah's Flood: Early 19

century British Scriptural Geologists

Terry Mortenson, PhD

tmortenson@AnswersInGenesis.org

P. 16

"philosophical naturalism." But they clearly perceived them as such. They also insisted that
there was a difference between, on the one hand, the experimental scientific studies which use
observations of presently occurring processes and repeatable experiments to determine how the
present creation operates and, on the other hand, the historical scientific studies which use
circumstantial evidence and written records to try to reconstruct the origin of the creation and its
historical development to its present state. The Scriptural geologists insisted that in constructing
a history of the earth geologists should not limit themselves to the circumstantial evidence of rocks
and fossils, but should also carefully consult the more important eyewitness testimony of God's
Word.

So the Genesis-geology debate was really a conflict of worldviews--that is, deism, vague

forms of theism and atheism joined together against Biblical Christianity. Sadly, many Christians,
even clergy, absorbed many of the anti-biblical philosophical assumptions hidden in scientific
writings in those days (and our days), and so they unconsciously became semi-deists, as society
was enjoying the lush and seemingly boundless fruits of human reason at work in the Industrial
Revolution. This is the ultimate reason, I believe, that the writings of the geologically competent
Scriptural geologists were rejected without refutation by the leading geologists of their day. By
the publication of Darwin's theory in 1859 the Scriptural geologists, as a "species" of thinkers,
had almost passed into extinction. Their thinking about both Scripture and the geological evidence
surprisingly resurfaced in the last half of the 20

century with the modern young-earth creationist

movement, which is now worldwide.

I think the battle the Scriptural geologists fought is very relevant for today, for at least two

reasons. First, their existence helps to expose the fallacy of the recent charge by evangelical
church historian, Mark Noll, who follows the former Seventh Day Adventist and now agnostic,
historian of science, Ronald Numbers. These two men have discredited modern young-earth
creationism by attempting to root it in the teachings of Seventh Day Adventism and stating that
young-earth geology began in the early 20

century with Adventist George McCready Price.

Certainly, Price's geological writings influenced men such as Henry Morris. But Price and the
earlier Scriptural geologists made many of the same observations and interpretations of the
geological phenomena, which modern creationists have also observed. And the Scriptural
geologists, the early Adventists and the modern creationists all obtained their young-earth ideas
from a literal interpretation of Genesis, which freed their minds from anti-Biblical philosophical
assumptions in geology and which is the way Genesis was almost universally interpreted in the
church prior to the 19

century. So, Mark Noll is badly misinformed as a historian and greatly

misleads his readers when he states in his influential book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,
that, young-earth creationists use "a fatally flawed interpretive scheme of the sort that no
responsible Christian teacher in the history of the church ever endorsed before this century."

Mark Noll, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," Christianity Today (Oct. 25, 1993), pp. 29-32 and

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), esp. pp. 12-14, and Ronald Numbers, The
Creationists (New York: Knopf, 1992).

Noll, Ref. 49 (1994 book), p. 14. For an incisive review of Noll's book by a leading creationist, see Carl

Weiland's article, "Missing the Mark: The Tragedy of the New Evangelical `Intellectualism'" on the Answers in
Genesis Web site: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v10n1_br.asp#f4.