ETS 2001: Boundaries on creation and Noah's Flood: Early 19
th
century British Scriptural Geologists
Terry Mortenson, PhD
tmortenson@AnswersInGenesis.org
P. 6
positions in the scientific establishment of Europe where they subtly promoted what is today
called "philosophical naturalism." But the effects of deistic and atheistic philosophy on Biblical
studies and Christian theology also became widespread on the continent in the late 18
th
century
and in Britain and America by the middle of the 19
th
century. As Reventlow concluded in his
thorough study,
we cannot overestimate the influence exercised by Deistic thought, and by the principles of
the Humanist world-view which the Deists made the criterion of their biblical criticism, on the
historical-critical exegesis of the nineteenth century; the consequences extend right down to
the present. At that time a series of almost unshakeable presuppositions were decisively
shifted in a different direction.
18
So the Biblical worldview, which had dominated the Western nations for centuries, was
rapidly being replaced by a naturalistic worldview.
The Scriptural geologists
It was in the midst of these revolutions in worldview and the reinterpretation of the
phenomena of nature and the Bible that the Scriptural geologists expressed their opposition to old-
earth geology. Well, who were these men? The Scriptural geologists were a very diverse group of
individuals. I discovered over 30 authors writing between about 1815-1855, but there probably
were more. Although some of them knew of each other and appreciated each other's writings,
they never formally organized themselves into a group. Most of them were from Great Britain,
although I found a few in America also and maybe there were some in continental Europe.
19
Some of the Scriptural geologists were clergy and some were not. Some were highly trained
scientists, and others had no such training. A few were very competent in geology, both as a
result of extensive reading and field study of geological formations and fossils in Britain and on the
European continent. Their writings ranged from short pamphlets to massive well-documented
books and they raised Biblical, philosophical and geological objections against old-earth theories.
What was most interesting for me as a historian was the fact that the old-earth opponents of
the Scriptural geologists, including fellow Christians, generally misrepresented them as being
opposed to science and being ignorant of geological facts. None of the old-earth geologists
responded to the arguments of the geologically most competent Scriptural geologists, even though
it was clear that in at least a couple of cases old-earth geologists personally knew one or more of
these Scriptural geologists.
In my Ph.D. thesis, I wrote individual chapters on each of thirteen Scriptural geologists,
giving a biographical sketch and a detailed summary of their arguments against the old-earth
18
Henning G. Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, John Bowden,
transl. (London: SCM Press, 1984), p. 412.
19
Byron Nelson, in his The Deluge Story in Stone (Mpls: Bethany Fellowship, 1968), briefly referred to
several American and European Scriptural geologists at that time. See also Rodney L. Stiling, "Scriptural Geology
in America," in David N. Livingstone, D.G. Hart and Mark A. Noll, eds., Evangelicals and Science in Historical
Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 177-192. With regard to Germany, help may also be
found in Stephan Holthaus, Fundamentalismus in Deutschland: Der Kampf um die Bibel im Protestantismus des 19.
und 20. Jahrhunderts, Biblia et Symbiotica 1, Bonn: Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 1993. This is a PhD
dissertation from ETF-Leuven.