A Theory On The Age Of The Universe

 

The age of the universe according to the Bible represents a controversial topic among Christians today, with some attempting to distance themselves from the issue, others minimizing the importance of such an inquiry, others claiming the topic possesses great importance, and others holding a position of agnosticism regarding the subject.  While I ultimately fall into the last of those four categories, I recognize the valid options available.  The Bible does not state in any one place that the universe is a certain number of years old, which only compounds the problem.  Regardless, I will present a possibility I do not recall hearing being widely put forth as a legitimate option: the creation days of Genesis 1 can be literal and the universe can still be billions of years old.  I have usually found that people allegorize or loosely interpret the entire creation week, interpreting each "day" as lasting far longer than 24 hours, or cling to a literal creation week of 24 hour days without any possibility of the universe being in its billions.  Here, I will show that 24 hour creation days and an "old" universe are not necessarily incompatible.


Does the Bible teach that any models of the age of the universe
other than young earth creationism (with the earth being around
6,000-7,000 years old) are untrue?

Unless there are genealogy errors that the Bible neglected to acknowledge, even going so far as to deceitfully represent the number of generations from Adam to Christ or the ages of the main figures in those generations, and unless the creation days are not literal (which could be very difficult to definitively demonstrate), there is only one way that one could interpret the Bible to not mean anything fanciful by the word "day" in Genesis 1 and have that interpretation remain compatible with a universe that is billions of years old.

Here are the first five verses of Genesis:


Genesis 1:1-5--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night'.  And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day."


Now, let us assess this passage.  The Bible is unclear as to whether or not the first creation day, where God separated light from darkness (Genesis 1:3-5), occurred within an actual 24 hour day of the initial creation of matter in Genesis 1:1.  In this potentially lengthy gap of time during verse two, thousands to billions of years could have elapsed, enabling for both the seven creation days of Genesis to be literal 24 hour days and the universe to be up to billions of years old.  By this I mean that there could have been billions of years after God created matter but before God separated light from darkness, at which point a series of 24 hour creation days occurred.  Does this theory boast the confirmation of outright Biblical agreement?  No, but the fact that Genesis 1:1-5 leave this possibility open means that people cannot dismiss it casually.



An "old" earth (and universe by extension, since God created both
simultaneously according to Genesis) and a literal creation week
consisting of 24 hour days are not necessarily logically exclusive.

Now, let me not be slow to proclaim that all of this is just a theory, a possibility that does not logically contradict itself or any specific passage of the Bible.  I am not saying this possibility is undeniably true, only that it is possible!  Yes, Matthew 1:17 says explicitly that there were "fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the Exile to Christ".  Yes, the Bible provides the lifespans of at least many of the central figures within the genealogy presented in Matthew 1.  Still, even if the Biblical genealogies and ages add up to only several thousand years from Adam to Christ, the universe can still be billions of years old.  It is possible that the universe is less than 10,000 years old; it is possible that the universe is billions of years old.  Neither option is, in a logical sense, impossible, and a literal understanding of Genesis 1-2 is not intrinsically irreconcilable to an "ancient" universe.  I only intended to make such a fact clear, not to claim anything more.