Beliefs re the Witness of Creation

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ATHEISM AGNOSTICISM DEISM THEISM
Evolutionary Creationism Old Earth Creationism Young Earth Creationism
without "gap" with "gap"

Creationism

Historically, Psalm 19:1-4 has been taken to justify the "Two Books" belief, that God has spoken through his Creation as well as through Scripture. This belief is perhaps more commonly accepted by Evolutionary Creationists, who celebrate the detail, than by other Bible believers, who tend to emphasise an aesthetic approach.
Romans 1:20 is also understood to mean that the creative power of God can be understood from the natural world, similarly encouraging the "Two Books" belief.


Young Earth Creationism (YEC)

Old Earth Creationism (OEC) with "Gap"

Bro John Thomas

On the front cover of his Advocate magazine Brother Thomas paired Romans 1:20 with 2 Timothy 3:16 to express the idea of God's Two Books. 

Old Earth Creationism (OEC)

Bro C. C. Walker

This paragraph published by Bro Walker in the Christadelphian magazine, of which he was editor, shows:

  • his respect for the witness of the natural world
  • his respect for the authority of "the professors" who study the natural world
  • his willingness to contemplate the possibility that modern birds might have evolved from ancient ones now fossilised
  • his recognition that in that case it would be necessary to "revise somewhat" his interpretation of Genesis ch 1.
  • his willingness to do so
  • his identification of possible scriptural support for such a revision

There are forms becoming extinct in our own day from slow and natural causes. May it not have been so in pre-Adamic times? The professors tell us for instance that some of these ancient birds, whose strides we can see for ourselves from their footprints were from four to six feet long, were like gigantic ostriches. Supposing that it were ever established that they were the actual progenitors of our smaller forms (“There were giants in the earth in those days” might apply to to birds and beasts), would the credibility of the Mosaic narrative suffer? Not at all, in our estimation. We should indeed have to revise somewhat our interpretation of the brief cosmogony of Gen. 1.; but should not waver as concerning its divinity, nor await with less faith and patience the reappearance of Moses in the land of the living.

C C Walker, Genesis The Christadelphian, Vol47 p501 (1910), quoted here

Evolutionary Creationism (EC)

Deism

Agnosticism

Atheism