I don't recall when I first came across the ministry, InspiringPhilosophy (IP). According to their “About us” page, they are an apologetics ministry and describe themselves as, “a nonprofit Christian organization with the goal of spreading and defending the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” I'd say they're sincere. I've seen a lot of their videos on YouTube and some of them are really good. Of course, there's probably not anyone with whom I agree 100% of the time and my point of contention with IP is their confrontational attitude toward young earth creationism (YEC).
There are other Christian apologists who compromise on the issue of origins but not all of them are as in your face about it as IP. IP doesn't just disagree with creationism; they produce a lot of material to try refute it. One particular video they've made is TOP TEN Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism. As the title suggests, they present 10 passages from the Bible which, they claim, don't reconcile easily with a young earth. I invite you to watch the entire video for yourself.
I've been writing a point by point reply to each of the video's 10 arguments. This will be my last point in this series. Links to all my previous videos in this series will be listed at the bottom.
POINT #1 (beginning at 17:09): Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
The video alleges, This may come as a shock to you, but the very first verse of the Bible can create difficulties for young earth models. The reason is, over the last few decades, scholars have noted the first verse lacks a definite article in Hebrew. So the way we translate it may not be accurate. Instead, scholars... have argued, it would make more sense to translate it as, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth,” What this would mean is that verse one is no longer a complete sentence, but what we would call a dependent clause and an incomplete sentence. So this would mean that verse 1 is dependent on the following clause, which is in verse 2. So Genesis is really saying, “When God began to 'bara' the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void.” In other words, when God started 'bara'-ing the heavens and the earth, it was already there as formless and void.
Wow. Just as I had discussed in my last post in this series, the video seems to leave open the possibility that Elohim is not the Creator of the universe. IP only portrays God as continuously shaping already existing matter but they never seem to definitively attribute the creation of matter to God. It's very strange.
It's always been a pet peeve of mine when people appeal to the original language to claim the passage doesn't really mean what the translation says. When I began learning Greek, this practice began to annoy me even more. I understand that translation is more of an art than a science but if you read the same verse in several translations, even a lay person can have a very good understanding of the author's intended meaning in the original language. To suggest that a verse in its original language means something radically different than its translation is a tactic usually employed by groups like Jehovah's Witnesses.
IP is making an argument about how Genesis 1:1 should be translated. I doubt that Michael Jones (IP's founder and the video's narrator) can actually read Hebrew. I'm almost certain that most of the English speaking people who watch his videos cannot read Hebrew either. As such, most people lack the ability to judge the credibility of the video's translation.
Now, in all fairness, I don't read Hebrew either. But since I'm fairly well studied in Greek, I've learned a few things about how grammar works in different languages. Since most people who read my blog are English speaking, I'm going to primarily discuss the errors in IP's English grammar but I'll show you how it applies to the Hebrew at the end. Sound fair? I don't want to make this whole post a grammar lesson but there's going to be a lot grammar being discussed. I apologize in advance.
IP's argument hinges on the fact that the word “beginning” in Genesis 1:1 lacks a definite article. Really, that's the entirety of their argument. They're saying the Hebrew says beginning and not the beginning and somehow that changes the entire meaning of verses 1 and 2. So I'm going to start by explaining articles.
In English, the definite article is the word the. We also have an indefinite article – the word a – but Hebrew lacks an indefinite article. Generally speaking, the use of a definite article, narrows the scope of the noun it modifies. A book becomes the book, for example. However, even in English, nouns may not have an article at all. If I said, “John plays baseball,” John is still a definite noun even though it lacks the definite article. In another example, if I'm talking about a movie I'd seen, I might say, “Its ending dragged on.” In that case, ending is still a definite noun even though it lacks an article. After all, the movie had only one ending, right?
Now that we're clear on articles, you also need to understand parts of speech. In English, do you know the difference between begin and beginning? Here's a hint: begin is a verb and beginning is a noun. OK, that was more than a hint but I want you to see clearly that these are different parts of speech. This one is a little harder but do you know the difference between created and to create? Created is a simple, past-tense verb and to create is an infinitive.
Are you still with me? Now we'll look at the subject verse. First, as we've already seen, the lack of a definite article doesn't necessarily mean the noun is indefinite. To insert the indefinite article would render the translation as, “In a beginning,...” which is nonsensical. Just as the movie in my example above only had one ending, so also did the universe have only one beginning. Therefore, “In the beginning...” is the most obvious translation. By the way, John 1:1 in Greek also lacks a definite article and translators insert the in there was well: In the beginning, was the word....”
After saying all that, here is the glaring problem with IP's argument: In order to accomplish their dubious translation, they have to change the noun beginning into the verb began and they have to change the verb created into the infinitive to create all on the flimsy grounds that beginning lacks a definite article! Begin and beginning may resemble each other, but they are still different parts of speech. Basically, the video is trying to conjugate a noun! It's rather hilarious. I know Mr. Jones isn't a Hebrew scholar but even his grasp of English is suspect.
Nerds, er... I mean people... like me, who have studied languages, understand a concept known as morphology (word forms). English is not considered to be a heavily inflected language – that is, our words don't change form much, regardless of how they are used in a sentence. Take the noun, child, for example; the plural is children and the possessives are child's and children's. That's 4 forms for one word. In Greek, there are 10 forms for a normal noun (singular and plural nouns used in 5 different cases).
I bring up morphology because we can recognize words in other languages based on their form. In Genesis 1:1, the word translated as “In the beginning,” is a single word, reshith (בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית, Strong's word 7225). We can tell by its form that it is a singular, feminine noun being used as a preposition. In other words, the Hebrew morphology of this word shows us – without question – that this is a noun. It's not a verb! It's not debatable.
As IP said, it's only been “over the last few decades” that liberal scholars have come up with this notion that the lack of an article somehow turns a noun into a verb. Yet, keep in mind that we've studied the OT for millennia and Hebrew is a language that is still spoken! How is it that no one has come up with this unusual translation before now? I ask rhetorically because the reason is obvious. No one translates it that way because Hebrew doesn't work that way. I don't want to slight the Hebrew scholars that IP relies on to arrive at their understanding because, for all I know, they are misrepresenting those scholars just as they misrepresent Scripture. But I dismiss the the video's translation in its entirety. It's amateurish and demonstrates how a little knowledge can be dangerous.
Conclusion
In the first few minutes of the video, the narrator accused young earth creationists of believing, “that Christians, who believe the earth is old, have to misconstrue or reinterpret passages to make the Bible fit with an ancient earth and the theory of evolution.” After having reviewed all 10 points, I hope that you can see clearly that misconstruing and reinterpreting Scripture was all that the video offered to support its claims.
According to this video, God may not actually be the Creator who made the universe out of nothing, death may not be the penalty for sin but was something God had planned all along, and Adam wasn't even the first person but came after a world full of people had already lived and died. It's bizarre when someone claims to believe the Bible but never seems to understand the ordinary meaning of any passage he reads.
I didn't think any of the 10 points presented a problem for young earth creationism. Instead, I believe it highlights the dangerous gospel of theistic evolution. It's easy for people to say the creation account is merely poetry; but when they try to dig in and explain what Genesis “really means,” we're left with a confusing message that turns Scripture into gibberish. To say there was no Creator, no Adam, no first sin, and no judgment but you still need Jesus is a gospel that saves no one!
I remind you of Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees in John 5:39-47:
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