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The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence

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Professor Young has done a superb job in collating how different scholars have responded to the Old Testament flood account through the centuries in the light of extra-Biblical data. This detailed study was largely in response to the rise of support in the last 40 years among some (not all) Christians for the global as an explanation for much of the geological record. Young shows repeatedly how this recent phenomenon is out of step with the way Christian scholars have dealt with extra-Biblical data over the last two millennia. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the interaction between science and Christianity, in the history of geology, and in modern young earth creationism.

I would go on about all the details of the book, but Young does a superb job. He traces the way scientists and theologians alike have viewed the flood in the light of increasing amounts of extrabiblical evidence. The greatest understanding I had taken away from his book is that science was once used to help better understand the true meaning of scripture. Today many Christians believe science is irrelevant, but when the evidence is as tremendous as shown in this book it only further forces one to realize maybe they are just being stubborn in the way they want to read things, and not rejecting God.

As Stanley Jaki diagnosed in his "Genesis 1 Through the Ages", it was necessary for the Protestants, once they had rejected the infallible magisterium of the Catholic Church, to fall back on some other form of infallibility: that of the Bible. The problem, as Davis Young remarks (px) is that the Bible is not self-interpreting: it must be, as it has always been, interpreted within a certain context of "extra-biblical knowledge", i.e. our knowledge of the world around us which, being God's work, has a lot to say about Him.

That context of extra-biblical knowledge, fortunately, has not stagnated since men first attempted to make sense of the Bible. It has kept expanding and expanding, as observations and improved theories have accumulated in such sciences as geology, biology or geography, requiring ever finer and more informed interpretations of the texts.

In the process, a Biblical book or passage that may rationally have appeared to be historical to some of the greatest minds of the Church may now be revealed to be nothing more than a story, and just as fictional as one of Jesus's parables, whose value does not depend on our finding the bones of the Good Samaritan or the well-preserved oil-lamps of the foolish virgins buried somewhere on mount Ararat.

Taking the story of Noah as an example of the way increasing extra-biblical knowledge has transformed our understanding of Scripture, Young does for it what Jaki did (less charitably perhaps, but with a sounder ecclesiology) for Genesis 1, retracing more than two millenia of intellectual perplexity and progress in order to shed light on modern controversies.

Young clearly shows how problematic certain interpretations have become in the light of what we now know of the way things work: for countless evidential reasons, none of which have to do with "the rationalistic preconceptions of recent centuries", or any bias inherent in modern science other than a fondness for keeping one's eyes open, a literal reading of the Noah story has become untenable, all the efforts of the Woodmorappes of the world to make the impossible look plausible notwithstanding.

The book is not without its flaws. Being a Protestant, the author seems to believe in a Frankenstein monster of a "church" consisting of the Catholic Church until 1517, and then of the collective body of Protestants after that date, seen as having some sort of organic unity and as being continuous with the pre-Reform Catholic Church, while virtually none of the members of the post-1517 Church are deemed worthy of intellectual discussion, let alone of inclusion in the list of the "premier minds" of "the church."

Interestingly, when it comes to determining which aspects of the interpretation of the Bible are "non-negotiable", i.e. impervious to reinterpretation in the light of new evidence, Young has to fall back on pre-1517 decisions of the Catholic Church, since it seems hard to imagine how his patchwork "church" could ever produce any "settled interpretations" of its own (p308.)

That said, I highly recommend "The Biblical Flood" to anybody who wants to know what to think of the very vocal and self-assured defense made by certain modern Christians of a geographically or anthropologically universal Flood.

Davis A. Young is Professor of Geology at Calvin College. He is also the author of Creation and the flood: An alternative to flood geology and theistic evolution, Christianity and the Age of the Earth, and The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth. He is also the son of Edward J. Young, Professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, "As a professor of geology at a self-consciously Christian college with strong denominational ties... Quite often... I encounter those who are disappointed and distressed at what I say... I must not allow science to dictate my understanding of the Bible, they say... (this) has caused me to go back again and again to look closely at the Reformed theological tradition to which I belong. Has Reformed theology formally expressed such hostility to the use of extrabiblical information in interpreting the Bible?... I have attempted to sketch the broad outlines of the history of thought in the Christian world regarding the deluge narrative in the light of extrabiblical data..."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Modern searchers ... have mostly focused on a peak by the name of Mount Ararat... This is not the same Ararat referred to in early Christian tradition, however. Modern hunters of the ark appear to be looking in different places than the early Christians did." (Pg. 22)
"The discovery of all these new animals inevitably intensified the questions concerning the capacity of Noah's ark... Could the ark possibly have contained all these previously unknown animals? And how could species found only in the New World have traveled to the ark before the flood or returned after the waters subsided? Moreover, what could account for the fact that these species returned to their New World habitats in toto after the flood, without leaving any descendants behind in the Old World?" (Pg. 38)
"Those who insisted that all species of land animals had been preserved on the ark now had to include among them not only lions and bears but also mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, pterodactyls, megalosaurs, iguanodons, hylaeosaurs, and a host of other extinct mammals. The prospect of an ark with pairs of forty-foot-long monsters aboard stretched the limits of credulity." (Pg. 123-124)
"Setting aside the issue of whether carnivores could have ceased being carnivorous during the flood time, (Hugh) Miller noted that ... Many insects had no wings and feeble locomotive powers, some gnats could only live for a few hours or days after losing their wings, and other insects live only upon plants. Getting all the animals to the ark posed staggering difficulties, and getting them all back after the flood posed equally staggering difficulties. How would the insects have returned, for instance? As wingless grubs?" (Pg. 149-150)
"(In a worldwide flood) Coral reefs would have been destroyed by the pressure of the rising water, and freshwater fish and terrestrial plants would also have perished." (Pg. 199)
"If a global flood destroyed all life except for one pair of each kind of animal, then the ... animals indigenous solely to North America ... would have had to migrate from North American to the site of the ark and, having survived the flood on the ark, would then have had to migrate back to North America. But there is no fossil record of these species outside of North America... Morever, these species are incapable of covering huge distances overland. Snakes and shrews are slow movers that also have specific habitat and food requirements... How could ... the star-nosed mole, which cannot survive outside boggy and marshy terrain, have made its way to the ark and back?" (Pg. 231)

i thoroughly enjoyed this book, as i have another of his books; the bible, rocks and time. he treats the history with authority, and does so in a most gracious manner; so young earth people, don't be reluctant to purchase and read it, if you are wanting to be updated from Morris' the genesis flood.

There is a great deal to be admired in this work, it made me re-evaluate some of my strongly held beliefs that have been with me for decades, it made me think. I was unaware of the history of this subject and I will state emphatically that Davis Young does a superb job of illuminating the historical controversies over the centuries; I am better informed now, than I was before reading this book. The admonition for Christians to be educated on matters scientific is well stated. The quotes by Augustine cautioning Christians from stating more than they understand should be taught to every student of the Bible;

"Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the house of the faith think our scared writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men."

I could not agree more, we should either educate ourselves before speaking a subject relating to scientific issues, or remain silent on whatever topic we need to research until we have learned more.

There is however, a rather glaring omission, as one who became a Christian in the early 1970's, I was taught that the Earth was old, that the creative time periods mentioned as days in Genesis chapter one, were not literal 24 time periods, but rather creative periods of time, probably in the thousands of years of duration for each day. As this understanding fit with what I was taught in school, I really gave not much thought to the matter. I have since come to understand on my own research that the fifth and sixth creative time periods mentioned in the Genesis account would likely be on a time scale of millions of years of duration. There no reason to assume the creative time periods to be equal in length. Therefore, it is surprising to find out all these decades later how wide spread the "Young Earth" teaching actually is, having ran into a few here on the Amazon review pages, it really is quite a revelation to me. It becomes (in some ways) understandable then why Academia is so hostile to anything having to do with the Bible, because so many Christians believe things which are so obviously incorrect, and it provides fodder for secularist's to simply dismiss anything having to do with the Bible's history and teaching. This corroborates Augustine's counsel as quoted above. Mr. Young's omission being that there are quite a lot of us "Old Earth" believers around, and have been decades prior to his writing. His arguments focus exclusively on the YEC (Young Earth Crowd) as if this were the only legitimate Christian thought available, not so. Dr. Hugh Ross (an Old Earth Proponent) is contemporary with Mr. Young's publication, so I must conclude this omission is by design.

We cannot accept on the one hand advances science has made in Biochemistry, Biology and Astronomy which we then use to prove the cell's intelligent design and fine tuning of the Cosmos for the existence of life to be possible and then at the same time reject scientific evidence that does not support the Biblical event of a Global Deluge in geological record. "Houston we have a problem"!!!

Having said the above, we cannot read the account in Genesis 1:2 regarding God's spirit moving over the "face of the waters", without acknowledging this verse to be divinely inspired. It is simply not possible for Moses, educated in Egypt, to know this or even make a guess at it. The geological record is abundant everywhere on the planet, that the waters covered the Earth for periods in the millions of years of duration. Here in Colorado, stratification in layers of sedimentary rock laid down by water are simply everywhere. It is noteworthy however, that the geological record exposes anomalies that cannot be explained by Geologists either. At Red Rocks Amphitheater near Morrison, Colorado, exposed are the earliest rocks of the Earth's mantle the Fountain Formation lies directly upon the ancient granite and gneiss that gave rise to its subsequent sedimentary strata's. What is the most startling observational fact is that the strata layers indicate that this region was remarkably stable during all the vast epochs of time, until very recently. I have put my own hands on fossilized impressions of a mangrove swamp that are more than 6000 feet in elevation of their origin and tilted sharply and only thinly covered with top soil which indicates clearly the fossilized layer as being the last before the uplift occurred. The entire Rocky Mountain chain is a recent phenomena, geological pressures which would create this mountain chain do not simply turn themselves on and then off like this. In Durango we see sharply tilted strata uplifted and a horizontal glacial deposit right on top, no indication of an intervening epoch of time is visible between the two strata's. Something dramatic took place here in recent times that cannot be explained by Plate Tectonics or natural processes.

My point is this; if we cannot dismiss scientific evidence which support intelligent design, or lack of evidence which to support a Global Deluge, neither can we dismiss the evidence of the Genesis account being divinely inspired. For a historical comparison, both Aristotle and Plato imagined the Earth to be supported ultimately by a giant turtle. I will accept Mr. Young's premise that we must as enlightened Christians, reevaluate our understanding of scriptural text to have some harmony with scientific data. His analogy of a kangaroo surviving a round trip from Australia is a logical and well founded argument, Kuala and Pandas even more unlikely to survive any displacement from their habitat. I would however, submit that the creation sequence as enumerated in Genesis is correct and would have been unknowable to the Ancients, this lends more weight to divine inspiration of scripture which includes the Deluge narrative, further the balance historical facts such as the Israelite bondage, liberation from Egypt, conquering the area of Canaan are not disputed by serious historians, which are included in the first five books of the Bible. I am willing to admit anomalies' abound.

With all due respect to Mr. Young, I must take serious issue with the Evolutionary sympathies expressed in his book, Sir I would ask that you please reconsider your views on this matter. It is obvious that what the scriptures say is not always taught by religions. Likewise I make a distinction what academia says and what the facts of science enumerate. The "theory" of evolution is the epitome of speculation and opinion, which Mr. Young rejects when forthcoming from theologians. The hatred expressed by academics toward anything related to Bible is visceral; one need only look to quotes from luminaries such as Richard Dawkins or Isaac Asimov to note the degree of loathing, they are not at all shy in expressing their bigotry. Evolutionary theory has provided cover for secularist to commit all manner of atrocities (as if God does not exist, and mankind is not answerable to any higher authority than himself) and should be completely shunned by those claiming to be believers. Given the volume of excellent works produced by notable Christian PhD's of Bio-Chemistry and Biology it is clear that evolutionary dogma is simply untenable from a scientific point of view. Attempting to mix Christianity with Evolution is comparable to mixing Baal worship and dedication to Yahweh, this attempt was rejected by God in rather forceful measures. This last is why I can only rate this work at three stars.

The author does a fairly good job describing the history of the church's understanding of the Noachian Deluge. With few exceptions, the Flood had been accepted as universal. Then, in response to the rationalistic preconceptions of recent centuries, the church has largely backed away from Biblical truth, and settled for a local-flood compromise. Sadly, Davis Young, the author, himself is part of this compromising-evangelical community. In particular, his claims that the Ark could never have carried all of the world's animals is patently incorrect. See Woodmorappe, John. 1996. Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study.