I think the extract from my book chapter shows that most from 1660 accepted
a chaos rstitution interpretation with chaos lasting an indefinite but
shortish period.
I would now argue from 1550 or so and very much from 1600 as this was the
view of Descartes, Bacon, Grotius and Mersenne, 4 heavywieghts. This was
folowed by whiston and other Theories of the Earth and passed over to the 18
Century. Most prot and cath exegetes supported it (except Matt Henry, Andrew
Fuller)
In 1748 in his Natural History Buffon mocked Whiston et al but adopted a
similar view. In his Epochs of Nature 1778 he is more explicit and allows a
great length of time for the Gap/chaos and then six periods rather than
days. He cited Calmet anRC exegete. Some of the Sorbonne were unhappy but
some RC clergy supported him including Soulavie and Needham. I suggest you
read Roger's biography ET 1990
At the same time Whitehurst a mate of Erasmus Darwin published similar views
and in 1775 de Luc wrote to Queen Charlotte in later published letters a
long day interp of Genesis to allow for geology and in 1790s wrote similar
views in the conservative high church Anglican journal the British Critic
and had no opposition.
I have searched in vain for oppsition to these old earth views of Genesis
but cant find many examples (RCS Barruel and Sorbonne theols in France, poss
some of the Anglican Hackney phalanx in England and R Kirwan) By reading
both english and french I have found more French examples most of which a
either pre-revolutonary or post revolution arch-conservatives like
Chateaubriand. Now my french is appalling and I have garnered as many
english writers as posssible.
I will be fair and say that Buffon and Whitehurst only modified an old
interpretation and Chalmers got the credit.
As I have said before YEC was very much a minority view from 1600 onwards as
most allowed a bit more time and by 1770s millions of years or at least
70,000
Henry Morris eat your heart out. and perhaps this might cure Ham.
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Clarke" <jdac@alphalink.com.au>
To: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
Cc: "Stephen J. Krogh" <panterragroup@mindspring.com>; <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2002 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: History of 6000 Year old creation
Hi Michael
Your comment about Buffon is tantalising. I was under the impression ne was
close to being a lapsed catholic with a near deathbed revival. can you tell
us
more?
Jon
Michael Roberts wrote:
> Dear Stephen
>
> Will this be OK for starters - my chapter out of the book The Discovery of
> Time ed S McCready . I wrote this two years ago and now find I was not
> strong enough on the lack of YEC in the 18th century. Recently I have
found
> that it was Buffon who devised the Gap Theory in 1770s and not Chalmers.
It
> really stuffs up YEC as something which went out in c1660s with a slight
> revival in the 1820s to 1840 and bopped down by such evangelicals as
> Sedgwick and Hitchcock and really only dates back to 1961 when M and W
wrote
> their little book.
>
> Michael
>
> *******
> The Early church
>
> The early Christians were more concerned about time and chronology and
soon
> began to elucidate the biblical chronology. Until 400AD the vast majority
of
> Christians believed that the earth would last only 6000 years and had
> existed for about 5500 years when Christ was born. They argued the latter
> from taking all biblical chronologies, especially those in Genesis 5 and
11,
> literally. The former idea stemmed from "Chiliasm" - a belief that the
> earth would last Six days of millennia (from Psalm 90 vs 4 and 2 Peter 3
vs
> 8). This was proclaimed, rather than reasoned, as in the Epistle of
Barnabas
> (c130 AD); "Therefore, my children, in six days - six thousand years, that
> is - there is going to be the end of everything." This concern with the
end
> of the world, or the coming of the Millennium, may explain their great
> interest in chronology.
> An early example is Ad Autolycum by Theophilus of Antioch. Little is known
> about him beyond that he became Bishop of Antioch in 169 AD and wrote this
> volume after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD. He was a Greek and
was
> strongly influenced by Jewish Christians. At the end there is a chronology
> from creation to the death of Marcus Aurelius (d 180 AD), a duration of
5695
> years, suggesting that Creation occurred in 5515 BC. The chronologies are
> detailed and calculated from the biblical data and are not far off
Ussher's
> compilations and today's' estimates from Abraham to the Exile.
> Theophilus was highly literalistic, while others, like Augustine, took the
> days of Genesis allegorically; few reckoned the earth to be more than a
few
> thousand years old.
>
> The Renaissance
>
> The Renaissance was a time of broadening of horizons and exploration.
> Columbus discovered the New World; Copernicus (1473-1543) rejected the
> Ptolemaic system and proposed heliocentricity as the best explanation of
the
> relation of the sun and planets. There was a revival in the study of
ancient
> texts, classical and biblical, which also resulted in the Reformation. In
> all this flowering of exploration, scholarship and literature there was a
> sense of the unity of knowledge.
> It also marked the dawn of a historical consciousness but concepts were
few
> and the Scriptures were some of few texts, which went back to the earliest
> history. Thus attempts at the history of the world involved the fusing of
> biblical and classical writings. An example is Sir Walter Ralegh's
> (1552?-1618) History of the World, which he published in 1614 while in the
> Bloody tower of the Tower of London. Ralegh considered the world to be
> created in about 4000 BC and also gave a long dissertation on the four
> rivers of the Garden of Eden (Genesis chap 2). Ralegh's date was the same
> proposed by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546), the Roman
> Catholic Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621), and the devisor of the map
> projection, Mercator (1512-1594). A century earlier Columbus (1451-1506)
was
> more generous with 5443 BC. These few dates show how widely accepted a
date
> of 4000 to 5000 BC was for the origin of the earth. The majority of
> Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians concurred on about 4000BC and
the
> Geneva Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) typically reckoned "the present
> world is drawing to a close before it has completed its six thousandth
> year."
>
> Chiliasm
> As the Reformation progressed some developed a revamped Chiliasm. In the
> early 1600s the Dutch Protestant theologian Josef Scaliger put creation at
> 25 October 3950 BC. (Autumn was a favoured time for Creation, as the
fruits
> would provide sustenance for the winter.) The most well-known Chiliaist
was
> Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh (1581-1656). Ussher, whose uncle was an
> ancestor of the Queen (through an illegitimate niece of the Duke of
> Wellington), was a very able scholar and no obscurantist. He became
> Archbishop of Armagh in 1625. The most well-known of his works was Annales
> Veteris Testamenti (1650), which was a solid piece of chronological
> scholarship in which he argued from historical grounds that Jesus was born
> not in 4BC. But he is remembered for his date of creation - 4004 BC.
Despite
> popular representations, he did not arrive at this figure from arithmetic
> applied to dates of patriarchs and other Old Testament figures. To Ussher
> there were six Chiliastic days of 1000 years apiece followed by the
seventh
> day of the Millennium. There were four Chiliaistic days before Christ and
> thus Creation took place in 4004 BC, on the night before 23 October. Adam
> was created on 28 October. This date causes amusement to many, but the
rest
> of Ussher's chronology was very sound for the 17th century as he was a
> careful scholar. ( figure n.) His chronological calculations for the rest
of
> the Old Testament are close to today's estimates. Had not Ussher's
> chronology been inserted in many English Bibles from 1704, he would
probably
> have been forgotten, except to historians who valued his careful work.
>
> Theories of the Earth, 1660-1710
>
> The Royal Society of London, founded in 1660, epitomised the flowering of
> science both in Britain and the continent. The work of Robert Boyle, Isaac
> Newton and others in physics and chemistry needs no introduction. Less
> well-known is the natural history of John Ray (1627-1705), Edward Lhwyd
> (1660-1709) and others. The period also saw the beginnings of a scientific
> study of the earth and their findings were published in turgid volumes
known
> as "Theories of the Earth". On a first reading these seem to be a literal
> reading of Genesis stories with a few semi-scientific glosses. A closer
read
> shows them to be more profound as they meld together the Bible, the
> classics, almost mediaeval "book" learning with the citing of endless
> authorities and scientific insight in a Chaos-Restitution interpretation
of
> Genesis One. Here they shared the outlook of most theologians (except
> Ussher!) and literary writers such as Thomas Traherne and Alexander Pope.
> Instead of taking the Creation story to teach creation in six short days,
> writers, following an interpretation going back to the early Church
Fathers,
> claimed from Genesis (Chapter one verse one) that God first created Chaos
> (without form and void) and after an interval recreated it in six days.
The
> duration of Chaos was undefined. With Ussher it was twelve hours, but for
> most it was a long and unspecified duration. Some, notably Thomas Burnet
> (1635?-1715), Edmond Halley (1656-1742) and William Whiston (1667-1752),
> reckoned the days to be more than twenty-four hours. Halley attempted a
> calculation of the age of the earth from the sea's salinity, but came to
no
> firm conclusions other than it was tens of thousands of years old.
Likewise
> theological writers of the day; Bishop Simon Patrick (1626-1707) reckoned
> that God first created Chaos and then later re-ordered it in Six Days. He
> said of the duration of Chaos, 'It might be . a great while;.' Few
accepted
> Ussher's date of 4004 BC for the initial Creation, though most accepted
that
> humanity first appeared in about the year 4000 BC, hence the general
> acceptance of the rest of Ussher's chronology. The extension of time by
the
> "Theorists" and contemporary theologians was minute compared to the
billions
> of years of geological time, but was, as Stephen Gould wrote of Whiston's
> argument that the day of Genesis one was a year long was, "a big step in
the
> right direction." In Britain the way was open for a longer time-scale.
> Fossils and Geology
> Not until the late 17th Century were "formed stones" or fossils recognised
> as imprints of dead creatures rather than formed as "sports of nature" in
> place. Only then could "fossils" be used to demonstrate former life and it
> took a century before the succession of fossils was used to put strata
into
> historical order. Possibly the first person who used the succession of
> fossils to demonstrate evolution was Charles Darwin in a notebook in 1838,
> shortly before he "discovered" Natural Selection. In the 1690s there were
> insufficient grounds to suggest "Deep Time" or the continual reworking of
> the earth's crust as understandings of erosion were rudimentary. Ray,
> Whiston and others cannot be expected to have done otherwise.
> Most of the writers had some "scientific" understanding and often spent
as
> much time refuting each other as suggesting new ideas. Some were mostly
> speculative, as was Thomas Burnet's The Theory of the Earth. Despite his
> devotion to the Deluge, he sought to explain phenomena naturalistically
and
> somewhat extended the duration of Genesis One. John Ray's Miscellaneous
> Discourses concerning the dissolution of the world shows the beginning of
> careful observation on earth processes and questions over geological time.
> After reading the first edition of Ray's Miscellaneous Discourses, Lhwyd
> wrote to Ray on 30 February 1691, 'Upon the reading on your discourse of
the
> rains continually washing away and carrying down earth from the mountains,
> it puts me in mind.which I observed', and then described what he had
> observed in Snowdonia. He described innumerable boulders which had
"fallen"
> into the Llanberis valleys. (Most of these are glacial erratics.) As 'but
> two or three that have fallen in the memory of any man., in the ordinary
> course of nature we shall be compelled to allow the rest many thousands of
> years more than the age of the world.' Ray commented on Lhwyd's findings
and
> seemed deliberately to avoid facing the logic of Lhwyd's comments. He
nailed
> his colours firmly to the fence, and did not explicitly reject an Ussher
> chronology. However from his discussion of Chaos and other comments, it is
> fair to conclude that he accepted that the earth was considerably more
than
> five-and-a-half thousand years old, but left the reader to decide.
>
> Time in the Enlightenment
>
> Often the 18th Century is presented as a geological Dark Age until Hutton
> shed light with his theory in 1788. The 18th century did not see a rapid
> advance in geology until about 1780, as observers continued the work of
> their 17th century forbears. Geologically the most important question was
> how to work out the historical succession of strata and that occurred at
the
> end of the century.
> Two who broke loose from the Theories of the Earth were de Maillet and
> Buffon. Benoit de Maillet (1656-1738) was a French diplomat with a sound
> grasp of the geography and geology of the Mediterranean and amplified
> Cartesian cosmogony. His work Telliamed: or conversations between an
Indian
> philosopher and a French missionary did not appear until 1748, though
> manuscripts had circulated from 1720. It was an odd work both accepting
> mermaids and reporting careful observation on marine deposition. Our main
> interest is that the author reckoned the earth to be over two billion
years
> old and according to Albritton the work acted as a leaven among 18th
century
> geologists.
> Buffon
> Buffon, born as Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-88) was the Keeper of the
Jardin
> de Roi in Paris and in 1749 published the first volumes of Histoire
> Naturelle, but by his death in had published only 35 of the projected 50
> volumes. His work was widely available in English. His classification of
the
> natural world is of no concern to us, but his discussion of Whiston,
Burnet
> and Woodward in the first volume of his Natural History is. He had little
> time for these Theories of the Earth and said, 'I reject these vain
> speculations.' However according to Roger, his biographer, Buffon borrowed
> more from Whiston than he was willing to admit. It also shows that the
> Theorists' longer timescale was wellknown on the continent. Buffon also
> carried out experiments on the cooling of red-hot globes of iron and then
> applied his findings to the cooling of a globe the size of the earth and
> estimated that the age of the earth to be about 75,000 years. Though
vastly
> greater than 4000 BC, it was not drastically different from British
writers
> in the previous century and gave some experimental data to support them.
In
> unpublished manuscripts Buffon reckoned the earth to be 3 million years
old.
> In 1751 he was censured by the theologians at the Sorbonne and responded
by
> claiming that the first verse of Genesis should read; "In the beginning
God
> created the materials of the heavens and the earth". This, in fact, is
> similar to the ideas of the initial creation of chaos, which was so widely
> held - at least by Protestants in Britain and Immanuel Kant.
> Chaos and Time
> Buffon went further than his contemporaries on the duration of time but
the
> consensus of a Chaotic existence of matter in the early phases of the
> creation found its way into 18th century poetry. One was Erasmus Darwin
> (1731-1802), whose early attempt of putting forward a theory of evolution
> was in rhyming couplets. If Buffon is a forerunner of Charles Darwin,
> Erasmus Darwin is doubly so. Charles wrote of his grandfather, 'he fully
> believed in God as Creator of the universe.' and Erasmus's fin de siecle
> poems on evolution, considered by Horace Walpole as "sublime", reflect
> current understandings of Creation and Chaos,
> '---- Let there be light!' proclaimed the Almighty Lord.
> Astonished Chaos heard the potent word:-
> Through all his realms the kindling Ether runs,
> And the mass starts into a million suns;'
> The views of Erasmus Darwin on the age of the earth are similar to
> Christians of the time. Take William Williams (1717- 1791), who wrote the
> hymn Guide me O thou great redeemer. In 1756 he wrote Golwg ar Deymas
Crist
> (A View of Christ's Kingdom) an epic poem answering the Deists. Chapter II
> of his epic poem is an account of Creation. There were two creations: the
> creation of the basic materials - Chaos - and the creation of the universe
> with those materials, all of which God accomplished 'in one hundred and
> forty four hours', as in Genesis. Though the Re-creation took 144 hours,
> Pantycelyn gives no indication how long Chaos had existed. Most other
> religious writers held similar views and only a minority espoused a young
> earth. At the end of the 18th century they also sang about it as in
Joseph
> Haydn's oratorio The Creation, with the orchestral introduction on The
Chaos
> followed by the aria 'And a new created world sprung up at God's command'.
> The libretto of The Creation dates from England in about 1750. An unknown
> poet took Milton's ideas in Paradise Lost and wrote it for Handel. In 1792
> Haydn obtained a copy while in England and put it to music on returning to
> Austria.
> Many poets incorporated Chaos when versifying on Creation or related
> matters. The ubiquity of Chaos is evidenced by the Black poet Phillis
> Wheatly's Thoughts on the Works of Providence;
> That called creation from eternal night.
> 'Let there be light,' He said: and from his profound
> Old Chaos heard
> Wheatley was a slave born in Africa who was purchased and treated as one
of
> the family by John Wheatley of Boston. The Wheatleys, slave-owners and
> slave, moved in Evangelical circles and are more properly considered in
> respect of abolitionism, but this sheds light on how the concept of Chaos
> and thus of the duration of time was widely held. Sadly Phillis died in
> poverty at the age of 31 in 1784.
> Hutchinsonian Literalism
> Very different are the clerical scientists John Hutchinson (1674-1737) and
> his disciple Alexander Catcott (1725-79). In 1748 Hutchinson wrote Moses'
> Principia to oppose Newton. Both lay great store on Genesis and sought to
> correct the "errors" of Newtonianism. Far less is made of the Chaos than
in
> the Theories and Hutchinson seems not to hold that the period of chaos or
> tohu va bohu was of any significant duration. In 1868 his disciple Catcott
> wrote his Treatise on the Deluge which implied that Chaos was of short
> duration. The Hutchinsonian ideas were held by some until the early 19th
> century and the last Hutchinsonian scientist seems to have been the
> entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850), who argued for a Six-Day creation
in
> his Bridgewater Treatise. It would be fair to see Hutchinsonianism as a
> biblicist reaction to the prevalent Newtonianism.
> For the first three-quarters of the century there was no consensus on
the
> duration of time. What the uneducated believed no one can say with
certainty
> but the case of Phillis Wheatley should caution against assuming a mere
six
> thousand years as only the literate have left any evidence. A minority did
> take the Bible literally and adhere to an Ussher chronology,
> but most Christians, whether evangelical or not, stretched matters with an
> indefinite chaos with humanity limited to 6,000 years. It is difficult to
> decide whether the lines of William Cowper (1731-1800), an evangelical
poet,
> who also wrote a poem of appreciation to the botanical poet, Erasmus
Darwin,
> reflect a concern for geology or not,
> Some drill and bore
> The solid earth, and from the strata there
> Extract a register, by which we learn
> That he who made it, and reveal'd its date
> To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
> William Cowper "The Task"
>
> The Discovery of Deep Time.
>
> Until the end of the 18th Century the vastness of time was little
> understood. Though the priority for the discovery of Deep Time is often
> assigned to James Hutton (1726-97), the Scottish physician and scientist,
> the "discovery" was also made by several scientists in Europe in the last
> two decades of the 18th century; the Genevan polymath and mountaineer
Henri
> de Saussure (1740-99) in the Alps near Chamonix in 1778, the much-maligned
> German mineralogist Gottlieb Werner (1749-1817), the Parisian
> palaeontologists Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Alexander Brogniart and in
> England, the Canal engineer William Smith (1769-1839) working near Bath.
> None should be given all the credit. However by 1800 the age of the earth
> was known to be millions of years.
> Bound up with this was the development of the use of fossils to determine
> stratigraphy and the historical order of rocks. Before long the succession
> of life was known with the attendant fact of extinction. The stratigraphic
> column was slowly worked out and was the main task of geologists until
> mid-century and slowly the familiar sequence of Cambrian, Ordovician, etc.
> was worked out.
> Yet no precise figure could be given to the age of the earth; de
Saussure
> thought the earth to be very old, his compatriot J.A.de Luc (1727-1817)
> thought it to be tens of thousands, yet in the 1780s Abb» Soulavie was
> denounced for impiety by fellow Abb» Barruel for allegedly giving an
> estimate of 356,913,770 years. By 1820 the eccentric British
> clerical-geologist William Buckland (1784-1856) was reckoning "millions of
> millions" of years. There was no concerted attack by the church as most
> educated Christians happily accepted geologists findings, which was not
> surprising as many were clergy. Prominent at the end of the 18th century
> were John Playfair (1748-1819) of Edinburgh and Joseph Townsend
(1739-1816)
> of Bath, who publicised the work of Hutton and Smith respectively. Some
> churchmen did oppose geology, but they were always a small minority.
> Christian Accommodation
> At the beginning of the 19th Century many Christian or nominally
Christian,
> writers modified the consensus of the Theorists. The sequence based on
> Genesis One to Eleven of the initial creation of Chaos, re-ordering
Creation
> in Six Days with man being created in about 4000BC and then the Deluge
> evolved into a vastly extended Chaos to allow for the vast time of geology
> and a multiplication of Deluges. Theologians quietly slipped geology into
> the Chaos. The first theologian seems to have been Thomas Chalmers
> (1780-1847) at St Andrews in the winter of 1802. In 1816 the future
> Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner (1780-1862) published similar
> ideas in A Treatise on the Records of Creation. Both Chalmers and Sumner
> were Evangelicals - of an intellectual bent. This harmonisation of geology
> and Genesis was widely accepted and prevented any major conflict, but from
> 1820 to 1850 a minority tried to dismiss geology and insist on a Six-Day
> Creation. Their strongest opponents were the clerical geologists and their
> supporters.
> From about 1810 the main concern of English geologists was simply to
work
> out the stratigraphic order of rocks before asking more philosophical
> questions. Most geologists accepted some kind of multiple Catastrophism
with
> Noah's Deluge as the last of these, and were known as Diluvialists. In the
> 1820s some geologists, notably Charles Lyell (1797-1875), rejected
> Catastrophism and suggested a more gradual Uniformitarianism. Thus
meetings
> of the Geological Society of London were often fiery debates between the
> Fluvialists led by Lyell and the Diluvialists led by the Rev W.D.Conybeare
> (1787-1857), when no holds were barred. These were great fun as were the
> associated dinner parties where the port flowed freely. The debates are
> often presented as if it were Lyell who introduced notions of a great age.
> He did not as all of the "Conybeare Sect" (as Lyell called his friends)
> accepted vast geological ages. Some of the humour may be seen in Henry De
la
> Beche's watercolour cartoon lampooning Lyell's "piddling" geology. De la
> Beche (1796-1855) was the first director of the British Geological Survey.
> However the result of Uniformitarianism was that the Deluge was no longer
> seen as geologically significant or as the last of many Catastrophes, but
> many geologists were not entirely convinced of Lyell's Uniformitarianism.
> Lyell scarcely affected opinions on the age of the earth.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stephen J. Krogh" <panterragroup@mindspring.com>
> To: <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 7:56 PM
> Subject: History of 6000 Year old creation
>
> >
> > I am looking for references for how old is the concept of the 6000 yr
old
> > earth or creation. I know this was discussed in earlier posts but am
> unable
> > to find them. Thanks.
> >
> >
> > Stephen J. Krogh, P.G.
> > The PanTerra Group
> > http://panterragroup.home.mindspring.com
> >
-- "It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the earth as a pale crescent dwindling against the stars, until at last they look for it in vain".Arthur C. Clarke
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