Blast from the Past: The First Thing I Ever Wrote about Ken Ham…From March 13, 2010.

Given my research and writing these past few years on the young creationist movement, and the upcoming release of my self-published book, The Heresy of Ham, I thought it would be interesting to share my very first impressions of Ken Ham, when I first was even made aware of him back in 2010. What follows is a post I wrote on my previous blog. Enjoy…Other than adding the pictures, I didn’t change anything.

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Recently I watched a 30-minute DVD by Ken Ham, the founder of the Creation Museum in Kentucky. He is a staunch literal six day creationist and makes the case that if you do not hold to a literal six days creation story, then you are putting your own human authority (and more notably science-evolutionary authority) above the authority of the Bible. This, he asserts ultimately leads to a collapse of Christian morality, for without Biblical authority we have evolution, abortion, pornography, etc.

Well, if Ken Ham is right, then I am potentially in big trouble, for I do not think Genesis 1 gives us a historical/scientific description of the creation of the universe. That being said, Ken Ham makes one decent point in his presentation. Unfortunately, the ultimate foundation for his overall argument is completely off.

The object of Ken Ham’s presentation is those who say that the six days in Genesis 1 are not a literal six days. Many Christians say that each “day” could be a long period of time, possibly millions of years. They then point to Psalm 9 and II Peter 3:8 that say, “One day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” to back up their view with Scripture.

Ham’s response to this proposition is that “a day” means “a day.” Virtually everywhere in the Bible when “yom” (the Hebrew word) is used in conjunction with a number, it always means a literal day. Well, he actually is right. I can fully agree with him that in Genesis 1, “day” means “day,” and not “long periods of time.” It is, pun fully intended, “plain as day.” But although he gets this one point right, there is a more fundamental issue that Ham fully gets wrong. That issue revolves around the question, “What are we reading when we read Genesis 1 (or Genesis 1-11 for that matter)?

Ham dismisses all the modern scientific evidence for an older earth, a big-bang, etc. out of hand as simply “humanistic attempts to subvert biblical authority.” He says that scientists came up with this idea of “billions of years,” and that too many theologians have foolishly tried to “fit” these billions of years into the story of Genesis 1. Again, he’s actually right—it’s foolish to try to read “billions of years” into the text of Genesis 1. The problem with those types of theologians is that they have tried to make Genesis 1 into a scientific account. Ham is right to criticize them; but he is guilty of the same thing.

When faced with Genesis 1, some Christians have seen “day,” and have said, “No, it really means ‘long periods of time.” By contrast, when Ham sees “day,” he says, “It means that God literally created the universe in six 24-hour days, back at the beginning of the history of the universe.” Both have interpreted Genesis 1 wrong. The first view has tried to interpret “day” as a historical long period of time; Ham has tried to interpret “day” as a historical day. Both suffer from the same problem—they have failed to rightly understand the genre of Genesis 1-11. Both are assuming that Genesis 1 is making a scientific claim about the creation of the universe.

The ironic thing about Ham’s arguments is that, although he has completely misunderstood both the literary context (genre) and historical context (ancient Near East) of Genesis 1, he goes on at length about how context is so important. Context does indeed determine the meaning of a text; but Hamm seems to think “context” is nothing more than just “reading what it says, without interpreting it.” In fact, he essentially says this very thing: “I’m not interpreting it [Genesis 1]; I’m just reading it as is.” He then compares reading Genesis 1 to reading the historical account of the wars of Napoleon. But let’s look at what Ham has just done. He has just made the determination to interpret Genesis 1 as a historical narrative, while at the same time denying that any interpretation is going on. What he fails to see is that there is no such thing as reading something without interpreting it—it’s impossible. It is the very act of interpretation that gives meaning. Without interpreting these symbols, these words are just lines of ink on a page. My question to Ham would be, “On what basis are you deciding to read Genesis 1 as a historical narrative?” To answer that question with, “Because it is…that’s how God wrote it,” is no answer at all.

Ham then makes the statement, “God communicates to us in language, and we need to take the language that God has had people use to write the Bible and let it speak to us, and not us impose our ideas on the language.” Ham is completely right. But then again, that is the very thing Ham is not doing. His “idea” that he is imposing on the language of Genesis 1 is that it must be a scientific historical account of the creation of the universe. The problem with that view is that, if you assume that these stories go back to Moses at the time of the Exodus, no one wrote “scientific accounts” of anything back then. “Science” in our modern sense, did not yet exist. Furthermore, the way every single culture back then spoke of ultimate origins was decidedly not in a historical/scientific way.

When ultimate origins were written about, they were written in the genre of myth. They were writing about things that were beyond the scope of their understanding, and therefore used highly symbolic and poetic language within the ancient genre of myth. Their aim was not to give a “blow by blow” account of exactly what happened, but rather to give their interpretation regarding the meaning of who God/the gods were, who Man was, and what the purpose of life was. In short, they used the language of myth. If that is so (and any glance at the creation stories of ancient culture will show that it is), then what Ham is doing is imposing his modernistic-scientific ideas of reality back onto an ancient text that simply did not think in those categories. He has, contrary to what he says elsewhere, started “outside the Bible” (i.e. modernistic-scientific concepts of what is truth) and then reinterpreted what Scripture says.

The problem of both Ham and the “long periods of time” Christians is that they trying to read a mythological text as a scientific account. That’s like trying to interpret “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report” as the nightly news. The end result is you’re going to get some screwy ideas

Ham responds to the objection to a literal six days that says the sun was created on the fourth day—how could you have a 24 hour day before the creation of the sun? He says what you need is light, and you have that on the first day. But the very basis for both sides of that argument is wrong. Both are imposing scientific reasoning on a non-scientific text.

Ham then makes the assertion that if you say “no six literal days,” then you’re saying that the Bible is fallible; and if it’s fallible, what’s to stop you from saying there is no literal resurrection or virgin birth? My response is that Ham is failing to understand that the Bible is full of different genres of literature. I don’t believe that Genesis 1 is talking about six 24-hour days at the beginning of history, not because I think it’s wrong, but because I think it’s not trying to make that historical claim. Using Ham’s reasoning, I could say, “If you don’t believe God has literal wings, because Psalm 61:4 says, ‘let me find refuge under the shadow of your wings,’ then you’re saying the Bible is fallible, and you’ve just rejected the resurrection.” But that would be absurd. Psalm 61:4 is using poetry and imagery—to interpret that as a scientific factual claim is to in fact misinterpret it.

But do you see what Ham is doing? He is actually the one who is subjecting the authority of the Bible to the greater claims of modernistic science. He is saying that if Genesis 1 is not scientifically factual then the Bible is fallible. For him, the authority of the Bible rests not on the inspired revelation of God through Jesus Christ and through the life of the Church, but rather on the scientific provability set up by modernistic science.

Finally, one way Ham tries to support his view is by quoting Martin Luther. Here it is:

“The ‘days’ of creation were ordinary days in length. We must understand that these days were actual days, contrary to the opinion of the holy fathers. Whenever we observe that the opinions of the Fathers disagree with Scripture, we reverently bear with them and acknowledge them to be our elders. Nevertheless, we do not depart from the authority of Scripture for their sake.”

Ironically, by quoting this, Ham acknowledges that the Church Fathers, the very ones who were key in acknowledging and forming our canon of Scripture (i.e. the ones who put together our Bible) did not, in fact, interpret Genesis 1 in a scientific way. And then Ham takes Luther’s interpretation and confuses it with the authority of Scripture.

Ham’s major flaw is two-fold. First, he fails to understand that interpretation is inevitable. The question is not, “Are you questioning the authority of Scripture?” The question is, “Since Scripture is authoritative, and since in Scripture we have the account in Genesis 1, what is the correct way to interpret it?” Secondly, Ham, for all his insistence on the authority of Scripture, has actually subordinated the authority of Scripture to the modernistic-scientific worldview that says, “Unless it is factually verifiable, then it cannot be true.”

Simply put, I do not look at Ham’s view and accuse him of undermining the authority of Scripture. Rather, I look at his view and accuse him of not knowing how to read.

Now certainly, to say that Genesis 1-11 is in the genre of “myth” needs considerable explanation. In our Christian culture in America, “myth” is equated with “false,” “fairy tales,” and ultimately “blasphemous.” Well, despite the misconceptions of the actual literary genre of “myth,” we need to make sure we know exactly what the term originally meant. And certainly, if we grasp this, it will in fact force us to reconsider how we read Genesis 1-11. I think, though, it will bring light, and not confusion. It will actually help us understand the inspired revelation found in Scripture even more. But this topic must wait for another day.