A.W. Pink and the Gap Theory

As I was reading Arthur W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God (which I am borrowing from a library), I came upon an interesting section where Pink discusses the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating an individual. He likens it to the Holy Spirit's work in renewing the desolate world in Genesis 1. The interesting part about it is that Pink here argues for a Gap[1] interpretation of Genesis, which he then uses as a springboard for his discussion on the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. In the fourth chapter of his book, he writes,

A beautiful type of the operations of the Holy Spirit antecedent to the sinner's "belief of the truth", is found in the first chapter of Genesis. We read in verse 2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The original Hebrew here might be literally rendered thus: "And the earth had become a desolate ruin, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." In "the beginning" the earth was not created in the condition described in verse 2. Between the first two verses of Genesis 1 some awful catastrophe had occurred—possibly the fall of Satan—and, as the consequence, the earth had been blasted and blighted, and had become a "desolate ruin", lying beneath a pall of "darkness." Such also is the history of man. Today, man is not in the condition in which he left the hands of his Creator: an awful catastrophe has happened, and now man is a "desolate ruin" and in total "darkness" concerning spiritual things. Next we read in Genesis 1 how God refashioned the ruined earth and created new things to inhabit it. First we read, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Next we are told, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." The order is the same in the new creation: there is first the action of the Spirit, and then the Word of God giving light. Before the Word found entrance into the scene of desolation and darkness, bringing with it the light, the Spirit of God "moved." So it is in the new creation. "The entrance of Thy words giveth light" (Ps. 119:130), but before it can enter the darkened human heart the Spirit of God must operate upon it.[2]

As a friend of mine pointed out, it is noteworthy that the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the restoration of Israel using the language of creation: "I looked on the earth, and behold, it was formless and void; And to the heavens, and they had no light" (Jeremiah 4:23). How well this interpretation holds up, however, I will leave for the reader to decide.[3]

End Notes

1. The gap theory postulates that an indefinite span of time exists between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. This time span is usually considered to be quite large (millions of years) and is also reputed to encompass the so-called “geologic ages.” Proponents of the gap theory also postulate that a cataclysmic judgment was pronounced upon the earth during this period as the result of the fall of Lucifer (Satan) and that the ensuing verses of Genesis chapter 1 describe a re-creation or reforming of the earth from a chaotic state and not an initial creative effort on the part of God. (Sofield, Jack C. The Gap Theory of Genesis Chapter One. Bible.org. <http://bible.org/article/gap-theory-genesis-chapter-one>.)
2. Pink, Arthur Walkington. The Sovereignty of God (Sixth Edition). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1959 (repr. 1975) pp. 90-91.
3. For a good book critiquing the Gap theory, I would recommend Weston W. Fields' Unformed and Unfilled: A Critique of the Gap Theory. New Leaf Publishing Group, 2005.

Another Fake Missing Link

Thanks to Scholar for Truth for bringing this one up via facebook.

New Hominid Species Not A Missing Link, Scientists Say
Doubt over claims that we descended from new species and disagreement about how close a cousin it was.

Apr 8, 2010

By Devin Powell
Inside Science News Service

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Two million years ago in South Africa, a juvenile ape-like creature that walked upright fell down a deep hole and died. His remains were buried until 2008, when a nine-year-old boy named Matthew literally stumbled upon them -- tripping over a log and uncovering a remarkably-preserved skull and set of fossils.

These fossils -- and the remains of a middle-aged female adult found nearby -- reveal an unusual patchwork quilt of features: some primitive and apish, others advanced and human-like, in a combination never before seen together in the same body.

Matthew's father, Lee Berger, has raised the possibility that the earliest humans may have descended from this new species: Australopithecus sediba.

"Sediba means natural spring, fountain or wellspring in Sotho, an appropriate name for a species that might be the point from which the genus Homo arises," Berger said in statement about the find, which will be published Friday in Science.

The first hominids to walk upright 3.5 million years ago, Australopithecus, had chimp-sized brains, protruding faces, and feet built for climbing. The earliest species thought to be human (or Homo) started to emerge over 2 million years ago with bigger brains, smaller teeth and longer legs.

Berger, a paleontologist at the University Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, argues that A. sediba could have been a link between the Australopiths and the earliest Homos.

But other researchers find this "missing link" idea hard to swallow.

"This is an outstanding find and Lee should really be congratulated," said renowned paleontologist Meave Leakey, who traveled to Africa to inspect the fossils. "However I do not think that they have anything to do with Homo or the ancestry of Homo."

The remarkably-complete remains belong to a female adult and a male child, both about 4 feet tall, that seem to have fallen into an underground cave. Their remains were carried by flowing water into deeper underground hollows and slowly buried in mud that turned to rock over the course of time.

"Normally we have only a hip bone, a skull, a hand bone or a foot bone and often we cannot even be sure what species the fossils represent," said Leakey. "Here we have a collection of fossils from single individuals that are exceptionally well preserved and that, with further work, are likely to be even more complete."

To figure out how old these remains are, the scientists first looked at the other bones found nearby -- species of hyena and wild ass that appeared in Africa around 2.36 million years ago and had disappeared by 1.5 million years ago.

The scientists also dated the remains by calculating the amount of uranium and lead encased with them. Over time, uranium breaks down into lead at a steady rate -- a ticking clock that revealed an age of 2 million years. The rocks that formed around the bones confirm this date; they contain traces of a reversal of the Earth's magnetic field that happened around 1.9 million years ago.

This timing is problematic for the argument that the new species could be an ancestor to the human lineage.

"We already have good diagnostic jaws of Homo older than this," said William Kimbel, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University in Tempe. "It doesn't strike me as terribly likely that this represents a population that was the font from which all later Homo evolved."

Fossil remains show that tool-users with big brains were already walking the Earth at this time -- such as East Africa's "handy man" (Homo habilis), thought to have lived between 2.4 and 1.4 million years ago, and Homo erectus, often described as a miniature version of the modern human, the earliest fossils of which date back to 1.9 million years ago.

The immediate ancestor of these early humans has remained a mystery for scientists; few fossils have been found of hominids living just before these early humans.

Each of the four outside researchers contacted by this reporter agreed that A. sediba is an unlikely root for this branch of early humans. Instead, they consider it to be relative -- though the closeness of the relationship is up for debate.

Kimbel favors classifying sediba as a sort of sister species to early humans that shared a close ancestor.

"I'd classify it with Homo," said Kimbel, who pointed to features of sediba that are similar to those of early humans.

It had long legs and the shape of it hips resembled human species better adapted for walking efficiently and even running than those of more primitive species, according to Berger.

Its front teeth -- though the shaped like those of Australopithecus ¬-- are small, like those of early humans, said paleontologist Fred Spoor of University College London.

"The tooth size reduction that is the hallmark of Homo has always been associated with the increase of animal protein in the diet," said Spoor. "Vegetable matter requires a lot of chewing and larger tooth size so as not to wear through the teeth too fast."

But Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley argued that the characteristics of the new species are more hype than Homo. He and Leakey both favor the idea that the species is more distantly related to our ancestors, an advanced Australopith that managed to survive until the time of early humans.

White said that A. sediba is missing many of the "key characteristics" that are normally used to classify a species as human. Its brain, for example, was the size of that of the famous "Lucy" that lived hundreds of thousands of years earlier -- tiny compared to its Homo contemporaries and less than a third the brain size of that of a modern human.

He also cautioned that many of Berger's findings are based largely on the analysis of a single juvenile, whose proportions do not necessarily represent those of an adult.

"There is obviously more media bang in a spin that relates these fossils to later Homo," said White.

Everyone agrees that reaching a consensus about how close of a cousin this new species our will require more work. Further analysis awaits the newly-uncovered fossils, and the South African site promises to offer up more specimens of the new species.

Deconstructing Darwin

I was recently in the Deconstructing Darwin Conference that was held in a nearby church that my cousin goes to. I am pleased to say that the speakers Calvin Smith and Dr. Emil Silvestru did a really good job of giving a coherent and well-researched case for Creation and against Evolutionary Naturalism. I especially like Dr. Silvestru's presentations. He obviously knows what he is talking about as a Geologist.

If anybody would like to know more, I would suggest checking out their organization, Creation Ministries International (link to their website), and see what kind of resources they have to offer. Also, here are a couple of clips of Dr. Silvestru (from elsewhere, not from the conference) to give a brief example of what he has to say, particularly on the topic of Noah's flood:

Some Information on Evolution and Design

I figured that with all the misleading information being propagated in the field of biology, it would help to set the record straight. The following are some articles on the current origins debate, detailing the evidence for and against evolution and intelligent design. I hope that anybody interested in this information could benefit from it, and think twice about what you're being told in your high school biology classes.

Articles

• Jonathan Wells - Survival of the Fakest
• William A. Dembski - Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge
• The Scientific Controversy Over Whether Microevolution Can Account For Macroevolution
• The Scientific Controversy Over the Cambrian Explosion

Anyone interested in more information such as this can find other articles on website of the Discovery Institute. Also, check out the Access Research Network as well for solid scientific information on the current origins debate.

Pass the information on.

New Stuff

Four new books for Christmas:

• NET Bible, Compact Edition (Bible.org, 2007)
• D.A. Carson - Exegetical Fallacies, Second Edition (Baker Academic, 1996)
• J.D. Shams - Where Did Jesus Die?, 8th Edition (Islam international Publications Limited, 1989)
• Ethelyn Simon, Irene Resnikoff and Linda Motzkin - The First Hebrew Primer: The Adult Beginner's Path to Biblical Hebrew, Third Edition (EKS Publishing Co., 2005)

Also, there is now a link list "On Origins Debate" for those interested in doing research on Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design.

And for those interested, there is a free E-book linked on the EvoInfo Lab entitled The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories by Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olson. You can download it by going to this link.

EDIT (12/30/2009)
Managed to procure four new books, one from the Royal Ontario Museum and three from a used bookstore somewhere in downtown Toronto:

• Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World (Royal Ontario Museum, 2009)
• Antony Flew - There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind (Harper One, 2007)
• H. Richard Niebuhr - Christ and Culture (Harper One, 2001)
• Howard Rice - Reformed Spirituality: An Introduction for Believers (Westminster John Knox Press ,1991)