<strong>By Rev. Jeffrey O. Smith</strong>
Is the earth 6,000 years young or billions of years old?
The story of creation in Genesis indicates that the earth was created in a matter of days, and then the age of the earth can be established based on the given ages of earth’s inhabitants since that creation.
Modern science, however, holds that the earth is billions of years old, going through a process of planetary formation and then life evolution.
As a minister, I, of course, believe that God created this universe. But did God create the universe 6,000 years ago by speaking things into existence, or did He cause the “big bang” and then wisely and lovingly guided evolution through millions of years to the point we are at now? I don’t take issue with either one of the creation methods. Frankly, God can do whatever He wants, and He only does what He wants.
In the young earth theory, God is perfectly capable of setting a created stage within which humans might exist. Are fossilized dinosaur bones a problem for this scenario? No, not for a God who wishes to leave humans in freedom, not to mention that humans sometimes have problems thinking that they know everything.
And how about the old earth theory? Well, in the eyes of an eternal Creator, a billion years of preparing a world for eventual human existence is no different from five days of creation preparing a world for created people. Both the young earth and the old earth theory leave room for a process that happened over a period of time.
What about New Church Teachings? Do they offer any evidence for one theory or the other? Yes, they do … for both.
The Writings allude to the amount of time that has passed since the creation event of Genesis. They occur when referring to theoretical amounts of time that souls would wait in graves for a physical resurrection, or also the theoretical numbers of people who have come into existence since the universe’s beginning.
New Church Teachings also make mention of pre-humans, or “pre-Adamites” as they are called in more than one passage, suggesting, perhaps, a species that evolved in some way into the modern human. Additionally, in Swedenborg’s pre-theological works he theorizes about nebular formation of the solar system.
Is the earth young or old? We may never know in this world. The answer in no way affects our directive to love the Lord and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And, by the time we are able to get an answer in the next life, it won’t matter to us anymore anyway.