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Gap creationism (also known as ruin-restoration creationism, restoration creationism, or "The Gap Theory") is a form of old Earth creationism that posits that the six-day creation, as described in the Book of Genesis, involved literal 24-hour days, but that there was a gap of time between two distinct creations in the first and the second verses of Genesis, explaining many scientific observations, including the age of the Earth.[1][2][3] It differs from day-age creationism, which posits that the 'days' of creation were much longer periods (of thousands or millions of years), and from young Earth creationism, which although it agrees concerning the six literal 24-hour days of creation, does not posit any gap of time.
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Gap creationism became increasingly attractive near the end of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century, because the newly established science of geology had determined that the Earth was far older than a literal interpretation of Genesis and the Bible-based Flood geology would allow. Gap creation allowed religious geologists (who comprised the majority of the geological community at the time) to reconcile their faith in the Bible with the new authority of science. According to the doctrine of natural theology, science was in this period considered a second revelation, God's word in nature as well as in Scripture, so the two could not contradict each other.[4]
Gap creationism was popularized by Thomas Chalmers, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, founder of the Free Church of Scotland, and author of one of the Bridgewater Treatises, who attributed it to 17th century Dutch Arminian theologian Simon Episcopius. Other early proponents included Oxford University geology professor and fellow Bridgewater author William Buckland, Sharon Turner and Edward Hitchcock.[4]
It gained widespread attention when a "second creative act"[5] was discussed prominently in the reference notes for Genesis in the influential 1917 Scofield Reference Bible.[4]
In 1954, a few years before the re-emergence of Young Earth Flood geology eclipsed Gap creationism, influential evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm wrote in The Christian View of Science and Scripture:[4]
"The gap theory has become the standard interpretation throughout hyper-orthodoxy, appearing in an endless stream of books, booklets, Bible studies, and periodical articles. In fact, it has become so sacrosanct with some that to question it is equivalent to tampering with Sacred Scripture or to manifest modernistic leanings".
This book by Ramm was influential in the formation of another alternative to gap creationism, that of progressive creationism, which found favour with more conservative members of the American Scientific Affiliation (a fellowship of scientists who are Christians), with the more modernist wing of that fellowship favouring theistic evolution.[6]
Proponents of this form of creationism have included Cyrus I. Scofield, Harry Rimmer, Jimmy Swaggart,[7] G. H. Pember, L. Allen Higley,[4] Arthur Pink, Donald Grey Barnhouse and Clarence Larkin.[8]
Gap creationists believe that science has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the Earth is far older than can be accounted for by, for instance, adding up the ages of Biblical patriarchs and comparing it with secular historical data, as James Ussher famously attempted in the 17th century when he developed the Ussher chronology.
To maintain that the Genesis creation account is inerrant in matters of scientific fact, Gap creationists suppose that certain facts about the past and the age of the Earth have been omitted from the Genesis account; specifically that there was a gap of time in the Biblical account that lasted an unknown number of years between a first creation in Genesis 1:1 and a second creation in Genesis 1:2-31. By positing such an event, various observations in a wide range of fields, including the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, dinosaurs, fossils, ice cores, ice ages, and geological formations are allowed by adherents[9][10][11][11] to have occurred as outlined by science without contradicting their literal belief in Genesis.
Because there is no specific information given in Genesis concerning the proposed gap of time, other scriptures are used to support and explain what may have occurred during this period and to explain the specific linguistic reasoning behind this interpretation of the Hebrew text. A short list of examples is given below:
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