Creation Is Based on Real History

I believe in Jesus Christ . . . He suffered under Pontius Pilate. (Emphasis mine.)

That, of course, comes from The Apostle’s Creed—a document used by the early church to summarize its teachings. The creed begins with:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
    creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
    who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
    and born of the virgin Mary.
    He suffered under Pontius Pilate.1

The creed then goes on to clarify that Christ was crucified, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and other such details that are outlined in the New Testament.

However, the specificity of naming the Roman governor who ordered the torture and crucifixion of Jesus within it, emphasizes something many modern believers, Christian leaders, apologists, and even cultural Christian champions (such as my fellow Canadian Jordan Peterson) seem to have forgotten.

True Christianity is based on real historical events

True Christianity is based on real historical events, not simply spiritual concepts, analogous life lessons, and metaphorical meanings that we should adopt for moral reasons or to somehow produce a better culture.

Are Only Specific Facts Important?

Although many people seem to acknowledge that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus all need to have been actual real historical events for Christianity itself to be true, many seem to simply check out beyond that point and fail to understand that the cross of Christ does not stand alone in history.

The cross is embedded in a specific place in a true, historical timeline that extends backward to when God created the heavens and earth, just as The Apostle’s Creed begins. It then extrapolates forward from that place into our today and then beyond us to a time when Christ will someday return and rule over a fully restored new heavens and new earth.

There are many other detailed historical events throughout the entirety of the holy Scripture with just as much (if not more) specificity as well. Such events include the creation account, Noah’s flood, the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel, Abraham’s wanderings, the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the fall of Jericho, Jonah’s three days in the great fish, etc. These are all in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, even more events are recorded including water being turned into wine, supernatural healings, people walking on water, resurrections, etc.

And yet, when asked if these other events should be taken as historically accurate, many Christians begin to obfuscate and downgrade their importance in terms of being literal. They often tout “science” as the reason for their departure from a plain reading of the text to a more metaphorical leaning. But why? And we should also ask if this is really an intellectually defensible way to understand and proclaim the authority of the Bible.

Let’s Be Reasonable

If you are a believer, think of it this way. Let’s say someone asked you about Christianity and what you believed, and you decide to follow the command laid out in 1 Peter 3:15, which says to have reasoned answers for your faith when asked about it. So you present them with a summary of your beliefs in the form of The Apostle’s Creed.

What if they looked up the name of Pontius Pilate and discovered he was simply a fictitious character from some play someone wrote years ago that had been copied into the text? What would you say to them? “Oh yes, well, even though that part isn’t really historically true you should still believe the rest of it.”

Well, the obvious answer from most people would be “Why?” And, in addition to coming up with some unjustified explanation for why you should believe some parts but not others, would you think their trust in the rest of the information presented within the creed would be increased or decreased because of their discovery? Because the creed says Jesus “suffered” under Pontius Pilate.

Related Ramblings

So did he suffer? How exactly did he suffer? Did he suffer under someone else then? Why didn’t they get the name right? It says Jesus died and rose again in three days. Were those literal days?

Many Christians will tell you that the days in Genesis aren’t literal days, even though that’s the way the grammar around them insists they are. Isn’t there a story in the Bible that says the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho for seven days? Were they seven real days or not?

Isn’t the number seven just symbolic? Isn’t it God’s perfect number? So maybe, this is just some kind of instructive story with some spiritual lessons in there to be discovered—kind of like Noah’s flood and all that talk about bringing a bunch of animals on board. Couldn’t that just be a lesson about how we are to be good stewards of God’s creation and that we should make sure not to pollute the planet so we can save all the animals?

As ridiculous as all that may have just sounded to you, that is the level of nonsense that I have heard many, many times from people—many of them professing Christians—trying to exposit certain areas of Scripture in contradiction to its plain reading.

A Reasonable Faith

On the other hand, what if when looking into your claims that The Apostle’s Creed is an accurate representation of your faith, your friend discovered that in addition to the biblical account, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria recorded Pilate being a Roman lieutenant who was appointed governor of Judea2 and that the Jewish historian Josephus also mentioned in his historical writings Pontius Pilate as the Roman governor who put Jesus to death?3

And then, what if they discovered that there was a Roman historian named Tacitus that also recorded there was a man “Christus” executed by one Pontius Pilate from whom a group identifying as “Christians” derived their name,4 which also corroborates the details of Jesus’ execution from the New Testament?

In addition, what if their investigation uncovered that in 1961, rock-solid (pun intended) archaeological evidence for Pontius Pilate was discovered on an inscribed stone (commonly known now as the “Pilate Stone”) unearthed during excavations near the theatre at Caesarea Maritima in Israel?5

Three of the four lines of text on it survived, confirming that Pilate was the prefect of Judea. They read, “Tiberium . . . Pontius Pilate . . . Prefect of Judea.”

Three of the four lines of text on it survived, confirming that Pilate was the prefect of Judea.

Then to top it all off, what if while doing their investigation, they found this on the Brittanica website (with absolutely no caveats or allusions to Jesus being anything other than a historical figure), demonstrating that despite many modern skeptics claiming that Jesus never existed, the vast majority of historians consider Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate to be an undeniable historical fact?

Pontius Pilate (died after 36 ce) was a Roman prefect (governor) of Judaea (26–36 ce) under the emperor Tiberius who presided at the final trial of Jesus and gave the order for his crucifixion.6

Building Your Case

Now obviously, none of these accounts can definitively prove the events recorded in Scripture happened, but any reasonable person would likely be much more inclined to believe they did, certainly far more than if someone discovered there was a complete lack of evidence that Pontius Pilate had ever existed!

Although this support of Pilate’s existence would not automatically confer trust in the rest of the events recorded in The Apostle’s Creed, it would certainly warrant a more favorable investigation of them as historically accurate as well.

Just as multiple corroborating witnesses would build jurors confidence in their testimony, the large number of witnesses confirming Pilate’s existence builds confidence in the Bible’s testimony.

Trust in Genesis

However, The Apostle’s Creed begins by stating, “I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” The creation account in Genesis describes God creating ex nihilo (from nothing) in six literal days. Specific features and/or creatures were created on each of those days with absolutely no hint of any kind of long age, evolutionary processes whatsoever.

Also, Exodus 20:11 explicitly states and confirms “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”

A search through the New Testament also reveals its writers understood the Genesis creation account as real history. Just a small sampling can be seen in the following list.7

• God created ex nihilo, not through an evolutionary process (Hebrews 11:3)
• God created in six days (Hebrews 4:4, 9–10)
• God created the first man from the dust (1 Corinthians 15:45–47)
• God created woman from man (1 Corinthians 11:8)
• Eve was deceived by a serpent (1 Corinthians 11:3)
• The entire creation was cursed by God (Romans 8:20–22)

Yet despite these (and many other) corroborating verses teaching the literal, grammatical, historical account of God creating in six literal days approximately 6,000 years ago, we have the majority of popular pastors, authors, Bible professors, and apologists falling all over themselves theologically to convince people that the Bible doesn’t actually mean or teach what it plainly says about the creation account.

Why? Because “science” has supposedly proven that the story of evolution and/or its required long age time frame has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, which demands that Christians reject and reinterpret the Genesis account as plainly written.

Science over Scripture?

Obviously, if humans evolved from apelike hominids, then the history regarding the creation of Adam and Eve is incorrect, even if you try to explain that two of those creatures somehow became human at some point in their “evolution.”

If the rock layers containing fossils we see all over the world were laid down slowly over millions of years, then obviously Noah’s flood (which is said to have been a global event) must not have ever happened as described.

If animals evolved slowly, transforming from one kind into another over vast time spans, then obviously the creation account over six days isn’t valid as described either.

If humans slowly evolved over millions of years, developing language and intellect and various “racial characteristics,” then the account of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11 would need to have been mythological as well.

Science + History = Historical Science

The aforementioned points (concerning how the historical accounts in Scripture clash with modern historical evolutionary interpretations in science) demonstrate that this is not a “science vs. faith” issue as most people think of it. Rather, the origins debate is a historically focused “faith vs. faith” issue, based on the exact same facts.

The faith that both an evolutionist and a creationist has is in the historical interpretation of the facts they both accept. For example, a creationist and an evolutionist walking up to a sedimentary layer of rock in the Badlands of Alberta could both observe and agree that there is a dead thing (a fossil) embedded within the escarpment they stood in front of.

They might even retrieve it to determine the kind of dinosaur it was, measure its length and height, and do mineral testing on the remains, etc. There would be no reason for disagreement when determining these results based on the observable, repeatable, and experimental tests that could be done repeatedly to discover the answers to these questions.

However, there would be massive disagreement when each of them began explaining what they believed about the historical nature of what they were observing. For example, how long ago did this burial event happen? What was the sedimentation rate of the rock that buried this creature? How did this creature come into existence in the first place?

Same Facts, Different Explanations

Of course, each scientist would answer these questions based ultimately on the historical narrative that they believe. The evolutionist might say he believes the creature was buried and died 65 million years ago, and the creationist might say he believes the creature was killed in the biblically recorded great flood approximately 4,400 years ago.

The evolutionist might say that slow and steady deposition buried the creature’s remains over a long time, but the creationist would argue for rapid deposition during the flood. The evolutionist might argue that the creature evolved from some kind of simpler organism that existed prior, while the creationist would say the creature was created by God on day six of creation because God created man and land animals on day six and dinosaurs were land animals.

Behind the historical explanations would come justification for their beliefs based on scientific observations. For example, the evolutionist might base their idea of slow deposition of sediments as the mechanism for burial on the rates of sedimentation occurring in lakes and rivers today and extrapolate that rate back in time as the justification for believing the fossil formed over many thousands of years.

The creationist could point to several examples of rapid deposition of rock occurring within our lifetime that would justify his belief in catastrophic flood conditions explaining its burial and subsequent fossilization. Especially considering the many fossils we find (such as 30-foot-tall trees extending through many rock layers) that could not possibly have been buried slowly over millions of years. Why?

Observable science demonstrates that creatures exposed to watery environments decay and disarticulate rapidly (often accelerated by activity by scavengers), and the same happens on land. The dead deer you passed on the side of the highway won’t be there being buried and turning into a fossil during your lifetime, let alone thousands of years.

Observable science demonstrates that creatures exposed to watery environments decay and disarticulate rapidly (often accelerated by activity by scavengers), and the same happens on land.

Is Historical Science a “Made-Up” Concept?

Now anyone with a whit of intellectual clarity should be able to see the difference between historical science and operational science.

Basically, if anyone explaining a scientific concept to you inserts a “historic” explanation into their conclusion (especially when there could be multiple historical explanations to explain the phenomenon), they are discussing historical science.

On the contrary, if someone is describing a science experiment that can be duplicated or replicated in the present that demonstrates the same results, they are talking about operational science done according to the scientific method, which demands direct observation to verify its claims. Operational science utilizes the scientific method where experimentation yields repeatable, consistent results under the same conditions in the present, such as discovering what temperature water freezes or boils.

Despite this clarity, these two types of science are often blended when discussing various topics, which can create confusion among people. Evolutionists will claim that historical science is a made-up construct by creationists to confuse people into accepting our “pseudoscientific explanations” to support the Bible’s historical accounts, which they see as fables at best.

Ironically, who did famous evolution-believing scientist Dr. Ernst Mayr say was responsible for introducing it? “Darwin introduced historicity into science. Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science—the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place.”8

Of course, Mayr is not the only one who has pointed this out. As I mentioned earlier, any rational person can clearly see the difference between historical and operational science. Just look at how evolution-believing Harvard professor Dr. E. O. Wilson describes the differentiation between the two: “If a moving automobile were an organism, functional biology would explain how it is constructed and operates, while evolutionary biology would reconstruct its origin and history—how it came to be made and its journey thus far.”9

Understand, I’m not quoting some fringe group of evolution-believing amateurs here. For example, Wilson was so influential in his role as an evolutionary biologist that he was named “The New Darwin,” “Darwin’s natural heir,” and “the Darwin of the 21st century” by many of his colleagues.10

The fact is that the difference between historical and operational science is not emphasized nearly enough in today’s educational circles. This is likely one of the main reasons the story of evolution has gained the respect it has. If students aren’t careful to see the difference between the two, they often apply the same weight to both methods and are thus convinced that evolution has been scientifically proven.

But as Mayr noted, Darwin is the one who introduced a specific historicity into science, which was not there before. This was noted by many researchers who came after Darwin who recognized that scientific conjecture about the past is primarily philosophical at its core. Just look at this quotation from Oxford anthropologist J. D. Unwin from 1934.

It may be said that there are two kinds of science, historical and inductive. A historical scientist is one who studies the past history of a phenomenon and formulates a working hypothesis by means of which he tries to connect, even to explain, his data. Thus a geologist is acting as a historical scientist when he attempts to estimate the age of the earth and the method of its formation; an astronomer is a historical scientist when he submits a hypothesis in regard to the birth of the solar system. . . . Now in any historical science the sequence of the related facts is interrupted. There are many gaps in the record; these must be filled in by the hypothesis; and inevitably they are filled according to the temperament of the student. In this manner historical science tends to become philosophical.11

Forensic Science: A Perfect Example of Historical Science

The last quotation I’ll use comes from one of my favorite examples of the use of historical science—forensic science. It’s one of my most-used illustrations to show the difference between historical and operational science to my audiences when I do presentations. They typically already understand the difference and just need to be reminded of it in more detail.

This is from Dr. Gabriel Weston from the BBC FOUR TV show Catching History’s Criminals: The Forensics Story, where she is discussing how a man named Sam Sheppard was falsely accused of murder and then later had the verdict overturned.

The most interesting point about the case was that it was not the introduction of new evidence that overturned the result but rather the reexamination and reinterpretation of the exact same evidence that convicted him the first time around that caused the reversal. Proving, of course, that it was not operational science that was in play.

The Sheppard case reminds us that there are two kinds of forensic science: some is definitely science (soil analysis, murder scene objects). But some like Paul Kirk’s investigation (past events) is really about opinion and interpretation. . . . And without proper safeguards it can borrow the authority of science and disguise these opinions as hard scientific fact. . . . Science continues to deliver new techniques for the capture of evidence, but machines and chemical analysis don’t interpret evidence, people do and they can get it wrong.12

She makes the point quite clearly. It’s like the example I gave earlier. Is anyone going to argue the results of the soil analysis? No! Because you could go back and do the same analysis again and get the same results.

Is anyone arguing about the existence of the actual murder scene objects? No! Because you can observe them, pick them up, weigh them, etc. It was the opinions and interpretations of the cold, hard facts that allowed for the differing results in the verdicts.

A different interpretation of the exact same facts allowed for two different versions of history to be believed. Both of which had a drastic impact on Sam Sheppard’s life. In the same way, what people believe about the history of where we came from (creation or evolution) can have a massive impact on someone’s life as well.

A different interpretation of the exact same facts allowed for two different versions of history to be believed.

Science Supports Scripture

So for those Christians (or those examining Christianity to see if it is a legitimate belief system) who are still struggling with the concept of whether or not science has disproved the historical accounts (particularly Genesis 1–11) contained in Scripture, remember, observational science has not disproved anything in the Bible. No one needs to check their brains at the church door or be a “science denier” to be a Christian.

Rather, it is only the historical misinterpretations of the scientific facts we observe that conflict with the history contained in God’s Word. The facts that we observe during modern scientific study are much easier to interpret according to the plain reading of God’s Word than any tale the story of evolution has proposed.

More reason to hold true to the declaration contained in The Apostle’s Creed:

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.