Every New Testament author either directly quotes or alludes to Genesis. Dozens of times Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Cain, Abel, Noah, the Flood, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lot, Sodom, Gomorrah, and so on, are directly (and indirectly) referenced. They are spoken of as literal historical characters and events, not mythological beings and occurrences.

You may think you’ve heard enough about the creation versus evolution debate. Anyone who has given the debate even a cursory following has heard the creation position described as “creationism.” But one rarely, if ever, hears of “evolutionism,” as though only one side of this debate is rooted completely in logic and reason, without any un-provable premises.

It is frequently overlooked that every side of the creation/evolution debate derives their knowledge (The word “science” is derived from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge.”) from certain governing presuppositions. In other words, whether a person is a creationist or an evolutionist, or some combination of the two, eventually he or she must eventually rely on certain un-provable assumptions. As the late philosopher, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, put it, “At the most fundamental level of everyone’s thinking and beliefs there are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth, behavior, and such things. Convictions about which all other experience is organized, interpreted, and applied.”

How does the evolutionist construct his historical narrative? By assuming that “the present is key to the past.” Today’s evolutionist observes “change over time” within certain species, such as with peppered moths, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, insecticide-resistant bugs and the like, and uses such evidence to support billions of years and molecules-to-man evolution.

In accepting the Biblical narrative of creation, Creationists typically support the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. This doctrine is deduced from two Biblical conclusions: the Bible is the Word of God and God is never in error. However, interpretations of the account of creation vary within those who accept Biblical inerrancy. In other words, conversely, not all who accept Biblical inerrancy accept the six days of creation that a straight-forward reading of the book of Genesis reveals.

Creationists who accept the six-day account in Genesis do so by practicing a form of hermeneutics known as the literal historical-grammatical approach. This method attempts to find the literal meaning of a text based on an understanding of the historical and cultural settings in which it was written.

Following accepted rules of grammar and noting the particular style of the book (historical, poetic, prophetic, and so on), conclusions about proper interpretation are then reached. Borrowing from Dr. David Cooper, we get a clear, if not succinct, summary of the literal historical-grammatical approach: When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. Therefore, using the standard meaning, form, and syntax of the words in use; and understanding the proper historical position of the author; take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.

Or, as Screwtape put it to his demon protégé, “The documents say what they say and cannot be added to.”

The validity of the literal historical-grammatical approach is supported by multiple facts. First of all, a scholarly approach to the New Testament reveals that, when interpreting the Old Testament, this approach was taken by both New Testament authors and characters.

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