The authority and understandability of Scripture

Final authority: Is the Bible understandable on origins? The historical, clear teaching of Scripture for young-earth creation should supersede secular geology.

Published 12 November 2025

By Jonathan Sarfati

Reprinted from Creation Ministries International

“Have you not read what was said to you by God?”—Jesus (Matthew 22:31)

While the Christian church has historically supported ‘young-earth creation’, we often receive pushback from modern churches. The reasons really boil down to: what is our final authority, and whether it can be understood.

“The ‘young earth’ position is not our axiom, our starting assumption. Rather, it is a theorem, i.e., something logically deduced from our real axiom: the authority of Scripture.”

First, the ‘young earth’ position is not our axiom, our starting assumption. Rather, it is a theorem, i.e., something logically deduced from our real axiom: the authority of Scripture. Throughout most of its history, the Church accepted that Scripture was the last word on origins. Thus no Church Father or Reformer taught that Earth was older than a few thousand years.

However, around AD 1800, long-age theories crept into secular geology. They denied the global Flood of Genesis a priori by restricting causes to processes happening now. That meant it would take millions of years to form the rocks and fossils.

In response, many churches essentially replaced the authority of Scripture with the authority of secular geology.

There were two ways it could go. The liberal wing rejected the authority of Scripture outright. They agreed that Scripture really does teach a young earth, but it was wrong. Many conservatives wanted to keep biblical authority but were intimidated by the secular long-age claims. So they invented various schemes to pretzelize the Bible to accommodate long-age thinking. For example, concepts like the gap and day-age theories appeared in the 19th century. The ‘framework hypothesis’ was a 20th-century novelty. (See creation.com/history-interpretation.)

“If these views were really taught in the text, then why did the Church Fathers, Reformers, and other Christian scholars miss them before about 1800?”

But it was clear that they had really made secular ‘science’ their final authority. If these views were really taught in the text, then why did the Church Fathers, Reformers, and other Christian scholars miss them before about 1800? And if we abandon biblical authority on history, then why not on morality and doctrine as well (creation.com/useful-dupes)?

Other pushbacks are claims that the Bible is not clear on the topic. But this goes to another important issue: whether the main teachings of the Bible are understandable or perspicuous.¹ After all, Jesus often said, “it is written”. Paul said, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” and makes us “complete” and “equipped” (2 Timothy 3:15–17). This could not be, if the Bible were as difficult as some claim.

Some make hyper-pious claims that ‘God’s days are not man’s days’. But God wrote Scripture to teach us. Therefore, God’s meanings must be the same as ours; otherwise, communication is broken. And for us to apply His teachings, God’s logic must be the same as ours. The difference is that God knows all true premises and commits no logical fallacies (see creation.com/logic).

This is the 48th year of Creation magazine, affirming both the authority and understandability of Scripture, plus ample supporting evidence. This issue contains much more of the same. For instance, hard blue-gray rocks forming in decades show there is no need for millions of years (p. 43).

Biblical authority and understandability have historically been a fruitful foundation for science. On p. 24, we interview a molecular biologist who firmly defends biblical creation, while p. 50 challenges the supposed evolution of the whale. The biblical Creation/Fall/Flood/dispersion framework explains the wide variety of animals around the world (p. 32), including the bowerbird (p. 28). Plus, the Bible’s design implication explains why some animals will sacrifice themselves for their groups (p. 18). And our p. 40 article explains how and why Scripture clearly teaches the foundational doctrine of creation out of nothing.

You can help people see the importance of having the right foundation in Scripture (cf. Psalm 11:3). One way is to share this magazine with your friends and family!

References and Notes

The official term is perspicuity of Scripture. But the word ‘perspicuous’ may not be very perspicuous itself. That makes it a heterological word—a word that doesn’t exemplify what it describes, like ‘long’, ‘German’, or ‘monosyllabic’. Words that are what they say are autological, like ‘small’, ‘English’, or ‘polysyllabic’.