• 6.7.1: A
• 6.7.2: B
• 6.7.3: C
• 6.7.4: D
• 6.7.5: E
• 6.7.6: F
• 6.7.7: G
• 6.7.8: H
• 6.7.9: I
• 6.7.10: J
• 6.7.11: K
• 6.7.12: L
• 6.7.13: M
• 6.7.14: N
• 6.7.15: O
• 6.7.16: P
• 6.7.17: Q
• 6.7.18: R
• 6.7.19: S
• 6.7.20: T
• 6.7.22: V
• 6.7.23: W
• 6.7.24: X
• 6.7.25: Y
• 6.7.26: Z

Creationism, Creationist

The idea, claiming a biblical and scientific basis, that all species came into being as the result of separate acts of creation by God, rather than via a long process of evolution. There are two variations of this concept. Young-earth creationism is the most widely held and high profile version. This is the idea that the world and the life-forms within it were created by God in a literal six days and that the earth has only existed for a few thousand years. Old-earth creationism is the idea that creation happened over a longer time-span. The days of creation as described in the Bible are understood to be either many years in length or a non-literal framework for the story.

Most people who believe in creationism tend to be either Evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. Some would insist that the events described in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 literally happened exactly as described. Others, however, would say that Genesis was either a symbolic description of real events, or a teaching story. Many Christians believe that there is nothing in the Bible to contradict the theory of evolution and/or that the method by which God created the species is unimportant.

Nevertheless, it's not entirely accurate to say that all Christians believed Genesis to be literally true up until Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in 1859 CE. Until then, some Christians (having no other information to go on) turned to the Bible and concluded (by trying to calculate timespans from genealogy lists) that the world was merely several thousands of years old. However, the anti-Christian philosopher Celsus, writing in the third century CE, ridiculed the story of the creation of Eve. Nevertheless, even he admitted that ‘the more odest among Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things, and try to give them somehow a symbolic meaning' (Origen's Against Celsus, 4.38). It's also worth noting that creationism is not an equivalent term for Intelligent Design (ID).

Covenant

C

Crucifixtion