Introduction
Over the last couple days I have been contemplating the Biblical and scientific evidence and arguments between Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and Old Earth Creationism (OEC). While I was researching this topic, I was struck by one thing… none of the arguments appear to consider the omnipresent & omnitemporal nature of God.
Did God create a “mature” earth that instantly appeared as he spoke things into existence over 6 days? Were the “Days” described in Genesis actually longer than 24 hours…. Perhaps each millions or billions of years? Did the matter that makes up the universe already exist in some other form? Are modern scientific advances in methods for dating matter completely wrong?
The apparent contradictions between a plain reading of the scriptures and the evidence available from both Christian and secular scientific research have been the topic of countless debates. But what if we stopped thinking of the creation event from a human perspective, and started thinking about it from the perspective of God?
The Temporal Anchor Creationism Theory
SUMMARY:
Temporal Anchor Creationism proposes that God created the universe in six literal 24-hour “work sessions” which served as focal points for the instantiation of all spacetime. In this view, each day of creation acted as a temporal anchor where God’s spoken word backfilled and forward-filled an internally consistent, multi-billion-year history into the spacetime block, harmonizing a literal reading of Genesis with observable scientific data.
God does not relate to time and space the way we do so we should not look at God’s acts of creation from our perspective. When we consider Einstein’s theory of relativity and the relationship between space and time, there is simply no way to separate the existence of what we call time from our physical universe. Therefore when God created the universe, He also created all of spacetime. Since He created and actively sustains the entire physical universe, He must also have created and actively sustains all of time. Consider these verses:
In him we live and move and have our being
Acts 17:28 (ESV)
and
He upholds the universe by the word of his power
Hebrews 1:3b (ESV)
Both life and movement require time as well as a physical universe to exist, and these verses (among several others) tell us that all of spacetime exists in Him and is actively sustained by Him. Therefore, God’s consciousness is not bound to one specific moment in time and space like us. Indeed, scripture seems to say that we should not simply believe that God is present in all of spacetime and instead we should realize that all of time and space are present in Him. All of spacetime exists in Him and is sustained by Him.
Whenever God interacts with spacetime, His interactions are not limited in their impact to only affect events that occur after the point in time where He chooses to act. Rather, His sovereign actions can have any impact He desires on all of spacetime. This concept is clearly demonstrated in scripture through the redemptive effect of Jesus’s death and resurrection on everyone who was saved prior to Jesus’s death.
In Genesis 15:6 we read:
And he [Abraham] believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.
We also see in Genesis 22:8a
Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’
When we look at the faith in God’s promises that Abraham demonstrated and we study the Jewish sacrificial system God designed, it is plain to see that these things point forward to the focal point in time when Jesus’s death and resurrection occurred. From God’s perspective, however, that redemptive event happening was set in stone by His will & perfect plan when He created all of spacetime.
Consider this analogy: when an author writes a novel, they sometimes start that work with a particular end scene in mind. They sometimes even write the last chapter of the book first! They then outline a timeline of events that lead up to the incredible ending they envisioned. As they go through and backfill the rest of the book they may get to chapter 23 and decide that a character should have blonde hair instead of red! They can retroactively go through the “timeline” of the chapters they have already written and change that characters hair color. After they finish writing the main story, they may decide that this novel really needs a prologue, thereby extending the entire timeline of the book, perhaps by hundreds or thousands of years, to some prior age that occurred before the real story. Perhaps this author buckles down and writes his whole novel in a matter of days or weeks from their perspective, but the story within the book itself contains a timeline that spans centuries or millennia! At the end the writing process, the author looks at his completed work, and decides it is good… perhaps even very good. The book is published… then it is set… the work is complete… it is finished.
When God decided that there should be stars in the sky, for example, perhaps He didn’t cause the stars to instantly exist at that single moment in time on Day 4, but rather instantiated a timeline that was internally consistent into the spacetime continuum He was creating. Every photon of starlight hitting Earth has a “valid” 14-billion-year ID card that scientist can observe, because God authored the entire journey of that photon from the temporal focal point of the 4th day of creation. He wrote in a “prologue” to essentially establish the 14 billion years of celestial activity that would be required for the stars to appear in the sky from the perspective of Earth at the anchor point of the day He created them!
Not only that, He established the exact patterns of celestial activity that has happened since Day 4 of creation and will continue happening until He creates a new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21). So on Day 4 God created all of the celestial activity required to accomplish His plan for all of spacetime, including perfectly timed cosmic events He designed as signs and wonders, for example:
- The long day of Joshua (Joshua 10:12-13)
- The sun dial of Ahaz moving backwards (2 Kings 20:9-11)
- The star of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:2)
- The darkness at the crucifixion (Luke 23:44-45)
- The prophesied cosmic events described in Revelation 6:12-13.
Really let that sink in…each time He spoke something into existence on a Day of creation… the entirety of time & space bent to His will to make it so!
God brings out the starry host by number and calls them by name, sustaining their existence.
Isaiah 40:26 (ESV)
This is an important distinction because the strongest criticism against Young Earth theories used in defense of a literal 6 day creation centers around the truthfulness of God. Since God is truth, He could not create “fake” history by making the universe “appear” older than it actually is in a way that would deceive or trick people who are using modern dating methods. However, if He wrote a history into the spacetime block, from the focal point of the 4th day, that history is as “real” as the present moment because His will sustains all time and space.
God is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the great “I AM”. Every moment in time exists in Him and is sustained by Him, so “when” He does something is a distinction that only really matters from the perspective of us temporal mortals. Of vastly more significance, I believe, is that if God decides to act within the dimensions of the spacetime He created, He must be fully committed to the effects each of His actions have on the spacetime continuum.
God is the same, yesterday, today and forever, because He experiences all of the effects of His choices and actions eternally for as long as He wills to maintain spacetime. Because He decided to send his Son to die on the cross, everyone who God elected to save by grace through faith (whether they lived before or after the temporal focal point of Jesus’s death & resurrection) was saved. When He looks upon one of His adopted sons or daughters, He does not just see them in a single point in time. He sees them from the time they were born through their entire eternal future all at once! In the same way, He sees the entirety of the universe in one spacetime block that He created and sustains from beyond the 4 dimensions of height, width, depth, and time that we can perceive.
I propose that when we consider this perspective, there is no actual contradiction between what human scientists can observe from our perspective in the physical universe and the Biblical narrative that God created all of space time in 6 literal 24 hour days. Indeed, I propose He could have created all of it in one nanosecond if that was the story He wanted to write. I believe that He elected to spread that effort out over 6 days for our benefit, so that He could establish a pattern of work and rest that He knew we would need.
The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
Mark 2:27 (ESV)
6 Days of Creation as Temporal Anchors in Spacetime
Day 1
God instantiates within Himself as few as 24 hours of spacetime containing the Earth as a planet covered in water surrounded by darkness. He hovers over the waters and says “let there be light”, and there is light (Presumably this light is generated directly from Him). He separates the light from the darkness and calls it a day.
Day 2
God extends space time another 24 hours, and creates the atmosphere around the earth by separating the waters below from the waters above with air containing clouds/humidity. (Possibly including a water canopy layer that creates a greenhouse effect around the planet, and would later contribute to a global flood.)
Day 3
God adds another 24 hours to spacetime, and creates dry land to separate the seas and creates an abundant variety of plant life. He now has essentially an ellaborate, planet sized terrarium that will support life… all of spacetime could have been only 72 hours long. Tomorrow He will expand spacetime to establish the lighting and timeline needed for writing His story.
Day 4
On this day, God expands all of spacetime (in both temporal directions as I detailed previously) to create the entire celestial universe of activity beyond Earth that would be necessary to have starlight, a moon to effect tides/provide limited nighttime visibility, and a Sun to support the animal life He was about to create over the next couple days. Since all of the physical universe expanded, all of the relative time required by the physical laws He created on this day would have expanded along with the physical universe to be internally consistent with what He was building. The planet that He created on previous days, would have had it’s history backfilled (and foreward filled) with the exact amount of legitimate spacetime required to accomplish His will. Every molecule of inanimate matter and every plant that would ever be throughout Earth for all of the timeline God created to exist until the end, could have been extended out on this single day as God expanded spacetime!
Day 5
From this 24 hour temporal anchor point, God creates all of the sea life and bird life that He determined would be necessary for the Air and Seas to be full of life according to His plan. The life He created from the focal point of this day, could have been designed and added to spacetime accross whatever timeline God ordained. Fossil records suggest that perhaps God instantiated various distinct species at different times, allowing the time to multiply and populate the planet with the proportions and balance He desired on Day 5.
Day 6
From this 24 hour temporal focal point, God created all of the land animals and insect life that ever was and ever will be on Earth, following the same principles of Day 5, He could have layered the addition of these creatures at various points in His timeline. At this point the stage is set for telling His story and He takes the rest of the day to create mankind in His image. (Additional thoughts on this in my conclusion below)
Day 7
God Rests… All of Spacetime has been created, the cosmic clock has been set and the entire story is written. All of what we call the past, present and future begins to play out from a human temporal perspective, precisely as He planned it, according to His perfect will.
Breaking Down the Issues
The table below serves as the bridge between the two traditional camps, showing how when we consider each topic from the Temporal Anchor perspective, it preserves the scriptural integrity of the 6-day narrative while respecting the physical consistency of the universe we observe.
| Topic | Young Earth Creationism (YEC) | Old Earth Creationism (OEC) | Temporal Anchor Creationism |
| Age of the Universe | Approximately 6,000–10,000 years based on genealogies. | Approximately 13.8 billion years based on general relativity and expansion. | The universe has 13.8 billion years of internal history, that was created in 6 temporal “Anchor Point” days. |
| Meaning of “Day” (Yom) | Literal 24-hour solar days. | Long periods, epochs, or “Day-Age” intervals. | The days are literal 24-hour “work sessions” for God. Each time God’s Word added to His creation, the entire spacetime block (past and future) responded to His will according to His spoken intention. |
| Distant Starlight | Light was created “in-transit” or via miraculous speed to reach Earth quickly. | Light has traveled at a constant speed for billions of years across vast space. | On Day 4, God expanded the spacetime continuum by instantiating the internally consistent timeline of celestial activity that was required to ensure that starlight reached earth at the focal point of the 4th Day and would continue until the Last Day. |
| The Fossil Record | Mostly attributed to the Global Flood; implies no death before the Fall. | Records billions of years of biological life and extinction before humans. | God instantiated the entirety of the plant & animal kingdoms from the temporal focal points of the Days of Creation. Similar to the celestial creation on Day 4, the effects of God’s spoken word theoretically could have had retroactive effects on the timeline of the earth, thus resulting in various fossil records as spacetime reacted to ensure the plants and animals He created would exist in abundant supply by the end of Day 6, when God created Man. |
| Nature of Creation | Creation was a series of sequential events inside a timeline. | Creation was a guided process over a vast timeline. | God spent 6 days within the timeline He created, with each day layering the totality of spacetime needed to accomplish His plan. He sustains the entire 4D block of spacetime simultaneously within Himself. Every coordinate in the past, present, and future is being “authored” and upheld at once to accomplish His sovereign will. |
Conclusion
In this view, the “conflict” between scripture and science is merely a matter of perspective. By recognizing that God is not a passenger on our timeline… indeed, we are passengers in His… we do not have to choose between the authority of the Word and the reality of the World. He is the Author of both, and His ways are beyond human abilities to fully comprehend from our perspective. I believe that a temporal anchor approach brings together the physical evidence and the scriptural narrative in a way that is consistent.
On Day 6, when it says:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27 (ESV)
What if God… in that moment… created EVERY male and female who would ever live in the story He was writing across spacetime… and saw His entire story of redemption and our salvation… saw His sacrifice, death and resurrection… saw the repentance and sanctification of the elect… saw our eternity together with Him as the bride of Christ?
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31 (ESV)
From the Author’s chair, the work took six days… from the perspective of the universe and characters in the “ink” of spacetime, the story is billions of years deep.
Appendix: Foundational Concepts & Definitions
This section provides the technical and theological framework for Temporal Anchor Creationism. It defines the relationship between the Author (God) and the “Ink” (Spacetime).
I. Theological Framework (The Nature of the “Author”)
- Omnitemporality: The attribute of God by which He is the source and container of all time. Rather than inhabiting the timeline, the entire 4D block of spacetime exists within Him, and He has authored and sustains every coordinate of it simultaneously (see Acts 17:28, Ps 90:4, Isa 46:10).
- Divine Sustenance (Active Upholding): The doctrine that the universe does not run on “autopilot.” God’s active will is the “power” that keeps every atom and every second of time in existence. If He ceased to sustain a moment in the “past,” the “present” would cease to be (see Heb 1:3, Col 1:17).
- The Proleptic Principle: A theological concept where a future reality is “backfilled” into the present or past. In this theory, God applies this principle to the physical creation, backfilling “Old Earth” history from “Young Earth” anchor points (see Gen 15:6, Rom 4:17, Rev 13:8).
- Ex Nihilo (Out of Nothing): The belief that God created the very substance of reality. Because God created both the “matter” and the “laws” that govern it, He is the Author and sustainer of all spacetime, not a subject of it (see Gen 1:1, Ps 33:6, Heb 11:3).
II. Scientific Framework (The Physics of the “Ink”)
- Minkowski Spacetime (The 4D Block): A model that treats the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time as a single, four-dimensional fabric. In this “Block Universe” view, the past, present, and future exist permanently as a completed geometric object. (🔗 Learn More)
- The Lorentz Transformation: The mathematical bridge used to relate space and time coordinates between different perspectives. In this theory, it represents the “internal logic” that ensures the universe remains physically consistent and measurable for us, even though it was authored from a different “frame.” (🔗 Learn More)
- Causal Consistency (The “Valid ID Card”): The requirement that every physical effect must have a measurable, preceding cause. For a photon to hit Earth today, it must have a mathematically “real” origin and journey, which God authored into the fabric of the spacetime block to ensure the story is coherent. (🔗 Learn More)
- The Speed of Causality ($c$): Commonly called the speed of light, $c$ is the universal speed limit for information. Because space and time are linked by $c$, looking deeper into space is mathematically identical to looking further back into the “internal history” of the universe. (🔗 Learn More)
III. The Synthesis
- Temporal Anchor: Each day of creation is a literal, 24-hour “work session” within spacetime. On each day of creation, God focused His creative power to instantiate specific layers of the universe. These days serve as the “anchors” from which the rest of the spacetime block (both the internal history required to achieve the desired state on Day 7 and its future timeline from Day 7 to the Last Day) was expanded and stabilized (see Gen 1:5, Ex 20:11, Rev 21:1).
- Internal History: The billions of years of biological, geological, and cosmic events that are physically “real” and measurable. This history is not “fake” because it was the immediate, consistent result of God’s spoken word on the 6 Anchor Days, ensuring the universe had the necessary “age” and structure to support the story He was writing (see Ps 19:1, Rom 1:20).
- The Creative Perspective: The understanding that the real and observable physical evidence of a 13.8-billion-year timeline was authored and established during 6 literal 24-hour days. Since God created all of spacetime in 6 Days, and sustains every coordinate of spacetime from within His being, the “work” done in those 6 days is what gives the “ink” of the rest of history its form and reality (see 2 Pet 3:8).