The Collapse of Diluvial Cosmogonies
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Although neptunism largely replaced diluvialism as an explanation for the formation of layered rocks, interest in the Noachian flood was hardly dead. Diluvialism may have been dying out, but many scholars continued to believe that there was scientific evidence for the flood.
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Nineteenth-Century Developments, the Rise of Diluvial Catastrophism
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The Collapse of Diluvial Catastrophism
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Summary of Early Nineteenth-Century on the Flood
Naturalists of the early nineteenth century accumulated a great deal of information that led to changes in their view of earth's history and the role of the Noachic deluge in it. They all paid scrupulous attention to the full spectrum of available geological information and adjusted their ideas in response to that information. Many of them were orthodox Christians, and yet they felt no need to distort the evidence they encountered in order to sustain their belief in the biblical deluge. One finds no appeal to miracle on the part of even the most ardent advocate of the deluge, William Buckland. The premier geologists were persuaded that existing geological evidence supported the notion of a global or at least continental deluge. Every one of them rejected the old diluvialism which attributed the deposition of fossiliferous secondary and tertiary strata to the flood, however. They identified only surface deposits as the effects of the deluge.
Even that view collapsed, however, because of the importance that these men placed on extrabiblical evidence. Buckland, Sedgwick, and others ultimately abandoned nineteenth-century diluvialism when it became clear that gravels, valleys, polished rocks, cave deposits, and the like could no longer be satisfactorily understood as the result of a giant deluge. Because the Christian naturalists of the era were unafraid of God-given evidence, they recognized that extrabiblical information provided a splendid opportunity for closer investigation of the biblical text in order to clear up earlier mistakes in interpretation. Biblical expositors of the period were more reluctant to grapple with extrabiblical data in so forthright a manner, as we will see.
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The Coming of the Ice Age -- the Frozen Flood
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Development of the Geological Time Scale
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In a clear appeal to extrabiblical data, Miller asserted that with respect to the flood as with respect to other biblical references to matters of physical science, "the limiting, modifying, explaining facts and circumstances must be sought for in that outside region of secular research, historic and scientific." He believed it essential that the church stay as well acquainted with such research as the enemies of the faith did. From research "much valuable biblical illustration" had been derived. He warned against ignorance of extrabiblical data, chided those who were content to solve scientific problems with the Bible alone, and showed that extrabiblical data had frequently corrected erroneous interpretations of the Bible.
"Plain men who set themselves to deduce from Scripture the figure of the planet" had little doubt that the earth was flat "until corrected by the geographer"; "plain men who set themselves to acquire from Scripture some notion of the planetary motions" thought that the sun moved around an earth at rest "until corrected by the astronomer"; "plain men who have sought to determine from Scripture the age of the earth" were confident that the earth was about six thousand years old "until corrected by the geologist."
In sum, plain men quite properly learned the way of salvation from the Bible, but every time they "sought to deduce from it what it was not intended to teach -- the truths of physical science -- they have fallen into extravagant error." [106] And if such error is casually or, worse, boldly or even belligerently endorsed, it must necessarily mar the overall credibility of the church.
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