For Calvin, then, the Flood was not simply an influx of water. It was a disordering of creation that interrupted the normal working of nature. The world was undone on a much deeper level than is recognized by either of the two predominant views, and the result is a miracle as different from a naturalistic flood as a cardiac resuscitation is from a resurrection.

The geographic extent of the Genesis flood recently became a flashpoint on Christian social media. Given the rancor over the topic, one might expect to find critical distinctions between those who argue for a flood that extended over a local area and those who believe it covered the entire globe. And certainly, the two groups each feel the other damages the concept of biblical inerrancy in some way. Yet the reality is the camps are far more similar than different. Both operate from nearly identical presuppositions, and both allow those presuppositions to drive them to adopt minority interpretations of biblical texts. My goal here is to highlight the commonalities and suggest consideration of a third way.
Side 1: A Global Flood
Advocacy for the global flood position is supported by several parachurch organizations that are, if not solely interested in the issue, highly focused upon it. This is unusual, as most apologetic concerns do not draw such dedicated attention. The organizations engage with the development of different flood models, but nearly all of them are propelled by the key assumption that the flood operated in a naturalistic fashion. To be sure, miracles are accepted at various times during the event, but the overriding belief is that the principles of geology observed today can and should be applied to the flood of yesteryear. All the models therefore assume a type of flood geology, in which the surface of the planet was completely reshaped by predictable forces.
Flood geologists often maintain that they hold to the traditional majority interpretations of Scripture. While this is true in many instances, there is at least one section of text they understand in a completely novel way. Gen 2:10-14 reads:
“A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where this is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”
Here Genesis seems to indicate at least some of the Edenic rivers are still flowing, and that the surrounding lands are still in existence. Yet this is clearly incompatible with the notion that the Earth’s surface has been catastrophically changed by the flood. Flood geologists address this challenge by positing that the portions of Genesis describing the antediluvian world were themselves written prior to the flood. After the flood, the names of rivers and lands were reused for the new surface. The pre-flood writings were then translated into Hebrew and integrated into Genesis without revision or editorial comment.
While there is nothing logically impossible about this scenario, it does seem to me to be unnecessarily convoluted. What’s more, it represents a notable deviation in the hermeneutical principles generally employed by flood geologists. Creation science organizations routinely advocate for the interpretation of Scripture to be guided by a plain reading of the text. There is, however, nothing in the plain reading that suggests the Tigris and Euphrates are anything other than the rivers known to Moses’ original audience. Certain scientific pre-commitments cause the text to be read in a way which breaks from both the normal interpretive methodology and the historic understanding. As one article published by Creation Ministries International states:
“The first option is that the Havilah, Cush, Assyria, Tigris, and Euphrates in Genesis 2 are the same as their post-Flood designations. As we noted, this option fails to appreciate the devastation the Flood would have had on the continents, literally reshaping the surface of the planet as miles of sediment were eroded and laid down. Furthermore, as we have shown, it is impossible to match the Bible’s geographical description with the names in Genesis 2. So while biblical creationists such as Luther, Calvin, and many others held this view historically, it is no longer a viable biblical creationist option in light of current geological knowledge.”
Side 2: Local Flood
Advocacy for the local flood position also receives some parachurch support, but it is far less than what is given to the opposing viewpoint. This relative lack of organizational structure may contribute to the greater level of diversity in the details of the local flood models. Considering location alone, one can find suggestions that include the Black Sea, the area around the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean during the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Like their global counterparts, the local models all take for granted that the Genesis flood functioned according to known geological principles. Reasons to Believe demonstrates this when answering the question “Could the Genesis Flood Happen the Way it was Written?”:
“From a geoscience perspective this short list of the conditions required to produce Noah’s flood seems reasonable. There was clearly enough water which, when coupled with rapid land level change and suitable topography, could conceivably cause a flood of “biblical proportions.” While these mechanisms may not have been responsible for Noah’s flood, they at least demonstrate that the occurrence of this catastrophic localized flood does not require breaking the laws of science that God himself set in place (Jer. 33:25).”
Holding to a naturalistic view of the flood once again affects the reading of the biblical text. While the continued existence of Edenic lands and rivers pose no issue for the local models, the universal sounding descriptions of the flood require an explanation. These passages are subsequently held to be hyperbolic and limited by the context of the discussion. For example, Gen 7:19 (“And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered”) is explained by an appeal to Deut. 2:25 (“This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you”). Just as Deuteronomy does not intend to describe all the peoples of the globe, so the argument goes, neither does Genesis intend to describe all the mountains on earth. This represents a rejection of the majority reading found throughout history, much like the exegetical choices of the flood geologists.
Cashing Out
To be clear, I don’t believe minority reports should be rejected solely because they are minority reports. Yet I can’t say I’m convinced that either of our friends’ suggestions take a full accounting of the biblical data. There is a verse that nags at me, and it is one that is almost universally ignored in these conversations. The Lord, speaking in Gen. 8:22 after the Flood, states, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” It is a surprising promise. Did the cycle of day and night cease during the flood? Calvin thought so. In his commentary he explains:
“By these words the world is again completely restored. For so great was the confusion and disorder which had overspread the earth, that there was a necessity for some renovation. On which account, Peter speaks of the old world as having perished in the deluge. Moreover, the deluge had been an interruption of the order of nature. For the revolutions of the sun and moon had ceased: there was not distinction of winter and summer.”
For Calvin, then, the Flood was not simply an influx of water. It was a disordering of creation that interrupted the normal working of nature. The world was undone on a much deeper level than is recognized by either of the two predominant views, and the result is a miracle as different from a naturalistic flood as a cardiac resuscitation is from a resurrection. One is reminded of what Vern Poythress wrote in Redeeming Science when discussing the possibly miraculous nature of the flood:
“If the mechanics of the flood are completely unfathomable, no scientific theory can hope to capture them. The flood remains permanently beyond the reach of science. What, then, would scientists find when they examine rocks left behind by the flood? They might find pure chaos, such that no one could make sense of it. But both flood geologists and mainstream geologists think that they find order, and that a great deal can be explained. Evidently, God did not choose to act in a way that just left behind a complete chaos.
Second, one might find that the flood left behind a mature creation, after the manner of the mature creation at the end of the six days of creation. This alternative is less far-fetched than one might think, because the Bible gives clear hints that the flood of Noah represents a pattern of destruction and re-creation. In a manner of speaking, the flood returns the world to the watery, empty situation of Genesis 1:2. The Lord then proceeds to “re-create” an ordered world.”
To adopt a position like this forces us to re-examine our fundamental assumptions of the world. It reminds us that the God of order is Himself not bound by His own creation. The routine operations of the Lord’s governance do not govern Him.
There is a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader when the boy Eustace is speaking to a retired Narnian star in the form of a man. Eustace explains that, “In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” The star replies, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.” Perhaps all sides of the flood debate might take the sentiment to heart. Perhaps in our world, water is not what the flood was but only what it was made of.
Sean McGinty is a member of Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Scottsdale AZ.
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Satan’s false flag operation is fueling misgivings about Biblical teaching concerning gender differences, fatherhood and motherhood, roles in marriage and male leadership in the church. (The church’s government notably has as its head a man, the man Christ Jesus, who set it up, who shed his blood for sinners in love and appoints men to shepherd the flock he loves.) Satan’s operation is a deceitful emotional appeal that can be summarized by a short and familiar formula: “God is evil, isn’t he?” But the truth is the opposite.

Last week I noticed that Ryan Gosling was nominated for an Oscar for playing Ken alongside Margot Robbie’s Barbie in last summer’s hit by the same name. Robbie, incidentally, was not so nominated. I won’t watch the film, but I recall reading that the plot features a wayward Ken promoting patriarchy, and that Barbie—won’t this help us all sleep better—rescues the world from patriarchy. It is likely that I am not the only one to detect a total public relations failure when the man gets the trophy after all.
This in turn reminded me of something I read around the time the movie came out: that the Archbishop of York of the Church of England was also worried about patriarchy, and that its troubling existence makes some understandably uncomfortable with a certain prayer that begins with the words “Our Father.”[i]
And the bishop is hardly alone. Many professing Christians sound just like Barbie and the bishop, and tell me that the church has missed something—a two-thousand-year-old fifth column called patriarchy must be rooted out of Christianity for Christianity to survive in our enlightened age.[ii] Without pulling this invasive weed, they tell me, we are doomed.
What do we make of this assessment? Is this really a noxious weed? What is patriarchy?
What is True: Decades of Bad News Concerning Bad Men
In 2002 the Boston Globe published a series of stories revealing a pattern of criminal sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The hypocrisy caused a crisis of confidence that spread in the church worldwide, and continues to the present day—the fathers were not what they claimed to be.
American evangelicalism has not fared much better. Vision Forum promised the restoration of the Christian family through “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy;” instead its president confessed to inappropriate sexual conduct. Mr. “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” left his wife and left the faith.  Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention faced serious allegations. To our shame the church has often looked more like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein than Job or Joseph.
My own tribe—evangelical Presbyterianism—has its own cases of the same sordid substance. This is the hypocrisy of which Jesus said: “Woe to you!” This is also the way of sinful flesh; there is nothing new under the sun, and what has been will be. Sexual desire, apart from the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit, produces all manner of wicked fruit. The lust of the flesh is destructive and evil.
But some suggest that these failures are not fundamentally rooted in individual fallen human nature but rather social structures that unequally place men in positions of influence, leading to the imbalance and abuse of power. If we solve the imbalance, so the logic goes, we will eliminate the abuse. Utopia requires the elimination of patriarchy.
What is Patriarchy?
Patriarchy simply means father-rule. The word clearly indicates an apportioning of authority. It is an uncomplicated word, used by the church for millennia. Today’s use of the word, however, appears to be confused by two things: (i) people who use it to describe unbiblical schemes (we will call this not-patriarchy) or (ii) people who think patriarchy itself is actually bad.
About not-patriarchy: The promises of I Kissed Dating Goodbye or Vision Forum or Bill Gothard should never have appealed to Christians, ever. These schemes went beyond the Law of God, lacked Gospel basics, and understated dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is no surprise that adherents later kiss Christianity goodbye. All forms of legalistic, harsh, and sinful leadership are not fatherhood but delinquency. We need to learn to recognize and reject counterfeit patriarchy.[iii]
The second concern is the unequivocal rejection of the whole thing: Patriarchy is simply very bad. Countless journalists, opinion writers and professors, the bishop and Barbie (and a growing chorus of evangelical-egalitarian influencers) are in agreement: Very, very bad.
I hear this sentiment in the Presbyterian denominations in which I travel: “Beware patriarchy,” which then is inexplicably defined as “men being unkind to women.” This particular definition often makes its appearance during discussions of abuse or sexual sin; for some this is apparently indistinguishable from patriarchy. If we were playing Clue, it was patriarchy in the church that did it. Case closed.
The net effect? Listen up, everybody: Patriarchy is a big problem. Father-rule is bad. The father is bad.
The Dangers That Follow the Loss of Patriarchy
So why even try to rescue a sullied word? Doesn’t language change? I would submit that acquiescence to the popular equation patriarchy–is-evil will result in the loss of our nation, the Christian home, the church and the Gospel. How, you ask, could this little word be so important?
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It is unknown how many people died of smallpox in the 3,000 years it has likely infected humans, but it has been estimated in the 20th century alone to have killed more than 300 million people. How do you fight something that terrible and seemingly unstoppable? In hindsight, the answer seems pretty straightforward: Start with a basic knowledge of the principles of immunity.

Smallpox constituted one of the worst of viral plagues experienced by humanity, and it was indeed a terrible disease for many who contracted it. After an incubation period of 7-19 days, those infected experienced an initial fever accompanied by body aches for another 2-4 days. Sores began to form in the mouth, then spread to the face, extremities, and the whole body within 4 days, and filled with liquid and pus. In people that survived this viral onslaught, their sores began to crust over, forming scabs that could result in scarring for life. It is unknown how many people died of smallpox in the 3,000 years it has likely infected humans, but it has been estimated in the 20th century alone to have killed more than 300 million people.
How do you fight something that terrible and seemingly unstoppable? In hindsight, the answer seems pretty straightforward: Start with a basic knowledge of the principles of immunity. For centuries, people understood that individuals who acquired many diseases become immune to getting them again, but what they didn’t understand is that immunity could be induced in order to protect individuals who never had the disease.
This began to change, possibly in the 16th century, when the technique of variolation, derived from the Latin name for the virus, Variola (meaning “spotted”), began to be adopted in the west (its origin is unknown). With variolation, scabs of smallpox sufferers were ground up and dried, then exposed to naive (i.e. never infected) individuals by rubbing on the skin or by small circular needle perforations on the back of the hand, or in some cases, sniffed into the nose or on cotton placed into one nostril.
Those that received the inoculation mostly experienced a mild form of disease, with a transient fever and a small number of pustules at the site of inoculation, and upon recovery were ‘forever free from fear of contagion’, as Boston minister Cotton Mather wrote around 1714, after being convinced by his African slave, who had been variolated. The procedure was not without risks; variolated individuals were still contagious, and it was estimated that 1-3 out of one hundred died from a more severe form of the disease due to the inoculation. However, this was a substantial improvement over the maximum 30% mortality of natural infection, and the procedure gained acceptance and was employed in England by the early 18th century.
Yet variolation was still treated with suspicion and hostility in much of the rest of Europe, as mentioned by Voltaire in his Philosophical Letters, published in 1734:
It is inadvertently affirmed in the Christian countries of Europe that the English are fools and madmen. Fools, because they give their children the small-pox to prevent their catching it; and madmen, because they wantonly communicate a certain and dreadful distemper to their children, merely to prevent an uncertain evil. The English, on the other side, call the rest of the Europeans cowardly and unnatural. Cowardly, because they are afraid of putting their children to a little pain; unnatural, because they expose them to die one time or other of the small-pox.
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