Two Standards of Evidence
This is not an argument about who is right on Genesis, or Isaiah 51, or 2 Peter 3. I am setting all of that aside.
It is about one thing. The standard of evidence Mike Sullivan requires from me, and the standard he uses himself.
Every quotation below is linked. Read them in context. That is the point of linking them.
1. First, the standard he requires of me.
When he answers Covenant Creation, the demand does not change. Produce the verse.
“… with the ultimate logical conclusion to the system that there isn’t one verse in the entire Bible that mentions God created and sustains all things. Without any affirmation that God created the universe (and thus a BIBLICAL distinction between the creator and the creature), it is seriously difficult for me to see how this fits within Christianity.” (X, Aug 1)
“Well you were exposed to a false teaching that is forced to get rid of the creator / creation distinction since they admit they no longer have ANY verse in the Bible that God created the universe. That is absolutely nuts. This is not a small error.” (X, Aug 5)
“God made a covenant / promise last I checked in Gen. 6:18; 8:20-22. You have nothing.” (X, Aug 5)
In his video of August 3 he says it twice more.
“What I don’t have is anything stated in the Old Testament or New Testament that tells me that Genesis 1 and 2 is not historical.”
“If you can’t prove that from the Bible and the Bible doesn’t have a verse about it, folks, you’ve got a real real problem.” (video, Aug 3)
And in print, in Part 3, published August 5:
“Nothing in Matthew 23:35, Hebrews 11, 1 Corinthians 15, Romans 5, or the broader testimony of Scripture requires or even suggests that Genesis 1–3 is non-physical…”
“Covenant Creation’s use of Abel is an unnecessary and textually unsupported addition.”
So the rule is plain. A doctrine needs an explicit statement in the text. No verse, no doctrine.
2. Moreover, this is the voice of a man who has made up his mind.
I include these for one reason. They tell you how settled he is. Read them and judge that for yourself.
“Prove your stupidity that trees aren’t trees, fish aren’t fish, water isn’t water, the sun, moon, and starts aren’t what they are to mark the seasons, etc. Noah’s ark really isn’t a boat and the animals aren’t really animals, etc. I’m sorry, this just gets retarded at some point… You think you are solving a problem, but in reality you end up in la, la, land.” (X, Aug 1)
“They seem to make this stuff up as they go and each one takes it as a challenge to out spiritualize the other.” (X, Aug 1)
“Tim doesn’t know if Adam is one man or a ‘corporate group’ that was in covenant with God in their alleged ‘heavens and earth’ covenant. It’s a MESS!” (X, Aug 1)
“Sorry you aren’t a priority right now. Get over it. Good try though.” (X, Aug 4)
“Wow, powerful argumentation — are we in grade school?” (X, Aug 5)
“Last I checked the water is gentiles in Gen. 1-2. Then in the flood it’s a war of gentiles and the ark is a city if I’m not mistaken. The animals on the ark are people. It gets more retarded and liberal over the years in their attempts at being consistent.” (X, Aug 5)
“That trajectory is precisely why some who adopt the covenant-creation approach eventually jettison the supernatural altogether and become full blown libtards.” (X, Aug 5)
In the same days he called the view heretical, said he will not share a teaching platform with anyone who holds it, and tagged his newest article “Covenant Creation Heresy.”
3. Further, here is what he said about his own certainty a week earlier.
From Part 1, published July 17, in the same series:
“because I am still studying and remain open to various interpretive possibilities on Genesis 1–3, I have no strong conviction on that broader subject and would not debate it at this time.”
“I have offered some theories and possibilities on Genesis 1–3 over time, but nothing I can be dogmatic about. A strictly wooden literal reading leaves me uncomfortable, and a full Covenant Creation hermeneutic likewise reads with serious difficulties and absurdities in places. This is where I have stood for years and where I remain today.”
“Tim has readily acknowledged that ‘Genesis 1–3 is typological,’ and on that point we can certainly agree.”
“The creation account can be both historical and physical in its foundational sense and typological in how the Spirit inspires later writers to use it.”
Note added 9 August 2026. The four quotations above were taken from Part 1 as it stood on 5 August 2026, the day I captured it. Mike has since revised that article. Two of the four are no longer on the page in any form: “I have no strong conviction on that broader subject” and “nothing I can be dogmatic about.” The other two remain in reworded form — “Martin himself has acknowledged that ‘Genesis 1–3 is typological,’ and on that point we can agree,” and “something can be genuinely physical and historical while simultaneously functioning typologically.”
Where the removed sentences stood, the current text reads: “I have offered various possibilities over the years and remain open to different interpretations concerning the genre, structure, chronology, and typological dimensions of those chapters. A strictly wooden literal reading leaves me with questions… This is where I have stood for years and where I remain today.” Elsewhere he now writes that he does “not presently hold a position on every issue with sufficient conviction to debate it.”
I have changed nothing I originally wrote. In fairness to Mike, he has announced revisions to his articles publicly before. Readers can compare the two versions and draw their own conclusions.
And on X, on July 31:
“Full Preterism has allowed for different interpretations of the material universe in Gen. 1-2 (old earth, young earth, framework, etc.).” (X, Jul 31)
Nineteen days separate “nothing I can be dogmatic about” from “textually unsupported.”
If he has since reached a settled conviction, that is his right and I have no complaint about it. People study and people move. But a standard is not a mood. Whatever he now believes, the question is whether the rule he applies to me is the rule he applies to himself.
4. Interestingly, it is not.
Set the demand for an explicit verse beside his own published work.
The Trinity. In his confession of faith:
“while the Scripture does not explicitly mention the ‘Trinity,’ this doctrine exists within it’s inspired pages.”
The deity of Christ. He does not produce one verse and rest on it. He builds nineteen converging arguments. God alone is worshiped, and Jesus is worshiped. God alone forgives sins, and Jesus forgives sins. God is the Rock, the Shepherd, the light, the first and the last, and so is Jesus.
Deuteronomy 6:4. He argues that “one” there “should be understood as a compound unity,” reasoning from a man and wife becoming one flesh, and from the many parts of the tabernacle forming one building. No verse says that. It is inference from analogy.
Death before the fall. In Part 3, footnote 2:
“Biological death did not enter the world through Sin. It was already in the world.”
That is a large claim, reasoned from seed cycles in Genesis 1:11-13. No verse states it.
And his central thesis. His whole case is that a covenantal “heavens and earth” was created at Sinai. He calls this the Achilles’ heel of my position. He builds it from Isaiah 51, Exodus 19-24, Deuteronomy 32, a Targum, John Owen, and the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
No verse states that God created a heavens and earth at Sinai or at the Exodus.
Let me give his best text before he does. Isaiah 51:16 says God put His words in Israel’s mouth “that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.” The verb for “plant” there is agricultural, not the cosmic verb used three verses earlier, and the Targum reads the line as raising up a nation. I think he is right about that verse. I will come back to why it helps me rather than him.
But notice what it is not. It names neither Sinai nor the Exodus. The two verses in Exodus that do speak of God making heaven and earth, 20:11 and 31:17, both date that making to the six days and use it as the ground of the sabbath sign. And Deuteronomy calls heaven and earth as witnesses against Israel, four times over.
So he gets there by reading many passages together and drawing a conclusion none of them states. He builds it the way I build mine. Many texts, converging. The thing without the word.
5. His own authorities do not hold the rule either.
I am not bound by Reformed authorities and I am not appealing to them for my position. I raise them because he leans on them constantly. Owen, Gill, Leithart, Sproul, DeMar, Wilson, Durbin, Keil and Delitzsch, the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. In Part 1 he quotes Calvin himself as a witness on Psalm 102.
So take Calvin. He read Genesis 1 as the making of the physical world. He still found a covenant in the garden:
“his giving the tree of life to Adam and Eve, as an earnest of immortality… they had a mark engraven on them by the word of God, to be proofs and seals of his covenant.” (Institutes 4.14.18)
A sign and seal of a covenant. Given to Adam. In the garden. And the Hebrew word for covenant is nowhere in that passage.
Then there is Nicaea. In 325 the church defined the Trinity using a word that is not in the Bible, “of the same substance.” That was the main objection raised against the creed at the time. Your word is not in Scripture. The other side even held the verses that sound more obvious. “The Father is greater than I.” “Firstborn of all creation.”
The church did not answer by finding a verse with the word in it. There isn’t one. They answered that the whole of Scripture required the idea though the term was absent.
Mike cites the Nicene Creed’s content as settling a question in Part 2. The creed he cites was defended on the very ground he denies me.
6. Finally, what I am actually doing.
Here is the positive case, and it is not exotic.
A Trinitarian never finds the word. He reads the whole canon in context, watches the Father, Son, and Spirit texts converge, and concludes a doctrine the vocabulary never states.
A preterist never finds “AD 70.” He reads the time statements, the audience, and the covenant language in context across the canon, and concludes a fulfillment the vocabulary never dates.
Covenant Creation reads creation language in context across the canon. Isaiah 51. Deuteronomy 32. Jeremiah 4. Genesis 37, where Jacob himself tells us sun, moon, and stars are a father, a mother, and eleven brothers. Ezekiel 32. Revelation 1:20, where the stars are said outright to be messengers. And it concludes a covenantal referent the vocabulary never states.
That is one method used three times. Mike accepts it twice.
And this is why Isaiah 51 helps me rather than him.
He is right that Isaiah uses creation language for a covenant reality. I agree with him. The question neither of us can avoid is why the prophets reach for Genesis 1 vocabulary every time they describe a covenant world being made or unmade. He says they borrowed material language and used it as a figure. I say they reached for it because that is what the language was doing in the first place.
But look at what he has to grant to make his own case work. He needs “heavens and earth” in Isaiah 51 to name a real covenant order, really established, that really passed away in AD 70. Not a turn of phrase. An actual referent.
Once that category exists, and it is his category, not mine, then whether Genesis 1 belongs in it is a question of evidence. It is not a category mistake. It is not spiritualizing. It is asking whether something he already grants at Isaiah 51 is also true one book earlier.
So let him use the prophets. The moment he does, so can I.
He is a full preterist precisely because he already reads context against plain sense, and against the majority, and against the creeds where he thinks they got it wrong. He is the man who says the church took a text materially and was mistaken, and that context governs.
I am asking him to do at Genesis 1 what he already does at Matthew 24, at Revelation 21, at Isaiah 65. Not a new hermeneutic. His own, carried to the front of the book.
I am not claiming preterism requires Covenant Creation. He denies that it does, and I am content to leave the point alone. I am claiming the method is the same method, and that he stops using it at Genesis 12 for reasons he has not given.
So the question I would put to him is simple. Which is it? If a doctrine needs an explicit verse, the Trinity is in trouble, Nicaea was a mistake, and his own Sinai creation has no text. If a doctrine can be established by many passages converging, then my reading of Genesis has to be answered on the evidence rather than dismissed for a missing word.
He cannot have the first standard for me and the second for himself.
Sources: X, Jul 31 · X, Aug 1 · X, Aug 1 · X, Aug 1 · X, Aug 4 · X, Aug 5 · X, Aug 5 · X, Aug 5 · X, Aug 5 · X, Aug 5 · Video, Aug 3 · Confession of Faith · Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Calvin, Institutes 4.14.18 (Beveridge)