What Are Biblical Kinds?

Hi, I am studying in science about each of the different classifications of species, and my teacher (it was a recorded video) was talking about what the biblical kind is. He went through a scientist’s life and what he believed, but that scientist kept changing his mind. The video did not seem to have a final answer to what the Biblical kind is, and I was wondering if you had an answer to that? Thank you.

Awesome question, Kayla. Most likely the scientist in question was Carl Linnaeus, the man who gave us the taxonomic hierarchy (animal classification system) we use today. Linnaeus was originally trying to define the created kind. That’s why he used the word species because species is a Latin word that means “kind.” However, by the end of his life, Linnaeus had realized that species could interbreed and thus did not represent the kind.

By the end of his life, Linnaeus had changed his view to more closely align with the modern creationist position. Creationists view the animal kind as a reproductive group. Members of the group can or could previously reproduce with other members of the group. This is the biblical definition of a kind based on the phrasing in Genesis 1 and the flood narrative.

Genesis 6:20 makes it clear that the kinds taken on the ark were intended to repopulate the earth. This could only happen if the kinds were interbreeding groups. Genesis 8:17 confirms this, instructing Noah to take the animals off the ark so that they could breed abundantly. Thus, reproductive connectivity is the central focus of a created kind.

Members of the same also generally share the same physiological appearance. If I placed picture of a jackal, a wolf, a coyote, and a lynx on a table in front of you, it would be very obvious which one was not a member of the canine kind. In the same way, if I put a lion, a bobcat, a Pallas’s cat, and a rabbit in front of you, it would be obvious the rabbit is not a cat.

This can also be inferred from Adam naming the animals in Genesis 2. If Adam could not distinguish between two animals, he could not name them. Thus, the original kinds must have been distinct enough for Adam to recognize and name them.

Not all kinds are as obvious as cats and dogs. But in most cases, recognizing members of the same kind is fairly straightforward. When breeding is either no longer possible between two living species or one or more species in a group are extinct, there are other methods to determine membership of a kind. Often this is done using statistics, though statistical results are vulnerable to bad or biased data. Genetic comparisons are another common way baraminologists (people who study created kinds) try to determine if two organisms are related.

Ultimately, a kind is defined by its reproduction because that’s how God defined them.

Ultimately, a kind is defined by its reproduction because that’s how God defined them. A certain distinctness between members of different kinds is not explicitly stated in Scripture but could be reasonably inferred. All other methods are simply approximations used to fill in missing data.

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