I agree with those theological critics who say that the age of the earth or universe is not by itself a major issue for theology. It’s only when the age of the earth or universe are wedded to other ideas that major issues arise. Two minor issues can make a major issue.
Before the rist of modern science, a constancy paradigm reigned that held there was a large, unchanging supralunary world and a small, sublunary world that varied within limits. The age of the universe or earth made little difference for the constancy paradigm. Hence Christians could accept the view that the universe had no beginning, as long as God was understood as responsible for its existence.
Modern science changed all this, first in astronomy and gradually in all the sciences. When the evolution paradigm arose, Christians were told it was a lawful process guided by God’s providence. Theistic evolutionists still have this idea even though evolutionists have made it clear that evolution is completely unguided. Now if evolution has less that 10 thousand years to work, it cannot do much and so age becomes a major issue for them. Hence they defend hypertemporality (deep time) strongly.
At this point the age of the earth is an enabling issue for evolutionary common ancestry. Now common ancestry should be a theological issue because it says that the difference between all organisms is a matter of degree, not kind. So theistic evolutionists have to posit undetectable spiritual kinds or become progressive creationists and posit unrecorded miracles. Either way they have retreated from the Bible.
The main theological issue is the reality of multiple kinds of organisms, which are discontinuous with each other, with a particular discontinuity between humans and non-humans. Without this, the Bible makes no sense. Because of this, I’m a multiple kind creationist (MKC).
December 2013