Table of Contents
The Importance of the Doctrine for Sound Theology
The Doctrine of Creation in the History of the Church
Church Fathers in the Early New Testament Period
The Reformers
A Change of Thought
The Situation Today
The Hermeneutics of Genesis One
Hermeneutics
The Pretense of Objectivity
Examples of Objectivity
A Moral Duty
Unbiblical Theories of Creation
Six Day Creation - The Predominant View
Day-Age Theory
Punctuated Day Theory
Gap Theory
Framework Theory
The Teaching of Scripture
The 252nd Synod of
the Reformed Church in the United States erected a special committee
"to articulate the RCUS's position on God's creation in six normal
chronological days of light and darkness as adopted by the 75th annual
session of the Eureka Classis and confirmed by the 76th annual session
of the Eureka Classis, together with a recommendation as to where in the
governing documents of the RCUS this position may best be placed for
use" (1998 Abstract, p.53).
Our responsibility, therefore, is not to
formulate a new statement on six-day creation, but to defend the one we
already have, namely, "that God created the heavens and the earth
in six normal days which were chronological periods of light and
darkness as recorded in the book of Genesis" (1985 Abstract,
p.105). Your committee was also asked to find an appropriate place in
our standards for our position statement in order to minimize questions
about its authority.
Writing our report was relatively simple. We
wanted our report to be a positive expression of our doctrine. Though it
was necessary at times to evaluate and criticize alternate views, our
goal was to do so only to the degree necessary to clarify and defend our
own position. Your committee was in full agreement with the position of
the RCUS regarding this doctrine. The only ambiguity noted in our 1985
statement concerns the word normal. It has sometimes been alleged that
the days of creation were anything but "normal" since the
events of those days were so unique. Doubtless, this argument amounts to
little more than a red herring, but in forming a doctrinal statement we
should be as clear as possible. Your committee understands "six
normal days" as "six days of normal duration" or
"six sidereal days."
Each member of the committee was assigned part
of the report. Our topics include the importance of the orthodox
doctrine of creation for sound theology, the history of the doctrine in
the church, herraeneutics, the meaning of the word day in Genesis 1 and
in the fourth commandment, and heretical views of creation.
Finding a suitable place for our position in the
governing standards has been more challenging. Part of our difficulty
arises from the fact that Synod has not yet adopted the report of the
Special Committee on the Authority of Position Papers. Until this is
done we do not even know whether there is a need to amend our standards
to include our position on creation. Even so, your committee believes
that the best approach would be to recommend that the position taken by
the RCUS in 1985 is the correct interpretation of our creeds
(specifically Questions 92 and 103 of the Heidelberg catechism), and
that our report be adopted as an exposition of the creeds. In this way
our report would be useful as evidence in any judicial proceeding that
may involve this issue.
Our thinking on this is as follows. To begin
with, we do not believe that a doctrinal position on an matter of this
importance should be placed in the Constitution. Our doctrinal and
governmental standards should remain distinct. On the other hand, we
hesitate to suggest that our confessions be tampered with - either by
amending one of the Three Forms or by adopting the 1985 statement as an
additional confession dealing only with the doctrine of creation.
However, if a stronger affirmation of six-day creation is necessary,
this may be the only way to go. Altering Article 12 of the Belgic
Confession would probably serve that purpose best. The amended article
would read, "We believe that the Father by the Word, that is, by
His Son, has created of nothing the heaven, the earth, and all
creatures, in the space of six days of normal duration (which were
chronological periods of light and darkness as recorded in Genesis 1),
when it seemed good unto Him...." Your committee had considered the
possibility of annotating the creeds in some way, but this has the
disadvantage of complicating our standards by adding a tertiary layer.
The same problem would occur if Synod decides to give its positional
statements a quasi-confessional status. The reasons for doing so may be
laudable, but the results, to say the least, would be confusing.
We hereby submit our report with the hope that
Synod will find it acceptable. May our sovereign God use it to the
advancement of his kingdom and glory! Amen.
The Importance of the Doctrine
for
Sound Theology
Wayne C. Johnson
Why does the
Reformed Church in the United States feel it necessary to articulate a
doctrine of creation that may well impose a shadow of separation between
us and many beloved brethren? Are we, as some have suggested, clinging
to and/or creating distinctives merely to justify our separate
ecclesiastical existence?
That's a fair question and, in a spirit of true
biblical ecumenicity, it deserves an answer. Let us consider the
situation.
Our ministers in the RCUS are, for the most
part, underpaid. Many of our congregations are located on the Northern
Plains, where population has been dwindling for decades. Men serving in
many of those pulpits had best know how to repair an engine, replace old
wiring and plant a garden. We have no seminary. We struggle to provide
for retired ministers and widows. In short, things might be a lot easier
were we to simply fold the tent and merge with a larger body.
The unique history of the RCUS has also created
an outlook on the world that is arguably myopic, but also wonderfully
immune to the vagaries of the modern evangelical version of political
correctness. At the dawn of this century, there were large and
prosperous seminaries, universities, colleges, orphanages and hospitals
that bore our denomination's name. Churches dotted the land. RCUS
publications flourished. The ministry was respected and well-paid, but
sadly, like Micah the priest. most chose the comforts of this world over
service in what remained of the once mighty RCUS. She became a church
without ministers, and in many eyes a church without a future, held
together through the perseverance of her people and their elders, many
the sons of Russian-German immigrants who had known little else than
poverty and hard times in unforgiving climates.
Yet, it pleased God to preserve this tiny
communion. Union for the sake of union would hold little attraction for
these brethren, who had already paid the price. There were few lofty
aspirations among the sons of the RCUS, but fewer liberals, still. She
was a parochial and isolated body, ignoring and largely ignored by the
broader Reformed community. In time, as language and cultural barriers
fell between the RCUS and her sister Reformed and Presbyterian
denominations, warm and affectionate relations would flourish. Still,
there would remain an historically conditioned, and largely justified,
suspicion of things "new."
"Don't you people get cable? You sound like
'fundamentalists?"' The answer, of course, is that when it comes to
the doctrine of Scripture, we are fundamentalists, and more ... much
more. For Reformed believers, Christ is not only the mediator of
redemption, but also the mediator of creation. He is truly Lord and
Savior. "All things were created by him, and for him." There
is a purpose and plan to our Creator God's handiwork that encompasses
far more than the fundamentalists' singular focus on individual
soteriology.
Nor is our God, "who of nothing made heaven
and earth and all that in them is, who likewise upholds and governs the
same by his eternal counsel and providence" (Heid. 26), the
contingent God of neo-evangelicalism. Rather, He is the great "I
AM" whose "creatures are so in His hand, that without His will
they cannot so much as move" (Heid. 28). He is a God who
"redeems me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me
that, without the will of my Father in Heaven, not a hair can fall from
my head, yea, that all things must work together for my salvation"
(Heid. 1).
What the Bible has to say about the creation,
therefore, is vitally important to how Christians are called to live
their lives. Christ is Lord of all the earth, and He has purposed to
deal with us in this world according to His good pleasure. In other
words, we affirm not only the sovereignty of God over salvation, but
over all things, all events and all meaning. We affirm the transcendence
and immanence of God, resisting the nascent existentialism of modern
evangelicalism that presumes a God indifferent to history (as well as
the truncated gospel of the fundamentalists).
Where theology is replaced by psychology, when
God created the world, how God created the world, or even if God created
the world, are no longer important. Relationships are important.
Feelings are important. Like poor relations unexpectedly showing up at
the family reunion, adherents of six-day creation are greeted with tight
smiles and embarrassed looks from brethren who can probably still recall
when they "used to believe that, too." In fact, most still do,
but simply don't see why such an obvious stumbling block ought to be
hurled at the feet of prospective converts who are bound to associate
such views with narrow-minded backwood preachers.
To the modern church, six-day creation is an
unnecessary impediment to both evangelism and respectability. It also
embraces many faithful, but uneducated Christians in a catholicity that
is not entirely welcomed by many scholars. While we are passionately
dedicated to the proposition of an educated ministry, we reject outright
the notion that scholarship must necessarily beget an effete ministry
for whom affirming the inspiration. authority and in fallibility of the
Bible is a mark of theological autism. We also reject the notion that
any true doctrine may be discredited simply because uneducated people
believe it. Our goal must be to embrace the truth. regardless of the
company which the truth may keep.
"But why fight about such things?" ask
our fraternal brethren. The simple fact is that we don't fight. We
agree. Rather than bringing dissension and discord, we in the RCUS have
been blessed by God with a wonderful harmony of spirit and doctrine
regarding the doctrine of Scripture and the doctrine of creation which
that doctrine of Scripture demands.
We see in the broader evangelical church in
general, and in her seminaries in particular, a dangerously low view of
the Word of God. "Thus sayeth the Lord," all too often sounds
like "Hath God said?" We plead with our Reformed brethren, and
the broader evangelical church, as well, to hear what we are saying. Our
insistence upon the doctrine of six-day creation is a direct, and
necessary, extension of our doctrine of Scripture.
Our membership not only believe their Bibles,
they demand that their ministers believe them, too, without reservation.
And by God's grace they do. We recognize the obligation to defend our
position among our fraternal brethren, and we will. But we defend it as
we defend the faith and the Bible itself. God's Word is clear. To defend
six-day creation is to defend the proposition that the Bible means what
it says, and that its meaning is clear.
If our Bibles mean whatever we want them to mean
in Genesis 1, then why not at every other juncture where God's Word
offends the sensibilities of man's reason? Ninety-five Theses, Calvin's
Institutes, the Reformed Creeds and the blood of the martyrs aside, if
there is a single cornerstone upon which the Reformation rests, it is
that the Bible is the Word of the Living God. Infallible. Inspired. A
light unto our path, and a lamp unto our feet.
As Reformed believers, we know that it has been
the Holy Spirit Himself who has preserved His Word. We have it. It need
not be authenticated by church councils or learned doctors. Nor do we
need the permission of academics to believe what the Bible clearly says.
The Spirit of God knows His own Word, and continues to testify to its
veracity in the hearts of the believing church.
Our critics will complain that we say too much,
assume too much and demand too much. We leave no room for differing
opinions among faithful men. We can only answer that the stated position
of our church represents the deeply held conviction of our people. It
is, by God's grace, what we believe. It is what we would have our
children taught. Most importantly, it is what the plainest reading of a
decidedly unambiguous text teaches.
In answering our critics, have we not also
earned the right to ask questions of our own? What purpose is served,
may we ask, in seeking to allegorize the Biblical account of creation?
What motive is fed? What secret lust whetted? We can only reply that no
good fruit has come of this "symbolical" tree. Is six-day
creation a stumbling block to would-be believers? If so, let them also
stumble at the offense of the cross. Let them scoff at swimming axe
heads, manna from heaven and, most unbelievable of all, the resurrection
of the dead. It is the convicting work of the Holy Spirit that will
convince the gainsayers, not the reluctant witness of a timid church.
We seek not division, but rather unity in the
truth. We would count it a blessing if our fraternal brethren joined us
in our affirmation, but that is not our first purpose. Our purpose is to
maintain the unity with which we have been blessed, and to insure,
insofar as God ordains, that this unity of doctrine continue to be shed
abroad in our churches, from generation unto generation.
"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God,
that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor thirst
for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander
from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to
and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it" (Amos
8:11-12).
The Doctrine of
Creation
in the History of the Church
Wesley Brice
Certain questions
need to be carefully considered in this paper. First, we need to ask,
will a study of the history of the doctrine of creation produce church
fathers who taught or supported a six-day creation or will it reveal
that the church fathers held to a long day-age theory? Secondly, will
this study of the history exhibit for us men who held to an old-age
earth and universe or church fathers who held to a recent, under 10,000
years, creation.
This has become a vital issue in the church
today. Many who are attempting to interpret Genesis 1-11 in the light of
recent scientific theories regarding the beginning of creation have made
this inquiry necessary because they need and boldly assert that the
church fathers did teach a long day-age theory and an old-age earth.
However, the issue of creation for the church fathers was more between
the church and the pagan philosophers and so called sciences of the
world rather than a controversy in the church itself. Therefore since
there was no great conflict regarding creation in the church itself you
will not find any council dealing with the subject as a central issue.
But as they write their different apologies of the faith, and
instruction to the church you will find the subject discussed.
Church Fathers in the Early New Testament Period
For the purpose of this paper, we will consider
only the views of men who wrote after the completion of the New
Testament canon. I will provide quotes to show that many of the early
church fathers not only held to six twenty-four hour days of creation
but also believed the world was quite recent in its creation, much less
than ten thousand years old.
Irenaeus seemed to support the day-age theory
when he wrote, "Thus, then, in the day they did eat, in the same
did they die.... For it is said, 'There was made in the evening, and
there was made in the morning one day.' Now in this same day that they
did eat, in that also did they die.... On one and the same day on which
they ate they also died (for it is one day of creation)...." And
again. "He [Adam] did not overstep the thousand years, but died
within their limit ·.. for since 'a day of the Lord is as a thousand
years,' he did not overstep the thousand years. but died within
them." But in the same passage he also wrote, "For in six days
as the world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded.
And for this reason the Scripture says: 'Thus the heavens and the earth
were finished, and all their adornment. And God brought to a conclusion
upon the sixth day the works that He had made; and God rested upon the
seventh day from all his works.' This is an account of the things
formerly created, as also it is a prophecy of the things to come. For
that day of the Lord is a thousand years; and in six days created things
were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end
at the sixth thousand year" (Irenacus, c 115-202, Against Heresies
5.28.3).
In the latter passage, it should be noted that
Irenaeus does not speak of six "ages" of creation, but only of
six "days" of creation. and then six "ages" of
history to come. Thus, he is a witness for six normal days, not long
periods of time in creation, and also a witness for a recent creation of
less than six thousand years.
Likewise, Hippolytus (c 170236) wrote, "For
in six days the world was made, and [the Creator] rested on the
seventh" (Against Heresies 4:48). In a more detailed discussion of
the age of the earth in which he taught that the world was less than six
thousand years old he wrote, "For as the times are noted from the
foundation of the world, and reckoned from Adam, they set clearly before
us the matter with which our inquiry deals. For the first appearance of
our Lord in the flesh took place in Bethlehem, under Augustus. in the
year 5500; and He suffered in the thirty-third year. And 6,000 years
must needs be accomplished, in order that the Sabbath may come, the
rest, the holy day 'on which God rested from all His works.' For the
Sabbath is the type and emblem of the future kingdom of the saints, when
they 'shall reign with Christ,' when He comes from heaven, as John says
in his Apocalypse: for 'a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.'
Since, then, in six days God made all things. it follows that 6,000
years must be fulfilled. And they are not yet fulfilled, as John says:
'five are fallen; one is,' that is, the sixth; 'the other is not yet
come "(On Daniel 2:4).
From this we see once again that Hippolytus
taught that the world was created in six days, and that the world would
continue six thousand years from the "foundation of the
world."
Clement of Alexandria (c 150-220) also did not
teach a great age of the earth but reckoned time from creation to his
lifetime to be only 5,784 years: "From Augustus to Commodus are two
hundred and twenty-two years.' and from Adam to the death of Commodus
five thousand seven hundred and eighty-four years, two months, twelve
days" (Miscellanies 1:21). Concerning the fourth commandment, he
simply states that "the creation of the world was concluded in six
days" (Miscellanies 6:16). In light of the fact that Clement
considered time from Adam to his day as only 5,784 years it is hard even
to pretend that he th9ught of the six days of creation as billions of
years.
Origin wrote, "After these statements,
Celsus, from a secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account
of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand
years old, but very much under that,... And yet, against his will,
Celsus is entangled into testifying that the world is comparatively
modern, and not yet ten thousand years old" (Celsus 1:20). Note
that Origen emphasizes that Celsus was in error and motivated by a
"secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account of
creation." According to Origen what is the Mosaic account? He
plainly states the Mosaic account of creation "teaches that the
world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that."
The fourth century father Basil taught as
Biblical doctrine a literal twenty-four hour day in Genesis chapter one:
"Thus were created the evening and the morning. Scripture means the
space of a day and a night, and afterwards no more says day and night,
but calls them both under the name of the more important: a custom which
you will find throughout Scripture. Everywhere the measure of time is
counted by days, without mention of nights.... If it therefore says 'one
day,' it is from a wish to determine the measure of day and night, and
to combine the time that they contain. Now twenty-four hours fill up the
space of one day - we mean of a day and of a night; and if, at the time
of the solstices, they have not both an equal length, the time marked by
Scripture does not the less circumscribe their duration. It is as though
it said: twenty-four hours measure the space of a day, or that, in
reality a day is the time that the heavens starting from one point take
to return there" (Homily II).
Theophilus of Antioch (c 180) does not elaborate
on the meaning of day, but after he quotes chapter one of Genesis he
simply makes this comment: "Of this six days' work no man can give
a worthy explanation and description of all its parts, not though he had
ten thousand tongues and ten thousand mouths" (Autolycus 2:12).
Ambrose of Milan (339-397) provides us with one
of the fullest discussions of the length of the creation days. He
maintains the following view of the creation of day and night: "God
created day and night at the same time. Since that time, day and night
continue their daily succession and renewal" (Hexameron, p.72). In
particular he taught that the very meaning of day and night rests on
God's Word. He wrote, "The beginning of the day rests on God's
word: 'Be light made, and light was made.' The end of day is the
evening. Now, the succeeding day follows after the termination of night.
The thought of God is dear. First He called light 'day' and next He
called darkness 'night.' In notable fashion has Scripture spoken of a
'day,' not the 'first day.' Because a second, then a third day, and
finally the remaining days were to follow, a 'first dav' could have been
mentioned, following in this way the natural order. But Scripture
established a law that twenty-four hours, including both day and night,
should be given the name of day only, as if one were to say the length
of one day is twenty-four hours in extent" (Hexameron, pp. 42-43).
Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 387) simply states in his
catechism instruction that "In six days God made the world: but the
world was for man (Catechetical lectures 12:5).
Augustine is probably the church father most
often quoted by the day-age theorists as an early church father that
held to their day-age interpretation of Genesis 1. There is no question
that Augustine did not hold to a literal, normal six-day position, but
did he hold to an extended period of time for creation as is often
alleged?
First he asserted that God did not need six days
to create but that he had the power to create all things in a moment of
time, and certainly did not need to rest from His labors: "Now, on
the subject of this rest Scripture is significant, and refrains not to
speak, when it tells us how at the beginning of the world, and at the
time when God made heaven and earth and all things which are in them, He
worked during six days, and rested on the seventh day. For it was in the
power of the Almighty to make al] things even in one moment of
time" (On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed, 17:28). Augustine
could not imagine why God needed six days when He could have made all
things in a moment of time.
The key to understanding this problem, as
Augustine saw it, lay in the fact that six is a perfect number. He
suggested what he thought to be a logical framework for the six days,
based on fractions of numbers that make up the number 6 (1, 2 and 3). He
wrote, "These works are recorded to have been completed in six days
(the same day being six times repeated), because six is a perfect
number, - not because God required a protracted time, as if He could not
at once create all things, which then should mark the course of time by
the movements proper to them, but because the perfection of the works
was signified by the number six. For the number six is the first which
is made up of its own parts, i.e., of its sixth, third, and half, which
are respectively one, two, and three, and which make a total of six. In
this way of looking at a number, those are said to be its parts which
exactly divide it, as a half, a third, a fourth, or a fraction with any
denominator,... So much I have thought fit to state for the sake of
illustrating the perfection of the number six, which is, as I said, the
first which is exactly made up of its own parts added together; and in
this number of days God finished His work. And, therefore, we must not
despise the science of numbers, which, in many passages of holy
Scripture, is found to be of eminent service to the careful
interpreter" (City of God 11:30).
Again, regarding the age of the earth he wrote,
"As to those who are always asking why man was not created during
these countless ages of the infinitely extended past, and came into
being so lately that, according to Scripture, less than 6000 years have
elapsed since He began to be, just as I replied regarding the origin of
the world to those who will not believe that it is not eternal, but had
a beginning" (City of God 12:12).
The Reformers
In the history of the
doctrine of creation certainly Calvin's views are indispensable to the
understanding of the church's position on creation at the time of the
reformation. Since he is without question one of the outstanding
theologians of that time.
Interestingly he deals with creation by asking a
question that confronts the church today, "Should the church be
influenced by the unbelieving scientific world in its interpretation of
holy scripture?" Calvin wrote in his commentary on Genesis 1:1,
"When God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth, the
earth was empty and waste. He moreover teaches by the word 'created,'
that what before did not exist was now made; for he has not used the
term rxy, (yatsar,) which signifies to frame or form but arb, (bara,)
which signifies to create. Therefore his meaning is, that the world was
made out of nothing. Hence the folly of those is refuted who imagine
that unformed matter existed from eternity; and who gather nothing else
from the narration of Moses than that the world was furnished with new
ornaments, and received a form of which it was before destitute. This
indeed was formerly a common fable among heathens, who had received only
an obscure report of the creation, and who, according to custom,
adulterated the truth of God with strange figments; but for Christian
men to labor (as Steuchus does ) in maintaining this gross error is
absurd and intolerable. Let this, then be maintained in the first place,
that the world is not eternal but was created by God."
As to the order of the days of creation, he
accepted the sequence given in Genesis. He also rejected the argument
that God created all things in a moment of time, but expressly stated
that God took "the space of six days" (Commentary on Gen.
1:5). Moreover, he understood the days as six successive days: "For
the correction of this fault, God applied the most suitable remedy when
he distributed the creation of the world into successive portions, that
he might fix our attention, and compel us, as if he had laid his hand
upon us, to pause and to reflect" (Commentary on Gen. 1:5). He also
makes it clear that the days of creation were "natural days":
"To divide the day from the night. He means the artificial day,
which begins at the rising of the sun and ends at its setting. For the
natural day (which he mentions above) includes in itself the night.
Hence infer, that the interchange of days and nights shall be continual:
because the word of God, who determined that the days should be distinct
from the nights, directs the course of the sun to this end"
(Commentary on Gen. 1:14). Finally when he considers the sanctifying of
the seventh day he notes that with God one moment is as a thousand
years. Thus he concludes that God took six days for our benefit not his.
In giving us the common view of the church at
the time of the Reformation, the Dutch Annotations upon the Whole Bible
ordered by the Synod of Dort on Genesis 1:5 reads as follows: "The
meaning of these words [day/night] is that night and day had made up one
natural day together, which with the Hebrews began with the evening and
ended with the approach of the next evening, comprehending twenty four
hours."
The Westminster divines appear to have embraced
the common view. They wrote, It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom,
and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the
world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space
of six days; and all very good" (WCF 4:1).
Some have argued that the divines understood the
phrase "space of" as extended periods of time. Gratefully, by
the providence of God some of them left for us their understanding of
the word "day" in Genesis.
David W. Hall, who has done extensive research
on the subject, wrote as follows: "The Westminster Divines and the
long stretch of church history prior to the 19th century DID have a view
on the length of creation days. This historical fact is often obscured
by either biased presuppositions or a research vacuum. Despite the
prevalent claim from some quarters (actually relatively recent,
primarily since the 18005) that the confessional words "in the
space of six days" really could mean up to 16 billion years, when
primary writings by the divines are consulted, it becomes very difficult
to maintain that the divines were more chic than heretofore
imagined." And again, "Contrary to the theological mythology
of the past 150 years, the leading Westminster Divines did leave
explicit testimony, in writing, repeatedly, and uniformly on this
subject. A review of their own writings only permits embarrassment for
those who assert that they expressed no view on this subject."
Here are the words of the Westminster divines
themselves:
John White: "Here, where it [day, yam] is
distinguished from the Night, it is taken for a Civil day, that is, that
part of twenty-four houres which is Light; but in the latter end of the
verse, it signifies a Natural day, consisting of twenty-four houres, and
includes the night too" (Commentary on Gen. 1-3)
John Ley: "This first day consisting of
twenty foure howres...." and "... the Sabbath (being as large
a day as any of the rest, and so containing twenty foure howres is
measured from even to even" (Annotations).
John Lightfoot: "Twelve hours was there
universal darkness through all the world; and then was light created in
the upper horizon, and there it enlightened twelve hours more"
(Works 2:71). Again, "And in four and twenty hours the command is
accomplished (Works 2:10-11; cf. 2:334). And finally, "But let us
consider of the second thing, as it tends to the end of this command,
the setting forth the reason of the institution of the sabbath; that he
created all things 'in six days.' And what needed he take six days, that
could have done all in a moment? He had as little need to take time for
his work, as he had of the world, he being Lord of all. What reason can
we give? But that he, by his own proceeding and acting would set the
clock of time, and measure out days, and a week, by which all time is
measured, - by his own standard, evening and morning, to make a natural
day, i.e., day and night; and seven natural days to make a week; six
days of labour, the seventh for rest.... So that look at the first day
of the creation, God made heaven and earth in a moment. The heaven, as
soon as created, moved, and the wheel of time began to go; and thus, for
twelve hours, there was universal darkness. This is called the
'evening,' meaning night. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and light
arose in the east, and, in twelve hours more, was carried over the
hemisphere; and this is called, 'morning,' or 'day.' And the evening and
morning made the first natural day; twelve hours, darkness, - and
twelve, light" (Sermon on Exodus 20:11).
Again quoting David W. Hall, "Several other
Westminster Divines lent their hand to the 1645 Annotations upon all the
Books of the Old and New Testament (London, 1645). Among the divines
appointed to draft these 'study notes' were John Ley, William Gouge, and
Daniel Featly, who were also appointed to the Westminster Assembly.
Assemblyman John Ley composed the Annotations on the Pentateuch, and
expressed the Westminster view that 'the word Day is taken for the
natural day consisting of twenty foure howres, which is measured most
usually from the Sun-rising to the Sun-rising; or from the Sun-setting
to the Sun-setting.' Ley noted that such sense was also used in Exodus
12:29, Numbers 3:13 and 8:17. Referring to other literal twenty-four
hour periods, the view of the divines could hardly be invisible."
It should also be noted that James Ussher (who
was appointed to the Westminster assembly but never participated because
of his sympathies for the crown, but whose Irish Articles nonetheless
greatly influenced the assembly) held that the first day of creation
took place October 23, 4004 BC.
To sum up the quotes of the above Westminster
Divines it can be safely argued that when they used the words "in
the space of six days" in the confession they meant six literal
days and not six extended periods of time. Such terminology would have
been foreign to their thinking.
A Change of Thought
In the mid 1800s the influence of Darwin and
Huxley took its toll upon otherwise sound reformed theologians. While
the change of thinking may have begun in the science departments of the
colleges and universities, it soon affected the religious thinkers of
the day.
Charles Hodge, for example, was influenced by
the evolutionary and long-age scientific theories of the mid-nineteenth
century. In his Systematic Theology, he accepted the theories of the
geologists of his day. Here he sadly suggests the need to interpret the
Bible in such a manner as to bring it in line with the atheistic
thinking of the Darwinian theorists of his day (Systematic Theology
1:1:10).
Accepting the "facts" of geological
theory, Hodge was concerned with the conflict this created with the
Mosaic record. What is the church to believe -- Moses or geologists? The
issue of faith is now brought into the picture. To answer this, he
proposed "two methods of reconciling the Mosaic account with those
facts have been adopted." One can take the first verse of Genesis 1
to refer to the original creation of the matter of the universe in the
indefinite past, and what follows to refer to a reorganization of the
earth to fit it for the habitation of man. Or one can interpret the word
day as used throughout the chapter as geological periods of indefinite
duration.
Please note what has taken place here. Hodge has
encouraged the church to "reconcile" the Mosaic account with
the facts the geologists have adopted. In other words, where the Bible
and science are in conflict he wants the church to interpret scripture
not by scripture, but by the prevailing scientific theory of the day.
This is a serious and ultimately fatal step for the church of Jesus
Christ.
Hodge came to the conclusion that the word day
can be understood to be a period of indefinite duration. No longer did
he hold the days of creation to be normal twenty-four hour periods as
the church had held until then. He concludes by proclaiming that the
recent readings of science have the blessing of a "divine
pronouncement" upon them. Now he says there is an
"agreement" between science and the Bible. There is so much
that the most recent readings of science have for the first time
explained, that the idea of man as the author becomes utterly
incomprehensible. By proving the record true, science "pronounces
it divine; for who could have correctly narrated the secrets of eternity
but God himself?"
The Situation Today
The church's present-day rejection of the
natural interpretation of the days of Genesis 1s relatively new,
stemming from the so-called scientific discoveries of the mid-1800s. But
the assertion is without foundation in the history of the church until
then.
The theories of science in regard to geology,
evolution, etc., have changed drastically since Darwin's day. They will
change again as the weeks, months, years, decades continue to pass by,
but the Word of God is settled in the heavens.
There is no need to try to fit the Bible into
science falsely so called. Let God's Word interpret itself for us;
indeed, let the Bible interpret science as well. Only if we follow the
Scriptures will we remain in the mainstream of the history of the
church. And more importantly we will remain faithful to the sacred text
that was produced by the very breath of God. "Forever, 0 LORD, your
word is settled in heaven. Your faithfulness endures to all generations;
you established the earth, and it abides. They continue this day
according to Your ordinances, for all are Your servants" (Ps.
119:89-91).
The Hermeneutics of Genesis
One
Warren Embree
Over the past fifty
years a number of diverse papers and articles have been written
concerning the doctrine of creation and the interpretation of the first
chapters of Genesis. One clear line of division among these writings is
whether the days of Genesis are to be understood as literal or
figurative. Another line - after careful study has shown to some that
the language demands the days be understood as literal - declares the
creation passage to be a literary fiction rather than a literal account
of an historic set of events. While a good deal of this debate occurs
outside the bounds of conservative Reformed and Presbyterian scholarship
circles, one is surprised to find when studying Reformed or Presbyterian
scholars a marked rejection of or doubt concerning the literal
interpretation of either the days in Genesis 1 or the creation account
itself. Meredith G. Kline, most familiar to those in the Reformed Church
in the United States, concludes "that as far as the time frame is
concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequence of events, the
scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about
cosmic origins." On the other hand, a significant work of exegesis
refuting the allegorical or metaphorical interpretation of either the
days or the week of Genesis 1 has been given by the late Gerhard F.
Hasel, former John Nevins Andrews Professor of Old Testament and
Biblical Theology at Andrews University, teaching at a Seventh-Day
Adventist school.
As will be taken up in another place, our
understanding of the creation of the world affects the whole body of our
faith. Despite the desire of some to give the scientific community all
time and space for their theories, the fact remains that the question as
to whether the account is to be understood as literal or figurative is a
significant matter for the orthodoxy of that faith. After all, it is
'through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of
God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do
appear" (Heb. 11:3). Those who argue that the only issue of
importance is whether God created ex nihilo neglect the fact that the
Greek term used in this passage of Hebrews refers to more than the
origin of the stuff; it teaches that the creation of the universe was in
an orderly fashion. This creation is not only a demonstration of God's
power to bring into being -- it expresses the architectural and
constructive genius of our Creator as well. The prophets and apostles
teach us that our knowledge of God encompasses not only the
"what" of His activities, but the "how" also. To
ignore the latter at the expense of the former is to ignore the
revelation of Truth God has given for our "instruction."
Nor is a proper understanding of Genesis
1ntellectually frivolous. There is more to the question than whether
Genesis 1 should be understood as literal or figurative. At stake is the
veracity of the biblical authors -- Moses in the case of Genesis -- and
the authority given to them to teach what is the truth concerning God
and our responsibilities to Him. At the heart of the issue is the
inherent authority of Scripture and the authority of the Scriptural
authors over all human activity, the scientific community included. Even
were it possible to demonstrate that the intention of Moses in giving us
the creation account in Genesis 1 was to provide a word picture of some
incomprehensible activity of God, we give up too much to declare that
the scientific community -- much less any human community -- is
"free of biblical constraints" in matters relating to an
interpretation and understanding of the universe in which we live. Our
principles of understanding are to be derived from, not introduced into
the words of the apostles and prophets. These were the men sent by God,
inspired by His Spirit, endowed with the Spirit of Christ, whose
perception and understanding of God and the universe is our true guide
in matters of the mind as well as all matters that pertain to being.
Hermeneutics
How, then, are we to approach a study of these
words? The term "hermeneutics" has undergone considerable
permutations in the past century or so. Once considered an objective set
of rules and methods for ascertaining the meaning of a text, it is now
used to describe the subjective set of presuppositions whereby the
interpreter can have an intellectual or spiritual "meeting"
with something that may or may not have to do with the text or the
author of that text. In the world of Biblical hermeneutics Karl Barth
pursued the notion of an existential encounter Rudolf Bultmann desired a
hermeneutic that de mythologized the Biblical teachings. Martin
Heidegger sought hermeneutics as a way to authenticate our being. Hans-Georg
Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur desired to destroy even the
"pretense" of objectivity in interpretation Wilhelm Dilthey
Ernst Fuchs, and a host of others all reject the notion of objective
hermeneutics as passe'. Even those who resisted relegating hermeneutics
to being a philosophical descendant of phenomenology or existentialism
did not return hermeneutics to an objective set of rules and methods.
Most turned to developing an overriding thematic presupposition that
defined and dictated the direction interpretation should take. Oscar
Cullmann, for example, proposed "salvation-history" and Jurgen
Moltmann the "theology of hope."
Each of these "new" approaches to
hermeneutics nevertheless has a single, unifying principle, regardless
of the diversity of definitions or philosophical origins. Each assumes
that there is a pre-existing set of presuppositions or
"pre-understandings" which demand a subjective approach to
hermeneutics. Hermeneutics so defined is but old allegory writ in modern
terms. The significance of this should not be lost on us. Thomas Aquinas
before them -- who at least held that the grammatical approach was
useful for understanding the "human" author's intent --
-reserved the allegorical method as a means to understand the
"divine" Author's intent. These "new" hermeneutics,
however, deny that the Scriptures speak clearly and plainly to the human
intellect at all. They deny that anything like an objective hermeneutic
is possible.
We must reject such notions of hermeneutics. We
must hold that exegesis is the critical or rigorous interpretation of a
Biblical passage and hermeneutics are the "principles, laws, and
methods" of that interpretation. The goal of this hermeneutic is to
arrive at the intention of (he author and, as we understand what the
prophets and apostles of (he Living God have said, our understanding
increases so that we can further understand the world in which we live.
To speak of an "hermeneutic of the doctrine
of creation" is therefore to speak of the set of principles, laws,
and methods of literary interpretation, which apply to all those
passages in Scripture that pertain to that doctrine. The goal of this
hermeneutic is to reach an intelligent understanding of the passages
and, as should be the view of those who hold the Scriptures as the
infallible and inerrant Word of God, that understanding should be an
accurate reconstruction of the original intent of the author. To this
end the principles, laws, and methods of a hermeneutic must involve
ascertaining what the author of a particular passage originally said
(textual criticism), what was meant by the terms and syntax of that
passage (hermeneutics proper), and how this understanding has
significance and relevance in our own time (application).
The Pretense of Objectivity
One of the hallmarks of the Renaissance and
Reformation era was an insistence on returning to the "plain
sense" of a Biblical passage. This insistence represented a
rejection of the allegorical method as it related to the interpretation
of Scripture and placed the emphasis back to the grammatical and
historical meaning as the foundation of Biblical interpretation. The
reformers, of course, were dealing with centuries of exegetical
tradition and, despite the fact that Augustine had laid out a clear
definition of the hermeneutic enterprise for Biblical teachers in his
writings, these teachers of non-objective hermeneutics left the clear
sense of Scripture for flights of intellectual fancy. The Renaissance
and Reformation interpreters rejected such a subjective approach to
hermeneutics. Whether one wants to credit certain individuals or simply
a general movement away from the excesses of allegorical interpretation,
the clear desire was to free interpretation from the multiplicity of
senses and concentrate on the meaning intended by the author within the
context of his historical audience and his linguistic usage. The
fundamental principle was that a passage of Scripture has a single,
simple sense arrived at grammatically and historically BEFORE outside
principles influence one's understanding of that meaning. This exclusion
of outside intellectual influences is one of the defining features of
the Reformation hermeneutic, and it is a feature whose goal and
objective is to let the Biblical authors speak for themselves. It
accepts the principle that the Scriptures hold the highest intellectual,
philosophical, theological, and literary authority and that the authors
of Scripture speak not for themselves but for God. In a word, the
Reformed hermeneutic accepts that the intent of the Biblical author is
the intent of the Spirit of God. More importantly, any
"pre-understandings" of the interpreter are formed not by that
Spirit but by a reprobate mind intent on suppressing the truth of God.
Furthermore, lest we be concerned that we are
merely following "one" possible hermeneutic among many, the
justification for this principle of authorial intent as the meaning of
Scripture and historical-grammatical analysis as the proper method is
found within the Scriptures themselves. The Apostle Paul teaches that
the moral responsibility of the speaker is to convey something of value
to the hearer. If it is otherwise, Paul asks, "what shall I profit
you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge,
or by prophesying, or by doctrine?" (I Cor. 14:6). Paul further
teaches that any language is capable of transferring this meaning when
he states that all languages are "articulate" (1 Cor. 14:10).
Therefore the intent of the author is what constitutes the proper value
of the use of the language, and an understanding and careful analysis of
the language enables us to ascertain that meaning. The words of Christ
confirm this moral responsibility and intellectual signification when He
states that "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
account thereof in the Day of Judgment" (Matt. 12:36). The words of
the speaker -- and by analogy the writer -- are the moral responsibility
of that speaker and therefore, according to Scripture, the intended
meaning of the speaker is what shall be accounted as the meaning in the
final judgment. Conversely, as the Heidelberg Catechism says that we are
to "wrest no man's words" (Held. 112). This is especially
applicable to the Scripture for, as the Apostle Peter states "they
that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other
scriptures, unto their own destruction" (2 Pet. 3:16). In this
letter Peter specifically states that ascertaining the intended meaning
of the author may be "hard," but he does not therefore free
the interpreter from "Biblical constraints." On the contrary,
he indicates that it is the duty of a Biblical exegete to do just that
-- understand what the author intended.
The purpose of our Biblical hermeneutic, then,
is to use grammatical and linguistic principles and methods that yield
for us the intended meaning of the authors of Scripture. Anything else,
while intellectually satisfying, is immoral and contrary to the express
command of the Scriptures themselves.
Examples of Objectivity
The plain sense of the first chapter of Genesis
1s that God created the heavens and the earth in six days of normal
duration and rested on the seventh day. As Hasel points out in his
article, all the major lexicons of the Hebrew language demonstrate that
the term "day" of Genesis 1:5 and elsewhere "is meant to
communicate a 24-hour day, respectively, a solar day." In order to
reject the simple sense of the meaning of this term, one must reject the
clear and unambiguous research and findings of the best of the Hebrew
scholars. Grammatically and linguistically, the term "yom" in
Genesis lacks any signal for us to understand it as a figure of speech.
When the Scripture uses the term figuratively, there are always
linguistic signals, such as those akin to the English "as" or
"like." So Psalm 90:4 teaches "a thousand years are LIKE
yesterday." Or in the New Testament, when Peter makes his point, he
uses the Greek particle for a figure "with the Lord, one day is AS
a thousand years" (1 Pet. 3:8). The term "yom" does have
figurative meaning in many passages of the Old Testament, but each time
the term is used as a figure it has syntactic and linguistic signals to
let us know. As Hasel points out again, "the extended, non-literal
meanings of the term 'yom' are always found in connection with
prepositions, prepositional phrases with a verb, compound constructions,
formulas, technical expressions, genitive combinations, construct
phrases, and the like." Historically, it is clear from even a
casual glance that the term is understand as a normal day of normal
duration. Even Josephus -himself given to allegory in order to make the
Hebrew religion palatable to the Greeks -- affirms in the Antiquities
that the days of creation were normal days. If we accept the grammatical
and historical meaning, then we must conclude that Moses intended us to
understand the term "yom" in this way The term day is not
intended to refer to anything else. If we wish it to do so, we must
force some interpretation upon it for philosophical or theological
reasons -- there are no linguistic, semantic, or syntactic reasons.
Is the whole first chapter of Genesis a literary
figure then? Since the term refers to normal days, is it a normal week
and did God create the world "habitable" during the course of
this normal week? There are those who argue otherwise, that the week is
an analogy of some sort, that the account is not historic but a fiction
used to describe what really happened. While we must not simply discount
the possibility out of hand -- literary fictions (parables) were the
primary means of teaching used by Christ -we must still ask whether
Moses intended this account as a literary fiction. Did Moses give to us
the account of creation as a literal account of the historic events or
rather, when properly interpreted, does it actually correspond to some
other system of relations hidden beneath the literal text which details
must be extracted for us by the experts?
Again, there is no grammatical, linguistic,
literary, or historical reason to think so. When David personifies the
sun, it "is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber" and
"rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race" (Ps. 19:5). The
grammatical term "as" signifies for us that this is a figure.
Genesis 1 is not in the form of a psalm nor is it called a song. Indeed,
when Moses records a song he tells us (Exod. 15; Num. 21; Deut. 31). Nor
is Genesis 1 a parable; it is not a poem; not a liturgy; not a story;
not a simile. In fact, as Hasel points Out in "the literary
structures, the language patterns, the syntax, the linguistic phenomena,
the terminology, the sequential presentation of events in the creation
account, Genesis 1 is not different from the rest of the book of Genesis
or the Pentateuch for that matter."
In a word, Genesis 1 is prose. There is no
system of relations hidden beneath the literal text. The light, the
darkness, the day, the night, the water, the land, the sun, the moon,
the stars, the plants, the animals, and man are just that: light,
darkness, day, night, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals,
and Adam. One can just see Moses' look of bemusement had Aaron told him
he really understood the message of Genesis 1: there were time periods
of indeterminate length and it teaches a "two-register cosmos"
which is "thus the scene of the biblical drama, which features
constant interaction between the upper and lower registers,"
between the visible and invisible universe. Such interpretations come
from the outside in, not the other way around.
What of Kline's article "Because It Had Not
Rained"? He has been defended as an exegete, whose understanding of
Genesis 2 forces the conclusion that Genesis 1 cannot be a factual and
historic account. There is, however, no grammatical warrant for such
arguments. As will be pointed out in another place, Kline misuses
several grarnmatical principles in defense of this position. There are
likewise gratuitous rejections of Moses' narrative style, language, and
form. In this attempt by Kline, and others like it, there is a clear
rejection of the grammatical-historical approach to understanding a text
and, for whatever reasons, a deliberate attempt to introduce another
system of relations. Not surprisingly, these new insights" lay open
for us the "real" meaning of the texts.
A Moral Duty
We have a moral duty to ascertain what a
Biblical author has said and what he intended to mean. This duty must be
logically and intellectually prior to any "pre-understanding"
we might bring to the text. Difficult? Peter says it is. Therefore we
should not be simplistic. Time and space do not permit introducing or
refuting the other "new" ways of looking at language,
literature, and interpretation. None of them, however, give any warrant
to reject the diligent grammatical and historical stud)' of a passage of
Scripture and striving to understand what the Biblical authors intended.
By way of warning, we should all note that in
his commentary on the first chapter of Genesis, John Calvin mentions
Moses over fifty times. In his last article on Genesis, Kline mentions
Moses but once.
Unbiblical Theories
of Creation
Frank Walker
Throughout the
history of the church, the doctrine of creation has been a source of
constant discussion. Some have argued that creation took place in time,
while others held that it came about with time. A few of the Scholastics
opted for a third position, viz., continuous creation. The puritan
Jonathan Edwards held a similar view which he based on God's
omniscience. In an earlier period of church history, the discussion
focused more on the relationship between creation and the will of God,
in particular whether creation was a free or necessary act of the divine
will. However, none of this speaks directly to
the point of this paper. Our subject is the length of creation days, and
our purpose is to defend the position that the days of creation, as
recorded in the book of Genesis and interpreted in the fourth
commandment, were of normal length, i.e., approximately twenty-four
hours.
A Six Day Creation - The Predominant View
Though creation has been widely discussed, the
length of the six days of creation, as held throughout the ages of
church history, was generally agreed: they were ordinary or sidereal
days. There were few exceptions to this: Clement, Origin and Augustine
being the main ones. Clement and Origin, of course, followed an
allegorical method of interpretation and denied the historicity of much
of the Bible. Augustine's statements, on the other hand, are unclear but
it seems that he believed that God actually created the world all at
once (i.e., in an instant of time, the six days being repetitions of the
one day of creation) but related the story of a six-day creation to us
to accommodate our limited understanding. To be sure, there is much in
the Bible that is difficult (if not impossible) for our finite minds to
grasp, but in this case one must wonder how a six-day account would be
any easier to comprehend than an instantaneous creation. In any case,
the non-literal views of the days of creation were uncommon and not
highly regarded.
The same holds true for the Reformers. Luther
wrote that God "employs the terms 'day' and 'evening' without
allegory.... that the world, with all its creatures, was created within
six days, as the words read. If we do not comprehend the reason for
this, let us remain pupils and leave the job of teacher to the Holy
Spirit." Calvin agreed, "With the same view Moses relates that
the work of creation was accomplished not in one moment, but in six
days. By this statement we are drawn away from fiction to the one God
who thus divided his work into six days, that we may have no reluctance
to devote our whole lives to the contemplation of it." The
Westminster divines considered the doctrine of such importance that, in
the Confession and both catechisms, they incorporated the statement that
God created all things "in the space of six days" (a phrase
borrowed from Calvin who held strictly to a six-day creation). A.A.
Hodge tries to escape the force of this by arguing that the divines
merely quoted Scripture without taking a position one way or another.
But this answer is intellectually unsatisfying and dishonest. The phrase
in question appears nowhere in Scripture; to the contrary, it seems that
the divines added the words "in the space of' specifically to make
their intent perfectly clear. Extant writings of the divines yield
several affirmations of six-day creation but nothing to the contrary.
Six-day creation was also generally maintained
in the Post-Reformation literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Thus, during the time the great creeds of the church were
written, the prevailing opinion was that God created the world in six
ordinary days.
Today the picture is quite different. The modern
church is filled with alternatives. Sadly, it seems that whenever an
alternate view of creation is held by a majority, the six-day view of
creation, which was the predominant view of the church well into the
eighteenth century, is no longer tolerated. Why is this? How have these
other views come into the church?
Berkhof addressed this concern: the problem is
that Scripture and science are in conflict. He wrote,
In the eighteenth century, however, under the dominating influence of Pantheism and Materialism, science launched an attack on the Church's doctrine of creation. It substituted the idea of evolution or development for that of absolute origination by divine fiat. The world was often represented as a necessary manifestation of the Absolute. Its origin was pushed back thousands and even millions of years into an unknown past. And soon theologians were engaged in various attempts to harmonize the doctrine of creation with the teachings of science and philosophy. Some suggested that the first chapters of Genesis should be interpreted allegorically or mythically; others, that a long period elapsed between the primary creation of Gen. 1:1,2 and the secondary creation of the following verses; and still others, that the days of creation were in fact long periods of time.
Since Berkhof wrote his Systematic
Theology yet another view has come into prominence within the Reformed
community, viz., the literary Framework Theory. Yet, it seems that the
operating principle behind the Framework Hypothesis is the same.
Meredith G. Kline, who is perhaps the leading proponent of this theory
within the Reformed world at the present, wrote this in the last
footnote of his paper, Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony :
"In this article I have advocated an interpretation of biblical
cosmogony according to which Scripture is open to the current scientific
view of a very old universe and, in that respect, does not
discountenance the theory of the evolutionary origin of man."
Though Kline himself believes that there are good Biblical reasons for
the direct creation of Adam, he wants the scientist to be "left
free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic
origins." Kline is concerned that the traditional view pits
Scripture against science and ultimately against itself.
Though we believe the above to be a correct
assessment of the situation, it is insufficient to discredit a theory
solely because of its suspicious origin. Therefore, we must carefully
examine the alternate approaches to the days of Genesis 1 in the light
of Scripture.
Day-Age Theory
The first view that we will consider is the
Day-Age or Geological Age Theory. Basically, this view says that the
"days" of creation were actually long periods of time. Many
believe that these "days" correspond roughly to the geological
ages proposed by modern geology. The main argument in support of this
theory is that the Hebrew word yom 
does not always signify a period of
twenty-four hours. The claim is made that it can be used, as in Genesis
2:4, in reference to the entire creation week; and even in the first
chapter of Genesis 1t sometimes denotes only that part of a day which we
generally call "daylight" (vv. 5, 16, 18). Further, it is said
that in several instances in the Old Testament yam refers to an indefinite
period of time (Job 20:28; Ps. 20:1; Eccles. 7:14).
However, Genesis 1 does not allow the days of
creation to be anything other than normal days. Each of the creation
days concludes with the phrase, 'And the evening and the morning were
the ____ day." The most natural meaning of this is that the days of
creation consisted of periods of light and darkness that alternated in
cycles of approximately twenty-four hours. This is further supported by
the use of the ordinals ("first," 'second," third,"
etc.). Elsewhere in Scripture, whenever both criteria are used, literal
days are always in view. The fourth commandment also refutes the Day-Age
Theory, for it requires man to follow the pattern established by God in
creation. What could it possibly mean for man to work six days and rest
one if the days of creation were geological ages comprising millions of
years? Furthermore, the verses used to support the idea that yom can
refer to extended periods of time either use the plural
("days") or can be legitimately interpreted as one single
twenty-four hour period.
The problem, as we have already noted, is that
the Day-Age Theory begins by assuming the general accuracy of modem
geology. Geologists have "shown" that the earth is the result
of lengthy, natural processes; therefore, passages of Scripture that
suggest or teach otherwise must be reinterpreted. However, this reverses
the relationship between natural revelation and special revelation.
While it is true that special revelation is often misinterpreted, it
does not follow that natural revelation can or must become our guide.
Natural revelation is inherently inadequate for this task, lacking the
clarity, precision and completeness of special revelation. Indeed,
natural revelation can be understood correctly only when its
interpretation is guided by the Word of God. To reverse these roles is
dangerous and endemic to the faith. Why? Because it implies (implicitly,
if not explicitly) that we cannot trust Scripture to give us true and
accurate information from God. Once a man is shown to have perjured
himself in court, his entire testimony automatically becomes suspect.
Whether the point in question concerns salvation or something else is
beside the point.
Yet, even if the days of creation were intended
as geological ages, Genesis would still conflict with modern science.
Contrary to geology, Genesis teaches that God created birds before
reptiles, plants before the sun, and fruit trees before sea creatures.
Punctuated Day Theory
Another alternative is the Punctuated Day
Theory. Actually, this view' holds that the days of creation were
ordinary days, but it differs from the traditional view in that allows
long intervening periods between the six days. Thus, the actual creation
week went something like this: Day One, then a few million years; Day
Two, another few million years; Day Three, followed by still another few
million years, etc. According to this view. the "days"
highlight the creative activity of God. The New' American Standard Bible
allows for the Punctuated Day Theory, as we see in the way it translates
the closing description of each day: "And there was evening and
there was morning, one day.... And there was evening and there was
morning, a second day," etc.
This view has the advantage of maintaining the
literalness of the days, but it cannot escape the problem of relying too
heavily on modern science. There is no Biblical warrant for inserting
eons of time between the days of creation. Further, this view cannot
accommodate the kind of evolutionary development that modem paleontology
envisions, for it has each specie of plant and animal life arising
within twenty-four-hour periods. All land animals and man, for example,'
appear on the sixth day.
Gap Theory
Next comes the Gap Theory, which holds that
there was a long interval of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:3-31. During
this time, Delitzsch says, God judged Satan and this resulted in the
massive waste and darkness mentioned in Genesis 1:2. However, this
requires changing the verb was to became in verse 2. Dispensationalists
tend to favor this interpretation.
The problems with the Gap Theory are fatal. For
one thing, was is certainly the correct rendering of the Hebrew verb in
verse 2. Yet, without a change in this verse there is no other
Scriptural warrant to justify a gap in the early verses of Genesis 1,
for the usual passages that are cited (viz., Job 9:4-7; Isa. 24:1;
45:18; Jer. 4:23-26; 2 Pet. 2:4) do not speak about the original
creation. Further, the Bible uniformly teaches that God made not only
heaven and earth, but also all the hosts of them, in six days (Gen. 2:1;
Exod. 20:11).
Framework Theory
Of all the alternatives to a literal
interpretation of Genesis 1, the Framework Theory is the most insidious.
It claims that the "days" of creation have nothing to do with
time, but are "forms" or "images" designed by God to
help us understand an otherwise unintelligible act of creation. Its
basic approach to the first chapter of Genesis 1s thematic. It is as if
a person takes a trip across the United States. When he returns, he
arranges his photographs by subject rather than in the order in which
they were taken. Hence pictures of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are
on one page, pictures of the Rockies and Appalachians on another, and
the deserts of California and New Mexico on a third. Those who hold to
the framework theory find it necessary to interpret Genesis 1 in this
way because exegesis compels a non-literal, non-chronological
interpretation. Genesis 1 is, therefore, reclassified as a
"literary device," "poetry" or "semi-poetic
teaching device."
The exegetical considerations that supposedly
compel a non-literal interpretation are of many different kinds. First.
the sun was not created until Day Four (Gen. 1:14-19). Since the sun is
the instrument used for measuring "days," the first three days
could not have been what we now think of as "days." Second,
God rested from his creative activity on the seventh day. Since then he
has taken an eternal delight in his works (cf. Heb. 4). This, it is
said, suggests that the seventh day is an eternal day and not a normal
day. Now, if the first three days and the seventh day were not normal
days, perhaps Days Four, Five and Six were not normal either. Genesis
2:5. accordingly, shows that God's modus operandi during the creation
week was ordinary providence. This precludes any of the creation days
from being normal twenty-four days because ordinary providence does not
cause "oceans" to evaporate or animals to grow to maturity within such a short period of time. Thus, the creation account is
regarded as figurative or poetic. Notice the correspondence between the
first three days and the second three days: Day One (light), Day Four
(light bearers); Day Two (separation of water and air), Day Five (fish
and birds to inhabit the water and air); Day Three (dry land and
plants), and Day Six (the inhabitants of dry land, including man and
land animals).
Each of these considerations is easily answered.
While it is true that the first three days were without the sun, they
were not without light (which was created on the first day) and this
light, whatever its source was, waxed and waned in periods of
"evening and morning." If time is defined as the succession of
events, as Augustine said, this certainly qualifies. Even the length of
the seventh day cannot be denied on the grounds that it was not
described as "evening and morning." It differs qualitatively
from the other six days, being a day of rest, not labor, and as such
would allow an alternate closing. In fact, it seems that the early
verses of Genesis 2 are just as definitive for the length of Day Seven
as the other indicators are for the first six days. Notice, for example,
that it is called the seventh day three times; that is, it is the
seventh of whatever the first six were. If the first six days were
normal days, the seventh day must be a normal day too.
As for Genesis 1 being poetry, it seems that
there is an unspoken assumption that literary form and literal meaning
are mutually exclusive. This necessarily involves an incomplete and
defective view of language. Why must we assume that poetry is literally
false? Are the Psalms literally false simply because they employ Hebrew
parallelism? Jean-Marc Berthoud, a Swiss Reformed scholar, says,
"What difficulty would it be for [the Sovereign Creator] to cause
the most complex, refined literary form to coincide with the very way in
which He Himself created all things in six days? Artistic form is in no
sense opposed to an actual relation of facts, especially since the
Author of the account is none less than the actual Creator of the facts
which are described in that account...."
More to the point, Dr. Embree has already
established that there is no reason to classify Genesis 1 as anything
other than ordinary prose. We would add that the parallelism of the
creation narrative, which supposedly warrants its reclassification as
poetry, is not as exact as we are asked to believe. E.J. Young dealt
with this in a rigorous argument covering several pages of his
commentary on Genesis 1, but for our purposes I will quote just two
paragraphs:
Do the second and fifth days parallel one another? On day two there is a twofold fiat ("let there be a firmament ... and let it divide") and the fulfillment consists of two acts of God ("God made ... divided"), followed by a further act ("God called"). On the fifth day there is also a twofold fiat ("let the waters bring forth ... and the fowl let it fly") and then comes a fulfillment consisting of a threefold creative act of God ("God created ... great whales ... every living thing ... every winged fowl") and this is followed by two additional acts of God ("God saw ... God blessed"). As far as form is concerned, the parallelism is by no means exact.
Nor is there exact parallelism in content. The swarming waters and their inhabitants which were created in the fifth day are not to be identified with the primeval waters of day two. Rather, it is expressly stated that the fish are to fill the waters in the seas (verse 22), and the seas were brought into existence on the third day. For that matter, if a mere parallel with water is sought, we may note that "the waters" and the "abyss" are mentioned in verse two also.
In a footnote Young says that this is
sufficient "to show that the alleged parallelism between days two
and five is an illusion."
Since Genesis 2:5 is a pivotal passage for
defenders of the framework hypothesis, we want to deal with it
separately. Mark Futato, who teaches at Westminster Seminary in
California, believes that Genesis 2:5-7 is a "logical, highly
structured, and perfectly coherent" presentation of two problems,
their reasons and their solutions. The problems are stated in the first
half of verse 5: there was neither "wild vegetation" (plant of
the field) nor "cultivated grain" (herb of the field) in the
earth. The reasons why these two kinds of plants did not exist are given
at the end of verse 5: there was no wild vegetation because the LORD God
had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no cultivated
grain because there was not a man to till the ground. The solution to
the lack of rain, which kept the wild vegetation from germinating, can
be found in verse 6: God caused "rain clouds" (Futato's
interpretation) to arise from the earth and water the whole ground. The
absence of a cultivator is supplied in verse 7, where the LORD God
formed man of the dust of the ground. He concludes that these normal
processes (rain and human cultivation) were present during the time of
creation since these verses describe the origin of certain plants. In a
footnote, he specifically says that "other biblical accounts of
creation [Ps. 104:13 and Prov. 3:19-20 in particular, but probably
including Job 38-391... testify to the presence of rain from the
beginning."
It seems that it is the concept of "other
biblical accounts of creation" that causes the problem. The
assumption seems to be that these other creation accounts diverge from
each other so much that we must find a way to harmonize them. But a
discrepancy appears only if we treat the other creation accounts as if
they were independent of each other. In other words, we must assume the
problem in order to find one. This is a clear case of petitio principii
(begging the question). One would be hard-pressed to find any indication
of chronological sequence in the other so-called accounts; yet, this is
exactly what Genesis 1 purports to offer. If only one account claims to
be chronological, the difficulty vanishes.
All this is to say that Genesis 2:4ff. is not a
second version of the creation narrative. The account of the creation of
heaven and earth concludes with Genesis 2:3. Genesis 2:4 begins with the
phrase, These are the generations. Many years ago. Dr. Young
demonstrated that this phrase, which occurs several times in Genesis,
always introduces the results of the previous section with a view toward
analyzing some aspect in greater detail. Thus, Genesis 2:4 introduces a
new section that concentrates on one part of the completed creation,
namely, the creation of man. It first considers the environment in which
man would appear and then narrates the creation of man and his helper.
Thus, Genesis 2:5 functions as a detailed description of an already
created world with specific information relating to man's place in that
world. This being so, Genesis 2:5-7 anticipates the story that follows.
Its function in the narrative is akin to the heading or subheadings of a
newspaper article. That is, they provide the basic story. but the
details of that story come in what follows afterward.
The plants mentioned in Genesis 2:5 are the same
as those mentioned in Genesis 3:18. In fact, exactly the same words are
used for herb of the field. Thus, Futato's definition of these plants as
"wild vegetation" and "cultivated grain" is
essentially correct. But what he misses is that neither of these kinds
of plant life grew before the fall exactly as they grew afterward. When
Adam sinned, God cursed the entire world: Thorns also and thistles shall
it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of tile field; in
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread (Gen. 3:18-19). Wild
vegetation became a hindrance and an annoyance to man; God himself
provided rain to cause weeds to flourish in man's cursed world.
Cultivated grain needed the tireless labor of a cultivator. No more
would Adam and Eve simply reach out their hands to eat the abundant
fruit of the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2:5-7, then, helps the reader
understand the drastic change that took place as a result of Adam's sin.
The Framework Theory, therefore, comes across as
an unnecessary and fanciful answer to a non-existent problem. The
church of Jesus Christ should not give it any credibility.
The Teaching of Scripture
Throughout Scripture, creation is spoken of as a
six-day event. The clearest of these is the fourth commandment. When
Moses gave the law to the Israelites, they knew what days were because
they spent many of them out in the hot desert sun making bricks. The
fourth commandment obligated them to follow the pattern for labor that
God himself established at the very beginning. Now, if the days of
Genesis 1 are not the same kind of days that we know today, then this
commandment makes no sense. "God put together six images of
creation and then rested forever; therefore, we must work six days and
rest one day"? This is called the fallacy of equivocation; that is,
the meaning of the terms is not consistent throughout the argument.
Kline recognizes the force of this argument,
though he obviously does not want to admit it or accept it. He says,
"The argument that Genesis 1 must be strictly chronological because
man's six days of labor follow one another in chronological succession
forces the argument unnecessarily." He does not say why he thinks
so, but continues, "The logic of such argument would not allow one
to stop short of the conclusion that the creation 'days' must all have
been of equal duration and twenty-four hours at that." So it does.
We are pleased that he agrees.
When the length of
the days in Genesis 1 is discussed, believers are often reminded that
science sometimes discovers information that requires the church to
adjust its teaching. Did not the church hold once to the notion that the
earth is the center of the universe? Was it not widely believed that our
planet is a flat plane with four comers? Without Copernicus, Galileo and
Columbus, we might still believe such things. Well, perhaps the same is
true with the Biblical account of creation. If the church was wrong
about the location and shape of the earth, could it be wrong about the
length of creation days, too? Or are we so naive and provincial that the
truth is over our heads?
Those who raise this objection ignore a very
important fact: nowhere does the Bible teach that the earth is the
spatial center of the universe or that it really has four corners.
Passages that describe the earth in these terms employ obvious figures
of speech. Sound principles of hermeneutics allow us to see this, and
the same principles demand that God created the world in six consecutive
days of approximately twenty-four hours in duration. Not only are there
clear indications in the text of Genesis 1, but the entire Bible treats
the early chapters of Genesis as literal history. There is not the
slightest indication anywhere in the Word of God that the six days of
creation were anything but ordinary days.
While the voice of the church down through the
ages is not determinative of any doctrine (but is rather a witness to
Biblical doctrine), it is helpful for us to see that the church has
almost unanimously affirmed six-day creation. As Rev. Brice noted in his
report, David W. Hall (a PCA minister) has done extensive research into
the views of the Westminster divines and cannot find one who held to a
figurative understanding. At least twenty-one divines are on record
(either implicitly or explicitly) stating their agreement with Calvin,
that God created the world "in the space of six days" (a
phrase first used by Calvin and later quoted in the Irish Articles of
Archbishop James Ussher and then repeated in the Westminster
Confession). Given the etymology of this phrase, one wonders how anyone
could be so naive as to think it allows for the possibility of long ages
or a figurative interpretation of Genesis 1. Indeed, it was not until
Enlightenment philosophy and natural religion entered the church that
anyone thought it necessary to "harmonize" or
"reconcile" the Biblical account of creation with the supposed
facts of science. Sadly, some otherwise orthodox theologians fell prey
to this kind of erroneous thinking, and today the church is even more
willing to be led by science than it was then.
Why was the testimony of the church almost
unanimous until the mid-nineteenth century? Dr. Embree shows that the
basic issue in this debate is hermeneutics. Even the early church
fathers, many of whom concentrated on allegorical and fanciful
applications, generally acknowledged that there is in Scripture a
literal meaning that can only be uncovered by the principles of what we
call "historico-grammatical exegesis." That is, there are
objective principles and laws that must govern any attempt to ascertain
the meaning of a text. This is the only intellectually honest approach
to any piece of literature. The problem, however, is that hermeneutics
has become increasingly subjective (especially since the time of
Schleiermacher), thus allowing the interpreter to create and insert into
the text whatever meaning suits his purpose. To put it plainly, there
are no rules now. This has had devastating effects on Biblical research
and especially on the church's understanding of creation.
Why does the RCUS insist that God created the
world in six twenty-four hour days? Is it because we are backward and do
not know any better? Many think this is the case. The real answer is
that the Bible, when interpreted correctly (i.e., by the rules laid down
in Scripture itself), allows no alternative. It is not that our attempt
to evade this has been unsuccessful, for we do not want to evade it. Our
response is what Martin Luther said to Charles V: "Here we stand;
we cannot do otherwise."
This also implies that we are a confessional
church: we confess the Bible. But because there are so many different
opinions about what the Bible teaches, we have adopted subordinate
standards that summarize what we believe, namely, the Three Forms of
Unity (the Heidelberg catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of
Dort). These subordinate standards help us to unite in confessing the
same faith.
Unfortunately, none of our confessions deals
directly with the matter of six-day creation. The Belgic Confession has
an article on the doctrine of creation but it does not specify the kind
or length of days in Genesis 1. However, the Heidelberg catechism takes
up the matter indirectly in relation to the fourth commandment. In
Question 92 it quotes the entire text of Exodus 20:8-11, which
specifically bases our observance of one day in seven upon the pattern
that God himself followed when he formed the world. Unless the word day
means a period of twenty-four hours in both instances, we have an
excellent example of the fallacy of equivocation. At the very least.
this would render the fourth commandment meaningless. Question 103 of
the catechism supports this interpretation, for it distinguishes a
"day of rest" from "all the days of my life." If
this is not given as the proper interpretation of day in the fourth
commandment and in the creation narrative of Genesis 1, then we are at a
loss as to what the true meaning is.
Zacharias Ursinus, the chief author of the
catechism, put forth the same argument in his commentary. He wrote,
"The reason which is here given [for keeping the fourth
commandment] is drawn from the example of God's resting on the seventh
day from the work of creation which he had accomplished in six
days" (p.558). and again, "That by the example of himself
resting on the seventh day, he might exhort men, as by a most effectual
and constraining argument, to imitate him, and so abstain, on the
seventh day, from the labors to which they were accustomed during the
other six days of the week" (p.561). Commenting on Question 26, he
says that "God created the world, not suddenly, nor in a moment of
time, but in six days" (p.145). Indeed, according to Pareus'
calculations he believed that the world was only 5534 years old in 1616
(p.145).
Our conclusion, then, must be that the
Heidelberg catechism teaches six-day creation. The RCUS affirmed this by
its adoption of a position statement on the length of creation days in
1985. Since we admit no exceptions or scruples to our doctrinal
standards, the RCUS requires all officers to teach, defend and promote
the belief that God created the world in six normal days.