Faith Presbyterian Church

The Controversy Regarding the Creation Days

September 3, 2000 AM
By Rev. Dr. Robert S. Rayburn
From: Standalone Sunday School Lessons

Background

There has been agitation on this subject in our church (and other churches, of course) for some years. In some PCA presbyteries, there is hardly ever a licensure or ordination examination that does not become, in one way or another, an occasion for the presbyters themselves to vent their disagreement on this issue. It has not been, until very recently, an issue in our own presbytery, but it is now an issue.

And there are a variety of views that are held by men in the ministry and eldership of our church: 1) the days are twenty-four hour, normal days; 2) ages or eras of time; 3) analogical or God’s days; 4) a literary framework without necessary chronological significance. This variety of interpretations of Genesis 1-2 has been found in the conservative Presbyterian world for a long time. In earlier times most Presbyterians, but not all, would have held to six-24-hour day creation without much thought or reflection. But, as time went on, and as the understanding of the world began to change, other views came to be held, and held by Presbyterian leaders. In the 19^th century Charles Hodge held to the day-age view, so did Benjamin Warfield. The great Dutch theologians Kuyper and Bavinck did not hold to six-24-day creation. Alongside these men, however, were men who held to the six-24-day view. Presbyterian churches all through this time did not sanction men who held these various views and, by and large, it did not seem to be a matter of substantial controversy.

It is today an issue for different men for two quite different reasons.

1. The biblical teaching and loyalty to the Bible in the race of the discredit of the world. There are a good many men in the evangelical church (e.g. the Creation Research Institute men) and in our church who really do feel that holding to six-24-hour creation is a test of orthodoxy. We have some men in our presbytery who seem near to saying that if one doesn’t hold to six-24-day creation he has sold out to the unbelieving worldview. Many of the folk in the so-called Christian Reconstruction circles have taken that view and the Moscow, Idaho men have argued that way.

   (But, many of the men in the PCA who themselves hold to the view that the earth is much younger than is believed to be the case in the scientific world and that the creation days were, in fact, each 24 hours in length, recognize that other views of the biblical text have legitimacy and can be argued in faithfulness to the Bible itself.)

2. The teaching of the Westminster Confession (“in the space of six days”). Most men who believe that the Bible teaches six-24-day creation also believe that that is the plain meaning of the words used by the Confession of Faith (“authorial intent”). Indeed many men who don’t think the Bible teaches creation in six-24-hour days admit that that is what the Confession meant by the words it used. For these men the issue is one of confessional subscription. If the doctrinal standard we are sworn to uphold takes this view, then men must either believe that view or say that they do not and take an exception to the Westminster Standards on that point (an exception: What? Granted by whom?). Most PCA presbyteries would grant the exception but some would not and have said they will not permit anyone to be licensed, ordained, or transferred into their presbytery who does not hold to six-24-day creation. I could not presently serve as a pastor in some presbyteries of our denomination.

   Others, however, argue that if the Westminster divines intended to say that the creation was accomplished in six-24-days they needed to say so. We are not obliged to believe what they may have believed. We are obliged to believe what they said. Fact is, most all of them may have thought that was what they were saying, but what they said was what the Bible says. The question of what the Bible means by those six days they did not address. So, if we want the Confession to say six-24-days, then we should change the Confession and make it say that. It would be odd, they argue, to make a man take an exception to a statement he is in perfect agreement with. Everyone in our church thinks that the world was created in six days, because the Bible says it was. The question is what does the Bible mean by those days.

The alternatives

Six-twenty-four-hour days

According to this view, which may be fairly described as the majority position of historic Christianity, the creation took place over a period of six days like our days, 24 hours in length. As Adam and Eve were created full-grown, so the rest of creation came forth full grown from its maker. The Garden included full grown plants and animals that Adam named. It admits that the word “day” is used in various ways in Genesis 1 and 2 (e.g. 1:5 has two uses of the word; 2:4 another). But, in each case, it is obvious what use is being made of the word. The first three days were not technically solar days, as the sun and moon had not been created, but the Bible indicates that their duration was the same as the later days of the creation week by saying that there was evening and morning for those first three days also and by using the same word “day” for the first three as for the last three days of the creation week.

That seems to be a straightforward interpretation of the text. But, it is not without major problems, problems that have been known and discussed for centuries. The six-24-day men think they are not major problems, but, the fact is, they can’t make them go away.

1. The lack of the sun and moon before the fourth day certainly suggests that these were not “our” days in the ordinary sense of the term.
2. There is no boundary or ending for the seventh “day” and NT texts seem to teach that it continues to the present, even though it too is a “day.”
3. 2:8 the NIV’s “had planted” is possible, but not most likely a reading of the Hebrew verb. The Lord “planted” a garden. What is more the term “planted” by itself suggests a process of growth, not a full-grown garden all at once. At the very least, if the six-24-day men are taking “day” literally, as they say, they are not taking “planted” literally. The land began to produce vegetation on day 3, just 2 days, 48 hours before Adam!
4. The problem of so much in 12 hours of daylight on the sixth day. The creation of Adam, putting him in the garden to work it, naming the animals, the nap, the creation of Eve, and then Adam’s “at last.” [The lexical authorities all say that the term implies the passage of time and so it is translated everywhere else in Genesis: “now, at last” or “at length”] If all of this happened in 12 hours of daylight, Genesis 2 becomes a pageant, not the real history it appears to be (Adam plays at working, plays at naming, plays at napping).

The Day-Age View

A number of our men recently have held this view: From Hodge to Machen to Buswell to E.J. Young to Laird Harris to Schaeffer. Recently the late Jim Boice took this view. Basically this view relates the creation days to periods of indefinite time, such as the meaning of “day” in Isaiah 11:10-11. [“In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from lower Egypt…”] The six days are taken as sequential, following one upon the other, but overlapping, much like an expression such as “the day of the Protestant Reformation.”

1. There is no denying that this view became popular as a way of understanding the teaching of Genesis in a way that made sense of what was being learned of the geological history of the world. Those who scorn that modern view of the earth’s history, of course, have no time for the Day-Age view. But, to the extent that that view is correct, the Day-Age view can better account for the creation of the world. It also, obviously, avoids the problems mentioned above with the six-24-day view.
2. It has problems, of course, as do all the views. It has given many people the impression that the Bible’s interpretation is subject to the so-called discoveries of science. We must change a natural reading of the Bible to suit the current scientific orthodoxy. To be sure, these day-age men I mentioned were not sympathetic to evolution at all. They were aggressively critical of evolution. But the principle has been given up, it is said, by reading the Bible in a way no one ever would who just was reading the Bible. [There are problems with that objection, of course. Literary studies have drastically changed many translations and interpretations of the Bible for the better. E.R. Thiele’s studies on the chronology of the Hebrew kings has changed the way everyone reads those numbers in the Bible. What is more there were other interpretations of the creation days centuries before Darwin. [Augustine, for example, believed in an instantaneous creation] There are other problems that require the idea of overlap to solve. E.g. green plants appear on day three before sunlight on day four.

The Framework View

This is quite new, resting on the work of Meredith Kline who has taught at both Westminster seminaries. These men hold that the six days of the creation week are a figure, a metaphor and that the several pictures of the creation history are placed within the six-day work frames not chronologically but topically. The week of creation is to be taken metaphorically, not literally. God’s creation is a historical fact, but we are not told about its specific timing and development except in a metaphor. God chose the model of the week to establish for us the rhythm of work followed by Sabbath rest. The week itself, you will see, is organized in two triads of days (1-3; 4-6). The first triad represents the separations of formless chaos into three static spheres. The second triad fills us those three spheres one by one: light and darkness filled up with the sun, moon, etc.; the sea and sky filled up with fish and birds; the earth with plants, animals, and man. Each triad begins with a single act of creation and moves to a creative act in two parts and then finishes on its last day with two separate acts of creation. Each triad ends with the “earth bringing forth…” The inhabitants of the second triad are said to rule the spheres of the first triad. The account is that of the transformation of an earth that is unlivable into a beautiful home for man. Dr. Waltke claims that Genesis 1 is a “literary-artistic representation of the creation.”

As proof, for example, it is argued that Genesis 2:5-6 is very difficult to square with the sequence of Genesis 1 as it is ordinarily understood. These verses suggest that vegetation, which appeared on day three, could not exist because, according to 2:5, it was too dry. Surely that is how an early reader would have read 2:5-6. However, the land was inundated with water on day two, only one day before the plants were formed on day three. How could it have been too dry in 2:5? This suggests a topical, not a chronological arrangement.

People object to the Framework view on the grounds that it seems to impugn the historicity of Genesis 1, but that is not what is being claimed. They believe it history, but they think the form in which it is told to us is metaphorical or figurative. The basic facts conveyed are historical. They rest a great deal on Genesis 2:5-6 and the argument that this proves that God uses natural means in the process of creation and not supernatural means (rain for plants, not full-grown plants and supernaturally dried out land). On the other hand, those are assumptions that the six-24-day men must make and the Bible doesn’t say that God did those things supernaturally.

Analogical Days

Jack Collins has recently popularized this view again and become controversial in our church as a result! The basic claim of this view is that the days in question are God’s work days, not ours. And like so much else in the revelation of God, there is an analogy between God and man, a relationship, but it is not at all identical. Jack cites Herman Bavinck as holding this view. Many of the arguments for this view are those that have been cited before as either support for or arguments against the other views.

But Jack points out that the entire account is full of anthropomorphisms in which God is described as acting in ways we associate with human action. In Genesis 1-2 he is pictured as a craftsman, even a potter, as the word in 2:7 suggests, where we read that God “formed” man. Then, God, who has no body, is said to have “breathed” into the man. [Interestingly, in Exodus 31:17, reflecting on the Sabbath rest of God in Genesis 2:2, we read that “on the seventh day [God] abstained from work and was refreshed.” The same is perhaps suggested in the recurring refrain “there was evening and there was morning” each day. What happens between the evening and the morning? The worker rests after his work is done. But, of course, the whole idea of God “working” in this way is anthropomorphic. However God “works,” he does not work as we do and so his days of working are not as ours are.

Conclusion

• The Age of the Earth. I do not think that flood geology or young earth creationism is easy to reconcile with the Bible. The problem is posed by the description of the location of Eden in Genesis 2:10-14. But this world is obviously a world familiar to Moses’ readers, not a different world. There are five miles of sedimentary rock below the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. If all of that was deposited by the flood (along with its weathering between the seams – apparently put there by God to give it the appearance of age), then it is very hard to imagine that Eden could be described in Genesis 2 as located where it was, by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The age of the earth is not specified in the Bible and is a question more interesting than important in my view.
• The interpretative problems in Genesis 1-2 are real, of longstanding, and, perhaps in the present state of affairs, insoluble. I think any of the four views may be true, but none of the four views is without problems. I am drawn to Jack’s “anthropomorphic days” view more than to any others, but I am hardly at the point where I could preach it as the meaning of the text.
• The day-age view seems a contrivance to me, designed to harmonize a literalist reading of Genesis 1 with modern geology. The Framework view seems to me to be weakened by an over-reliance on Genesis 2:5-6, which can be read in other ways, and asks a great deal in asking us to ignore the impression of sequence in Genesis 1. The problems with the six-24-day view I have summarized already and they are sufficient for me not to think it the likeliest way of reading the text.
• We have lived happily enough with a variety of interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2 and should continue to do so. As with eschatology, we are nowhere near a consensus on this point.
• This issue should be discussed as a question of interpretation, proper exegesis, not of fidelity to the Bible. Everyone in our circles believes in the historicity of Genesis 1-2, of a real creation ex nihilo, of a distinct creation for man, etc.
• The interesting feature of the PCA debate is that it has been conducted largely on the right side of the church where such questions are considered important and interesting. It has not been a TR vs. seeker friendly debate at all.