Creation
We believe that the Heavens and the Earth were made in “the space of six days” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 4). These were regular days (24 hours) and not used as a figure of speech to signify an age or vast period of time (e.g. millions of years). Otherwise God could not command us to keep the Sabbath day holy by saying: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20: 11).
Mankind’s uniqueness
Mankind was a separate creation from all other creatures. “God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2: 7), he was not made, or transformed, from another animal, as Darwinists teach. We, as human beings, are separate from the rest of the creatures, since we are made in God’s image; all other creatures are made “according to their own kind.” All similarities between mankind and animals (e.g. DNA, cell structure, limb structure, et c.) only exist because it has pleased God to make all creatures similarly; for he is a God of order, not chaos (1 Cor. 14:33).
Adam’s historicity
Adam was a real, historical person and the physical father of us all. To deny this would be to contradict God’s Word and deny the Gospel. For Romans 5: 12-21 states that we receive Christ’s righteousness just as we received our sinful nature from Adam. Adam, as a real person, was a type of Christ (Romans 5: 14).
6 days means 6 days
The issue of creation has long been considered a fundamental Christian belief and one that distinguishes Christianity from other religions. This particular doctrine has been subject to prolonged attack since the mid- 19th century, but continues to be critical for orthodoxy. Although the history of belief on this subject is clear, some prominent reformed theologians from our communions have held differing views on this subject. However, as a confessionally reformed church, we are obligated not to teach contrary to our articles of faith, most notably the Westminster Standards and the Heidelberg Catechism, which specifically address the doctrine of creation.
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.
Scripture commands the church to “contend for the faith, given once for all.” And by God’s grace, we 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 - the perspicuity of Scripture.
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 reserved His Word. We have it. It need not be authenticated by secular science or human reason. 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.
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 and unfaithful church.
We seek not division, but rather unity in the truth. We would count it a blessing if our reformed 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 church, 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).
Thus, we affirm the following:
We believe that God’s Word is not only inerrant, but that it is also clear to the learned and unlearned alike; thus, we affirm that when God reveals his mind—on creation or any other matter—he is quite capable of making his thoughts known in ordinary language that does not require extraordinary hermeneutical maneuvers for interpretation.
Accordingly, we believe that when God revealed his creation as ex nihilo and by the power of his word, and when he surrounded the six days of creation with such phrases as “the first day . . . the nth day” and “evening” and “morning”—all phrases which would have been understood in their normal sense by Hebrews in the second millennium BC—that God himself intended to convey that the work of his creation spanned six ordinary days, followed by a seventh and non-continuous day which also spanned 24 hours, like the other six days. The plain sense of the first chapter of Genesis 1 is that God created he heavens and the earth in six days, of normal duration, and rested on the seventh day.
We believe that an accurate study of OT texts does not support the gap theory, the framework hypothesis, the analogical theory, or the day-age view. Indeed, we find the OT creation texts to be interpreted as normal days, and no passage demands that Genesis 1-2 be re-engineered to yield other interpretations. The long history of rabbinical commentary, the very dating of time by the Hebrew calendar, and orthodox Jewish thought so understands these texts to embrace only days of ordinary length.
The NT church and Scriptures offered no revisions of this view, and nowhere do those texts themselves advocate framework or day-age views. We certainly believe that if the wording of Genesis 1-2 required clarification or modification away from the normal meaning of the Hebrew terms, God would so indicate in the text itself, as well as in NT treatments of Genesis 1-2, but He did not.
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.
The earliest post-canonical commentaries either advocated a 24-hour view of the days (e.g., Basil, Ambrose) or followed Augustine in a somewhat platonic scheme. Augustine’s view, however, was that creation occurred instantaneously, and he nowhere enunciated a day-age view or a framework hypothesis. Until the Protestant Reformation, only two views were propagated: (1) the Augustinian view (followed byAnselm and John Colet) and (2) the literal 24-hour view (espoused by Aquinas, Lombard, and others).
The magisterial Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Beza) adopted a uniform view, that of 24 hours, and overtly repudiated the Augustinian view. 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.
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 Heidelberg 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). Our conclusion, then, must be that the Heidelberg Catechism teaches a six-day, 24-hour, creation.
The Westminster Assembly divines either felt no need to comment on the length of days—so clearly was it established—or if they commented, they uniformly (either explicitly or implicitly) adopted the 24 hour view. With 60-80 divines normally attending sessions, at least 20 of the divines who did comment in other published writings indicate that they only understood the creation days to be 24-hour days (or ordinary days), and none have ever been found who espoused a contrary view. Specifically, here were no divines who wrote advocating a day-age view or a framework view. 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. We continue to esteem them not only as confessional authors but also as faithful exegetes. We deny that certain scientific theories are so certain as to compel us to reinterpret Scripture on this matter.
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 1 is 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 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.
Therefore, we declare our view shares the exegesis of the Westminster Confession which clearly affirms that God created all things “in the space of six days” by the word of his power. We also believe that the Heidelberg Catechism teaches a clear 6-day creation. This clear meaning of confessional language, therefore, should be taught in our church and from its pulpit, and that departures from it should be properly safeguarded against.
Accordingly, we reject the following contemporary notions: (1) that John 5:17 teaches a continuing seventh day of creation; (2) that violent death entered the cosmos before the fall; (3) that ordinary providence was the only way that God governed and sustained the creation during the six days of creation; (4) that extraordinary literary sensitivities must be ascribed to pre-1800 audiences; and (5) that Scripture is unclear in its use of “evening and morning” attached to the days of creation.
Even should other fine men differ with us on this subject, we hereby announce our intent to remain faithful to the teaching of the reformed confessions of faith on this subject.