A new subscriber writes from Ontario, Canada: “We have a little problem. It is openly said around here that the Lord did not create heaven and earth in six days as we know them. Is this in line with our Reformed faith? Can you please tell us what is commonly accepted by the Reformed Fellowship, Inc. on this subject?”
Taking the second question first: Although I can not speak for them, I assume that the majority of the constituency of the Reformed Fellowship accept the six days of creation as ordinary days. 1 am not aware of any consensus ever having been sought or published on this. It will, however, be of interest to the inquiring subscriber (whose letter expresses appreciation of Dr. P. Y. De Jong’s “Studies in Genesis 1–11”) that in a recent issue of THE OUTLOOK (Journal of Reformed Fellowship, Inc.) Dr. De Jong has written the following on this matter:
“On interpreting ‘day’ as ‘period’, J. C. Leupold in his Exposition of Genesis, Vol. 1 (Baker, 1950), says: ‘There ought to be no need of refuting the idea that yom (day) means period. Respectable dictionaries . . . know nothing of this notion . . .’ He (Leupold) quotes Skinner (modernist) as saying also that such an interpretation ‘. . . is opposed to the plain sense of the passage and has no warrant in Hebrew usage’. . .”
My own conviction is that, regardless of what science may say, there are incontrovertible considerations that make it exegetically impossible to hold that these were six long periods rather than six regular days. The late Louis Berkhof, Professor of Dogmatic Theology and President of Calvin Seminary, has stated these considerations concisely and clearly as follows:
“1. In its primary meaning the word yom denotes a natural day; and it is a good rule in exegesis not to depart from the primary meaning of a word unless this is required by the context . . .
“2. The author of Genesis would seem to shut us up absolutely to the literal interpretation by adding in the case of every day the words ‘and there was evening and there was morning: Each one of the days mentioned has just one evening and morning, something that would hardly apply to a period of thousands of years. And if it should be added that the periods of creation were extraordinary days, each one consisting of one long day and one long night, then the question naturally arises, What would become of all vegetation during the long, long night?
“3. In Exodus 20:9–11 (fourth commandment) Israel is commanded to labor six days find to rest on the seventh, because Jehovah made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh day. Sound exegesis would seem to require that the word ‘day’ be taken in the same sense in both instances. Moreover the sabbath set aside for rest certainly was a literal day; and the presumption is that the other days were of the same kind.
“4. The last three days were certainly ordinary days, for they were determined by the sun in the usual way. While we cannot be absolutely sure that the preceding days did not differ from them at all in length, it is extremely unlikely that they differed from them, as periods of thousands and thousands of years differ from ordinary days . . .” (Systematic Theology, pp. 154, 155; Eerdmans).
The other question (“Is this in line with our Reformed faith?”) is more difficult to answer because it is not clear precisely what other view our correspondent has in mind. I assume that the writer is not thinking of Darwinian or natural evolution but rather of so-called theistic evolution. Together with many others, I do not believe that the latter is in line with the Reformed faith even though there are also many who hold that it can be.
In view of what is coming from the Free University of Amsterdam today (Kuitert, Lever) it is most interesting to take note of what another professor at the Free University had to say about this matter some forty years ago. In his Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature (The Stone Lectures Delivered at Princeton in 1930; Eerdmans), Dr. Valentine Hepp, Professor of Theology at Amsterdam, had this to say about the capitulation of Christian scholars to the modern philosophy of nature:
“A large body of Christian scholars hoisted the white flag. They were afraid lest they be called unscientific when they did not yield to the demands of geology and paleontology: Give us room for our evolutionistic ideas. And so they began to apply the thumbscrew method to the Scripture. The Scripture must furnish the millions which they wished to pay to the unbelieving science in order to keep their good name. Of course, they did not call it a thumbscrew method. No, it was called an attempt at reconciliation. But they were not different from the attempts of those who wanted to make Christ and Belial agree . . . .
“But those went furthest who construed a separate kind of exegesis for the story of creation in order to please unbelief. This exegesis was not to be allegorical, poetical, or mythological, but what it really is, they did not say. It amounts to this, that the hexaemeron of Genesis 1 does not necessarily have to be taken up literally. Rather, one must see in it the narration of six logically differentiated moments in the creative work of God, six divine ideas becoming real through the formation. It would not be possible, according to them, to determine anything from Genesis concerning the length of time used in the preparation of the earth. If science needs millions of years, Genesis does not object . . . .
“The entire periodistic theory which transforms the days of Genesis into geological periods must be opposed in the strength of faith. This theory will have nothing of the Scripture, the authority of which extends also over the natural science . . . . It is absolutely unacceptable to the Calvinist who more than any other Christian keeps guard at the principle of the authority of the Word of God . . .” (pp. 201–203, 211).
Imagine that! That was the judgment of a prominent professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. But that was forty years ago, in a bygone and a better day for that institution, a time when the Christian Reformed Church could still send her future leaders there for graduate study with a confidence that has now tragically ceased to be.
Advice is said to be cheap, but at times it can also be worth its weight in gold; as, for example, this: pick up those old volumes of Berkhof, Hepp, and others like them Once again or for the first time and really find out what they had to say about our historic view of the Genesis account of creation.
Taking the second question first: Although I can not speak for them, I assume that the majority of the constituency of the Reformed Fellowship accept the six days of creation as ordinary days. 1 am not aware of any consensus ever having been sought or published on this. It will, however, be of interest to the inquiring subscriber (whose letter expresses appreciation of Dr. P. Y. De Jong’s “Studies in Genesis 1–11”) that in a recent issue of THE OUTLOOK (Journal of Reformed Fellowship, Inc.) Dr. De Jong has written the following on this matter:
“On interpreting ‘day’ as ‘period’, J. C. Leupold in his Exposition of Genesis, Vol. 1 (Baker, 1950), says: ‘There ought to be no need of refuting the idea that yom (day) means period. Respectable dictionaries . . . know nothing of this notion . . .’ He (Leupold) quotes Skinner (modernist) as saying also that such an interpretation ‘. . . is opposed to the plain sense of the passage and has no warrant in Hebrew usage’. . .”
My own conviction is that, regardless of what science may say, there are incontrovertible considerations that make it exegetically impossible to hold that these were six long periods rather than six regular days. The late Louis Berkhof, Professor of Dogmatic Theology and President of Calvin Seminary, has stated these considerations concisely and clearly as follows:
“1. In its primary meaning the word yom denotes a natural day; and it is a good rule in exegesis not to depart from the primary meaning of a word unless this is required by the context . . .
“2. The author of Genesis would seem to shut us up absolutely to the literal interpretation by adding in the case of every day the words ‘and there was evening and there was morning: Each one of the days mentioned has just one evening and morning, something that would hardly apply to a period of thousands of years. And if it should be added that the periods of creation were extraordinary days, each one consisting of one long day and one long night, then the question naturally arises, What would become of all vegetation during the long, long night?
“3. In Exodus 20:9–11 (fourth commandment) Israel is commanded to labor six days find to rest on the seventh, because Jehovah made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh day. Sound exegesis would seem to require that the word ‘day’ be taken in the same sense in both instances. Moreover the sabbath set aside for rest certainly was a literal day; and the presumption is that the other days were of the same kind.
“4. The last three days were certainly ordinary days, for they were determined by the sun in the usual way. While we cannot be absolutely sure that the preceding days did not differ from them at all in length, it is extremely unlikely that they differed from them, as periods of thousands and thousands of years differ from ordinary days . . .” (Systematic Theology, pp. 154, 155; Eerdmans).
The other question (“Is this in line with our Reformed faith?”) is more difficult to answer because it is not clear precisely what other view our correspondent has in mind. I assume that the writer is not thinking of Darwinian or natural evolution but rather of so-called theistic evolution. Together with many others, I do not believe that the latter is in line with the Reformed faith even though there are also many who hold that it can be.
In view of what is coming from the Free University of Amsterdam today (Kuitert, Lever) it is most interesting to take note of what another professor at the Free University had to say about this matter some forty years ago. In his Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature (The Stone Lectures Delivered at Princeton in 1930; Eerdmans), Dr. Valentine Hepp, Professor of Theology at Amsterdam, had this to say about the capitulation of Christian scholars to the modern philosophy of nature:
“A large body of Christian scholars hoisted the white flag. They were afraid lest they be called unscientific when they did not yield to the demands of geology and paleontology: Give us room for our evolutionistic ideas. And so they began to apply the thumbscrew method to the Scripture. The Scripture must furnish the millions which they wished to pay to the unbelieving science in order to keep their good name. Of course, they did not call it a thumbscrew method. No, it was called an attempt at reconciliation. But they were not different from the attempts of those who wanted to make Christ and Belial agree . . . .
“But those went furthest who construed a separate kind of exegesis for the story of creation in order to please unbelief. This exegesis was not to be allegorical, poetical, or mythological, but what it really is, they did not say. It amounts to this, that the hexaemeron of Genesis 1 does not necessarily have to be taken up literally. Rather, one must see in it the narration of six logically differentiated moments in the creative work of God, six divine ideas becoming real through the formation. It would not be possible, according to them, to determine anything from Genesis concerning the length of time used in the preparation of the earth. If science needs millions of years, Genesis does not object . . . .
“The entire periodistic theory which transforms the days of Genesis into geological periods must be opposed in the strength of faith. This theory will have nothing of the Scripture, the authority of which extends also over the natural science . . . . It is absolutely unacceptable to the Calvinist who more than any other Christian keeps guard at the principle of the authority of the Word of God . . .” (pp. 201–203, 211).
Imagine that! That was the judgment of a prominent professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. But that was forty years ago, in a bygone and a better day for that institution, a time when the Christian Reformed Church could still send her future leaders there for graduate study with a confidence that has now tragically ceased to be.
Advice is said to be cheap, but at times it can also be worth its weight in gold; as, for example, this: pick up those old volumes of Berkhof, Hepp, and others like them Once again or for the first time and really find out what they had to say about our historic view of the Genesis account of creation.