taken by commentators to be days as we know them rather than days as representing years. Why should we not similarly do so for the evenings and mornings of Genesis 1 ?
(5) Day in Genesis 2:4 simply signifies a time characterised by something distinctive, in this case the making of the heavens and the earth. Thus, elsewhere we have "the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2) and "the day of Jehovah's wrath" (Ezekiel 7:19). The meaning of day, in this sense has to be distinguished from day as meaning daytime or day as meaning one revolution of the earth, which takes 24 hours. As others have pointed out, the use of day in Genesis 2:4 is the same as the use of day in Numbers 7:84, whereas the meaning of days in Genesis 1 is the same as that for the days in the earlier part of Numbers 7, which are clearly days in the usual sense.
(6) Even if we assume that days at the time when God created the heavens and the earth were not of the same length as they are at the present time (it is perhaps more likely that they were shorter rather than longer as it is usual for anything turning on its axis to slow down rather than speed up), it would I think be considered unlikely in the extreme that the rate of revolution was so slow that each day was millions of years. This would be necessary if the evolutionary time scale is to be accommodated in the six days of creation.
(7) The idea that in Genesis 1 we are in a different time frame must be considered speculative. If it were true, all it would mean practically is that the time spans of millions of years postulated by evolutionary scientists and the days of the biblical creationists are, in their own way, both right. It is true that we know little about the nature of time and it may be that there is something that is upsetting the calculations of scientists (changes in the speed of light for instance) which may make time gone by seem to have been longer than it was. It is at least curious that the ages of the evolutionists get longer the further back in time we go.
Essentially there are only two theories as to origins; either God created everthing or it all came to be by chance. Actually there is no such thing as chance, because everything must have a cause. There may, of course, be coincidence, but no one that I know of considers that the universe came to be simply as the result of coincidences. Saying that the universe came to be as a result of pure chance is really saying that it came to be as the result of nothing.
If the universe came to be as a result of God's operations then there are three known options:-
(1) It was created in a short space of time as Genesis postulates.
(2) It was created over a much longer time span in jumps.
(3) It was created over a long time span as in (2), but in minute stages.
(2) and (3) are usually called evolution and only (1) is called creation. In theory all three options could be attributed to chance or to God, but in practice only (2) and (3) are attributed to chance though the theistic evolutionist would attribute them to God, albeit probably in a remote way. Saying that the universe came into being by chance in six days is something almost anyone would baulk at; by substituting countless aeons for six days to the mind of some almost anything then becomes possible.
The question may be asked why it should be that evolution should be attractive even to those that are not using it as a way of eliminating God from the scheme of things. I think the reason may be that we are used to one thing emerging from another i.e. at birth. It is something we are familiar with in nature. On the other hand special creation is not and that is more difficult to believe in. In other words it requires faith (Hebrews 11:3). In evolution theory only small changes are usually thought to occur, and these are in the genes that produce the species. The egg so to speak comes first. In special creation it is the fully formed species that appears first. The chicken is there before the egg.
BACK TO INDEX 14 November 1993