1998 issue 5 - the westminster view of creation days - counsel of chalcedon

8/12/2019 1998 Issue 5 - The Westminster View of Creation Days - Counsel of Chalcedon

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The Westminster Divines and

the long stretch of church history

prior to the 19th century did have

a view

on

111e length

of

creation

days. This historical fact is often

obscured by either biased presup

positions or a research vacuum.

Despite tlle prevalent claim from

some quarters (actually relatively

recent, primarily since the 1800s)

111at

the confessional words

in

11le space of six days really could

mean up to 16 bi11ion

years, when

primary writings by the divines

are consulted, it becomes very

difficult to maintain that the

divines were more chic than

hertofore imagined.

committed revisionist would

believe. From the record of

history and from the Scriptures,

tlJese claims simply do not sustain

tlle case

111at

tlJe language of the

Confession is unclear. The

Westminster standards con

sciously asserted a truth claim by

tlleir words: in the space

of

six

days. That language had specific

meaning when it was asserted,

and it still means what is says

today. Persons may differ willI

ilie Confession's assertions and

doubtless other issues must be

addressed, but its meaning is

verifiable and unambiguous.

The urban legends I have

mentioned above have, however,

become fai rly entrenched and

widely taught in academic class-

f

one cOllsiders some

of

the

considerably culture-biased

statements of Hodge and

Warfield, they will hardly suffice

as role models on tlJis issue . They

were, in fact, quite influenced

by

the ideological currents

of

tlleir

day. Jonatllan Wells observes tllat

as early as 1863 Charles Hodge

was accused of Remaining open

to the possibility tlJat Scripture

would have to be re-interpreted in

. light of scientific evidence.'

Fur11ler the

New York Observer

accused Hodge of being guilty of

letting Science lead the

way

and

the Bible followed. 20n several

occasions Hodge had to defend

himself from his contemporaries

iliat he was not guilty

of

subor

dinating Scripture to science.

In

at least this instance, other

Contrary to the Uleological

mythology of the past 150 years,

the leading Westminster Divines

did leave explicit testimony, in

writing, repeatedly,

and

uniformly

on

this subject.

The

Westminster View

of Creation Days:

Choice betweell NOli Ambiguity r

Historical Revisiollism

A review of tlJeir own

writings only permits

embarrassment for

11lOse

contemporaries sus

pected 11lat Hodge could

be persuaded by scien

tific evidence to modify

who assert that they

expressed no view on

this subject.

First, in

order to follow tIle

trail, good tlleological detectives

may have to weed out many

of

ilie urban legends that have been

recently and industriously sown.

We have

been

told that there is

little or no record of what the

original divines intended. That is

not true, unless one limits himself

to a very narrow set of documen

tary evidence. We have also been

led to believe tlJat English Bibles

use the phrase, in the space

of

six days, to paraphrase biblical

teaching. We

caIDlot

find one.

We

have been told tllat many puritans,

like William Ames, allowed for

long periods of creation. That,

too, is a mytlJ. The view of

Augustine has been distorted, and

we are supposed to believe 1l1at

Augustine was

an

early day Carl

Sagan-a myth that only a

c

DavidW.I Ian

rooms for a century. Much of

1l1is at least

in

reformed circles,

hides behind the authority of

recent reformed heroes. It is also

mythical that we are obliged to

foHow leading 1l1eologians when

they were wrong.

I am happy to acknowledge

tlJe debt we owe to Charles Hodge

and B. B. Warfield. They were

great home run hitters of tlleir

day, the Babe Rutll and Mark

McGwire of tlJeir respective days.

But even great hitters

hit

foul balls

occasionally, and

in

tlle matter of

tIle span of the creation week,

1l1ey were afield. Even good men

err, and the reformed tradition has

consistently affirmed tllat

it

prefers real history to following

the traditions of

1l1e

elders, even i f

the elders are Hodge, Shedd, or

Warfield.

his interpretation of

Scripture, and that he

served to reconcile

Scripture with established scien

tific facts. I That Hodge was

contouring the Bible to tlJe

findings of science to some

degree is seen from his

comment

in an 1856 review: If science

should succeed

in

demonstrating

1l1at tlle earth is millions

of

years

old, then

we

will witlJ tIle utmost

alacrity believe tllat 1l1e days

of

creation were periods of indefinite

duration. 4

Abraham Kuyper warned

similarly about tlJe uneasy alliance

between Hodge's approach and

secular geology. Kuyper at one

paint wrote, There is, to be sure,

a theological illusion abroad

which conveys tIle impression

that, witlJ the Holy Scripture in

hand, one can independently

construct his tlJeology from tlJis

principium.

' In

1l1is criticism,

Kuyper was likely tItinking of

October/November, 1998 - THE COUNSEL of Chalcedon - 15


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Hodge

and

others who champi

oned

sCientific orthodoxy

based

on their presupposition of the

IUlality

of

facticity.

Kuyper

criticized Hodge

y

name

in

another section. He

faulted

Hodge

for

his combina

tion o facts and truths which

overthrows his own

system.

Kuyper

said

that Hodge demanded

that the theologian be the one to

authenticate

these truths.

6

Further, Kuyper accused

Hodge

of succumbing

to

the temptation

of placing Theology formally in

line with the

other sciences.'

Continuing

his critique

of

Hodge,

the

Dutch

theologian said:

The

authentication of

his facts

brought

him logically back again under the

power

of

naturalistic science. And

though as a man of faith he

bravely resisted this, his demon

stration lacked logical necessity.

the entire subsequent develop

ment of theological study has

actually

substituted an utterly

different

object, has cut the

historic tie that binds it to Original

theology, and has accomplished

little else than the union of the

sub-divisions

of

psychology

and

of

historic ethnology

into a

new

department

of

science, which

does not lead to the knowledge of

God, but

aims

at

the knowledge

of

religion as a phenomenon in

the life

of

humanity. ,'

Kuyper protested

every

appearance of

neutrality, which is

after

all

bound

to be dishonest

at

heart.

In contrast

to Hodge,

Kuyper

maintained

that there

could

be no

neutrality toward the

scientific datum-an early

form

of a presuppositional apologetic.

Wells perceptively remarks:

Although

Hodge

died without

conceding that evolution could be

reconciled

with the

Bible, his

theology

contained

the seeds for

such a reconciliation.

9

It

appears that these angels

were unaware

of

the inherent

dangers of accommodation at this

juncture. As Theodore Bozeman

perceptively wrote

at the conclu

sion of

his book:

It may

be questioned whether

religious leaders at any previous

point in the nation's past had

achieved a more unabashed union

of

gospel

and

culture

than

this.

Doubtless

if

the Old School could

have foreseen Darwin

or

the

triumph

of

a physics

of

forces

undermining the older empiricism

they would not have been so

eager either to canonize Bacon or

to

embrace

scientific endeavor as

a natural patron of belief.

I

Indeed,

for

Bozeman:

It

is

revealing that [certain] prominent

Old Schoolers . were now

willing to suggest that

if

an

'indisputable' result

of

thorough

induction manifestly contradicted

an existing doctrine of the

church, the theologian must

reconsider his interpretation of

God's word, and see

if

he has not

misunderstood it. In view of the

firm biblical literalism and the

unbending confessionalism to

which the Old School was

committed, this was a substantial

concession. 11 Science could at

least

theoretically

have preemi

nence

over

Scripiure-at least as

an intermediate hermeneutic.

Benjamin Warfield

is

another

glaring illustration

of

this flaw,

and

when our friends claim to

follow Warfield, they may claim

far more than they wish.

In

a 1915 work entitled

Calvin's

Doctrine

of

Creation,

one marvels

at

Warfield's herme

neutical gymnastics as he tried to

mold

Calvin into a proto-evolu

tionist. Warfield was to the point

of saying: Calvin doubtless had

no theory

of

evolution;

but

he

teaches a doctrine of evolution.

16 -

THE COUNSEL of Chalcedon -

October/November, 1998

He had no objection and so

teaching it, cut to preserve the

creative act . 12 Warfield even

speculated that had certain

preconditions come about Calvin

would have been a precursor of

the modern evolutionary theo

rist. In

a footnote responding to

Herman Bavinck, Warfield con

cluded: Calvin accordingly very

naturally thought along the lines

of

a theistic evolutionism. 14

That

claim is as stunning,

as

it is

erroneous. In either case,

Warfield ought

not

be our author

ity on this matter. I f one consults

Calvin's

nstitutes or

other

Calvinalia, the possibility that

Calvin might have been an evolu

tionist is qui te remote.

Even excellent men like Hodge;

Warfield, and others may be

wrong on this issue and still

worthy of great respect in other

areas. The challenge remains to

explore a wider selection of

theologians than recent exemplars

alone in order to ascertain what

the catholic and

apOStoliC

church

held on the matter.

I. Short Tour

of

Pre-Westminster Exegesis

A brief review

of

pre

Westminster exegesis focussing

on Augustine and the reformers

indicates that ttiey

did

have

definite views

on

this subject that

were contrary to those

of

Hodge

and Warfield.

So

did virtually the

entire church prior to the las t

century.

Frequently, Augustine is

misappropriated to support a long

creation week, although

it

seems

that most misappropriators have

not read Augustine himself in

context.

What

was Augustine's

view

of

the length

of

the creation

week? Let me summarize his

view, since he is so frequently

misrepresented. Was he a literal

144 hour creationist? No; he was


3/5

a .000001 second creationist.

To

be sure, he allowed for non-literal

interpretation of the days, but in

Ille

OPPOSITE DIRECTION

of

modem claims. Augustine did

NOT believe in long days. He

believed all was created in a nano

second.

Augustine is often appealed to,

as are Origen, and later Aquinas.15

Some even blame fundamentalism

for the genesis

of

creationism.

Often earlier Illeologians are

misrepresented. While Augustine

argued for a non-literal approach,

he certainly did not envision

or

support a long expanse for

creation as modem revisionists

assert. t is utterly indefensible to

suggest that Augustine would

have agreed that in the space

of

six days could mean millions of

years. The best that appeals to

Augustine can demonstrate is iliat

symbolic language is appreciated

in earlier commentaries.

16

That is

one iliing---{;onceptually different

from adjusting the Confession to

modem geological long periods. t

is a reach, neverilieless,

to

infer a

repudiation of traditional (pre

Darwinian) creationism from

these authors' use

of

a symbolic

hermeneutic.17 Virtually every

appeal seeking Augustine's

support for long creation periods

misappropriates his view.

n earlier adversary,

Andrew

D. White despite

his wish to Ille

contrary-admitted

Illat Calvin

had a strict interpretation of

Genesis, and that down to a

period almost within living

memory [1896], it was held,

virtually ' always, everywhere, and

by all,' Illat the universe, as we

now see it, was created literally

and directly by the voice or hands

of

the Almighty, or by boili---out

of nothing-in an instant or in six

days Even opponents find

i t difficult to mangle tllis testi

mony, although willi the effect of

cumulative misrepresentations

Illat is becoming more frequent.

Ambrose of Milan (339-397)

was one

of

tile first tlleologians

to

explicate a mature view of cre

ation. In his

H exameron,

Ambrose

affirmed,

God

created day and

night at tile same time. Since tllat

time, day and night continue tlleir

daily succession and renewal. '

In his fullest discussion of tile

lengtlls of 1l1e creation days,

Ambrose commented:

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. ilie

succeeding day follows after the

termination

of

night. The thought

of God is clear. 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, I.hen a third day, and

finally the remaining days were to

follow. a 'first

day' could haye

been mentioned. following in this

way the natural order. But Scrip

ture established a law that

twenty-four hours, including

both day and nigl , should be

given the name

of

day only, as

if

one were to say the length of one

day is twenty-fonr hours in

~ 2

In The Literal Meaning

of

Genesis,

Augustine-the alleged

adherent

of

Ille framework

hypothesis---{;ommented: Hence

it seems that this work of God

was done in Ille space of a day

22 Thus, in all

1l1e

days

of

creation iliere is one day 23

(4 :26) He continued to explain:

That

day in the account of

creation, or those days that are

numbered according to its recur

rence, are beyond the experience

and knowledge

of

us mortal

earthbound men. ' (4:27) He

believed Illat, the whole of

creation was finished in six

days.

(4:14) Augustine argued

fuat Ille firmament , fue waters,

plants, trees, heavenly bodies,

and

all living creatures were made

simultaneously. 26 In

light

of iliis

and many other

comments,

Augustine's sensitivity to symbol

ism ought

not

be transformed into

a cosmology

which

fits with a 16

billion

year

old cosmos

apart

from

numerous, explicit, and

consistent

iterations or admission

of

ideo

logical bias.

Lest one

think

that

Augustine

was arguing for an expanded

period

of

creation so as to permit

lenglllY development,

he

also

argued that the entire

creation

happened in only

one

day: Per

haps we should say 1l1at

God

created only

one

day, so iliat

by

its recurrence many

periods called

days would pass by All

creation, ilien, was

finished by

ilie sixfold recurrence of iliis day,

whose evening and morning we

may interpret as explained

above. 27 (4:20,26)

So far was be from advocating

a gradual evolution iliat

he

said:

For this power of Divine Wis

dom does not reach by stages or

arrive by steps .

t

was

just

as

easy, then, for

God

to

create

everything

as i t

is for

Wisdom to

exercise this mighty power . . .

Creation, therefore,

did not take

place slowly in order that a slow

development might be imp/allied

n

those things that are slow by

nature; nor were the ages estab-

lished at the plodding

pace at

which they now pass. (4:33)

That Augustine is incompatible

Witll

modem

notions

is seen

from

his comment: [B]ut there was no

passage

of

time

when

they

[creatures] received these laws at

creation. Otherwise, if we think

1l1at when'iliey

were first

created

by Ille Word of God, iliere were

1l1e processes of nature wiili ilie

normal duration of days that we



4/5

know, those creatures that shoot

forth, roots and clothe the earth

would need not one day but many

to germinate beneath the ground,

and then a certa in number of

days, according to their natures,

to come forth from the ground;

and the creation of vegetation,

which

SCripture places

on

one

day, namely the third, would have

been a gradual process. (4:33)

August ine believed that there

was no b e f o r ~

or Hafter n the

moment of creation:

It

follows,

therefore, that he, who created all

things together, simultaneously

created these six days, or seven,

or rather the one day six or seven

times repeated. (4 :33) He

believed creation occurred in a

split

second,

not

over long days.

t is Augustine's view that was

largely repeated by John Colct and

a very few others. But it was

explicitly

denied

by Westminster

divines, their Confession, and

their puritan contemporaries.

One can summarize

Augustine's views as below:

-They

were directed toward a

certain

set

of ideas of his day. His

argumentation should

be

set in

that context and not snatched

from that context to argue for

later ideas that may be incompat

ible;

-His views of creation seem

rather unique and idiosyncratic in

the

history of theology;

i.

e., few,

i f any, theologians approached the

Genesis narratives as creatively as

did Augustine (For exainple, his

concern for the angelic observa

tion of creation is rather unparal

leled.);

-He

did not wish

to be

inter

preted as using the allegorical

method; his intent was to be as

literal as possible;

-He treated the day of creation

contrary to the stated

Westminster Assembly position;

-He did not believe that cre

atiofr took a long

period of

development, but to the contrary;

-Augustine believed that all of

creation occurred simultaneously,

at one instant.

-He

also believed that Jesus'

saying n John 5 ( My Father is

still working ) applied only to

governance, not

of

creating any

new nature. Thus, it is difficult

to

sustain the argument that

Augustine believed in continuous

creation.

-Augustine believed that Adam

was made from the slime of the

earth and the woman from the

side of her husband. (6:5).

Ernan McMullin confinns that

Augus tine concurred with the

Alexandrine fathers who believed

that creation was in a single

moment; he clearly did not believe

that creation days were indefi

nitely long periods of time: In

fact, he insisted that the creative

action whereby all things came to

be was instantaneous; the six

' days' refer (he suggests) to

stages in the angelic knowledge of

creation. In prop,eriy temporal

terms the

'days'

reduce

to

'an

indivisible instant, so that all the

kinds of things mentioned in

Genesis were really made simulta

neously

n

Augustine, Anselm, Lombard;

and Aquinas are frequently alleged

to have suppor ted long days.

Covenant Seminary Professor

Jack Collins confirms that:

Augustine and Ansehn do not

actually discuss the length of the

creation days .

Certainly

Augustine and Anselm cannot be

called as witnesses in favor

of a

day-age theory. Suffice i t to

say that neither did Aquinas

consisten tly nor explicitly hold to

long days. Aquinas (1224-

1274) believed: The words one

d y are used when day is first

18 - THE COUNSEL of ChaIcedon - October/November, 1998

instituted, to denote that one d'ay

is made up of

twenty-four

hours. Moreover, he com

mented elsewhere:

But

it [cos

mos] was not made from some

thing; otherwise the matter of the

world would have preceded the

world Therefore, it must be

saidthatthe

world was made

from nothing. 31

Peter Lombard, continued the

analogy of faith on the subject of

creation. Lombard, along with

other contemporaries, recognized

creation

x

nihilo Adam and

Eve's special creation, and

affinned that the Catholic faith

believes that tberewas one

prinCiple, one cause

of all things,

namely God. Moreover,

Lombard affimled the essentially

hexameral plan of creation,

taking a cle'ar position that God:

creates the angels and the

unformed matter simul and ex

nihilo. Then, in the work of six

days, he produces individual

creatures out of the unformed

matter The days referred to

in Genesis are to be understood

literally s lasting twenty- four

hours. f one retains a proper

understanding

of

the philosophical

audiences and contexts of the

great theologians prior to the

Refonnation, one discovers that a

majority of orthodox commenta

tors did not explic itly hold to long

days, gradual development, or an

old earth s is frequently

claimed,40

Interestingly, had Calvin

wanted to lobby for long days,

two ideal verses presented them

selves: Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter

3:8. Oddly, while commenting on

both of them, Calvin refrained

from injecting the idea that the

first days of creation could be as

long s millennia. The exegesis

which is becoming so common

was avoided by earlier exegetes.

These verses were not interpreted


5/5

to satisfy certain scientific

Uleories; rather

Uley

were inter

preted simply to mean that God is

above time. All in all, Calvin

presents a rather consistent view

on lhis subject which is antitheti

cal to the modem attempts to

recraft it after their own image.

41

In his Commentary

on

Genesis

(1

:5), Calvin even uses

the

phrase

in

the space of six days, which

was later adopted by Ule

Westminster Assembly consistent

with Calvin's view.

Martin LuUler's view is largely

uncontested, so explicit is

it.

Numerous other citations could

be assembled, but interestingly

Luther is rarely misappropriated.

t

deserves to be stated, however,

that the frequent omission of

reference to Luther (and others)

illustrates the selectivity of

sources drawn upon. A search for

the mainstream of orthodox

interpretation on

Ulis

subject

should not omit Luther, even if he

mitigated the propositions ardently

maintained by modem revision

ism.

Robert Bishop concurs:

Neither the origiual audience of

tllat book [Genesis] nor anyone

else until about two hundred years

ago would have understood a

'g e

ological

era'

to be a meaningful

concept. Thus the Confession

considered

110

such option. To

expect that the divines could

speak to unimagined concepts is

about like expecting Luther

to

Slump for Mac computers over

PCs four centuries in advance.

There is scant evidence, if any,

that prior to the nineteenUI

century

any

view

of

creation that

accorded with macro-evolution

was anyUling but aberrant.

t is an error to claim that

Augustine , the ancient church, or

the Westminster Divines held to

long days or envisioned Ulat

as

an

orthodox possibility.46 Such

concept would only arise much

later. There were only two major

views on

Ulis

issue prior to Ule

19th centnry, but Ule modern

myth seeks to uphold a third view

only embraced after the onslaught

of evolution. That third view is a

post-Darwin view, never held by

Ule church, oddly, prior to the

coincidence of that scientific era.

The two pre-19UI century views

and the post-J9th century view

may be summarized

as

below.

oAugustine had one view:

nano-second crealion

oThe divines had a 24 hour

view and explicitly rejected

Augustine.

oBut this 3rd view is different

and believes in long geologic

periods.

This new third view of long

creation arises only after the

popularization of Darwin. As I

have gone to the sources, follow

ing the reformers in style as well

as substance, I cannot find pre-

19th century interpretations that

adjust the Confession to geologic

eras or long periods

of

creation.

[Note: On July I, 1998, I

debated this thesis at a General

Assembly meeting in St. Louis. In

my zeal to make the rhetorical

case, I may have over -reached.

As I reported my research

which had turned up at least 20

Westminster divines who

endorsed a 24-bour creation

day-I offerred tickets to the St.

Louis Cardinals' game to anyone

who could produce a written

citation to the contrary by one of

the divines who contended for a

long geologic period as a creation

day. Some have misunderstood,

and

UlOught

that a citation by

all

reformed Uleologian after 18

should qualify. My exact pOint,

however, is

Ulat

Ule historic shift

below is post-1800. Few, if any

takers, have sought to produce a

reference, and-wiUl tickets

unclaimed-we thoroughly

enjoyed Ule 3-0 trouncing of the

Royals on July

2.

Mark McGwire

was

0-2 that night.

Still, 1 am told

Ulal

several

theologians will soon call my

bluff. In the interest of fairness

and unbiased research, I will still

mail tickets to any researcher

who produces a citation in writing

by one of

Ule

Westminster divines

who contended for a long geo

logic period

as

a creation day. I'll

candidly announce my own

shortcomings when the cite is

produced, and also

keep

a running

tally on our web site. Maybe I did

overstate; perhaps at the

end

of

summer the score will be 20-1

instead of 20-0. When the tally is

anywhere close, my thesis will e

surrendered.]

Before the church is expected to

change, advocates

of

the long age

view must prove their major

points. The hinge issues are:

oWhere did Augustine advo

cate long ages?

oWhere did those who influ

enced Westminster hold to long

ages?

oWhich Westminster Divines

contended for long ages?

oWhere are the English transla

tions tllat use tile confessional

phrase

in

the space of ?

To endorse such unfounded

interpretations is also to invite

men with untested commitments

to pass by without proper ration

ales. Indeed, this revisionism

creates a new standard for the

Westminster standards, and

makes it unlikely that any

Presbytery or Session will call

into question framework hypoth

eses

or

other expansive views

on

creation. There must be a less

radical way and we can suggest

several other meUlods to keep our

church open, but at the same time

not commit to pluralism.

Due to

sho

rtage of space we were

unable t include the footnotes for this

article. Anyone who desires the

footnotes p]ease contact the editor.


1998 issue 5 - the westminster view of creation days - counsel of chalcedon

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