The debate over the Church fathers {ii}
When The Fundamentals were written at the beginning of the 20th century, they argued for the day-age interpretation and an ancient earth and universe. However, they didn’t merely appeal to the Bible, but to Church history as well: “Do not think that this larger reading of the days is a new speculation. You find Augustine in early times declaring that it is hard or altogether impossible to say of what fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaves the matter an open question.”{iii} Hugh Ross has documented in Creation and Time and A Matter of Days plenty of Christians throughout Church history who argued that the days of creation were long periods of time.{iv} Christian philosopher Kenneth Richard Samples, a colleague of Ross, wrote, “From the time of the Church fathers, through the Reformation, and up to the present, various views have prevailed, some more broadly represented than others, but none was ever considered the definitive, or the only, orthodox biblical position.”{v} Similarly, the 19th century theologian William G. T. Shedd wrote:
The very common assertion, that the church has altered its exegesis, under the compulsion of modern geology, is one of the errors of ignorance. The doctrine of an immense time, prior to the six creative days, was a common view among the fathers and schoolmen. … Respecting the length of the six creative days, speaking generally, for there was some difference of views, the patristic and mediaeval exegesis makes them to be long periods, not days of twenty-four hours. The latter interpretation has prevailed only in the modern church.{vi}
In response to this, young-earth proponents state that these claims are simply false: “One is caused to question whether Dr. Ross has actually read any of the writings he quotes. Most of the ‘Church Fathers’ he claims as believing in figurative ‘days’ actually believed just the opposite. This is even evident within the same context of the quotes Ross reported. Creation and Time misinterprets no fewer than 9 of the 14 men listed.”{vii} “This claim [that there was no exegetical consensus on the days of Genesis] is wrong. There was only one view following the repudiation of Augustine’s view, and seldom (if ever) before the nineteenth century was the day-age or the framework view advocated.”{viii}
As far as I can understand them, there are plenty of statements in the Church fathers which, at the very least, strongly imply that some of them understood the days of creation as calendar days. Conversely, in defense of the view expressed by Shedd, Ross, Samples, and The Fundamentals, it must be recognized that there are also plenty of statements in the Church fathers which claim or imply that the days of creation were millennia.{ix} For example, some of the fathers argued that God’s statement to Adam that he would die “in the day” that he ate the forbidden fruit referred to the sixth day of creation. Since the time between Adam’s creation and his death was slightly less than a thousand years (Gen. 5:5), and since a thousand years is as a day to the Lord (Ps. 90:4), the sixth day (when Adam was created) was a thousand years long.{x} Others, in similar language as Heb. 4, identified the present or (more often) the future age with the seventh day of creation, sometimes claiming that it was instituted with Christ’s first advent—a view which led to the belief that Jesus would return at the end of the seventh day in AD 1000.{xi}
Yes, but…
There’s more to the story, though. Prior to the Reformation, most biblical commentators believed in multiple interpretations of Scripture. That is, any given passage had several different meanings. And it seems apparent that the Church fathers understood the day-age interpretation as a secondary one; that is, the days of creation referred to long spans of time in addition to their primary meaning.
This is evident from the fact that they thought each day was an age of human history. For example, they often understood the sixth day as referring to the 1,000 years prior to Christ. The problem comes in when we remember that human beings weren’t created until the sixth day. So were they suggesting that Adam and Eve were created sometime within the millennium before Christ? Were they suggesting that all of human history—from Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to Nehemiah, etc.—could be squeezed into the 1,000 years leading up to Jesus’ birth? Of course not. Obviously, understanding the sixth day as a millennium is a secondary interpretation.
Yes, but…
So what can we conclude from this? Not as much as some might hope. For one thing, the recognition that it was a secondary interpretation does not negate the fact that it was still a common interpretation. Regardless of whether it was secondary, the early Church fathers still understood the days of creation to be reasonably interpreted as long periods of time. They gave exegetical arguments for it. Perhaps those arguments were not sound, but it can’t be claimed that the day-age interpretation is just a recent position.
For another thing, young-earth proponents seem to assume that since the day-age view was a secondary interpretation, the primary interpretation was the calendar-day view. But this doesn’t seem clear. There are few explicit statements to this effect, and we know that some of the fathers thought that all of the events of creation week took place instantaneously. Augustine affirmed both that creation took no time, and that the days of creation were 1,000-year periods.{xii} Others argued that some aspects of the syntax in Gen. 1 were unusual, and shouldn’t be understood superficially.{xiii} Origen went so far as to repudiate those who took the creation stories in Gen. 1-3 as historical.{xiv} The point being that there was controversy in the early Church over how the creation narrative should be interpreted, and this controversy extended to the nature of the creation days. If a Christian writer of the time thought that the days of creation were calendar days, he would have had to make that clear to his readers since some of the most prolific Christian authors denied it. In the absence of such clarifications, there is simply no reason to assume that the calendar-day interpretation was universally presumed as the primary interpretation. How do we know that the “instantaneous” view wasn’t the primary interpretation?
And yet…
I have been discussing what the Church fathers wrote about the days of creation, rather than what they wrote about the age of the universe. But their understanding of the latter can be easily determined by reflection upon the former: if they thought that the six creation days were each 1,000 year periods, or that all of the events in Gen. 1 took place instantaneously in no time, how old would they have concluded the universe is? Well, several thousand years. They state this pretty explicitly.{xv} Because of this, many young-earth proponents think that their views are much closer to those of the early Church, and with some justification.
However, it must be borne in mind that the reason contemporary young-earth proponents make this claim is because they insist that the days of creation can only be validly interpreted as referring to calendar days. In other words, they have different reasons for believing the earth to be several thousand years old than Christians have historically.
The significance of this is twofold: first, an argument is only as good as its premises. Since modern young-earth proponents disagree with the traditional premises that the creation days are millennia (the day-age view) or that they’re metaphorical (the instantaneous creation view), their “agreement” that the universe is several thousand years old becomes irrelevant.
Second, modern day-age proponents are closer to the beliefs of the early Christians, since they agree with one of their premises, that the days of creation refer to long periods of time. They disagree that they were long periods of a specific length (1,000 years), and that this constitutes a secondary, rather than the primary, interpretation. But their agreement is more significant than the superficial one between modern young-earth proponents and the Church fathers.
The later Church
There wasn’t much alteration of these themes during the medieval era. Augustine’s view of instantaneous creation was commonly accepted. Anselm, for example, wrote that “the whole creation took place at once, and those days in which Moses appears to describe a successive creation are not to be understood like such days as ours.”{xvi}
With the Reformation, Protestants rejected multiple interpretations of the Bible and, while respecting the views of Christians throughout history, did not let traditional interpretations determine their understanding of the biblical text. Many accepted the calendar-day interpretation. As noted in the Introduction, Martin Luther himself accepted it, but with the reservation that the creation account is extremely obscure.{xvii}
Protestants formed creeds to summarize their positions regarding the most important aspects of Christianity. Very few of them addressed the nature of the creation days or the age of the universe. The Belgic Confession merely states that God created everything “when it seemed good to him,”{xviii} which suggests its writers were being deliberately agnostic about the universe’s age.
The Protestant confession that is particularly relevant to our study is the Westminster Confession. Some of the authors expressed elsewhere a belief in the calendar-day interpretation,{xix} and the Confession itself states that God created everything “in the space of six days.”{xx} From this it is claimed that the Westminster Confession affirms the calendar-day interpretation.
I think this is reading too much into the Confession. I agree, after all, that God created everything in the space of six days. I disagree, however, that he created everything in the space of six calendar days. The Westminster Confession does not say that the days of creation should be understood as 24-hour periods; and, again, given the diversity of views on this issue, if they were intending to do so, they would have had to make this much more explicit. The faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, who subscribes to the Westminster Confession, commissioned a report on this issue, and concluded that the phrase “in the space of six days” was not meant to define the days of creation as calendar days. Rather, it was intended to counter (but not condemn) the Augustinian view that creation took place instantaneously and took no time. They also note that this issue “never seems to have been regarded as a test of orthodoxy in the reformed churches.”
… we recognize that the exegetical question of the length of the days of Genesis 1 may be an issue which cannot be, and therefore is not intended by God to be, answered in dogmatic terms. To insist that it must comes dangerously close to demanding from God revelation which he has not been pleased to bestow upon us, and responding to a threat to the biblical world view with weapons that are not crafted from the words which have proceeded out of the mouth of God.{xxi}
Another example from about the same time is Isaac Newton. In his correspondence with Thomas Burnet and others, Newton, a Catholic, expressed his belief that the days of creation should be understood as individual rotations of the earth on its axis—but that the earth rotated much slower at this time, and that the days were therefore long periods of indefinite length. He also expressed his belief that the Bible teaches that the earth is ancient.{xxii} Burnet, the chaplain for King William III, responded by arguing for an ancient earth in his Archaeologie Philosophicae, published in 1692.{xxiii} This was before there was any scientific evidence that the earth and universe are ancient. All of this demonstrates that the day-age interpretation is not a purely contemporary position.
And now for something completely different
In this chapter I’ve discussed what Christians throughout history have thought about the days of creation. Perhaps the most important thing about their beliefs, however, is that the length of the days of creation was not a significant issue, and they were tolerant of different interpretations. This point is made best by Gleason Archer and Hugh Ross:
Prior to 1650 exegetes gave little attention to the length of the creation days. Of the approximately two thousand extant pages of creation-day commentary by early Church fathers, only a total of about two pages address the duration of the creation days. Anyone who reads the original source literature will notice the difference in tone between the early Church fathers and modern 24-hour advocates. The older writings are devoid of passionate certainty and dogmatism about the length of the creation days. Rather, they evidence a tentativeness and exhibit tolerance on this point.{xxiv}
Since this issue has, unfortunately, caused division in the Church, I submit that we should seek to imitate the attitudes and humility of those who have gone before us in the Way of Christ.
Objections and responses
Objection: None of the Church fathers advocating anything even remotely like a billions-of-years old universe. Lactantius even condemned the secular belief that the universe is ages old, since we know from Scripture that it’s only a few thousand years old. Therefore, the fathers can’t be said to have agreed with old-earth creationism and the day-age interpretation.
Response: Many Church fathers believed that the days of creation were 1,000 year periods and/or metaphorical. Therefore, the idea that the days of creation refer to something other than calendar days was an accepted view in the early church. As such, the day-age interpretation is neither new nor unusual, even if the specific claim that the universe is 13.5 billion years old may be. The difference between the patristic day-age interpretation and the contemporary one is merely that a) the former position held that the creation days were extended temporal periods of a specific length, while the latter holds that they are extended temporal periods of unspecific lengths; and b) the former held the day-age view to be a secondary interpretation, while the latter holds it to be the primary interpretation.
As for Lactantius, he argued that we know that the universe is only several thousand years old because Scripture teaches that the days of creation were long periods of 1,000 years each.{xxv} He had a different reason for thinking that the universe is young than young-earth proponents have today. Moreover, as noted in the introduction, Lactantius was one of only five individuals in Church history who argued that the Bible teaches that the earth is flat, and his theological views were eventually condemned as heretical after his death.
We have to be careful not to read our own presuppositions into the Church fathers, but let them speak for themselves. This may be problematic, since the issues they struggled with are sometimes very different from those we struggle with. The length of the creation days was not a significant point of contention for them, because the challenges they addressed were regarding the fact of creation rather than its timing. The secular view was that the universe was infinitely old and had always existed, so they responded that it was created a finite time ago.
Objection: Protestants believe in only one interpretation of any given biblical passage. Therefore, whatever additional interpretations others have made are irrelevant.
Response: That may be what some Christians believe today, but that doesn’t allow us to ignore or remove what the Church fathers believed.
Objection: The additional interpretations of Scripture made throughout Church history were largely subjective and arbitrary. Therefore, they don’t have the same weight as the primary interpretation.
Response: This is partially true: the ancient and medieval exegetes thought that the various interpretations of Scripture fell into particular categories, and so they read these categories into the Bible, even where they didn’t fit. This often led to interpretations which were highly subjective and forced. But this is not the case for the days of creation. They gave exegetical arguments for why they should be understood as long periods of time, some of which have been defended in this book, and these arguments were widely accepted.
Notes:
{i} For the diversity of interpretations of the creation days in Jewish history, see Nathan Aviezer (1990).
{ii} An easily accessible analysis of this issue is “The Days of Genesis 1” (chapter 3) in Robert I. Bradshaw (1999). Bradshaw began his study of this subject in order to defend the calendar-day interpretation as the standard view throughout Church history, but ended up concluding that there were several views.
{iii} James Orr (1917a), 197, 284-5; see also, Orr (1917b).
{iv} Hugh Ross (2004), 41-9.
{v} Kenneth Richard Samples (2001).
{vi} William G. T. Shedd (2003), 474-6.
{vii} Mark Van Bebber and Paul S. Taylor (1994), 94. As with Henry Morris (see note {xxvii} of chapter 2), these authors supply no reason why understanding the days of creation as long time spans is figurative rather than literal; and I don’t understand why they felt it necessary to put the phrase “Church Fathers” in scare quotes. Moreover, it’s difficult to accept their condemnation of Ross’s alleged misrepresentations when they gave their book the same title as his, and had Ross’s name in larger font on the cover than their own—all without permission (Ross [2004], 262, n. 7). I could certainly be wrong, but it looks like they were trying to trick people into thinking they were buying his book instead of theirs.
{viii} J. Ligon Duncan III and David W. Hall (2001b), 111.
{ix} See the appendix.
{x} Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho 81; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5:23:2.
{xi} Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5:28:3; 30:4; 33:2; Victorinius of Pettau, On the Creation of the World; Origen, Against Celsus 6:61. See also Robert G. Clouse, et al. (1999).
{xii}
{xiii} Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus 71:48; Basil, The Hexaemeron 64.
{xiv} Origen, De Principiis 4:1:16.
{xv}
{xvi} Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 1:18. It should be noted that Anselm begins this phrase with an “if,” but he never suggests that it is incorrect.
{xvii} Martin Luther (1858), 23.
{xviii} Belgic Confession, article 12.
{xix} David Hall has argued that 15 of the 151 members explicitly endorsed the calendar-day interpretation, and another 10 did so implicitly (Hall [2001]). William Barker has argued that Hall has overstated his case and that the total number of the 151 people on the committee who affirmed the calendar-day interpretation is actually five (Barker, [2000]).
{xx} Westminster Confession, 4.
{xxi} “Westminster Theological Seminary and the Days of Creation: A Brief Statement.”
{xxii} Newton to Burnet, January 1680/1, letter 247, in H. W. Turnbull (1960), 329-35.
{xxiii} Thomas Burnet (1692), 32-51.
{xxiv} Hugh Ross and Gleason Archer (2001a).
{xxv}