Excursus on the Origin of Life and Evolution of Biological Complexity (Part 5): Day-Age Interpretation

Day-Age Interpretation

We've been studying different interpretations of Genesis chapter 1. We've looked at the literal interpretation, at the gap interpretation, then at the day-gap interpretation. Today we want to turn to the day-age interpretation. The day-age interpretation has been held by a number of church fathers like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Augustine, and Basil of Caesarea, and commentators down through history. It holds that the days of Genesis 1 are not meant to be taken as 24-hour periods of time. Rather, they represent long periods of time of unspecified duration. On this view, God created the world over six ages, so to speak. You might interpret Genesis 1 as describing six consecutive ages of creation.

In support of this interpretation on might note that the events described on the various days would take more than 24 hours to elapse. For example, in Gen 2 all the events of God’s bringing all the animals to Adam to name, Adam’s feeling lonely without a companion, God’s creation of Eve, and so forth are supposed to have happened on day 6. Day 7 is not described as having an “evening and morning” phrase which would imply that it is not a 24 hour period. Finally, the word yom can mean a long period of time. Thus, the text is not meant to teach a literal six-day creation.

What might we say by way of critique? I think that the day-age interpretation is certainly a possibility. We do have, as I pointed out earlier, suggestions in the text that the days are not necessarily intended to be literal 24-hour periods of time. Recall what I said about the creation of the vegetation and the fruit trees on the third day. We're not to imagine this as being like time-lapse photography where the vegetation sprouts out of the ground and bears seed and fruit in a mere 24 hours. Moreover, the sveth day is not 24 hours in duration. So I think that there are indications in the text that these are not necessarily 24-hour periods of time. I do think that the word yom is clearly being used here of a 24 hour day, as shown by the expression “evening and morning.” It does not mean “age.” But the 24 hour days could be intended to be a figurative description of long ages.

On the other hand, the idea that the text intends us to take the days as six consecutive ages, especially of equal duration, is something that is being read into the text rather than out of the text. I don't think there is much in the text that suggests that we have here six consecutive ages. Indeed, the duration of the third day, on which the primordial ocean drains into seas and plant life and fruit trees come to populate the land, must be vastly longer than the duration of the fourth day on which God proclaims the purpose of the Sun, moon, and stars, unless one holds the God actually created these stellar objects on day four, in which case the prior days must have transpired in pitch blackness, which contradicts the narrative. So it doesn’t seem that these are intended to be ages.

Moreover, insofar as those who adopt the day-age interpretation are motivated by modern science to embrace it, it really doesn't fit that well with what modern science says in many respects. For example, the evidence does not support the view that certain forms of life didn't appear on the scene until the previous age was over. For example, according to the scientific evidence, terrestrial life appeared long before birds appeared on the scene. But in the Genesis text it has birds created during the age prior to the creation of the land animals. Now some interpreters have tried to escape this problem by maintaining that the ages were not consecutive but were actually overlapping, so that midway through one age a succeeding age began. But, again, such a hypothesis is clearly a contrivance aimed solely at reconciling the text with modern scientific evidence. I think it would be hopeless to try to find anything in the text that suggests such an interpretation of overlapping ages. Indeed, what the text says about morning and evening being the end of each age would seem to contradict the idea of overlapping ages because the dawning of a new age is the morning of the next day, and each age ends with the evening and then the dawning of the succeeding age. So that would be incompatible with seeing these ages as overlapping.

So the day-age view, I think, is certainly a possibility, but it's one that I think finds little support in the text apart from the fact that the days are not necessarily meant to be taken literally. Part of the problem here is that we have not been offered any genre analysis by the day age proponents to show us that this is symbolic literature using days as symbols of ages. We really need to know what kind of genre this literature is.

5. The Days of Divine Proclamation Interpretation

As we continue our discussion of various alternative interpretations of the creation account of Genesis 1, we turn today to a view that I'm calling “days of divine proclamation” interpretation. I'm using this title to comprise two different interpretations of Genesis 1: the first being “days of divine fiat,” and the second “days of divine revelation.”

You'll remember that when we studied creatio ex nihilo in Genesis chapter 1, we noticed that we seem to have in that chapter two different sorts of creation: creation by God's word, and then creation by God's action. These two traditions seem to be interwoven rather like a braid throughout the six creative days of Genesis chapter 1. The element that is common to both of the views that we're considering today is that the six days are days of divine proclamation only, not days of divine working. They differ in whether the divine proclamation occurs before or after the accomplishment of that proclamation.

The first view – the divine fiat interpretation – holds that at some point in the past God made a series of divine proclamations over six consecutive 24-hour days. He said “Let there be _____.” The word in Latin for this is fiat – fiat lux (“let there be light.”) These fiats or proclamations were then subsequently fulfilled (perhaps over very long ages) subsequent to the six days of divine proclamation. So on day seven on this view God does not cease from working as on the traditional interpretation; rather, he ceases from proclaiming.

The days of divine revelation view differs in that it holds that the seven days of divine proclamation that are spoken of in Genesis 1 are not days prior to the origin of things but rather later days during which God revealed to Moses or the author of Genesis (whoever he might have been) what God did. So each day is again a literal consecutive day of divine revelation describing God's creative activity rather than creative days themselves. You could imagine an evolutionary history of the Earth much as is described in standard evolutionary theory. But at some point in the relatively recent past God spoke to Moses (or the author of Genesis) over six literal consecutive days telling him what he did in the past to bring about the created order.

Both of these views thus separate God's proclamation from God's action and fulfillment of that proclamation and interprets Genesis 1 to describe six consecutive literal days of divine proclamation.

What might be said by way of assessment of these views? Well, let's talk first about the divine fiat view.

Supporters of this view draw attention to the fact, which we've already mentioned in our assessment of other views, that the fulfillment of God's fiats takes longer than one day to bring about. The most obvious example of this, I think, is day three with respect to the earth's bringing forth vegetation. We shouldn't imagine that the author thought that this was like something happening in time-lapse photography. Rather, the fulfillment of the command to let the earth bring forth vegetation bearing seed after its kind and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind took place over much longer than just a 24-hour period of time. But supporters of this view will also draw our attention to the draining of the primordial waters from the land. When God creates the dry land, the primordial ocean didn't just dry up overnight. The subsiding of the waters, the rising of the mountains, and the gathering of the waters into seas and lakes and rivers would take place over very long periods of time, not within an overnight period.

Although I think that the proponents of this view are quite right in drawing attention to this feature of the text, this feature is not unique to the divine fiat view. This is equally well explained by taking the days non-literally. If we don't take them as 24-hour periods of time then this feature of the text isn't really surprising. If the days are not literal, then it's no problem that the fulfillment of God's proclamation should take a long time to bring about. Rather, it seems to me that the crucial question facing the divine fiat view is whether we have good grounds in the text for divorcing the fulfillment of the proclamation from the proclamation itself, and here I have to confess that I'm skeptical of this bifurcation. The text seems to imply the fulfillment of each fiat on the day that it was made prior to the commencement of the next day.

Two considerations, I think, come into play here. First, some of the proclamations presuppose the existence of the things previously proclaimed to be. For example, the proclamation, Let the earth bring forth (on days three and four) presupposes that the waters have already drained away and gathered into seas, lakes, rivers, and so on as God earlier proclaimed. It seems implausible to think that God proclaims, Let the earth bring forth while, in fact, the earth is still covered with a primordial ocean and there was no dry land at that point. Similarly, for the creation of man on the fifth day, when the text says, Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, it presupposes the existence not only of the dry land but also of all of the animals that God has made over which man is proclaimed to have dominion. So it seems to me that some of these proclamations most naturally presuppose that the entities proclaimed to be in the earlier proclamations have come to exist.

Secondly, the word of approval which is constantly repeated throughout the narrative – and God saw that it was good – implies that the divine fiat has been fulfilled. The end result has been accomplished and is now evaluated by God. It's not still future and yet to be fulfilled – especially at the end of the creative week when the text says, and God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day. It seems most plausible to think that God is here giving a positive evaluation of the things that have come to be in fulfillment of the proclamation.

So I'm skeptical of the divorce that this view postulates between the proclamation and the fulfillment of the proclamations.

The days of divine revelation interpretation avoids these problems by holding that both the divine fiat and the fulfillment are in the past. What happens over the six days is just God's revealing what he has done. But this view strikes me as rather implausible. There's nothing in the text to suggest that these are revelatory days. The text does not say, for example, and God spoke to Moses saying etc., etc. Rather, the days describe what God does on each day, not what he reveals to Moses on each day. He then pronounces his work good, and each day ends with evening and morning. There's no suggestion that what we have here are days of revelation rather than days of God's creative activity; indeed, quite the contrary it seems to me. So I do not find the days of divine proclamation interpretations to be the most plausible interpretation of the text.