Six Literal Days of Creation? (A “Day” in Genesis 1, part 2)

A couple of articles ago, I pointed out that the narrow scope of Christian scientists who argue for a literal, six day creation narrative are applying a novel interpretative lens to Scripture that ignores thousands of years of biblical exegesis. One such scientist, Henry Morris, stated that anyone who does not believe in a literal, 24-hour day is reading scripture in a way that is “out of the question for any real believer in the Bible” (p. 244). A closer reading of Morris shows that many aspects of the short-earth view (as it is called) are more reactionary to Darwinism of the 19th century than a faithful reading of Scripture that invites conversation with theology and scholarship over the past 2,000 years.

So how do we get closer to what is actually happening in the six (not so literal) days of creation in Genesis 1 that reads the text from a more nuanced, biblical perspective? That question is the aim of this multi-part series on the “day of creation”.

In the first article (part 1), we noted that understanding each day of Genesis 1 as 24-hour days fall short because of its insistence that the Bible submit to scientific methodology that emerged from the scientific revolution of late. Apologetics from this view coerces the Bible to fit its literalist, modernist mold. In this article, the second part of the series, we look at broad brush strokes of what the other side of the theological aisle has to say about Genesis. Based on a cursory reading of some scholarship out there, what other options exist for understanding the word “day” in Genesis 1?

James King West, in his introduction to the Old Testament, states that the six days of creation must be held in tension with Genesis 2. The only way to make sense of scripture’s creation narrative is to see that, when viewed from Genesis 2, God’s orderly creation is a long process defined by intentional creative acts that move towards imago Dei, that is, towards the image of God. Genesis 2 (along with Genesis 1), “displays little interest in the precise sequence of the creative acts or in cosmogony as such” (West, 86).

This puts humanity, not the science behind the text, at the center of the creation narrative. Six days, whether literal or long, focus on humanity as the highest achievement reflecting God’s very image. “The progressiveness of the creative process comes into strong relief,” writes late 19th-century pastor Alexander MaClaren, “The work of the first four days is the preparation of the dwelling-place for the living creatures who are afterwards created to inhabit it” (MaClaren, 8). The emphasis is on the community and creative energy, the pneuma of creation, nurturing a relationship between God and humanity. The author of Genesis 1 and 2 was not a scientist, and the text ought not to be beholden to science because the main concern was humanity’s relationship with God. This relationship envelops both the harmony and the disharmony that occurred because of humanity’s failures to sustain that relationship.

World renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann expresses a similar sentiment when he argues that the creation narrative is a confession of faith rather than a scientific treatise. Genesis 1 and 2 is liturgical in nature, oriented towards a calendar that embodies stewardship, relationship, and sabbath. “The text is a proclamation of covenanting as the shape of reality” (Brueggemann, 17). This highlights function over science fact: the tending of creation wrapped up in stewardship, the unfolding of the gifts of creation by way of procreation and a call to “fill the earth”, and a resting from labor (sabbath) to remember that humanity is not defined by what humans produce but by their relationship to the Creator. Genesis is a call for a liturgical response as a result of God’s creation, which challenged the ancient notion of responding to the gods by worshiping creation. Even Von Rad, of whom Brueggemann was an acolyte, expressed how the word “create” in Genesis 1 (based on the verb bara) is a “technical term used by priests,” and is “the language of hymnody” (Von Rad, 142).

Other scholars go in a slightly different direction. The focus of Genesis 1 is not necessarily centered on humanity, although God’s relationship to humanity is important, but on the orderly structure of God’s creation of which humanity was a part. Kathleen O’Connor states that, “The seven-day structure is a literal device that highlights order…” (O’Connor, 27). It does not necessarily make for good science, but good literature and poetry, showing God’s creation not as a random accident or result of a violent conflict among a pantheon of gods, but an intentional creative act that brings order out of chaos. There is a purpose to creation, and it is an orderly purpose based on God’s character. Genesis 1 shows us who God is and who we are called to be as we reflect God’s nature.

Fretheim, writing for the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, states that the creation narrative has sabbath as its ultimate destination. Sabbath is the infrastructure that binds God and nature together, a “day” which “cannot be legislated or abrogated by human beings” (Fretheim, 346). The creation moves us from the marketplace of exploitation and objectification (“How much is that person worth and how much value does that person bring to the marketplace?”) to a cosmic arena of stewarding God’s blessings, which includes the peace-making ethic of sabbath and shalom.

What we find in this sampling of creation scholarship is an abandonment of trying to answer the literal 24-hour day vs. the long-earth debate; and, instead, a reaching towards the theological intent of the creation narrative. The writer(s) of Genesis was a theologian — perhaps our first in history — and to turn a theologian into a scientist is off-base. Whether we see creation as liturgical or covenantal, as focused on humanity or on sabbath, such long-earth perspectives does not weaponize or coerce science, but finds the tensions of scientific discovery supportive of God’s overall purpose of relating to humanity. In science as much as poetry of Genesis 1, there is an order, a beauty, intentionality, and a rhythm that inspires worship and reverence of the Creator.

Sources
Alexander MaClaren, Exposition of the Holy Scripture, vol. 1 (New York: Goerge H. Doran Company, 1959).

Brueggemann, Walter. Genesis. Interpretation Bible Commentary. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.

Davies, G. Henton. “Genesis.” Broadman Bible Commentary, vol. 1. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1969.

Fretheim, Terence. “The Book of Genesis.” New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.

O’Connor, Kathleen. Genesis 1-25a. Smyth and Helwys Commentary. Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 2018.

West, James King. Introduction to the Old Testament. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1981.