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This is also the idea conveyed by Ps. 90:4; and II Pet. 3:8. The only actual days of which God has
knowledge are the days of this time-space world. How does it follow from the fact that God is
exalted above the limitations of time, as they exist in this world, where time is measured by
days and weeks and months and years, that a day may just as well be a period of 100,000 years
as one of twenty-four hours? (c) The seventh day, the day in which God rested from His labours,
is said to continue up to the present time, and must therefore be regarded as a period of
thousands of years. It is God’s sabbath, and that sabbath never ends. This argument represents
a similar confusion. The whole idea of God’s beginning the work of creation at a certain point of
time, and then ceasing it after a period of six days, does not apply to God as He is in Himself,
but only to the temporal results of His creative activity. He is unchangeably the same from age
to age. His sabbath is not an indefinitely prolonged period of time; it is eternal. On the other
hand, the sabbath of the creation week was a day equal in length to the other days. God not
only rested on that day, but He also blessed and hallowed it, setting it aside as a day of rest for
man, Ex. 20:11. This would hardly apply to the whole period from the time of creation up to the
present day.
2. CONSIDERATION OF THE VIEW THAT THEY WERE LITERAL DAYS.
The prevailing view has
always been that the days of Genesis 1 are to be understood as literal days. Some of the early
Church Fathers did not regard them as real indications of the time in which the work of creation
was completed, but rather as literary forms in which the writer of Genesis cast the narrative of
creation, in order to picture the work of creation — which was really completed in a moment of
time — in an orderly fashion for human intelligence. It was only after the comparatively new
sciences of geology and palæontology came forward with their theories of the enormous age of
the earth, that theologians began to show an inclination to identify the days of creation with
the long geological ages. To-day some of them regard it as an established fact that the days of
Genesis 1 were long geological periods; others are somewhat inclined to assume this position,
but show considerable hesitation. Hodge, Sheldon, Van Oosterzee, and Dabney, some of whom
are not entirely averse to this view, are all agreed that this interpretation of the days is
exegetically doubtful, if not impossible. Kuyper and Bavinck hold that, while the first three days
may have been of somewhat different length, the last three were certainly ordinary days. They
naturally do not regard even the first three days as geological periods. Vos in his
Gereformeerde Dogmatiek defends the position that the days of creation were ordinary days.
Hepp takes the same position in his Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature.[p. 215.] Noortzij in
Gods Woord en der Eeuwen Getuigenis,[pp. 79f.] asserts that the Hebrew word yom (day) in
Gen. 1 cannot possibly designate anything else than an ordinary day, but holds that the writer
of Genesis did not attach any importance to the concept “day,” but introduces it simply as part
of a frame-work for the narrative of creation, not to indicate historical sequence, but to picture
the glory of the creatures in the light of the great redemptive purpose of God. Hence the