Note: Like many of my peers (but unlike many of our parents or many of our children), I have made a lot of Facebook comments over the years. The writing is often unpolished, but they nevertheless offer excellent snapshots of what I was thinking at a particular time and how I articulated those thoughts for a particular audience in a particular context. This comment was made on the post of a friend who shared without comment a Gospel Coalition article entitled, “Biblical Reasons to Doubt the Creation Days Were 24-Hour Periods.” It is an in-progress moment in the decade-long unwinding of my evangelical faith. I have cleaned up a number of typos from the original comment. (DL, Sept. 13, 2021)
My thoughts based on my understanding of various things:
- Before modern science, there was no external reason to take the seven days of Genesis as anything other than literal 24-hour days.
- Before the Enlightenment, these were very commonly (perhaps, “almost universally”) regarded as 24-hour days. (Note in particular that in the article you link, every person he lists is post-Enlightenment (even post-Darwin) except Augustine, who he has taken out of context. I don’t know what translation he’s working from, but in the Latin the closest I can find is, “sed qualis illa sit lux . . . remotum est a sensibus nostris“, “But what manner of light it was is beyond the reach of our senses.” In context, he’s referring to the light that made evening and morning even though the sun hadn’t been created yet. He concludes that, even though we can’t understand how these evenings and mornings worked without the sun, we must believe without hesitation what the Scripture teaches.)
- The creation days issue is, in my view, a less serious issue than the genealogies with specific ages that are given a few chapters later. IMO, any plain reading of the text unpressured by the concerns of science is going to end up taking those numbers literally and seeing a father-to-son list..
- I don’t think it’s fair to the text to manufacture “outs” from these passages that are plain in themselves and only become difficult when juxtaposed with the findings of science. Such attempts usually strike me personally as pilpul (h.t. Chaim Potok). In my view, the text should be taken for what it is.
- IMO, The historicity and extent of the Flood is an even bigger issue than the ones just raised as far as the reliability of Scripture goes. I believe the whole edifice stands or falls on that event.
- I don’t really believe the Earth is young.
- I don’t really believe there was a global flood in the recent past.
- Ergo, I am skeptical of much of the early historical material in Genesis in terms of reliability and inerrancy.
- I don’t believe in Darwinian evolution . . . at all.