What is the Day-Age Theory?

The other theory is that Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2 refer to the formation of the earth as matter, or that Gen. 1:1 refers to the creation of the earth, and that Gen. 1:2 refers to its being disordered by some means, as in the above theory, but that the various beds were formed with the fossils found therein during the six days recorded in Gen. 1; and that the days were of any needed indefinite length. It has been shown that the first things named as on the earth were grass and herbs, and these are always found in the lowest beds; and the other things created are found exactly in the same order upwards from the lowest, until man appears. These, in short, form three divisions: plants in the lowest beds; reptiles in the middle; mammals in the highest, with man the most recent. It is also asserted that no break has been discovered, as would be the case if after the beds had been formed destruction had come in, and an entirely new work of creation had begun again in what is recorded in Gen. 1. Many of the existing species are contemporaneous with those that we know have ceased to exist. It is maintained that the term 'day' is often used for indefinite periods of time in scripture, and therefore may be so in Gen. 1; that they refer to God's days, and not to natural days, seeing that 'the evening and the morning' are spoken of before the sun, which naturally causes the evening and morning. Also that it is not consistent to hold that God's rest on the seventh day only alluded to 24 hours.† It is true that the introduction of sin marred God's rest; but this is not there contemplated.

† It is asserted that long before any question of geology arose there were some among the Jews, as Josephus and Philo, and some among the Christians, as Whiston, Des Cartes, and De Luc, who believed that the 'days' of Gen. 1 were long periods. — 'Creation,' Kitto's Cyclopaedia.

To this theory it is objected that the words 'the evening and the morning' are too definite a description of the meaning of the word 'day' to allow the idea of indefinite periods. It is also held that Isa. 45:18 (translating the passage "He created it not without form, he formed it to be inhabited") proves that God did not create the world in the first instance "without form and void." The word 'created' here is the same as in Gen. 1:1; and the words 'in vain' in the A.V. are the same as 'without form' in Gen. 1:2. As to the correspondence in the order of created things it may be admitted that if the long periods come in between Gen. 1:1 and 2, the after order in the six days' creation is exactly the same — God working, in the same order on the large scale (ages), and on the smaller (six days' work).

The word "day" is not infrequently used in Scripture as signifying quite lengthy periods, hence we are not surprised that many have assigned that meaning to it in Genesis 1. Such an interpretation, however, lands us at once into serious difficulties.

The discoveries made by geologists of the various strata of the earth, the fossils found therein, together with the time that would necessarily be required for the formation of those strata, raised a cry that scripture must be incorrect in saying all was done in seven days. This led Christians to compare these works of God in creation with His words in scripture; and the principal question resolved itself into this: where in scripture could be found the many thousands of years which were apparently needed under ordinary circumstances for the formation of the strata? Putting aside the theories of the geologists, the facts are undeniable. There are the various beds of different substances in layers, which any one can see for themselves.

That a long gap, of as many thousands of years as were necessary for the formation of the earth's crust, may be placed between verses 1 and 2 of Gen. 1. That Gen. 1:1 refers to the original creation of the heaven and earth out of nothing; that the different beds were formed with the varying objects that are found therein as fossils, occupying a very long period. Then in Gen. 1:2 another condition is found: the earth by some means had become without form and void.* It was then ordered in view of the creation of man; and the various things were arranged and formed in the six days as detailed in Gen. 1, as they are now found in and on the earth.

There remains the third, and as I believe, the really sound meaning of the chapter: in that it leaves room for all that God wrought, however protracted the time that elapsed between the "beginning" and the "six days" in successive acts of God in construction and catastrophe: cognisable by men of science, and left for their discovery in due time, but entirely outside the scope of revelation. The first two verses give the principle of creation and of chaos for the earth, the one as necessary as the other for man when created, not only to learn the facts from the earth's crust but to use the results according to God's beneficent provision. Thus scripture departs not from its supreme design and character, nor encumbers itself with teaching science which is man's pride. But it is untrue that it commits itself to "false science" or unreliable history, or any other insinuation of infidels. Hence, as in a scripture not poetic in any way but the simplest prose attributed to God by as true a saint as ever lived, there is no ground to doubt that the "six days" are literal, as "the evening and the morning" seems expressly meant to convey.

Thus the work of these days wholly leaves out, because chronologically it follows, the vast operations both of slow construction and of destruction which give special interest to the geologist. Original creation and subsequent dislocation (which swept away in due time whole species and genera of organised beings, followed by fresh and different ones, and this repeatedly) it asserts distinctly; and both, before the days which prepared all for his life and probation under divine government who was created ere the week closed. The document itself furnishes the warrant to the believer for taking the first verse indefinitely before the six days, and also for affirming the state, possibly final state, of confusion into which the earth passed before it became the world as it now is.

There may indeed be some analogy between the days that concern the earth of the human race and those immense ages of ripening advance which preceded, so as to furnish a slight ground of resemblance on which not a few men of ingenuity and the best intentions have reared their various schemes for accommodating the days to the geological ages. Yet this hypothesis, even when guarded by the most cautious and competent aid of science, does not square with scripture. It is unjustifiable in every point of view to confound the disturbed state of ver. 2 with the creation of the earth described in ver. 1, which it really follows, disorder after order; is it not even absurd to identify ver. 3 with either? Each follows consecutively; and the long tracts of time, if filled up in a way that scripture does not essay, would come in after ver. 1, and before ver. 3, which wholly differing from what precedes, introduces a new condition where alone details are given to mark God's direct dealings with man.

Hence the days, from ver. 3 and onward, are wholly misapplied to the geologic ages. Where for this scheme have we the formation of the plutonic, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks? Where the upheaval of the mountain ranges and the tracing of the river systems? Where the succession of organic remains, marine and terrestrial, vegetable and animal, new ones following those extinguished, and mutually distinct, from the Laurentian beds to the Post-Pleiocene or Quaternary? The six days set forth the peculiar constitution God was pleased to establish for the existing or human world. What the geologic periods embrace is successive remodellings of the earth where sea and land have changed place, mountains were raised and valleys scooped, perhaps again and again, not only a sweeping away of old organic creation, but an introduction of new plants and animals, each assemblage confessed even by Lyell to admirably fit the new states of the globe; with singular varieties all pointing by harmony of parts and beauty of contrivance to One Divine Maker. These days only begin, when God, having closed the long undefined periods of progressive character, with repeated extermination of their correspondingly changed flora and fauna, forms, within the brief span of human labour, that system, inorganic and organic of which man is the appointed head, but enriched by all He had slowly deposited and rendered available to man's industry and profit by that dislocation which laid bare treasures so remote and manifold, so interesting and important.

Let me here state another patent fact. It is after all this that the days come in. It is quite a mistake to count them long periods. They are nothing of the sort. I see no reason to doubt that they are simple cycles of twenty-four hours. If long periods had been meant, do you think that God would have spoken about "the evening and the morning"? Such a phrase would be an extraordinary formula for introducing any other than a natural day. That there were long periods may be quite true; but then they are left room for, and not described. They would come in before if not after the state described in verse 2 — once certainly, and perhaps twice. There might be suites of long periods for aught we know. It does not appear, as far as my reading goes, that there is anything of real trustworthiness as to these periods except the general fact, which is a matter of fair inference from what has been turned up here below. But here it is, and here only, in my opinion, that you must insert these long eras. Grant that there may have been forty thousand years for one period, what is there to alarm in that? Be it so: I care not how many millions of years you claim. Supposing that scheme true, there is room for the geologic ages; Scripture says nothing to the contrary, but leaves abundant space for all, and so much the more remarkably because at first sight such interstices might be easily passed over.

The evident immediateness of the first day's work applies throughout the other days. Whatever grounds there may be for scientific men to infer processes occupying vast tracts of time before the "days," there is no real reason to doubt, but plain and positive scripture to believe, that the work done on the several six days was not of long ages, but really within the compass of the literal evening and morning. How unnatural to suppose an age for light to act on the first day! And why suppose otherwise on the second day or any other? A long succession of ages may be true after "the beginning" and before "the days," which taken in their natural import have a striking moral harmony with man, the last work of God's creation-week.

This surely points to the diurnal movement of the earth revolving round the sun. This clearly means a day of twenty-four hours. To try to make out that “the evening and the morning” were vast stretches of time involves too many difficulties. One cannot fit into the narrative the idea of millions of years of night, followed by millions of years of day. The reason why the period theory is pressed, is we believe that scientists are unwilling to admit the power of God. They will not allow that He is the Sustainer and Controller, as well as the Creator of nature.

If the preceding exposition be just, the day of the first week is plainly one of twenty-four hours. No one can fairly deny that scripture, like other speech, uses "day" where required in a general or figurative sense, which may cover a period of considerable length. But this need never produce embarrassment to a careful reader: as ever, the context gives the clue. In this chapter and the next we have the word variously applied according to the exigency of the case; in none ought it to be doubtful. Here "the evening" and "the morning" should exclude just question. It can only mean, thus defined, a day of twenty-four hours. Before (not "there was a sun," but before) the sun was set to rule the day (of twelve hours) as now makes no difference as to the length meant. The same phrase is carefully used before and after. Nor would any prolonged sense have been tolerated for this carefully specified week but for the error which muddles "the beginning" with the first and following days, makes the heavens and the earth at first to be a chaos, and in so doing effaces in fact the creation of both the one and the other. For where is either really "created" on such a scheme?

This will appear still more convincingly when we come to close quarters with the six days viewed as embracing the immense ages of geology. It might not be so glaring when taken in a dreamy poetic way as a vision in the hands of the late Hugh Miller. But when the simple dignity of the true father of history is vindicated for the matchless prose of Moses, the effort to make the days, or some of them, answer to the ages of geologic formation in building up the crust of the globe proves itself in so much more glaring and violent failure. Take the first day as our first test: are we told to imagine such a notion as that the outshining of the light in dispelling the immediately antecedent darkness occupied an age? And if not for the first day, or the second, or the fourth, how harshly inconsistent to claim it for the third, fifth, and sixth? Especially as the seventh day, or sabbath, should honestly put to the rout any such application. In every case the figurative sense is here irrelevant and unsuitable. We shall see in due time from scripture that the stretching out of the sabbath into an aeon is altogether unfounded.

An ingenious attempt is made in "Sermons in Stones" to show that the brooding of the spirit in ver. 2 means the creation of submarine animals (Zoophytes and Bivalve Molluscs without visual organs) before light; then of a higher class furnished with organs of sight after light on the second day; and lastly of Vertebrate Fishes on the third. All this is error opposed by the record, which admits of animated nature for man's world only after the fourth day. For this confusion we are indebted to the misinterpreting "days" here into ages. The truth is, according to the record, that the Spirit's brooding upon the face of the waters is quite general and admits of no such precision, as it was also before the first day. And if the days were simply days of the week in which Adam was created, geology can neither affirm nor contradict. Its main office is to investigate the evidence of the successive ages of the earth's crust before the human race. It is freely granted that the language employed by inspiration is that of phenomena; but this does not warrant the hypothesis of the medium of a vision. It was a divine communication to and by Moses; but how given we know not and should not speculate, lest we err. A vision in fact might have shown him the submarine animals, being beyond natural conditions; but the hypothesis is invented to foist in the creation of animals, not seen or specified in the record.