RBC Ministries values its Fundamentalist heritage. However, historic Fundamentalist leaders didn’t insist on a single interpretation of the length of the “days” in Genesis but always accepted different points of view. The intolerance and controversy that exist today concerning this subject didn’t dominate the Fundamentalism of the early 20th century.
The term “Fundamentalist” became popular following the publication of a series of booklets (1910 to 1915) that contained articles by contemporary, conservative, Bible-believing theologians who defined the boundaries of historic Christian doctrine. These were compiled into a four-volume set by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) in 1917 titled The Fundamentals and edited by R. A. Torrey (instrumental both in the growth of Moody Bible Institute and the establishment of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles). Charles Feinberg of (conservative) Talbot Seminary was a later editor.
The highly respected professor of apologetics and dogmatics at Glasgow (Trinity) College, Scotland, wrote about the Genesis creation account. In a treatise later revised by Feinberg, Orr stated, “The Bible, as every informed interpreter of Scripture has always held, takes the world as it is, and uses popular language appropriate to the common man, not the specialist. It does not follow that because the Bible does not teach modern science, we are justified in saying that it contradicts it.” Later Orr affirmed, “The creation of the world was certainly not a myth, but a fact, and the representation of the different creative acts dealt likewise with facts. The language used was not that of modern science, but under divine guidance the sacred writer gives a broad, general picture which conveys a true idea of the order of the divine working in creation.” From that perspective, Orr writes the following in his chapter on science and the Bible:
Few are disquieted in reading their Bibles because it is made certain that the world is immensely older than the 6,000 years, which the older chronology gave it. Geology is felt only to have expanded our ideas of the vastness and marvel of the Creator’s operations through the aeons of time during which the world, with its teeming populations of fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals, was preparing for man’s abode when the mountains were being upheaved, the valleys being scooped out, and veins of precious metals being inlaid into the crust of the earth.
Does science, then, really contradict Genesis 1? Not surely if what has been above said of the essentially popular character of the allusions to natural things in the Bible be remembered. Here certainly is no detailed description of the process of the formation of the earth in terms anticipative of modern science–terms which would have been unintelligible to the original readers but a sublime picture, true to the order of nature, as it is to the broad facts even of geological succession. If it tells how God called heaven and earth into being, separated light from darkness, sea from land, clothed the world with vegetation, gave sun and moon their appointed rule of day and night, made fowl to fly, and sea monsters to plow the deep, created the cattle and beasts of the field, and finally made man, male and female, in His own image, and established him as ruler over all God’s creation, this orderly rise of created forms, man crowning the whole, these deep ideas of the narrative, setting the world at the very beginning in its right relation to God, and laying the foundations of an enduring philosophy of religion, are truths which science does nothing to subvert, but in myriad ways confirms. The “six days” may remain as a difficulty to some, but, if this is not part of the symbolic setting of the picture of a great divine “week” of work one may well ask, as was done by Augustine long before geology was thought of, what kind of “days” these were which rolled their course before the sun, with its twenty-four hours of diurnal measurement, was appointed to that end? There is no violence done to the narrative in substituting in thought “aeonic” days—vast cosmic periods—for “days” on our narrower, sun-measured scale. Then the last trace of apparent “conflict” disappears. (The Fundamentals, reprinted by Kregel in 1990; pp. 8, 182, 133-134)
Contemporary Fundamentalist leader Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, shared this point of view regarding the days of Genesis in his well-known theology textbook:
Genesis clearly declares that there were six successive days in which God created the heavens and the earth of today. The best of scholars have disagreed on whether these are literal 24-hour periods or vast periods of time. From the standpoint of the ability of God, there is no question to be raised since He must be able to create all things in the briefest time. A literal 24-hour period seems to be applied when each is measured by words like, “and the evening and the morning were the first day,” etc. On the other hand, it is reflected in nature that much time has passed since the forming of material things, and the Bible does use the day symbolically when referring to a period of time. The coming kingdom of a thousand years is styled the Day of the Jehovah. Any point of time throughout the present age is known as the Day of Salvation. Peter declares: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day with the Lord is a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So, also, Christ represented the present age as the hour that was coming “and now is” (cf. Jn. 5:25-28). (Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Volume Seven)
There are many other examples of early Fundamentalist leaders who accepted a wide range of interpretations regarding the meaning of “day” in Genesis 1, but probably the most influential Fundamentalist document of the first half of the 20th century was the Scofield Reference Bible. Scofield’s notes in his first edition (1909) reflected his belief that the original creation was mentioned only in Genesis 1:1.
The first creative act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all the geologic ages.
Following a theory popularized by 19th-century Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers, Scofield suggested the second verse of Genesis implies that the original creation may have been made formless and void through an act of God’s judgment. He supports this theory with notes on Jeremiah 2:23-26 and Isaiah 24:1 and 45:18, which “clearly indicate that the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of a divine judgment. The face of the earth bears everywhere the marks of such a catastrophe.” According to Scofield, the remaining description of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 was not the original creation but a re-creation.
When the New Scofield Reference Bible appeared in 1967, the “gap theory” suggested by Scofield was no longer accepted by most conservative Christians, but the study notes still acknowledged that Scripture “gives no data for determining how long ago the universe was created.”
Further notes in the 1967 version state:
The word “day” is used in Scripture four ways:
(1) that part of the solar day of 24 hours which is light (Gen. 1:5,14; Jn. 11:9); (2) a period of 24 hours (Mt. 17:1; Lk. 24:21); (3) a time set apart for some distinctive purpose, as “day of atonement” (Lev. 23:27); and (4) a longer period of time, during which certain revealed purposes of God are to be accomplished (cp. 2 Pet. 3:10). Cp. Gen. 2:4, where the word “day” covers the entire work of creation.
In reference to Genesis 1:5, the New Scofield Reference Bible says, “The use of ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ may be held to limit ‘day’ to the solar day; but the frequent parabolic use of natural phenomena may warrant the conclusion that it simply means that each creative day was a period of time marked off by a beginning and an ending (cp. Ps. 90:6).”
Accordingly, in keeping with the Fundamentalist tradition as well as the historic tradition of orthodox theology, we believe it would be wrong to think all Bible-believing Christians should believe that the days of creation are solar days or that the earth (and universe) was created within the last 6,000 to 20,000 years. Many differing viewpoints regarding the date and nature of creation are in harmony with a high view of Scripture.
