A prologue to Revelation
IT may be, that those who hold the days
of Creation in Genesis 1 to be literally days as we know them, and those who hold that they refer to periods of great, though indefinite length, will never reconcile their divergent views until they must both submit to the final and authoritative solution. Yet it is not necessarily presumption, even at this late stage of the controversy, to attempt such an analysis of the significant Scripture passages as will make possible a synthesis of the opposing interpretations. For it is always possible to reconcile public adventure with a real humility by the reflection that the same uncharted path has probably been trodden before with less publicity.
It would probably be fair to say that the literal interpretation of the events of the first chapter of the Bible is held entirely from considerations of the text itself; (The passages say ‘day’, therefore let it mean day, and let us spurn all trifling with the plain meaning of the text
); while the alternative interpretation takes its stand, however unconsciously, upon the evidence of Science that the world as we know it seems to have been the product of long ages of change. The exponents of the second view do not doubt nor deny that God could have formed the world complete in seven days, or less, if He chose; they merely urge that geological, radiological and other evidence makes it immensely more probable that He did not choose. If it is urged that the evidence of geology relates not to the creation of Genesis, but to the one which had come and gone before, it can at least be answered that one of God’s creations (if there were two) was greatly prolonged, and it is not unlikely that He would work in a similar way on the postulated second occasion. And the striking parallelism between the events of the six days
of Genesis, and the supposed transition of the earth from the time when it was a hot and swamp-strewn mass, shrouded in darkness by the clouds of its own steam, makes it less probable that the correspondence is a mere coincidence.
Against this, it cannot be denied that the days of Genesis 1 sound very like real days (even though Josephus, Ant. 1 1:1, offers a later detailed discussion of the word which he, unfortunately, fails to give). There was evening and there was morning, one day
; There was evening and there was morning, a second day
; are phrases which define the day of the earth’s revolution about its axis as clearly as we could wish; and the objection of Delitzsch and others that days of twenty-four hours could not have been counted before the sun appeared, rings hollow when we remember that the Counter was God Himself. Must we then bow to the rule of plain language, and bluff the appearance of geology, or are there indications that the two views need not conflict?
We think there are. The rhythmic regularity of the dividing phrases, There was evening and there was morning, one day
; There was evening and there was morning, a second day
, . . . sounds remarkably like that of the other sequences of seven which we find in the Scriptures: He opened one of the seals
, He opened the second seal
, . . . The first angel sounded
, The second angel sounded
, . . . These, together with Daniel’s sequence of beasts, and Zechariah’s of chariots with horses, are typical examples of revelation by apocalypse, and there is something of the same character about the account of the creation. The mentions of the days are hardly associated with the working of the Almighty at all: it is not that, On the first day God made
, but rather that, the story of the first stage being given, a day has passed and a second is awaited.
Let it be suggested, then, that in Genesis 1:1—2:3, we have an account of an apocalyptic prologue to the story of the Bible, in its prime concern with the relationship of man to his Maker, presented to the visionary consciousness of the seer in seven daily visions, until the whole has passed before him, to be written by him for us.
A day, in this view, is a genuine day, but it is a day in which the work of unspecified times is presented to Moses and to us: in the visions of six days he sees and tells the story of the cardinal facts of creation, culminating, so far as its work is concerned, with the sixth day’s creation of man; and reaching its divine climax in the divine rest of the seventh. At once there arises an important point in favour of this view: the seventh day of rest on the period theory was an awkward complication to an otherwise simple scheme, and it was difficult to give to it any objective value, while its force as hallowing the ritual rest of the Sabbath was lost in its very unreality. God blessed the seventh day because He had rested
; and if there was no rest, that because
becomes a mockery. One does not sanctify an ordinance because
of something which has to be introduced to account for it. Even the literal theory was faced with a difficulty here; for a day’s rest of the Almighty is an incomprehensible thing—something which we will assuredly accept if God reveals it to be His meaning, but something which His labours would not lead us to suppose Him either to require or desire.
But if the story is a sequence of visions, we can immediately see what Moses saw: on six successive days we see the fiat of God fashion a dark and formless swamp into an earth which is bright, firm, and teeming with the lives of fishes, fowl, animals and man. And on the seventh we see a complete creation which God has pronounced very good
still, serene and at rest, with a satisfied Creator looking down in blessing upon the earth whose habitation He has purposed and accomplished.
We must, however, give a meaning to the rest
of the last day as real as that to the work of the previous days, if we would make the theory of vision really credible. And here it seems that the real value of the interpretation shows itself; for a literal view of the story must needs place the whole of it in one week of the remote past; even one which converts the days into ages has little excuse for any other course; but an Apocalypse, by the certain analogy of Daniel, Zechariah and the Revelation itself, carries its visions into the perfection of the future.
The work of the One day, the Second day, the Third, the Fourth and the Fifth stands complete before our eyes, but that of the sixth is not yet accomplished. The beasts and the man have been created, but the man is not very good
, and the whole creation labours under a curse. When the Jews sought to slay Jesus because he had healed on the Sabbath day, he gave them an answer which now springs out to tell them and us what the Sabbath of Genesis is: The Father works till now, and I work. . . . The Son can do nothing of himself, except what He may see the Father doing. Whatsoever he does, those things also does the Son in like manner
. The real Sabbath was yet to come and is even now future, for the work of the sixth day goes on in the redemptive work of God, before Jesus and through him, a work which will lead to the culmination of the purpose for which it was begun; He formed it to be inhabited. He created it not in vain
.
For he spake in a certain place on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all His works. . . . There remaineth therefore a rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into rest, he also is ceased from his works, as God from His
. The rest of the Creation is yet to come, and when it comes it will be God’s rest as it was in prediction, for a promise is left us of entering into His rest. If this is the meaning of the seventh day’s work of Genesis, the Sabbath at once falls into line with the other ritual types introduced into the Law and expounded in the Epistle to the Hebrews: as Sacrifice pointed forward to the supreme
Sacrifice of Jesus, and the Priesthood to his own unchangeable office, so also the Sabbath now looks, not back (even partly) to a rest of God which we must struggle to understand, but forward and always forward to the rest of God which remaineth for the people of God. This rest may be (as one of us believes) the Millennial rest in which God commits to the Son the government of the earth through the saints who have entered into it, since this period also is a day in the story of Genesis. Or perhaps (as the other wonders), the fact that everything which God has made is then very good
, that God has rested from all His works
, and that the day in Genesis is limited by no evening and morning as were the others, point to the time when the whole purpose of earthly creation will have been accomplished, and all that offends have been removed.
With this panorama we believe the story of Genesis to open; not with two stories of Creation in conflicting detail, but with one comprehensive preface to the whole of revelation (1:1–2 :3), followed in 2:4 with the beginnings of God’s workings with man, leading on historically to the perfection which had been already prefigured.
ALFRED NORRIS, Jr.
Editorial Reply by John Carter
This article is presented with due reservation; as an interesting suggestion on a subject upon which—as the writers themselves indicate—final conclusions may be impossible until Moses himself can give them. The view put forward is not new; the path has been trodden before and given all the publicity of print. Hugh Miller argued that Genesis 1 should be understood as an Apocalypse, revealed to Moses in a series of daily visions; Godet spoke of it as knowledge given under the form of pictures, analogues to those of prophetic visions. Sir Robert Anderson found a full explanation of the formula And there was evening, and there was morning, one day
, in the view that the creation story was revealed by way of Apocalyptic visions.
There is truly Scriptural ground for the word day
standing for an epoch; Moses himself so uses it in the context of the record of creation, concerning the time of Creation—in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens
(2:4).
The history of creation
, says Dr. Thomas, informs the reader of the order in which the things narrated would have developed themselves to his view, had he been placed on some projecting rock, the spectator of the events detailed
. The account does read like that of an observer from some vantage point; and the suggestion that Moses saw the order of creation in a series of visions so far aptly reconciles the difficulties.
The transfer of the sabbath to the future hardly harmonises with more than one passage of Scripture. Even that quoted (John 5:17), My Father worketh until now, and I work
, is rather evidence that the Sabbath of creation still continues and that if God worked on His sabbath, the son was justified in doing the Father’s work on the sabbath. And here we possibly touch a significance of the resting
of God. It was not a cessation of labour because of fatigue; it was a rest of creative activity. But during this period
God not only sustains His creation, but works
for the redemption of the creation that has been marred by sin. In that work Jesus laboured, and his healing on the sabbath was full of typical significance in such a connection.
Paul says: For we which have believed do enter into rest; as he said, as I have sworn in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest; although the works were finished from the foundation of the world
(Heb. 4:3). This passage requires a sense in which God’s works were completed, and God entered into a rest which yet remains
, for His rest foreshadows that future rest to which man is invited when he may cease from his own works, and find the rest provided in the redemption of the Son of God.
It is implied that the very good
description in relation to man is prophetic of something yet to be, rather than a statement of what was. Man, indeed, is not now very good
; and it is admitted that the statements made at his Creation are prophetic. (See the quotations of Gen. 1:26 in Psalm 8 and Heb. 2.) But as part of the creation of God man was very good: And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day
(Gen. 1:31). Then man became subject to vanity and lost his very good
state by sin.
Further discussion of some of the points raised will be found in The Word of God, by bro. C. C. Walker, Chapters III. and IV.; and on Heb. 4 see The Letter to the Hebrews, pages 59–72.
