How Does the Statement of Scripture That God Created the World in Six Days Agree?
How Does the Statement of Scripture That God Created the World in Six Days Agree?
Question:
How does the statement of Scripture that God created the world in six days agree with the views of geologists who trace the age of the earth back thousands of years?
Answer:
I know that the days of creation were not solar days like our days; rather, a day of creation is a period of time whose extent we do not know. It may be a moment of time, or it may be thousands or millions of years. Its beginning and end were designated by the expression, “there was evening and there was morning.” The proof of this is as follows:
(a) A solar day is a period of time bounded between the rising of the sun and its rising again, or between the setting of the sun and its setting again. Since the sun was not created until the fourth day (Gen. 1:16–19), then the first four days were not solar days, because the sun had not yet been created.
(b) The seventh day is not said by Scripture to have ended. It did not say, “and there was evening and there was morning, a seventh day.” Thousands of years have passed since Adam without the end of this seventh day. Accordingly, by this measure, the days of creation are not solar days, but rather periods of time of unknown extent.
(c) Scripture summarized all of creation in one “day,” as stated in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis: “the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens” (v. 4).
(d) Scripture says, “that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8).
Therefore, let the scientist say whatever he says; in all of that he does not differ with the Holy Scripture in anything.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Fifth Year – Issue Three – October 19, 1974.
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