The Truth of Christianity / Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion

by W. H. Turton

(2.) Its seven days.

Next as to the seven days. Now it is generally assumed, doubtless from their being referred to in the Fourth Commandment, that the writer intended these days to be ordinary days of twenty-four hours each, but this is at least doubtful. For ordinary days depend on the sun, and would therefore have been impossible before the formation of the sun on the fourth day; as the writer himself implies, when he says that the division of time into days and years was due to the sun.

Then there is the difficulty as to the seventh day, when God rested from all His work. This, it will be remembered had no close, or evening, and it is implied that it has continued ever since. For if God only rested for twenty-four hours, and then set to work again it would not have been a rest from all His work. But in this case, the seventh day would represent a long period of time, and if so the other days would probably do the same. Moreover the writer, or compiler, of this very narrative, after describing the creation in six days, says it all occurred in one day,[10] so he could scarcely have thought the days to be literal.

[10] Gen. 2. 4.

There are thus great difficulties from the narrative itself in taking the word day in its ordinary sense; and it seems better to consider it (like so many terms in the Bible) as a human analogy applied to God. Then God's days must be understood in the same way as God's eyes or God's hands; and this removes all difficulties.

None of these terms are of course literally true, but they represent the truth to man in such a way that he can to some extent understand it. For example, the phrase that God gained the victory by His own right hand clearly means that He gained it not with the assistance of others, or with the help of weapons, but simply by His own unaided inherent strength. It was such a victory as might in a man be described as gained by his own right hand. And the same may be said of the passage, The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers, and many others which occur in the Bible. The terms hands, eyes, and ears, when applied to God, are thus human analogies, which must not be taken literally.

And in one passage at least the word day is used in a similar sense; for we read "Hast thou eyes of flesh or seest thou as man seeth? Are thy days as the days of man, or thy years as man's days?"[11] Here it will be noticed days and years are applied to God in precisely the same manner as eyes and seeing.

[11] Job 10. 4, 5.

Moreover similar terms occur all through the present narrative. Even the simple words God said cannot be taken literally, for there was no one to speak to. They must be meant in the sense that God thought, or that God willed. And we have no more right to suppose the days to be literal days than to suppose that God literally spoke. What we are to suppose in the one case is that God—the Almighty One, for whom nothing is too hard—created all things in such a way as might to man be best represented by a simple word of command. And what we are to suppose in the other case, is that God—the Eternal One, to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday—created all things in such periods of time as might to man be best represented by six days. Vast as the universe was, man was to regard it as being to God no more than a week's work to himself. In short, the time of creation, however long in itself, was utterly insignificant in its relation to God; to Him each stage was a mere day.