Were the six-days of creation six 24hr days? or six long ages.
Was Genesis 1:1 included as part of the first 'day' of creation? or was there a long gap between verse 1 and the start of the first 'day'?
Does Genesis 1 need reconciling with popular 'science'?
And does it matter, so long as a person's conscience is clear?
One pastor said, "I'll leave that to the experts". But others are more insistent one way or the other.
But so far I think:
1. Genesis 1 doesn't seem to me to have been written like someone composing an allegory. Plus, the Bible claims, it was written by inspiration from the Spirit of God - not employing some ancient Babylonian Captivity-Era genre of writing nor an even more ancient Hebrew genre. Rather, it seems to me to have been written more like it was claiming facts.
I think we can almost assume this, because everywhere else in the Bible where a parable was used, the text states that it was a parable. But in Genesis, rather than state that it was a parable, it has the heading, "The generations of the heaven and earth". The title 'generations' is the same title used for "...the generations of Adam..." - which comprised of facts about Adam not allegories.
Therefore if the generations of the heaven and earth is only allegorical, then the genealgoies in Genesis, and the stories that go with them, might also only be allegories. But that's not how the New Testament treated them! The New Testament treated the genealgoies as real, and also the stories as real. So why not the creation too.
To impose an allegorical meaning on Genesis 1, but not on the rest of the Bible, seems to me to treat the Bible inconsistently, rather than being an attempt to be faithful to the Bible's own methods and intent.
2. But let's imagine for a moment chapter 1 was an allegory. It made a point of saying, "...and the evening and the morning were the first day..." etc. If the author was only using the six days allegorically, why did he stress the detail that each 'day' consisted of one evening plus one morning? I can't think of any allegorical significance that detail could have. In fact, stressing that detail only confuses matters if the author intended the six 'days' allegorically. So, the author seems to want to stress that each 'day' was a single usual night-day cycle.
3. But even if after that we can still question whether Genesis 1 was written in an allegorical style, parts of the Book of Exodus certainly weren't - and in Exodus chapter 20:11 it says:
"...in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is..."
That's stright prose, not poetry!
4. That verse from Exodus also seems to nullify any basis for perceiving a 'gap' between Genesis 1:1 and the first day of creation. Because it says not only that everything in heaven and earth and sea were made in six days, but also heaven and earth and the sea itself were made in the six days. So everything was made in six days, bar nothing.
5. A big part of the moitivation for imagining that the six days of Genesis 1 weren't six 24hr days, is to try to reconcile the Bible with popular 'science'. But Darwin's popular Theory of Evolution is frought with problems! I personally don't feel confronted in my world by any reason to believe in the 'Single Origin of Species'. So I personally don't see that Genesis 1 needs reconciling!
6. Even if the popular 'science' was proven (it hasn't been - but if it was), the Day-Age theory of Genesis 1 still wouldn't reconcile the Bible with science anyway! And neither would the 'Gap Theory' reconcile the Bible with science. Because the popular 'science' insists that fossils give a different geologic time scale to some of the order-of-events in Genesis 1 anyway. So, rather than solve 'problems' that the Bible has with popular 'science', the theories only exchange one set of 'problems' for other ones!
7. If we listen to some scientists (in fact, many scientists) the more we are learning about science, the more Genesis 1, taken literally, makes scientific sense.
So there you have seven thoughts: one for each of the seven days of the Creation-week!
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