Page 88 - Bible Doctrine Survey I - Student Textbook (3)

The Day-Age Theory
Many sincere bible scholars feel a need to accept and fit the geological age
system to the creation account that they have created the Day-Age Theory as
the best interpretation of Genesis 1. By doing so they are trying to equate the
days of creation with the ages of evolutionary geology.

Much like the Gap Theory, the Day-Age Theory encounters many problems which render it invalid.

1. The narrative record in Genesis 1 is very different from the acceptable order of fossils in the rocks
representing the geological ages.
2. As with the gap theory, the geological ages rely heavily on the fossil record and the fossils speak of
suffering and death in the world. This places death prior to original sin and causes contradiction with
Romans 5:12.
3. The bible makes it clear that the days of creation are literal days, not long indefinite ages. If a reader
just asks himself the question, “How would the writer write to convey 6 literal days for creation?” He
would have to conclude that the writer would write the account just as written. If however the writer
wished to convey long periods of time, it would be reasonable to infer that the writer would have been
more clear about the long period and would have written in such a way to bring about that
understanding.

When we read Genesis 1 it is clear that the intent of the writer is to convey 6 literal days of creation.

The Flood

As a result of mankind’s continual wickedness, God decides to destroy all
living things off the face of the earth, but preserve Noah and his family, and
two of every kind of animal living. For over 100 years, Noah constructed an
ark for the salvation of man and animal. Then God sent a flood that covered
the entire earth. It came suddenly and with cataclysmic results.

The extent of the Genesis Flood is partly determined by the meaning of the word ‘earth’ (Hebrew erets)
in Genesis 1–10, and (Greek kosmos) in 2 Peter 3:5–7. What is erets in Gen. 6:1 referring to? Genesis
6:5–7 suggests that the reference is therefore to the ‘earth’ of Gen. 1:1 and 2:1 (i.e. all that is not the
‘heavens’), for in Gen. 6:7 there is an echo of the creation (Hebrew bara) of men and animal life
recorded in Gen. 1:20–30. Moreover the words of Gen. 8:22 would hardly follow, if the promise in v. 21
applied only to the inhabitants of the early Middle East, for ‘seedtime and harvest’ are universal
phenomena, in the same way that ‘day and night’ bring us to the universal context of creation (Gen.
1:5). This apparent universality continues in Gen. 9, where it is not regional man whose life is protected
by law, but man made in God’s image (v. 6). Accordingly, the covenant of Gen. 9:9 ff establishes the
universally experienced rainbow as the pledge of God’s promise never again to destroy the whole earth
(the word again is erets).

2 Peter 3 clinches this line of reasoning, for in this chapter, Peter refutes uniformitarianism (v. 4) and
proclaims that uniformitarians are ‘willingly ignorant.’ He then states that after the creation of the
heavens and the earth in Gen. 1:1–2, the ‘world [Greek kosmos] that then was, being overflowed with
water, perished’ (v.6). The fact that the ‘heavens and earth which are now … are … reserved unto fire’ (v.

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