WSC Question 8-9

Q. 8. How doth God execute his decrees?

A. God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.
Q. 9. What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the
space of six days, and all very good.
I. Introduction
A. The Stage for God’s Glory
a. Creation is the theatre for God’s Glory
i. Matter is good, creation is good (7 times in Gen 1)
B. The Director of the Theatre of God’s Glory
a. God governs his world through his providence
i. Providence will be defined in Question 11
1. Providence in short is God’s sovereign care and direction over his
creation
2. Nothing in this universe is random or chance, but all is under the
loving care of our good Father
II. Creation
A. Essentials of the Doctrine of Creation
a. 1. The one true and living God existed alone in eternity, and beside him there was
no matter, energy, space or time.

2. The one true and living God according to his sovereign decree, determined to
create or make of nothing, the world and all things therein, whether visible or
invisible.

3. That no part of the universe or any creature in it came into being by chance or
by any power other than that of the Sovereign God.

4. That God created man, male and female after His own image, and as God’s
image bearer man possesses an immortal soul. Thus man is distinct from all other
earthly creatures even though his body is composed of the elements of his
environment.

5. That when God created man, it was God’s inbreathing that constituted man a
living creature, and thus God did not impress his image upon some pre-existing
living creature.

6. That the entire human family has descended from the first human pair, and,
with the one exception of Christ, this descent has been by ordinary generation.
 7. That man, when created by God, was holy. Then God entered into a covenant
of works with the one man Adam. In the covenant Adam represented his
posterity, and thus when he violated the requirement, all mankind, descending
from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him into an estate of
sin.
B. Other considerations
a. Genesis 1 and 2 must be interpreted literally:
i. we are to find the meaning that the author intended.
b. The narrative must be understood historically:
i. it is not myth, but a record of what happened in space and time.
c. Finally, the narrative contains metaphorical elements:
i. there are figures of speech and literary features within the account that
Moses records. The task of the exegete is not to determine whether the text
is scientific or historical on the one hand or literary on the other. Instead
the exegete must be sensitive to all of these elements in the narrative.
d. the purposes of the creation account.
i. While the account is not given to us to encourage historical or scientific
speculation, it does give us an inspired and authoritative account of the
history of God’s work of creation that does proscribe certain scientific
theories of our origins
e. The Doctrine of Creation is vital to other doctrines in the scripture
i. Sabbath,
ii. work
iii. marriage
iv. covenant
v. sin
vi. death
vii. redemption
viii. etc.
III. God Made All Things From Nothing
A. The Elements of Creation
a. Time
b. Space
c. Matter
d. Energy
e. Motion
i. Gen 1:1-2 In the beginning (Time), God created (Energy) the heavens
(Space) and the earth (Matter).The earth was without form and void, and
darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was
hovering (Motion) over the face of the waters. (Gen 1:1-2 ESV)
B. Nothing Means Nothing
a. Before God there was nothing except the triune God
 b. We as humans have no concept of nothing
i. Nothing is not empty space. Nothing means nothing
c. God created all things out of nothing
C. The Universe is not Eternal
a. Scientists sometimes postulate that the universe is eternal or part of a cycle of
creation, decreation, and recreation
b. Mormons teach that God did not make the universe out of nothing, but out of
preexisting matter
IV. By The Word Of His Power
A. The instrument of creation is the Triune God
a. Creation is a triune act
i. God the Father is the Creator
1. Gen 1:1 “In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth
2. Heb 11:3 “By faith we understand that the universe was created by
the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things
that are visible”
3. Rev 4:11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and
honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they
existed and were created.”
4. Jer 32:17 “Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens
and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm!
Nothing is too hard for you.”
ii. He created through the Son
1. John 1:1-3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with
God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was
not any thing made that was made.”
2. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers
or authorities-- all things were created through him and for him. 17
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
3. Heb 1:1-3 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke
to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has
spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things,
through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of
the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he
upholds the universe by the word of his power.
iii. And applied creation by the Holy Spirit
1. Gen 1:2 “And the Spirit of God was hovering (Motion) over the
face of the waters.”
2. Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”
 3. Job 26:13 “By his wind the heavens were made fair; his hand
pierced the fleeing serpent.”
4. Psalm 104:24-31 “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In
wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures
innumerable, living things both small and great. 26 There go the
ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. 27 These all
look to you, to give them their food in due season. 28 When you
give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they
are filled with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are
dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to
their dust. 30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground. 31 May the glory of the
LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works,
V. In The Space of 6 Days
A. Wording pulled directly from the Irish Articles written by James Usher in 1615
a. In the beginning of time when no creature had any being, God by his word alone,
in the space of six days, created all things, and afterwards by his providence doth
continue, propagate, and order them according to his own will.
i. The intent was to fight the idea of instantaneous creation from Agustine.
B. Length of Creation Days and Confessional Subscription (From the OPC Creation Report)
a. According to our Shorter Catechism, “The work of creation is, God’s making all
things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very
good” (Q. 9). What does the Catechism mean by the phrase, “in the space of six
days” and what understanding of the phrase does subscription require? The
committee believes that the current debate in our church about the days of
creation owes as much to its confusion over the nature of confessional
subscription as disagreement over the exegesis of the creation narrative.
b. Recent claims have been made by several students of the Westminster Assembly
and its work that the Westminster Divines held to an ordinary-day interpretation
of the creation week. Two things should be observed in the context of that claim,
however.
i. First, the Westminster Standards were written, as were all of the
Reformation confessions, as consensus documents, and the Divines often
expressed themselves in language that could be understood in different
legitimate senses. In his groundbreaking study of Reformed scholasticism,
Historian Richard Muller emphasizes that confessions have a two-fold
function: they establish both unity in the faith and diversity in the faith.
Confessions are not designed to solve all theological disputes; instead,
they are intentionally crafted to leave some questions unanswered. Rightly
understood, Confessions encourage theological creativity by establishing
the conditions under which exegetical and theological investigation can
take place. With respect to the phrase, “in the space of six days,” even if
 one grants that the Divines meant ordinary days by that expression, it does
not necessarily follow that they intended to restrict the meaning of that
phrase in that way. And even if they intended such a restriction, they did
not indicate such an intention explicitly in the language that they used.
ii. Secondly, the original intent of the Westminster Divines does not exhaust
our understanding of the meaning of our Confession and Catechisms. In
determining whether a particular position deviates from the standards of
the church, another principle must come to bear. In addition to the
historical meaning of the church’s standards, we must consider[4] the
animus imponentis of the standards, which is the “intention of the party
imposing the oath.” Through the animus imponentis, the mind of the
whole church establishes the application of the meaning of the standards,
to protect it from individuals who interpret the standards in their own
sense. (In this regard, it is important to note that animus refers to the spirit
of the whole church. In American Presbyterianism, presbyteries have
power to ordain but not autonomy. In credentialing their members, they
must work in submission to the whole church.)
c. With respect to the days of creation, then, what does confessional subscription in
the OPC require? Officers “receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and
Catechisms” of the OPC “as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy
Scriptures.” The OPC has understood this to mean subscription to all of the
doctrines that the standards contain, because they represent in their entirety the
system of doctrine found in Holy Scripture. This includes the doctrine of creation
“in the space of six days.”
d. What does subscription not require? Officers are not required to subscribe to the
very words of our standards, but rather must be in essential agreement with each
doctrine. This is important to remember, especially when considering the words,
“in the space of six days.” The meaning of these words is not exhausted merely by
observing that “six days are six days,” because this is begging the question.
Instead, we believe that the doctrine of six-day creation can be preserved through
different permissible understandings of the word “day.”
e. When a presbytery determines that a candidate’s view on “in the space of six
days” falls beyond the pale of the church’s standards, the presbytery should make
such a judgment only when convinced that his views violate both the historical
meaning of the words of the Confession and the animus imponentis. Secondly, the
church should make a negative judgment about the candidate as a whole only
when the church finds a deviation that undermines the candidate’s essential
agreement with the system of doctrine and entails his denial of the integrity of that
same system. The presbytery should not make its examination of ministerial
candidates the primary battleground over its theological differences.
C. Reasons we have debates about creation views in recent times
a. The Committee would be delinquent in the execution of its mandate if it failed to
address the question, why the present controversy? Since the founding of the
 Orthodox Presbyterian Church, its ministerial members have held a variety of
views on the days of creation. Why has it now erupted into such a strident
controversy? The Creation Study Committee of the Presbyterian Church in
America, in its report to the 2000 PCA General Assembly, suggested several
reasons for the recent debate in that denomination. These included:
i. 1. The novelty (real or perceived) of some non-literal views “accounts for
some of the unfriendly reaction” to them. Moreover, proponents of these
views have not always expressed them before presbyteries with sufficient
knowledge and humility.
ii. 2. Recent movements in the church (such as Christian Reconstruction and
home schooling) tend to emphasize a day of ordinary length view as well
as a young earth creation perspective. At times their advocates have
expressed themselves very polemically against other views in the church.
iii. 3. The increasing hostility of the church’s surrounding culture has pitted
Christians in a “culture war” against unbelieving forces of materialism,
naturalism, and evolutionism. In this context, the doctrine of creation has
taken on heightened importance, as it forms the foundation of a Christian
worldview, and some in the church have regarded criticism of a day of
ordinary length view as tantamount to an accommodation to secular
culture.
iv. 4. Within the church many are persuaded that non-literal interpretations of
the creation account undermined the inspiration and authority of the Bible
D. Why We Now Look At Our Brothers with Suspicion
a. The OPC has gone so long without a general debate on confessional subscription
or a particular debate on creation because the church has cultivated a community
of interpretation that has sustained confessional integrity among its ministerial
membership without imposing over-exacting standards of confessional
subscription or achieving complete uniformity in its understanding of creation.
The most important factor in establishing and maintaining this community of
interpretation has been the function of Westminster Theological Seminary in
Philadelphia as the OPC’s de facto denominational seminary. In training the vast
majority of the early ministerial membership of the OPC, Westminster Seminary
did not devote excessive attention to the days of creation nor to the Westminster
Standards. But what WTS accomplished that averted a creation or confessional
crisis was inducting Orthodox Presbyterian ministerial candidates into a culture of
interpretation. The effect was to cultivate a hermeneutic of trust within the church,
as ministers had confidence in the training of their colleagues, even if they
differed in their views. Westminster performed that function ably, and for a long
time, about thirty years, from the founding of the OPC in 1936 to the death or
retirement of the founding faculty at WTS (who were all members of the OPC) in
the 1960s.
b. As that faculty passed from the scene and as Westminster began to expand and to
attract other constituencies, the OPC lost the “induction” function of Westminster
 for its community of interpretation. In the years that have followed, several
Reformed seminaries have flourished in the free-market of American theological
education, and the OPC is receiving ministerial candidates from an increasingly
wide range of sources. Some of these schools have made the creation debate a
means of establishing their pedagogical distinctiveness.
c. This point must not be overlooked. The creation debate within the OPC owes in
significant measure to the entrepreneurial character of the contemporary
theological education. In their efforts to recruit students, some theological schools
are especially promoting their teaching on creation in such a way as to sometimes
cast suspicion on other schools. The winners and losers in this competition will be
determined by the success that such schools experience at marketing their
particular theological emphases.
d. For the OPC, the result has been the gradual disappearance in the church and its
assemblies of a shared community of interpretation. As Presbytery meetings and
General Assemblies become gatherings of strangers, a hermeneutic of suspicion
and distrust replaces interpretative confidence and charity. However, this
committee may serve to promote peace and unity in the church over the debate
over the days of creation, it will be a Band-Aid on the larger problem of the
disappearance of our consciousness as an interpretive community. This committee
will most effectively serve the church by suggesting ways for the OPC to
reestablish its shared confessional consciousness.
VI. Views on the Length of Creation Days
A. Ordinary Day View (6/24)
a. Ordinary Day view is defined as the doctrine that God created all things out of
nothing, and that the work of creation was accomplished in six days of normal
length, i.e., approximately 24 hours. This has also been called the traditional view,
the 24-hour day view or the literal view. The traditional view insists that the
Genesis creation account, with all of its details, presents the history of God’s
work of creation in the sequence in which it took place and in the time frame of
six days with a seventh day of rest. This view has been the majority position
throughout the history of the church and was held with virtual unanimity by the
Reformers. It is the view that was held without known exception by the authors of
the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. Today, even with the rise of
alternative theories, the 24-hour day view remains the majority position in
conservative Reformed and Presbyterian churches.
B. Day of Undetermined Length
a. This view of the creation days accepts the days of the creation account as seven
contiguous days of unspecified length. Adherents may hold the days as very brief
in duration or may allow them to be very long. This view accepts the days of
Genesis as historical reporting of separate and actual events occurring within the
successive contiguous space-time days as reported. This view rejects macro-
evolution as a possible explanation of the days of creation or as consistent with
biblical creation, but does not deny, for example, that once the various kinds of
 fish and animals, for example, were created, these original creatures may have
diversified within the kinds.
b. This view pursues the path traversed by many Reformed scholars of renown.
Although this is not the place to defend these analyses, it is affirmed that scholars
such as W. H. Green, Herman Bavinck, B. B. Warfield, and E. J. Young held to
this view (but they seem to allow for an age-day view). Young represents but one
voice in a long succession of voices that may be called the Princeton tradition. In
his Introduction to the Old Testament, written toward the beginning of his
teaching career, he wrote, “The length of these days is not stated....”[52] Again, at
a somewhat later date, he stated in Thy Word Is Truth,
C. Day-Age View (Charles Hodge, J. Gresham Machen)
a. The day-age view can simply be described as a view that holds to the creation
days at the beginning of creation (as described in Gen. 1) as allowing for long
durations of time. According to classical biblical Hebrew, “day” (yom) can
connote 24 hour periods as well as long periods of time just as “day” does in other
languages (e.g., English: “the day of your calamity,” “the day of salvation,” “the
day of the Lord,” “the day of judgment”). Therefore, one should not foist a
particular view of “day” upon the Genesis account in such a way that does injury
to the possible connotations of the word and the current scientific data at our
disposal.
b. The day-age view is not to be confused with the so-called gap theory, a prominent
view among pre-World War II fundamentalists which was promoted by the
Scofield Reference Bible. The gap theory teaches that Genesis 1:1 refers to a
dateless past while Genesis 1:2 refers to a cataclysmic change in the cosmos.
Scofield and his followers (of which there were more than a few, both before and
after World War II) wanted to accommodate scientific geological ages by positing
a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 which in turn allowed for an old earth. The
view has been totally discredited from a linguistic point of view.
D. Analogical Day View (C. John Collins, W. Robert Godfrey, Herman Bavink)
a. With respect to the length of the creation days, the Analogical Day view claims
that Scripture does not give us enough information to determine how long the
days were.
b. With respect to the nature of the creation days, the Analogical Day view claims
that the creation days were historical, but were extraordinary in character. Just as
man’s work is patterned off of God’s work (the potter molds clay as God molded
Adam’s body), so also man’s week is patterned off of God’s week. In neither case
does the analogical relationship undermine the historicity of the report.
c. With respect to the literary character of Genesis 1, the Analogical Day view
claims that the literary structure of Genesis 1 communicates the historical events
of the creation week in a stylized fashion (in a manner similar to the way in which
the book of Judges reduces the history of the judges to a formula in Judges 2, and
then presents the entire history of that period in terms of that formula). After each
 day of God’s work, there is an evening and morning which sets the pattern for our
period of rest and recuperation from our workdays.
d. With respect to the sequence of the creation days, the Analogical Day view claims
that they are broadly sequential.
e. The PCA report provides a useful definition of the Analogical Day view:
i. 1. The “days” are God’s work-days, which are analogous, and not
necessarily identical, to our work days, structured for the purpose of
setting a pattern for our own rhythm of rest and work.
ii. 2. The six “days” represent periods of God’s historical supernatural
activity in preparing and populating the earth as a place for humans to live,
love, work, and worship.
iii. 3. These days are “broadly consecutive”: that is, they are taken as
successive periods of unspecified length, but one allows for the possibility
that parts of the days may overlap, or that there might be logical rather
than chronological criteria for grouping some events in a particular “day.”
iv. 4. Genesis 1:1–2 are background, representing an unknown length of time
prior to the beginning of the first “day”: verse 1 is the creatio ex nihilo
event, while verse 2 describes the conditions of the earth as the first day
commenced.
v. 5. Length of time, either for the creation week, or before it or since it, is
irrelevant to the communicative purpose of the account.
f. The Analogical view emphasizes the role of the creation week as the model for
man’s weekly cycle: “Six days shalt thou labor, but on the seventh you shall rest.”
Genesis 1–2 presents the divine archetype of God’s work and rest in order to
establish the pattern that man must follow. While the Analogical view may sound
novel to some, it is rooted in the apostolic and patristic principles of biblical
interpretation that used the principle of analogy widely, and attempts to apply the
insights of Cornelius Van Til regarding the nature of analogy to the present
debate.
g. The PCA report likewise offers a helpful understanding of the history of the
Analogical Day view:
i. In the modern period, this view arose from perceived problems in the Day-
Age view, though it employs what were felt to be valuable observations by
the proponents of that view. William G. T. Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology
(1888), I:474–477, drew on these insights, as well as statements from
Augustine and Anselm, to the effect that the days of Genesis 1 are “God-
divided days,” with the result that “the seven days of the human week are
copies of the seven days of the Divine week.” Franz Delitzsch’s New
Commentary on Genesis appeared in English translation in 1899 (German
original, 1887) and argued the same position.
ii. The prominent Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck published the first
edition of his Gereformeerde Dogmatiek in 1895–1901, and the second
edition in 1906–1911. The section on creation has just appeared in English
 translation (Baker, 1999). There he advocates a version of the Analogical
Days interpretation:
iii. It is probable, in the first place, that the creation of heaven and earth in
Genesis 1:1 preceded the work of the six days in verses 3ff. by a shorter or
longer period ... So, although ... the days of Genesis 1 are to be considered
days and not to be identified with the periods of geology, they
nevertheless—like the work of creation as a whole—have an extraordinary
character ... The first three days, however much they may resemble our
days, also differ significantly from them and hence were extraordinary
cosmic days ... It is not impossible that the second triduum still shared in
this extraordinary character as well ... It is very difficult to find room on
the sixth day for everything Genesis 1–2 has occur in it if that day was in
all respects like our days ... Much more took place on each day of creation
than the sober words of Genesis would lead us to suspect. For all these
reasons, “day” in the first chapter of the Bible denotes the time in which
God was at work creating ... The creation days are the workdays of God.
iv. Bavinck goes on to say regarding the creation week: “for the whole world
it remains a symbol of the eons of this dispensation that will someday
culminate in eternal rest, the cosmic Sabbath (Heb. 4).”
E. Framework View (Scott Clark, Meredith Kline, Brain Estelle)
a. According to the framework view, the six days of creation are presented as
normal solar days. This distinguishes it from the day-age view, which argues that
yom can represent a long era of time, as well as from the view that the length of
yom is indeterminate (E. J. Young). Advocates of the framework view
acknowledge that yom can be used to refer to longer periods of time in some
contexts, but they argue that in this context yom is defined as a normal solar day
composed of the normal period of darkness called “night” and the normal period
of light called “day” (Gen. 1:3–5). However, advocates of the framework view go
on to argue ...
i. “Of course, we part ways with the 24-hour view when we insist that the
total picture of the divine workweek with its days and evening-morning
refrain be taken figuratively. The creation history is figuratively presented
as an ordinary week in which the divine Workman/Craftsman goes about
His cosmos-building, labors for six days with intervening pauses during
the night between each day, and finally rests from His work on the seventh
day ... God’s workweek of creation, which is revealed in Genesis 1:1–2:3
as a sabbatically structured process, was the archetype (original), while the
weekly pattern of life appointed for God’s human image-bearer is the
ectype (copy). (Kline and Irons)”
b. In other words, the days are presented as normal days, but they function within
the larger picture of the divine workweek, which is figurative.
 i. “It is possible to treat the terminology of the week as figurative language,
but at that moment ‘day’ has its ordinary meaning and with that meaning
plays a figurative role.” (Henri Blocher)
b. At this point the framework view and the analogical view begin to converge and
appear almost indistinguishable. However, the framework view differs from the
analogical view when it argues that the Day 1/Day 4 problem is an instance of
nonsequential or topical arrangement in the creation account. The analogical view
agrees with the framework view in interpreting the creation week
anthropomorphically so that there is an analogical correspondence between God’s
archetypal workweek and Sabbath rest, and man’s workweek and Sabbath rest.
However, the analogical view maintains that the order of the creation account is
sequential.
i. “What then is the framework interpretation? It is that interpretation of
Genesis 1:1–2:3 which regards the seven-day scheme as a figurative
framework. While the six days of creation are presented as normal solar
days, according to the framework interpretation the total picture of God’s
completing His creative work in a week of days is not to be taken literally.
Instead it functions as a literary structure in which the creative works of
God have been narrated in a topical order. The days are like picture
frames. Within each day-frame, Moses gives us a snapshot of divine
creative activity. Although the creative fiat-fulfillments ... refer to actual
historical events that actually occurred, they are narrated in a
nonsequential order within the literary structure or framework of a seven-
day week. Thus, there are two essential elements of the framework
interpretation: the nonliteral element and the nonsequential element.
(Irons)”
VII. And All Very Good
A. Creation is good
a. 7 times in the creation narrative God declared that it is good, with the last in verse
31 saying it was “very good.”
b. God made a good creation, and his good creation was wrecked because of sin
B. Matter is not bad
a. The Gnostics taught that matter is bad, creation is bad
b. Matter is good, creation is good
i. I know this because Jesus took upon himself a true human body and is a
true human in a glorified body today