Main Interpretations of Genesis 1-3 and the Creation Days

A. Calendar Day view(略)
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B. The Day-Age Interpretation

The 'Day-Age'interpretation of the creative days in Genesis 1 has taken various forms in its contemporary expressions, and those which have been held within conservative Reformed circles are outlined below and contain certain common features. This view has been held by such conservative Reformed theologians as those from the Old Princeton Seminary tradition of the Hodges and Warfield and more recently as expressed by J. Oliver Buswell, Jr. and R. Laird Harris, both of whom were on the original faculty of Covenant Theological Seminary and taught there for many years.
 
a. The 'six days' are understood in the same sense as "in that day" of Isaiah 11:10-11 —that is, as periods of indefinite length and not necessarily of 24 hours duration. There are other similar uses of the Hebrew word for "day" (yôm) in Scripture to support this view of periods longer than 24 hours including that in the very context of Genesis 2:4. Another argument for this approach is that the seventh day in Genesis 1 is not concluded with the boundary phrase, "and there was evening, and there was morning" as with the other days, and therefore it continues, as indicated by Hebrews 4:1-11's quotation of Psalm 95:11.
 
b. The six days are taken as sequential, but as overlapping and merging into one another, much as an expression like "the day of the Protestant Reformation" might have only a proximate meaning and might overlap with "the day of the Renaissance." While exponents of this view might be willing to concede a rough parallel between day one and day four, day two and day five, day three and day six, they would tend to deny that this is an intended parallel by Moses as author, as is commonly claimed in the Framework interpretation.

c. The Day-Age interpretation claims that the narrative of Genesis 1 is from the point of view of the earth as being prepared for the habitation of man. In this context, the explanation of day four is often that the sun only became visible on that day, as atmospheric conditions allowed the previous alternation of light and darkness to be perceived from the earth to have its source from the position of the previously created sun and other heavenly bodies. However day four is understood, the point is made that only on that day is the diurnal cycle of days governed by the sun begun, so that it is difficult to know the nature of the first three days.
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C. The Framework Interpretation
http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1996/PSCF3-96Kline.html

There are a number of versions of the Framework interpretation. Here we discuss the position which has arguably influenced the PCA most, that of Meredith G. Kline and Mark D. Futato. In Genesis 1:1-2:3: Exegesis indicates that the scheme of the creation week itself is a poetic figure and that the several pictures of creation history are set within the six work-day frames not chronologically but topically. In distinguishing simple description and poetic figure from what is definitively conceptual the only ultimate guide, here as always, is comparison with the rest of Scripture. In other words, the distinctive feature of the Framework interpretation is its understanding of the week (not the days as such) as a metaphor. Moses used the metaphor of a week to narrate God's acts of creation. Thus God's supernatural creative words or fiats are real and historical, but the exact timing is left unspecified. Why the week then? Moses intended to show Israel God's call to Adam to imitate Him in work, with the promise of entering His Sabbath rest. God's week is a model, analogous to Israel's week. The events are grouped in two triads of days. Days 1-3 (creation's kingdoms) are paralleled by Days 4-6 (creation's kings). Adam is king of the earth and God is King of Creation. Two major arguments support the position:

1. The order of Gen 1 is difficult to square with Gen 2:5-6: "and no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground." These verses presuppose that God's preservation of the plants during the six days was by normal, secondary causes (water), not by miracle. What Scripture presupposes is part of its inspired meaning. Without rain or a human cultivator, God would not create plants. Verse 5's explanation for this assumes that the mode of preservation during the creation period was ordinary preservation (the same as the Israelite knows, what is currently operating).  But normal preservation can not be easily harmonized with a week of 144 hours. If Gen 1 is strictly sequential, Gen 2:5 must have occurred on Day 3, because dry land did not exist before Day 3, and rich vegetation existed by the end of Day 3. But when Gen 2:5 occurred, it was too dry for plants. Land inundated with water only yesterday (Day 2) does not dry out in a few hours, especially without the sun, which was not created until Day 4. God could have preserved plants without rain, man, or the sun. But that is not the way Gen 2:5 explains the delay of the creation of plants. Rather it was because of the lack of water, or secondary means of preservation. Therefore the six days in Gen 1 must be topical, not sequential. The framework view does not state how long the week was, but affirms that it must have been longer than one hundred forty-four hours.

2. Second, since God's mode of operation was ordinary providence, and since light (Day one) without luminaries (Day four) is not ordinary providence, the six days of creation in Gen 1 must be topical, not sequential. Futato's version of the Framework view argues that both Gen 1 and 2 are arranged topically. Moses wrote in the second millennium B.C. for the edification of the Israelites on the outskirts of the land of Canaan. The basic message of Gen 1 is that Yahweh, the God of the Exodus, not Baal, is the Creator of heaven and earth. He brought them into being by his Sovereign Word. They depend on him completely. Yahweh is God over rain and sun, moon and stars; hence they are not to be worshiped.

As mentioned above, there are variations on the framework theme. Kline has recently added a "two-register cosmology," in further development of his earlier framework conclusions. Bruce Waltke summarizes his own reflections on the literary genre of the passage: . . .it is a literary-artistic representation of the creation. To this we add the purpose, namely, to ground the covenant people's worship and life in the Creator, who transformed chaos into cosmos, and their ethics in his creative order.

The Framework view interprets Gen 1 in the light of its immediate context in Gen 2. It harmonizes Gen 1 and 2 concretely and contextually. It tries to attend to the Bible's actual meaning within the ancient Near Eastern readership. This is particularly true of Futato's stress on the literary features of the text.

Moses'audience in Genesis was ancient Israel. To whatever extent he wrote to challenge paganism, his arrows were aimed at ancient Baal religion, not at modern naturalistic astronomy, biology, or geology. He wrote to strengthen the covenant people as they entered Canaan. However much we may diverge in exegetical conclusions, and granting that metaphor is less descriptively precise than prose, we may agree that for Israel, a technical scientific description of the timing and mechanisms of creation was not the primary focus of Gen 1. Nevertheless, the Creator's week is not window dressing, but a call to covenant obedience. The view is fully compatible with the New Testament which emphasizes God's Word of power and the created order, not the timing or length of creation. Specifically, it is compatible with Heb 4:4-6, which presents Gen 2:2, the 7th day, God's creation rest, as the consummation hope of the church.

The Framework view is theologically rich, highlighting Moses'presentation of biblical-theological themes such as covenant, image of God, and Sabbath. The literary schema of days illumines the glorious wisdom of God as the Sovereign architect of creation, and the goal of all things. With respect to the relation of scientific theory and theology it is open to the study of general revelation regarding the age of the earth and the cosmos, within biblical constraints. Some of those are: creation ex nihilo, that Adam and Eve were the genetically unique, specially created parents of the human race, and that the fall of Adam introduced the curse into God's good creation. It denies all evolutionary origins, and evolutionary philosophy as contradictory to the teaching of scripture

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D. The Analogical Days Interpretation

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.

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.

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."

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.

5. Length of time, either for the creation week, or before it or since it, is irrelevant to the communicative purpose of the account.