A Brief Statement

I hold that God alone is the eternal Creator, who in the beginning made the heavens and the earth out of nothing, by the word of His power — the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit — and pronounced all that He had made very good. Man, fashioned in His image, is the crown of that creation; and the whole of it exists, in the end, for the glory of its Maker.

On the manner and the timing of creation — the length of the days and the age of the earth — godly and faithful believers differ. I hold to a young earth and to six ordinary days, as the most natural reading of the text; but I hold this as a conviction, not as a test of orthodoxy or of fellowship, for it touches no article of the gospel and no one’s salvation. What Scripture will not let me surrender is of another order altogether: that God created freely and from nothing, that the material world He made is good, that Adam was a real man who really fell, and that all things were made for the glory of God.

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A Detailed Exposition

God the Creator

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The Bible’s first sentence sets God before and above all things: He alone is eternal and uncreated; everything else that exists, He made. And He made it out of nothing — not from pre-existing matter, as the pagans imagined, nor as an overflow of His own being, as the pantheist supposes, but by His sovereign word: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made … He spoke, and it came to be” (Psalm 33:6, 9); “the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).¹ This work was the work of the one God in three persons: the Father is the source, “from whom are all things”; the Son is the agent, for “all things were made through Him” (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16); and the Spirit was there at the first, “hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). To create is the prerogative of God alone, and in creating He revealed Himself as the triune Lord.²

The Creation Account

Genesis gives us not a myth or a poem of origins but a true account of what God did. In six days, He brought form to the formless and fullness to the empty: light, sky, and land, then the lights of heaven, the creatures of sea and air, the beasts of the field, and at last man, made in His own image and given dominion. At each stage He saw that it was good, and at the end, “behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The second chapter is no rival account, as some have alleged, but a closer view of the sixth day, drawing near to show the forming of the man from the dust and the woman from his side (Genesis 2; see my paper on Anthropology).³ That this was a real sequence of real days is, to my mind, the plain sense of the narrative — each marked off by “evening and morning” and numbered in order — and it is the reading on which God Himself grounds the Sabbath: “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth … and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11).⁴

The Goodness of the Material World

Because God made it and called it good, the material world is good. This must be said plainly against an old and recurring error — the notion, found in the Gnostics and in much pagan thought, that matter is evil or beneath the dignity of the spiritual. Scripture knows nothing of it. God made bodies and beasts and bread, and called them good; “everything created by God is good” (1 Timothy 4:4). The body is not a prison but a gift (see my paper on Anthropology). It is true that the creation was subjected to futility through man’s sin and groans now under the curse, but it is not despised or discarded. It waits, rather, for redemption — “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:20–22) — and will share in the glory of the new heavens and the new earth (see my paper on Eschatology).⁵

Creation Reveals the Creator

The world God made is not silent. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1); His “eternal power and divine nature … have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). This is what theologians call general revelation: God’s witness to Himself in what He has made, addressed to every person and leaving all without excuse. But, as I have argued in my paper on Bibliology, this revelation shows that God is, and that He is powerful and good; it does not, by itself, disclose the way of salvation. For that we need the special revelation of His word. Creation summons us to seek the Creator; only Scripture tells us how He may be found.⁶

The Question of the Days and the Age of the Earth

I come now to the matter on which sincere Christians most divide, and on which I wish to speak with both conviction and charity. Among those who hold a high view of Scripture, several readings of the Genesis days have been offered. The young-earth view, which I hold, takes the days as ordinary days and the earth as relatively young. The day-age or old-earth view takes each “day” as a long age, harmonizing the sequence with an ancient creation. The gap view, once popular in dispensational circles and printed in the older Scofield notes, posited a gap of ages between the first two verses of Genesis. The framework view reads the six days as a literary arrangement — two matching triads — rather than a strict chronology. And some, the evolutionary creationists, hold that God created through the long processes that science describes.⁷ I find the young-earth reading the most natural: the days appear as ordinary days, bounded by evening and morning; the Sabbath command rests upon a literal creation week (Exodus 20:11); and the genealogies, taken at face value, do not leave room for vast ages. Yet I hold this as a conviction, not as a wall. The age of the earth is not an article of the creed; it decides no one’s standing before God; and I would not break fellowship with a brother, nor put a stumbling block before a seeker, over the length of a day in Genesis. Here, more than almost anywhere, I am content to hold my own view firmly and my brother charitably.⁸

The Historical Adam

There is, however, a related question on which I must speak more firmly — not because it is a test of fellowship in the way salvation is, but because the gospel itself leans upon it. Whatever one concludes about the age of the earth, the Scriptures present Adam as a real man, the first man, from whom the whole race descends, and his fall as a real event in history. This is not incidental. Paul’s whole argument for our condemnation in sin and our justification in Christ runs through the parallel of the two Adams: “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22; cf. Romans 5:12–19). Undo the first Adam, and you unravel the doctrines of sin and of salvation alike (see my papers on Hamartiology and Christology). One may, I think, hold an old earth and a historical Adam together without contradiction; but a Christianity that lets Adam dissolve into myth has surrendered something the apostle would not.⁹

The Purpose of Creation: The Glory of God

Why did God create at all? Not from need, for He is complete in Himself, lacking nothing; nor from compulsion, for He made all things freely. He created for His own glory. “All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16); “You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11); He made His people “for My glory” (Isaiah 43:7). The creation is the theater of God’s glory, displaying His power, His wisdom, and His goodness; and the chief end of the creature who bears His image is to know Him and to glorify Him. This gives the doctrine its final shape: creation is not merely a beginning to be debated but a calling to be answered — the calling to render to the Creator the worship He is due.¹⁰

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Practical Implications

Ministry Emphasis: Wonder, Stewardship, and Charity in Disagreement

First, the doctrine of creation is meant to end in worship. A man may win every argument about the age of the earth and miss the whole point, which is that the God who flung the stars into place is worthy of our awe. “When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers” (Psalm 8:3) — the right response is not first a theory but a bowed head. I would have my own teaching on creation lead people to wonder before it leads them to debate.

Second, it lays upon us a stewardship. Man was set in the garden “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15) and given dominion over the creatures (Genesis 1:28) — a dominion meant as care, not plunder. To hold creation good, and God’s, is to treat it neither as an idol to be worshiped nor as mere stuff to be wasted, but as a trust to be tended for the Owner’s sake.

Third, this doctrine has taught me how to hold a conviction without making it a weapon. I believe what I believe about the days and the earth, and I can give my reasons, but I have watched good men wound one another and turn away honest questioners over a matter that decides no one’s salvation. We do the gospel no service when we plant our flag on the age of a rock and dare a brother to cross it. Firmness on the foundations — God as Creator, creation from nothing, the goodness of the world, a real Adam, the glory of God — and genuine charity on the rest: that is the balance I aim to keep, and to teach.

Finally, creation gives us solid ground before a skeptical age. To the question of why there is something rather than nothing, the Bible answers in its first four words: “In the beginning, God.” We need not be afraid of honest inquiry, nor pretend that the faith hangs upon a point of geology. We contend for the Creator with confidence and with grace — and we remember that the God who made all things is the same God who, in Christ, is making all things new.

Firm where Scripture is firm, gracious where it leaves us free — and in all things, to the glory of the Creator.

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Biblical, Exegetical, Theological, and Historical Notes

Genesis 1:1 uses bara (ברא), “to create,” a verb whose subject in Scripture is always God. While bara does not by itself prove creation from nothing, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is taught plainly elsewhere: “the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3 — “not out of phainomenōn,” φαινομένων, things visible), and “He spoke, and it came to be” (Psalm 33:9). This sets the biblical view against the pagan notion of eternal pre-existing matter and against pantheism’s emanation of the world out of God’s own being.
Creation is the work of the triune God. The Father creates through the Son: “all things were made through Him” (John 1:3), “by Him all things were created” (Colossians 1:16; cf. 1 Corinthians 8:6). The Spirit is present from the first, “hovering” (merachefet, מרחפת) over the waters (Genesis 1:2). See my papers on Trinitarianism and Christology.
The structure of Genesis 1 is orderly: the first three days give form (separating light from darkness, waters from sky, sea from land), and the next three give fullness (the lights, the creatures of sky and sea, the animals and man). God’s repeated verdict that it was “good,” climaxing in “very good” (Genesis 1:31), pronounces the worth of the material creation. Genesis 2 is not a contradictory second account, as source critics have argued, but a complementary close-up of the sixth day, focused on the making of man and woman.
The Hebrew yom (יום), “day,” can denote a longer period of time, but in Genesis 1 each day is bounded by “evening and morning” and numbered in sequence, which to my mind indicates ordinary days. The Fourth Commandment grounds the human work-week in the divine creation-week: “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth … and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11). Those who hold the day-age or framework views read yom and the structure otherwise; see note 7.
The goodness of the material creation (Genesis 1:31; 1 Timothy 4:4) stands against every form of dualism or Gnosticism that treats matter as evil. The creation was “subjected to futility” through the Fall and “groans” under the curse, yet it is destined for redemption, not annihilation: it “will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20–22). See my papers on Anthropology and Eschatology.
General revelation is God’s self-disclosure in the created order, perceived by all and rendering all “without excuse” (Psalm 19:1–6; Romans 1:18–20; Acts 14:17). It reveals God’s existence, power, and goodness, but not the way of salvation, which requires the special revelation of His written and incarnate Word. See my paper on Bibliology.
The principal readings held among those who affirm biblical authority are: (a) young-earth creationism — six ordinary days and a relatively recent creation, often with a global-flood geology; (b) the day-age or progressive (old-earth) view — the “days” as long epochs, with an ancient earth; (c) the gap theory — an interval of ages between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, popularized in the older Scofield Reference Bible; (d) the framework view — the days as a literary, topical arrangement rather than a strict chronology; and (e) evolutionary creationism (theistic evolution) — God creating by means of evolutionary processes. Each is held by some who confess inerrancy; they differ in exegesis and in their relation to modern science, not necessarily in their reverence for the text.
My own grounds for the young-earth reading are chiefly exegetical: the days appear as ordinary days (note 4); the Sabbath command treats the creation week as literal (Exodus 20:11); and the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, read straightforwardly, allow little room for vast ages. I recognize that godly scholars weigh these matters differently, and that the completeness of the genealogies and the reading of the natural evidence are genuinely debated. I therefore hold the position as a settled conviction but not as a test of orthodoxy or fellowship, since it bears upon no article of the gospel. See my paper on Hermeneutics on the literal reading of Scripture.
The historicity of Adam is of a different weight than the age of the earth, because the gospel’s logic depends upon it. Paul sets the “one man” Adam against the “one man” Christ as the two federal heads of humanity (Romans 5:12–19; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45), so that the imputation of sin and of righteousness alike hangs on a real Adam. See my papers on Hamartiology and Anthropology. An old-earth view and a historical Adam are entirely compatible; denying a historical Adam is far more serious, touching the doctrines of sin and salvation themselves. On this, see C. John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?
God created not from need (Acts 17:25) but freely, for His own glory: “all things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16); “by Your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11); “whom I created for My glory” (Isaiah 43:7). The creation displays God’s perfections, and the creature made in His image exists to know and to glorify Him — “man’s chief end,” as the catechism has it.