Volume 2 Issue 4
Page 1

October 1997

A RESPONSE ...

TO THE ENDORSEMENT OF ERROR IN THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION'S TEACHING ON THE MATTER OF CREATION

At the 25th General Assembly, meeting this past June in Colorado Springs, the assertion was made, in the course of a debate which touched upon the issue of the six day creation, that men who hold to views other than the literal six twenty-four hour days are not, in fact, taking an exception to the Standards. In support of this contention, appeal was made to various nineteenth century theologians, among them Charles and A.A. Hodge of Princeton, and Francis R. Beattie of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Pastor William Harrell, of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, VA, was not willing to allow this assertion to pass unchallenged, and most of what follows is taken from his response.

As noted above, one of those whose name was invoked on the floor of the Assembly was Francis R. Beattie, who served as professor of systematic theology and apologetics at the Louisville Seminary. In a work entitled THE PRESBYTERIAN STANDARDS, published in 1896, Professor Beattie wrote as follows:

Next, the Standards teach that the world was made in the space of six days. Here secondary creation comes chiefly into view, and the way in which the result of primary creation in chaotic form was reduced to an orderly cosmic condition during a period of six days is described. It is not necessary to discuss at length the meaning of the term days here used. The term found in the Standards is precisely that which occurs in Scripture. Hence, if the word used in Scripture is not inconsistent with the idea of twenty-four hours, or that of a long period of time, the language of the Standards cannot be out of harmony with either idea. There is little doubt that the framers of the Standards meant a literal day of twenty-four hours, but the caution of the teaching on this point in simply reproducing Scripture is worthy of all praise. The door is open in the Standards for either interpretation, and the utmost care should be taken not to shut that door at the bidding of a scientific theory against either view.

As Pastor Harrell points out, "Beattie himself writes: 'There is little doubt that the framers of the Standards meant a literal day of twenty-four hours. . .' This seems at very least an admission of original intent regarding what the framers of the WCF (Westminster Confession of Faith) meant to be understood by their use of the term 'day.' It may be argued that original intent is not our concern, but rather that we are bound more by the understanding and intention of those in American Presbyterianism who adopted the Westminster Standards. However, no amending language respecting this point can be found in the records of such American adoption of the Standards. Thus we may assume that what the Westminster divines intended by their use of the phrase, 'six days,' was adopted by American Presbyterians as well."

Charles Hodge admitted that, "According to the more obvious interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, this work was accomplished in six days. This therefore has been the common belief of Christians." He goes on to say: "It is a belief founded on a given interpretation of the Mosaic record, which interpretation, however, must be controlled not only by laws of language but by facts."

"But what," asks Pastor Harrell, "are these facts to which Hodge alludes? Are we to understand that Scripture is neither perspicuous nor sufficient in its testimony regarding something as seminal and vital as creation?"

Even more troubling, though, is the statement by A.A. Hodge that, "Since the Confession was written the science of geology has come into existence, and has brought to light many facts before unknown as to the various conditions through which the world, and probably the stellar universe, have passed previously to the establishment of the present order. These facts remain in their general character unquestionable. . ."

"This bold assertion," writes Pastor Harrell, "appears naive today, not only to believers of the creation science ilk, but to general members of the scientific community. Yet on the basis of the so-called facts of geology (not exegetical necessity), Hodge would have us make an 'adjustment of the two records (of science and Scripture).'"

We agree with Pastor Harrell's conclusion that, "It appears from this (the foregoing) that the Hodges are, in this matter, content to let man's imperfect apprehension of general revelation condition the testimony of special revelation."

A citation from the writings of Alexander Mitchell, a Church of Scotland ecclesiastical historian quotes him as asserting, first of all, that the view of the Confession which maintains that it "represents the creation of the world as having taken place in six 'natural or literal days,'" was a misunderstanding of the true teaching of the Confession, one long since abandoned by "almost all orthodox divines;" and, in the second place, that the figurative interpretation . . .of the six days of creation is no make- shift of hard-pressed theologians in the nineteenth century [but] was held by respectable scholars and divines, from early times, and was known to the framers of our Confession; and had they meant deliberately to exclude it they would have written not six days, but six natural or literal days. . ."

Pastor Harrell notes that this drivel (our characterization, not his) shows "a readiness to presume to know the minds of the Westminster divines, not as their thoughts are expressed in their writings, but rather as those thoughts were supposedly conditioned by their reading. . . .He would have us believe that simply because many of those divines had likely read the Jew, Philo, who wrote that anyone believing in a six day creation manifested a 'rustic simplicity,' the framers of the Confession must necessarily have agreed with Philo's assertion. Then, in a further stroke of revisionist fancy, Mitchell says that if the Westminster divines had meant to exclude views such as those propagated by Philo, they would have written that creation took place in 'six natural or literal days.' Thus Mitchell would move us from supposing the divines' exposure to age day theories to their being openly tolerant of such views, if not maintaining themselves a consensus in favor of such views."

Reference is also made to a quotation from THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, by one John Macpherson, who is described as a "Free Church minister, writer and translator of German theology," whose "theology was an Amyraldian type of Reformed theology"-in other words, no Reformed theology at all.

Thus, we have gone from the orthodox but mistaken (i.e., the Hodges and Beattie), to the revisionist (Mitchell), to the heretical (Macpherson). Pastor Harrell notes that "they were all driven in their understandings of the creation account, not solely by what God said in His word, but also by what men of science were saying in their day. All of them were 19th century men who lived and wrote when Darwinism was rising like an unstoppable tide. Because they themselves were not men of science, they were unable to answer the claims of science in scientific terms, and they obviously thought that theology could not answer except by way of capitulation and equivocation. This reaction of theirs, which, no doubt seemed the right one to them, must not be imported either to the framers of the Confession or to the Church courts from the 17th century to our own time."

"Regarding whether a man who holds to other than a six day view of creation is taking exception to our Confessional Standards, Robert L. Dabney has this to say: 'I would beg you to notice how distinctly either of the current theories (age day theories) contradicts the standards of our Church.' (LECTURES IN SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, p. 265).

"Dabney then goes on to say that if his students did adopt such views, they should advise their Presbyteries of their exceptions, and, believing that the Standards are in error, work to change the Standards. Such counsel still is valid and recommends, in our view, the only course which is consistent with theological and confessional integrity.

"Finally, Dabney speaks against the agnostic course advocated by the Hodges, et.al., and in support of the perspicuous and unequivocal nature of Scripture when he writes:

'Other. . . theologians have been seen advancing, and then as easily retracting, novel schemes of exegesis, to suit new geologic hypotheses. . . .unless the Bible has its own ascertainable and certain law of exposition, it cannot be a rule of faith; our religion is but rationalism. I repeat, if any part of the Bible must wait to have its real meaning imposed upon it by another, and a human science, that part is at least meaningless and worthless to our souls. It must expound itself independently; making all other sciences ancillary, and not dominant over it.' (LECTURES IN SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, P. 257).

"Therefore, I urge that we not rush, at the cries of a few men who lived in a cosmologically turbulent time, to adopt novel schemes of exegesis and endeavor to thrust them upon our fathers in the faith as well. Let us continue to understand Scripture and the Westminster Standards on this point in the plain sense of their wording, and marvel that our God has done in six days what no amount of men or natural processes could do in countless millennia, namely, create the universe out of nothing, and that in anticipation of His bringing a new creation out of the death which His Son endured for three days."