The Length of the Days of Creation (Objections)
The creation story speaks of creation over six days, considering the days to be 24 hours long. In contrast, the following objections have arisen, questioning this view.
Objection: The account of creation is not a description of actual events, but should be understood figuratively. The authors' intention is merely to convey faith, not to provide scientific details.
Response: The author of Genesis did not write fictional stories, but rather, God Himself communicated the true facts to him in the form of later prophecy. The Bible's narrative is a precise historical account, and important biblical teachings are based on this. Jesus, the Teacher of the Scriptures, and every author of the New Testament frequently referred to this. Nowhere in the scriptures do we find any reference to a symbolic meaning of primeval history. This is a trustworthy historical document. (Matthew 19:4; 1 Timothy 2:13-14)Objection: The Bible's authors were biased by their worldview and the knowledge of their time. As children of their era, they could not make definitive statements regarding science.
Response: This hypothesis is based on the mistaken assumption that biblical statements are the products of human imagination or theories. However, the Scriptures did not originate from human will; rather, they were spoken by men whom God called, moved by the Holy Spirit. This explains why the authors, independent of contemporary worldviews, pagan myths, or the spirit of the age, always proclaimed the truth of God's Word. Therefore, it does not matter whether they themselves fully understood what they wrote.Objection: The days referred to occurred before the Sun, as a celestial body, existed. God created the Sun on the fourth day, which is necessary to define the days. Thus, we cannot speak of days before that.
Response: The alternation between day and night and the length of the day do not necessarily depend on the Sun, but rather on two factors that were present from the first day of creation: a. the presence of a light source; b. the Earth's rotation around its axis. The constant length of the day is ensured by the Earth's steady rotation around its axis. Over millennia, the length of a day has changed only slightly; there is no physical basis for the idea that a day could represent a thousand years.Objection: There are stars billions of light-years away, meaning they are at least that many billions of years old.
Response: A light-year is not a unit of time but of distance. God created the stars on the fourth day, and according to the objection, no star would have been visible in the sky when creation was completed. However, God showed Abraham the innumerable stars visible in the sky. By the end of the creation week, everything was finished and complete. Since then, all of creation has been visible. The light of the stars was ready just as the stars themselves were, meaning the light from the most distant stars had already reached Earth.Objection: The millions of years required by the theory of evolution would have been inconceivable to the authors of the Bible. Therefore, they replaced the long ages with the more understandable days.
Response: The Bible is well-acquainted with large numbers. It does not say that God completed His work over thousands of thousands of years, but on the seventh day. (Genesis 2:2)Objection: It is possible to insert a long period of time between the first two verses of Genesis 1, and thus the Bible would allow the necessary long period for the theory of evolution.
Response: This theory is known as the Gap Theory, which suggests that before the actual creation, another world had already been created. This creation occurred at the time marked as "In the beginning." After this, Satan fell, and the original world was ruined. Then, God created life again. The Scriptures contradict this theory. The universe was created in six days, with no long periods in between. The fall of Satan did not happen here or at this time (John 12:31; John 14:30). The destruction of life occurred through the Flood.
Werner Gitt "A teremtés bibliai tanúságtétele" Evangéliumi kiadó, Budapest, 1996