Is six-day creation a stumbling block to would-be believers?  If so, let them also stumble at the offense of the cross.  Let them scoff at swimming axe heads, manna from heaven and, most unbelievable of all, the resurrection of the dead.  It is the convicting work of the Holy Spirit that will convince the gainsayers, not the reluctant witness of a timid church.

[Editor’s note: In 1999, the Reformed Church in the United States published a defense of its affirmation of six-day creation as, in essence, status confessionis. Included in that defense was the following apologia by RCUS Elder Wayne Johnson.]

In Six Days

Why does the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) feel it necessary to articulate a doctrine of Creation that may well impose a shadow of separation between us and many beloved brethren?  Are we, as some have suggested, clinging to and/or creating distinctives merely to justify our separate ecclesiastical existence?

That’s a fair question and, in a spirit of true biblical ecumenicity, it deserves an answer.  Let us consider the situation.

Our ministers in the RCUS are, for the most part, underpaid.  Many of our congregations are located on the northern plains, where population has been dwindling for decades. A man serving in many of those pulpits had best know how to repair an engine, replace old wiring and plant a garden. We have no [denominational] seminary.  We struggle to provide for retired ministers and widows.  In short, things might be a lot easier were we to simply fold the tent and merge with a larger body.

The unique history of the RCUS has also created an outlook on the world that is arguably myopic, but also wonderfully immune to the vagaries of the modern evangelical version of political correctness.  At the dawn of the [Twentieth] Century, there were large and prosperous seminaries, universities, colleges, orphanages and hospitals that bore our denomination’s name.  Churches dotted the land. RCUS publications flourished.  The ministry was respected and well-paid, but sadly, like Micah’s priest, most chose the comforts of this world over service in what remained of the once mighty RCUS.  She became a church without ministers, and in many eyes, a church without a future, held together through the perseverance of her people and their elders, many the sons of Russian-German immigrants who had known little else than poverty and hard times in unforgiving climates.

Yet, it pleased God to preserve this tiny communion. Union for the sake of union would hold little attraction for these brethren, who had already paid the price.  There were few lofty aspirations among the sons of the RCUS, but fewer liberals, still.  She was a parochial and isolated body, ignoring and largely ignored by the broader Reformed community.  In time, as language and cultural barriers fell between the RCUS and her sister Reformed and Presbyterian denominations, warm and affectionate relations would flourish.  Still, there would remain an historically conditioned, and largely justified, suspicion of things “new.”

“Don’t you people get cable? You sound like ‘fundamentalists?'”  The answer, of course, is that when it comes to the doctrine of Scripture, we are fundamentalists, and more…much more.  For Reformed believers, Christ is not only the mediator of redemption, but also the mediator of creation.  He is truly Lord and Savior.  “All things were created by him, and for him.”  There is a purpose and plan to our Creator God’s handiwork that encompasses far more than the fundamentalists’ singular focus on individual soteriology.

Nor is our God, “…who of nothing made heaven and earth and all that in them is, who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence….” [Heidelberg Q.62], the contingent God of neo-evangelicalism. Rather, He is the great “I AM” whose “creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move.” {Heidelberg Q.28]  He is a God who “redeems me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me that, without the will of my Father in Heaven, not a hair can fall from my head, yea, that all things must work together for my salvation.” [Heidelberg Q.1]

What the Bible has to say about the creation, therefore, is vitally important to how Christians are called to live their lives.  Christ is Lord of all the earth, and He has purposed to deal with us in this world according to His good pleasure.  In other words, we affirm not only the sovereignty of God over salvation, but over all things, all events and all meaning.  We affirm the transcendence and immanence of God, resisting the nascent existentialism of modern evangelicalism that presumes a God indifferent to history, (as well as the truncated gospel of the fundamentalists).

Where theology is replaced by psychology, when God created the world, how God created the world, or even if God created the world, are no longer important.  Relationships are important.  Feelings are important.  Like poor relations unexpectedly showing up at the family reunion, adherents of six-day creation are greeted with tight smiles and embarrassed looks from brethren who can probably still recall when they “used to believe that, too.”  In fact, most still do, but simply don’t see why such an obvious stumbling block ought to be hurled at the feet of prospective converts who are bound to associate such views with narrow-minded backwood preachers.

To the modern church, six-day creation is an unnecessary impediment to both evangelism and respectability. It also embraces many faithful, but uneducated Christians in a catholicity that is not entirely welcomed by many scholars.  While we are passionately dedicated to the proposition of an educated ministry, we reject outright the notion that scholarship must necessarily beget an effete ministry for whom affirming the inspiration, authority and infallibility of the Bible is a mark of theological autism.  We also reject the notion that any true doctrine may be discredited simply because uneducated people believe it.  Our goal must be to embrace the truth, regardless of the company which the truth may keep.

“But why fight about such things?” ask our fraternal brethren.  The simple fact is that we don’t fight.  We agree.  Rather than bringing dissension and discord, we in the RCUS have been blessed by God with a wonderful harmony of spirit and doctrine regarding the doctrine of Scripture and the doctrine of Creation which that doctrine of Scripture demands.

We see in the broader evangelical church in general, and in her seminaries in particular, a dangerously low view of the Word of God.  “Thus sayeth the Lord,” all too often sounds like “Hath God said?”  We plead with our Reformed brethren, and the broader evangelical church, as well, to hear what we are saying.  Our insistence upon the doctrine of six-day creation is a direct, and necessary, extension of our doctrine of Scripture. 

Our membership not only believe their Bibles, they demand that their ministers believe them, too, without reservation.  And by God’s grace, they do.  We recognize the obligation to defend our position among our fraternal brethren, and we will.  But we defend it as we defend the Faith and the Bible itself.  God’s Word is clear.  To defend six-day creation is to defend the proposition that the Bible means what it says, and that its meaning is clear.

If our Bibles mean whatever we want them to mean in Genesis 1, then why not at every other juncture where God’s Word offends the sensibilities of man’s reason?   95 theses, Calvin’s Institutes, the Reformed Creeds and the blood of the martyrs aside, if there is a single cornerstone upon which the Reformation rests, it is that the Bible is the Word of the Living God.  Infallible. Inspired. A light unto our path, and a lamp unto our feet.

As Reformed believers, we know that it has been the Holy Spirit Himself who has preserved His Word.  We have it. It need not be authenticated by church councils or learned doctors.  Nor do we need the permission of academics to believe what the Bible clearly says.  The Spirit of God knows His own Word, and continues to testify to its veracity in the hearts of the believing church.

Our critics will complain that we say too much, assume too much and demand too much.  We leave no room for differing opinions among faithful men.  We can only answer that the stated position of our Church represents the deeply held conviction of our people.  It is, by God’s grace, what we believe.  It is what we would have our children taught.  Most importantly, it is what the plainest reading of a decidedly unambiguous text teaches.

In answering our critics, have we not also earned the right to ask questions of our own?  What purpose is served, may we ask, in seeking to allegorize the Biblical account of Creation?  What motive is fed?  What secret lust whetted?  We can only reply that no good fruit has come of this “symbolical” tree.  Is six-day creation a stumbling block to would-be believers?  If so, let them also stumble at the offense of the cross.  Let them scoff at swimming axe heads, manna from heaven and, most unbelievable of all, the resurrection of the dead.  It is the convicting work of the Holy Spirit that will convince the gainsayers, not the reluctant witness of a timid church.

We seek not division, but rather unity in the truth.  We would count it a blessing if our fraternal brethren joined us in our affirmation, but that is not our first purpose.  Our purpose is to maintain the unity with which we have been blessed, and to insure, insofar as God ordains, that this unity of doctrine continue to be shed abroad in our churches, from generation unto generation.

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.  And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8: 11-12).

Wayne Johnson is an Elder at Covenant Reformed Church of Sacramento (RCUS), Member of the Board of Governors of City Seminary and Editor of Leben Magazine.

RCUS-Position-Creation Days-1999