“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11).
Federal Visionists love this verse because they think that God created the world in six days. This naïveté betrays the anti-intellectualism of the Federal Vision.
The Modern Reformed faith has always held that the first chapter of Genesis is poetic, and as everyone knows, poetry cannot be used to convey history. Poetry always compromises accuracy.
This becomes even more clear when we notice that the sun was not created until the fourth day, yet there were mornings and evenings for the first three days, not to mention the creation of light on the first day.
The only explanation for this chronological gaffe is that God is communicating poetically rather than historically. This violation of the law of non-contradiction leads us to the obvious conclusion that we cannot not take this account literally. Thus, the first chapter of Genesis is a poetic vision of how the world was definitely not created.
Federal Visionists wrongly accuse us of being dishonest with the text. On the contrary, our position is not only honest, but heroic. When the doctrine of the Creation ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given us, we openly rejected it. We preached against it. We took every risk.
