Did God Create the World in Six Days?

Although not as an infallible teaching, the Magisterium views the “days” of the creation story in Genesis as symbolic. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

“Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (337).

In subsequent paragraphs, the Catechism puts the words “six days” in quotation marks to indicate that they are to be taken in a qualified sense, and not as literal days (see 339, 342).

For a detailed study on the Church’s teaching concerning symbolism in the Creation story, see Jimmy Akin’s article “Does Symbolism Undermine Biblical Authority?” in the November-December 2017 issue of Catholic Answers Magazine.