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Process Creation
A common sense, straightforward reading of Scripture has led Israelites and Christians to understand that the cosmos was created in six 24-hour days, and is only thousands of years old, but with a few exceptions. Christians have tried to harmonize Biblical beliefs with Evolutionism since the 19th century. Many Christians accepted the fact that the Earth was billions of years old and have thus tried to add God's supernatural power to the evolutionary process.
The three processes by which Christians have incorporated into the Bible is Theistic Evolutionism, the Gap Theory or Progressive Creationism (also known as Process Creation). Theistic Evolution is the most liberal, with believers often rejecting the entire Creation account. For them, God's role is starting the "Big Bang" and occasionally stepping in to supersede the natural processes.
The Gap Theory is a conservative view and both gap theorists and progressive creationists consider themslves to be Bible-believing Christians. The Gap Theory propounds a time gap of millions/billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Most versions of the Gap Theory tell us that the required time for modern science can fill this gap and during this time, God did not tell us about many events which happened. Progressive Creationists choose to believe that a "day" in the creation account is a long indefinite period of time.
Some Progressive Creationists do not agree that God did relatively much in the way of creative acts during the supposed billions of years of creation. God simply stepped in now and then to create new life forms. More conservative Progressive Creationists often agree that God did many more creative miracles - (Process Creation, where the world was created in progressive steps).
Progressive Creationists often cannot agree on most
things. However, their general beliefs include the "big bang" being
interpreted as God's way of producing this universe through
billions of years of natural processes. They also believe that the
universe is billions of years old, the days of Creation were
overlapping periods of millions of years, that Death and bloodshed
were not the result of Adam's sin and the flood of Noah's Ark did
not affect the Earth's geology.
From here, it is quite obvious that Progressive Creationism is a belief which opposes both atheistic evolutionism and the historic understanding of biblical creationism. It was only recently that the views of Progressive Creationism receive wide and favourable publicity through Christian radio, magazines and television. The advantage of Progressive Creationism is that its views are based on literal interpretations of the bible.
The most dangerous teaching in the inconsistent theory of Progressive Creation is the proposal that the creation of Adam and Eve took place after the majority of earth's history had taken place, including the mass death among the animals. The belief that death existed prior to the fall of the animals undermines the Bible's teaching of death being a result of sin.
A concern for many Christians is the Progressive Creationists' interpretation of "days" of creation as long, undefined periods of time. This claim cannot support the sound hermeneutic principles (science of understanding the Bible). Thus, Progressive Creationism is just another attempt by Christians to harmonize the modern science with the Bible. However, instead of conforming with the Bible, Progressive Creationism supports the foundational tenets of evolutionary science and causes anxiety that God's word cannot be lightly understood by the layperson.