Augustine held that an omnipotent God did not need six days to create, that God created all things simultaneously (in a single moment), and that the revelation of God’s creative activity in terms of ‘six days’ was an accommodation to human understanding designed to convey certain logical or causal relationships among the creatures. See Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, trans. John Hammond Taylor, SJ (New York: Newman Press, 1982), 36-37, 154. Cf. Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1980), 435-36. Calvin disagreed, maintaining that divine accommodation does not always have to do with what God says but sometimes with what God does. That God too six (literal) days to complete his work was itself the divine pedagogy. See John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (Edinburg: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), 78.
Bruce L. McCormack, "Introduction," in Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction