This is the third part in a series explaining my position on the first chapter of Genesis. I believe the six days of creation are meant to be taken as a framework showing how God made the earth habitable and inhabited. You can read about the literary view of creation (part one) and the objections by the literalists (part two) here and here before reading my final conclusions presented in this third part.
THE RESPONSE
Let me summarize the four basic problems that literalists have with the literary view of the days of creation (which I brought up in part two of this series): 1. They believe the motive for the framework hypothesis is a desire to reconcile science and the Bible and not from pure exegetical discipline. 2. They believe it is inconsistent with Church tradition. 3. They believe the simplest reading of the days in Genesis should be understood as 24-hour units of time. 4. They believe the figurative nature of the seventh day would lead to a rejection of the fourth commandment and a belief that we can interpret the Bible any way we like. Each of these are serious objections so let me answer them seriously but briefly.
For the most part, the discussion about science has distracted us from the true beauty of the story of creation. To suggest that the framework hypothesis is just an attempt to marry modern philosophies and sciences together with the Bible is false. However, it is not too much to assume that at times God’s natural revelation will confirm and coincide with His special revelation. Henri Blocher says, “The sciences will stimulate the interpreter from without, driving him to verify his exegesis and test the evidence, or encouraging him by favorable convergences which bear witness to the common origin of the two Books of God [general and special revelation].”(17) After all, this interpretation isn’t new. “Augustine predated the rise of modern evolution by fourteen centuries…his professed reasons for taking the days nonliterally were strictly exegetical.”(18) Ridderbos concludes, “Therefore the situation is this that though natural science may at no point decree how Scripture should be interpreted, the views it proposes may occasion the question whether what we believed should and could be derived from Scripture is in fact teaching and whether we must not exegete the relevant Scriptural data in some other way.” (19) When our exegesis is called into question by our modern observations, it is not an unworthy endeavor to study again the pertinent texts of our faith.
Second, the literalists argue that the literary view is inconsistent with Church tradition. That assertion is untrue and irrelevant. Ridderbos says, “There are interpreters who believe that the arrangement of seven days is intended as a literary form. This view was already current in the early Church (Philo of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine).”(20) But this argument isn’t even relevant. The point is not to determine the who’s who of each position but to determine what the text actually says. We don’t cast aside church tradition but it is possible for our understanding of God’s Word to change as new light is shed on the subject. In Iron’s response to the rebuke from Duncan and Hall, he says, “Ironically, Duncan and Hall, who have accused us of engaging in exegesis motivated by outside factors (what they call ‘scientific eisegesis’), themselves engage in a type of exegesis driven by the outside factor of Church tradition.”(21) Again, church tradition is important and we are “standing on the shoulders of giants”. As a result, we can see much farther into the text than we could if we didn’t have such men and women of faith going before us. But if we are to call the framework hypothesis “scientific eisegesis” then we must apply the same to those who boldly declared that the earth was round and later, to those who believed that the earth revolves around the sun.
Third, literalists argue that the simplest understanding of the word day means a literal 24-hour day. But are we to then believe that the week must be taken literally? As Hugenberger points out “A week is an unnatural (not earthly) unit of time.” (22) The day is marked by the earth’s revolution, a month is marked by the movement of the moon and a year is marked by the time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun. Where did we get the week? Besides, it is not unprecedented for the Bible to use figurative language. In fact, what makes a metaphor successful is precisely that we know what it actually means. Lee Irons uses the metaphor of the fox for Herod in Luke 13. There isn’t another meaning for the word “fox”, we know exactly what Jesus means when He refers to Herod as a fox because we know the characteristics of an actual fox. Day is used to demarcate the framework that indicates the activity of a creating God.
Finally, the seventh day in Genesis can be seen as figurative without believing that we should abandon the fourth commandment or consider the story of the Fall to be figurative. According to Noordtzij, “the six days of Genesis 1 are obviously intended as the sum of two triduums which consequently reveal a clearly pronounced parallelism, while the total arrangement is intended to place in bold relief the surpassing glory of man who attains his true destiny in the Sabbath…Given this plan of the creation account we may infer meanwhile that the author consciously used days and nights, evenings and mornings, as a literary framework.”(23) Ridderbos says, “Does the author mean to say that God completed creation in six days, or does he make use of an anthropomorphic mode of presentation? Did he arrange the works of God in a given scheme (as Von Rad, for instance, has it), or a framework (as Noordtzij has it)? I may refer at this point to Genesis 2:7 and 3:21. Does the author mean to say there that God acted as a potter and as a maker of furclothes? These surely are anthropomorphic expressions. Another anthropomorphism is the saying in Genesis 2:2 that God rested; one may not infer from it that God had to exert Himself to create the world.”(24) Lee and Kline refer to all the other nonliteral uses of the Sabbath and the number 7 in Scripture, referring to the 70 years of captivity (actually 66 or 67), the seventy “weeks” in Daniel (actually longer than 490 years) and the three uses of 14 in the genealogies of Matthew to indicate that the generation of the Messiah (some names were intentionally dropped so that there would be three sections of 14). Irons writes, “Use of the Sabbath concept to provide a literary scheme for conceptualizing redemptive history is a major feature of Scripture.”(25)
In conclusion, it is obvious that the framework hypothesis has merit on exegetical grounds. On the other hand, the 24-hour day view has a lot to explain. It cannot maintain its consistency. Either the day in Genesis 1 is an ordinary day and God used extraordinary means to give light on Day 1 and sustain vegetation on Day 3, or, the story is constructed in a framework that helps us see how God made the earth inhabitable and inhabited. The framework hypothesis is not merely a recent invention contrived by the fear that science will be proved right and God to be wrong. Rather, that God, being the Author of both has given us an account of His work to create. Even Calvin, in his refutation of the figurative or literary view, at least recognizes the presence of the framework. Rather than reject the framework hypothesis, modern interpreters should survey the evidence to see if it can stand. As for me, I believe the weight of the evidence falls to a literary interpretation and that the author employed a framework to articulate divine truths to his audience.
After reading part one, two and three of this series, what are your thoughts on the framework hypothesis?
[17] Blocher, Henri. In the Beginning (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984) 27.
[18] Hagopian, David G. The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation (Mission Viejo: Crux Press, 2001) 90.
[19] Ridderbos, N. H. Is There A Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science? (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1957) 20-21.
[20] Ibid. 11.
[21] Hagopian, David G. The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation (Mission Viejo: Crux Press, 2001) 90.
[22] Hugenberger, Gordon. “The Theology of the Pentateuch” GCTS. Spring semester 2007.
[23] Ridderbos, N. H. Is There A Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science? (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1957) 11.
[24] Ibid. 30.
[25] Hagopian, David G. The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation (Mission Viejo: Crux Press, 2001) 227.
Thank you for providing a somewhat rare simple explanation of the Framework Hypothesis/Interpretation. I wish there were more discussions around the web about this in bite-sized chunks so as to not overwhelm those of us who are more simple-minded! It's sad that "The Genesis Debate" (where I first was made aware of this view) is apparently the only popular-level book that is relatively easy to find that defends this idea with credibility.