Following up on the message about the creation account in Genesis 1, as anticipated there have been many questions and comments, and so I will plan to make several blog attempts at responding to them.  Someone asked me what the goal was on Sunday in presenting the Framework position as our view on how to read the 7 creation days in Genesis 1.  The primary goal was simply to preach God’s Word faithfully as I’ve come to understand it.  That’s my primary task from the pulpit – to communicate God’s Word regardless of how others may respond.  A second goal was not primarily to persuade those who may come with a different perspective on the 7 days, but rather that those who have differing positions would be able to recognize that there is biblical validity in the other positions, and that this would not be a source of division.  

It’s this latter part that I think can be most difficult, particularly for those who like I once did, come from the seven 24-hour day view of the creation account.  One of the questions I received from many was the concern that reading Genesis 1 as a literary framework rather than the traditional model would open a Pandora’s box of liberal skepticism of the whole of Scripture.  While I sympathize with this concern, and have seen many liberal scholars undermine the Word of God by denying it’s truthfulness and historicity, I think there are fears in this that need not be.

First, the most important thing is that we let the Scripture say what it intends to say, and let the chips fall where they may.  We should never, ever, be afraid to proclaim what the Bible says and what it means.  God’s Word will stand, and the greater danger is a failure to faithfully proclaim God’s Word.  Certainly, people will abuse what the Bible says, but fear cannot be a factor in our exegesis of the text.  This is the great tragedy of legalism.  If you recall, the Pharisees were so fearful that someone might break one of God’s laws that they built a fence around the law with their rules and regulations so that no one would even get close to touching the sin.  But such rules are not from God, and were specifically rejected by Christ.  Thus we must resist all attempts to “fence” God’s Word from the possibility of someone distorting what the Framework view teaches simply motivated by fear or slippery-slope arguments.  

Part of the problem in these discussions for those who come from the traditional position as I did, is that this seems like a much more significant issue than I think is warranted.  Often we are tempted to view something as a really big deal because others have told us that it was such a serious issue.  But the question is, were we told rightly?  Does the Bible raise it to the level of a first-order doctrine, like maybe a pastor you’ve had in the past did?  If so, I encourage you to reexamine the relative importance of one’s position on the question of how to read Genesis 1.  I can understand this.  Ten years ago, if I’d heard that a pastor of a church drank alcohol, I would have left and never returned, because I’d been taught that no good Christian could drink (silly now, but it’s what I believed growing up).  Funny how God’s Word can change that perspective.  I think the same is true of this issue.  How one answers this question of the reading of Genesis 1 will have little impact on how you read the rest of the Bible.  We must only hold out as primary what the Bible holds out as primary, and we will never defend or teach anything as passionately or voraciously as the gospel.

Secondly, the fear factor I believe is rooted in a misunderstanding of the Framework position.  The framework position completely affirms both the historicity and the inerrancy of Scripture.  Moses is telling us real history in Genesis 1-2, but he is telling it in particular literary framework.  It is wrong and unfair to read ancient history by modern standards of historical reporting.  Where as sequence and chronology and exactness is required for good history today, that’s only been true of the past century or so, and thus you will find things in the text, both Old Testament and New, that may not be acceptable to modern historical standards.  But we must not read it as a modern history, but an ancient one.  Completely reliable in all that it professes to be true.  Remember the example of how Matthew and Mark mix up the order of Jesus’ temptations.  Unless you are willing to say that those gospels have error, there is no reason to believe that Moses’ dischronologization imports any error into the book of Genesis.  Moses did so with theological motivations, as did the gospel writers.

In the next blog, we will consider a few more thoughts about the strength of the Framework View.   Keep reading!