Well... Here goes my first blog entry...

First I want to thank Kirk for all his hard work to educate and inform us through this medium.  I am so grateful for his study and scholarship and how hard he thinks about Scripture in order to serve the church.  I appreciated your post as well Tito and look forward to future contributions...

I also want to thank those of you who read this blog.  We hope it has served you, and would want to convey our respect to you for your desire to learn, which your participation in this format represents.

And one final commendation... We have been so blessed by all the discussion on our series through the book of Genesis.  Your commitment as a church to grasping the word of God has been so inspiring and invigorating.  Your questions have been excellent and we encourage you to keep asking them...

To that end, I want to try to answer some of them...

One important point of clarification that I wanted to address has to do with a common misconception regarding the Framework position.  It is to connect that position with evolutionary processes, old-earth theories, or some scientific motivation.  If that were the case, it would certainly be correct (and loving) to be very concerned.  But the Framework view is NOT based on, or necessarily associated with, those things.  It is not trying to accommodate academia by questioning the authority or historicity of scripture, but just the contrary, it is seeking to be faithful in expositing what it finds in the Bible, within its appropriate literary context.

Just like we understand a parable differently from apocryphal literature and historical narrative from the poetry of the Psalms... the Framework position is attempting to faithfully render what appears to be more figurative than literal language recounting the actual creation of the world.

Examples would be the differing order of creation in the opening of Genesis.  Plants (day 3) come before man (day 6) in chapter one, while in chapter two the order is man then plants and all apparently occurring on the same day.  The 24-hour view answer I suggested on Sunday was the possibility that chapter two’s account of no bush or plant being in the earth is a reference just to no plant or bush being in Eden (i.e. Moses is zooming in on a particular aspect of creation from day six – that of humanity’s creation in the garden), but the word in verse 5 for earth usually connotes the entire planet.  The Framework position is simply trying to handle that honestly by saying that a figurative understanding of the creation account in Genesis chapter one synthesizes such differences more satisfactorily.

Another apparent inconsistency occurs in chapter two, verse 4: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day (singular) that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens (plural).”

This verse doesn’t appear to use the word, “day,” in the literal 24-hour understanding that the traditional view holds.  If that interpretative guideline is to remain consistent, it would seem like it would then have to insist that God made the earth and the heavens in a single day rather than a week.

The Framework theory is not trying to undermine Scripture in that but rather to render it carefully and accurately for what the text means in those more difficult to reconcile verses.

Another point of help for those struggling with the Framework position is to know that it is not making a statement at all about the length of the day, the age of the earth or the order of creation.  It is simply asserting that the framework put forth in chapter one is not trying to convey a chronology or literal 24-hour day... but rather that the literary pattern of days 1, 2 and 3 correspond to days 4, 5 and 6 with the first establishing the realms and the second populating them with rulers.  The point of that “framework” being that Yahweh and not Baal is the Creator of everything and, more specifically, the Creator of the promised land (realm), which he will establish with his people (rulers) for his glory.  Remember the context entails the recipients of Genesis about to embark on the conquest of Canaan.

The Framework position is also not insisting that because God is said to rest in Exodus 20 at the end of the 6 creation days, and we know his rest must be figurative (he can’t get tired), then the 6 days must also be figurative.  They could be literal 6 days and a figurative 7th day, it’s just open to the possibility that not all uses of “day” in regard to the creation account have to be read the same way.

In the Framework theory, you can actually believe that Genesis one teaches a literary framework and still believe that the earth was made in 6, 24-hour days.  The point for the Framework position is that you can’t demand that the 6, 24-hour day position be the only way to understand the text.  It could be that, but it could also be a longer period and in different order because the chronology and duration of each day is not the point anyway.

I hope that clears up some of the misconceptions of the Framework perspective, and helps you to see why our position as a team allows for this view as it attempts to honor the text and exalt the sovereign Creator alone who spoke the universe and everything into existence for his glory.

I also want to continue to encourage and uphold those who remain convinced of the traditional view.  As I mentioned on Sunday it is the “plainer” reading of the text.  The Bible does present creation in a specific order and appears to define the length of each day with this formula, “There was evening and there was morning the first day.”

The Old Testament also speaks of the creation event similarly using our understanding of day as the reference point for God’s creative activity.  When God confronts Job in chapter 38 he reminds him that he was not present when the world was formed and uses language that conveys the boundaries of the sea and the establishment of the “dawn” as something that occurred dramatically and instantly.  The Psalms also speak regularly of the power of God’s word immediately bringing the cosmos into being in a way that coincides more closely with the 24-hour rendering of the creation days in Genesis chapter one.  The same is true of the prophets and verses could be cited in the gospels and epistles as well.

Those references provide further evidence that causes me to lean towards the 6, 24-hour day creation view as they don’t use language that conveys a process or long periods of time being involved in “the beginning.”  But remember the bible doesn’t forbid such a position, and where fellow Christians who love God and maintain that Yahweh exclusively made the galaxies and he did so by the power of his word, but believe the earth might be old, and the order of creation not sequential, we want to be charitable.  We also want to be humble and honest where their position is stronger at some points than the one we might be convinced is correct.

May we as a church experience profound wonder and awe as we study the superlative splendor of the Creator revealed in Genesis.  His artistry and authority are so beyond our comprehension and so very worthy of our worship.

Bob