Addressing the elasticity of historicity...

It should not be a surprise that the "book binders" do not want to make a stand against historicity. In fact it should be noted that some "book binders" are some of the foremost proponents and defenders of the historicity of revelation in other quarters. So how do they escape the quite obvious problem when denying sequence that they retain historicity?

The first thing is to limit historicity. Here the idea is to discover what is essential to understand as necessarily real history and affirm that - then digress from there to what is not necessarily historical. "Book binders" will confess that Adam must be and was an historical man, that he really was created perfect, that he really did fall and plummet mankind into an estate of sin and misery. They will, and often are foremost in supporting, that God did really enter into a covenant of works with Adam for perfect obedience upon pain of death. This much they will establish and defend as ardently as any 24hr fellow. There is probably more that they will affirm - but what is important is that they affirm these things as the core historical truth. Other descriptions of the creation events may not be as "real" and may only frame a story rather than a history. Upon the latter it should be noted that it differs little from historic liberalism and the issue becomes how elastic or how static does the concept of historicity need to be to maintain orthodoxy.

Now, it does us no good to simply claim that all Scripture is equally historical - or that everything that falls with in a development of time is communicating sequence as one of its necessary elements. The Gospels clearly destroy that approach. However, we must I think, be able to apply exegetical disciplines properly. We should be able to say that "historicity" means this here, and that "historicity" means the same thing over here. In that way we should be very careful when making the historicity of Genesis 1 limited to a core and the "historicity" of Mark 15 unlimited.

Limiting terms to a core is one way of affirming "historicity" while denying sequence, but you can also stretch the term. For example one person may deny that Satan actual came in the form of a serpent, but affirm that there really is an historical creature called "Satan" and that he really did historically tempt Eve, and thus claim that he believes in the historicity of the temptation of Eve. In like manner, the "book binders" may affirm that God really did historically create all the things He said He did in Genesis 1 and that God really interacted by Word historically, but deny that the time sequence of one day passed between some of the creative fiats. The text may say evening and morning day..., but what is meant is not historical here, however, since I affirm the historicity of creation and of God and man, I am still understanding things historically.

Again, this kind of stretching is a danger - for it equivocates on the meaning of at least the terms evening, morning and day. It is my belief that whether we limit the historicity to a core, or we stretch the meaning of the term to fit broader semantic terms, which really means non-historic terminology, the effect is virtually synonymous, and that is we force the text into literal ambiguity and we limit the scope of revelation to the written story and detach it from the real history. It is interesting to note here what Murray said concerning revelation and "History" - he said that special revelation and historical revelation always follow the same pattern. This would mean that the special revelation of Genesis 1 - must have a correlative pattern in history - Which in fact it does - if you see the week (7 - 24 hr periods) historically. =-)