A Framework for History...
Coming to this seminary I knew that I would have to confront the so-called "framework hypothesis" - so I'm getting a head start. I will have to meet this head to head in The Doctrine of Man class, but I thought I might as well start my defense early.
A while ago I was honored to teach a class on the Sabbath and the transfer from the seventh day to the first. I took a different approach than typical and placed emphasis on the significance of the "week" and the bibles use of time frames to set forth truths about redemption. As I studied I gained more and more appreciation for the actual structure of a week, that it is composed of 7 days. For a "restoring" that happened on an 8th or 16th day and the Holy Spirit thought we should know this - for circumcision being done on the 8th day and not the 9th and so on. Now some might be thinking that I am heading into the murky waters of numerology, and maybe there is a little bit of truth in that fear, but I must say that there is an obvious fact of a seven day week throughout creation that has never been undone. The French and the Russians both tried to change this (During the French Rev they tried for a 10 day week, the Russian went for a 6 day week) but neither were successful.
I could delve deeper into such structures, but my purpose here is to say - why would God reveal the greatness of redemption using the structures of time sets like the day (24 hrs) and the week (7, 24 hr periods) later in redemptive history and not have set up the time set itself?
Let me be more clear: The "framework hypothesis" constricts God's redemptive revelation to the literary devise, and perhaps inadvertently, perhaps volitionally, denies it from the actual history/chronology itself. The 24 hr view retains both!
In future post I plan to get more into a defense of my view and a critique of the "framework" view. I will try to unpack the supposed problem of day 1 and day 4 light creation, and address the diversionary language of "literary artistry" and "thematic arrangement" ( I say diversionary because the presupposition is that a 24 hr literal view must deny such - which is not true). For now let it suffice that the history of the world and the sacred history in the Scriptures have all been with in the "framework" of God's time sets - Which leads me to affirm a "framework hypothesis" - but not one that is bound only to literature or meta-physical thought, but rather one that uses history as well as literature, physical as well as meta-physical. Much like the rest of redemptive history actually, and that is the point isn't it?
2 comments:
Do you mean that the literary and numerical framework in the scriptures of Genesis 1 echoes God's speech elsewhere?
That the numerical order of time in which we currently live is as constant as the rising of the sun in this current theatre of God's glory as it anticpates and serves God's final self-revelation in our Savior Christ Jesus is a powerful and biblical argument for the historicity of Genensis one.
Also, my eyes ran across the opening pages of a theological work that spoke well in general to the topic at hand:
"Now it pleased God according to His eternal good pleasure to speak concerning Himself outside of Himself, to let His Word proceed ad extra." ... "For the Scripture teaches us that all things are made through the Word, and that without the Logos nothing is made that is made, so that the universe is the the created Logos. And this Word is not like a dead handwriting, but it is the living Word of God which continues to speak concerning Himself. It is because God spoke in the beginning that the world received its original existence. It is because God speaks that the world continues to exist: for He upholds all things by the Word of His power. Hence the universe is a speech of God, variegated and differentiated in many words, yet concentrating on one theme, "the living God Himself," and in all its rich unending variation constituting the one Word of God created."(Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 17)
May God give you and your family rest by the peace we have with Him by His Son in our flesh-the Lord of the Sabbath!
Thanks for the thoughts - they are right up my alley! I am especially excited by the Hoeksema quote which solidifies and beautifies the great confession of the Christian that the Word - created for..."the universe is a speech of God...and in all its rich unending variation constituting the one Word of God created." It just doesn't get much better than this!
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