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?