My Top Twelve Books of 2016 - #10: Creation in Six Days

This post is continues my series counting down my favorite books of 2016. You can find my other posts on this site.

Here I’ll focus on James B Jordan’s book Creation in Six Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis One. This book is definitely the most narrowly focused in my countdown this year—it’s a collection of essays responding to journal articles on a single chapter of the Bible. It might be tempting, then, to think that this book is totally impractical and only enjoyable to egg-headed johnnies like me. Not so.

Creation in Six Days challenges the view of Genesis 1 known as the “Framework” view and presents a “defense of the traditional reading.” Though there are many different versions of the framework view, there hold certain things in common. The defining characteristic of the frameworkers is that they teach that the creation account in the first chapter of Genesis is not meant to teach us about history. Instead, in this view, the author uses a six-day workweek as a “framework” for talking about God’s creation. “Genesis one is not concerned to tell us how God created the world,” the frameworker says, “but that God created the world.” Jordan: “These texts, in other words, exist for ideas only and not for history.” (19) Jordan argues the position that Genesis 1 is to be taken as God’s creation of all things in the course of a normal workweek of six solar days with one day of rest.

How can Jordan hold to such a view? Is he not embarrassed that the vast majority of theologians disagree with him? It’s true that the majority of today’s scholars hold to some position other than the six-day view, but Jordan helps us see ourselves in the context of history:

“…[W]e have three groups that have always seen the text as clearly and obviously teaching a recent six-day creation that is chronologically datable from the Bible: (1) the historic Church and historic Judaism; (2) present-day “traditional conservatives”; and (3) unbelievers. We are left with a small group of evangelicals and other types of conservative Christians who are committed to believing the bible while also being very impressed with the constructs of modern science.” (19)

So, in the light of the history of theology, the frameworkers are in the minority. When folks today talk about “the majority of scholars,” they mean the majority of scholars alive today. But why should we use this as a standard? Why not give more credence to the traditional view? Chesterton once said that tradition is democracy extended through time—that tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. To listen only to the voices of those alive at one time in history is to only listen to an elite club--one where to qualify, you need only have a pulse at the time. But why this time and not some other? Why 2016 and not 1316?

My guess is that this is a result of what is commonly termed the Enlightenment. Modern man sees the development of modern science as being the hinge upon which history swings. NT Wright summarizes this view:

A great many people believe that prior to the modern world everything was shrouded in ignorance and superstition. Without modern science, people didn’t really know what the world was like. Without our newly enlightened understanding, they thought that the world was flat or the moon was made of green cheese or fairies at the bottom of the garden…We have escaped the primitive slavery of such views. We are liberated; we are progressive.

…Whenever you hear someone say, ‘Now that we live in the twenty-first century…’ or ‘In this day and age you would expect…’, you are hearing the Enlightenment, and it’s assumed we have all signed on. (Simply Good News, 84-85)

So the framework position is a minority position. But it’s not enough to say so. In 70 AD Christians were a persecuted minority. This is not a reason to drop their view of Jesus as Lord. We should evaluate a position based on its biblical merits.

So why should Christians reject the framework reading? Jordan’s answer: such a reading is gnostic. So what does it mean to be gnostic? “Gnosticism entails a number of different things, but one thing it means is the rejection of history in favor of mere ideas.” (20) For the frameworker, Genesis 1 is a long poem, not to be read as history and any attempt to read it as historic truth is “wooden literalism.” Shudder.

This is similar to the early gnostics who read much of the New Testament the same way.

For the gnostic, it does not matter whether Jesus really rose from the grave or not. What matters is the idea of resurrection, or the idea of a virgin birth, or the idea of the mighty acts of God, or even the idea of history (as opposed to the facts of history). Once we understand the idea embedded in a supposedly historical narrative, we can dispense with the historical events. (20)

This rings true to me. Most of the papers I’ve read espousing the framework view think that if they can (1) find what seems to be a contradiction in the text, (2) find the theological meaning of the text, and (3) find the structure of it, they can drop the history. Instead of finding a way to solve what looks like a contradiction in the Bible, frameworkers assume the account is not historical. But how would this apply to some other passage of Scripture? Jordan answers this question by looking at the ten plagues on Egypt and the exodus.

First of all, we note that twentieth-century historians of the ancient world cannot find any evidence of a vast host of people leaving Egypt at the time the Bible says it happened. Moreover, according to the text of Exodus, all the Egyptian crops and cattle were destroyed, along with the Egyptian army and a large number of Egypt’s sons. Modern “scientific” archaeology and history find no such event. Therefore, we have to look at the text of Exodus anew. Maybe these events never really happened. Maybe they are just a “true myth,” providing archetypical “ideas” that undergirded God’s relationship with Israel.

Well, do we find any indications in the text that the ten plagues are only a story, that they never really happened? Yes, we do. According to Exodus 9:6, all the livestock of Egypt died in the fifth plague, but according to 9:19, there were still more livestock to be killed in the seventh plague. Also, according to Exodus 8:24, the insects of the fourth plague destroyed all of Egypt, clearly including the plants, while in 9:31, the flax and barley were destroyed later on the seventh plague, and then in 10:15, the locusts of the eighth plague ate all the remaining plants. This is a much clearer “contradiction” than anything found in Genesis 1…

Well, sincere have found such clear indications that these plagues are not to be taken as real history, do we find a literary framework to posit as some kind of alternative? Certainly. There are three groups of three plagues, and then a tenth. The first plague in each cycle begins with a command to go to Pharaoh in the morning. The second in each cycle begins with a command simply to go to Pharaoh. The third in each cycle is not announced to Pharaoh at all. The first three plagues are brought by Aaron’s staff, while the least three are brought by Moses’ hand. Etc. So we have a clear literary structure. (92-93)

Should we, because of these factors, say that the ten plagues on Egypt are not historical, but are merely a foundational fiction for the people of Israel? If we are to use the framework view as our guide, we must. And as Jordan goes on to show, a similar process could give us reason to give up Jesus's resurrection as history (94-95). This is not a responsible way of reading the Bible and believing Christians should reject it.

The book addresses many other concerns including challenges brought by modern scientists, but for now, I’ll bring this post to a close. Creation in Six Days is a steady, careful response to the framework view of Genesis 1. But whatever your view, this book is worth reading.

Buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Six-Days-Defense-Traditional/dp/1885767625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481066771&sr=8-1&keywords=creation+in+six+days