The Chronology of Creation

There are, roughy speaking, four major views of creation, each with their variants. I'll speak to the representive version of each. They are:

1) Young Earth Creationism (YEC). Holds a strict, literal view of the Genesis account, including the chronology, with the distinction that the Hebrew word yôm, translated as day, means a literal 24 hour day.

2) Day Age Creationism (DAC). Holds a strict, literal view of the Genesis account, including the chronology, with the distinction that the Hebrew word yôm, translated as day, means an indeterminate (and long) period of time.

3) The Gap Theory (GT). Holds a strict, (probably)  literal view of the Genesis account, including the chronology, with the distinction that the Hebrew word yôm, translated as day, normally means a literal 24 hour day (there are variants) and with the further distinction that there was a geological time period between Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2 over which the perfected earth decayed (due to sin being introduced by Satan) into a chaotic cosmos.

4) The Framework Theory (FT). Holds that the first chapter of Genesis uses a literary device (parallelism) relating the first three days to the last three days. It is not allegorical. It affirms that creation happened by the decree of God. It takes no position on the duration of the days, but it asserts that for the purpose of a literary presentation the correct content is presented, though the ordering is not a chronology.

Let's make a table. Historic refers to whether the events actually occurred. Literal means the events occurred exactly as the text lays out. Chronological is a subset of literal, it means that the time-ordering of the events is accurate. And here, just to be annoying, General Revelation means science which, strictly speaking, is not General Revelation but the study of General Revelation. Just like theology is the study of scripture.

The ordering of the creation days, standing on their own and independent of any view on creation, taken as a chronology, is in conflict with General Revelation. Just one of many examples: Fruit bearing trees did not appear prior to all animal life as the Genesis chronology indicates. The honest YEC response to this is: who cares, I’m going to believe the bible. The dishonest YEC response to this is that science done right (where right means the "so bad it's not even wrong" pseudo-science of Answers in Genesis) shows there is no conflict. The DAC response to this to take great liberties with the text (where, for example, fruit bearing trees bear no resemblance to, well, fruit bearing trees) in order to create a thoroughly unsatisfying Rube-Goldberg creation account that purports to reconcile strict chronology with the fossil record. 

Now let's talk about the biggest criticism of the Framework Theory, that it is not chronological and hence not literal. How serious is this criticism?

Hmm. Let's take a gander and two accounts of Jesus being tempted, from Matt. 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. There are three major temptations. Matthew orders them:

1) Stone to bread to ease hunger

2) Top of the temple, to test God

3) High place (mountain) to offer all kingdoms

While Luke orders them:

1) Stone to bread to ease hunger

2) High place (mountain) to offer all kingdoms

3) Top of the temple, to test God

Both accounts are historical, but at least one of them is not strictly chronological. If you accept that both temptation accounts are inerrant, inspired scripture, then you tacitly accept that strict chronology can be, and in fact must be, at times, sacrificed. (This is not the only example.) 

Of course what really happens, what always happens, is that that when all potential rule violations (in this case strict chronology) are laid out, then Mr. or Ms. theologian will rationalize the violations with which they are comfortable and reject those they don't like. So virtually everyone who is not a framework theorist will accept/rationalize the chronological inconsistencies of the temptation accounts (sometimes with amazing exegetical gymnastics), while regarding the chronological liberties assumed by the FT as near if not outright heresy.⁵

Because we all cherry-pick. It is one of our worst habits.

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¹ Yes all the views are historic. Do not confuse literal with historic. Historic simply means the actual events depicted did, in fact, occur in history. God did indeed create the heavens and the earth.

² DACs and YECs read the creation account in exactly the same way, accepting it word by word as a strict chronology, differing only in their interpretation of the word yôm. YECs who argue that the DAC view is not literal are simply wrong.

³ It is hard to say whether or not the Gap Theory is literal. It, like YEC and DAC, takes the Genesis account word by word. In that sense it is literal. However, the GT inserts something (something major) into the text between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, so in that sense it is not literal. I don't know. You tell me.

⁴ The Framework theory takes no position on the age of the earth, and has proponents from both views. However if you are an "old Earth" FT advocate (that's me) then you hold the one view that, given it has sacrificed strict chronology, is trivially consistent with General Revelation.

⁵ Another example: Here is a list of Paul's N instructions for church worship and polity. Um... these M are cultural! These (N-M) are prescriptive and universal! Because reasons. (I am ssooooo guilty of this. We all are. We just have different values of M.)