The Creation Week vs. the Framework Hypothesis of Genesis 1-2

by Gary North

Here, I deal with the framework hypothesis of Genesis 1 that was offered by Meredith Kline in the late 1950’s. I show why it is not biblical.

The framework hypothesis denies that the six days of Genesis 1 were sequential. Instead, it says that the days were literary. Day 1 paralleled day 4. Day 2 paralleled day 5. Day 3 paralleled day 6.

Why would anyone offer such an exegetically bizarre theory? Because the sequence of the text’s six days cannot be reconciled with cosmic evolution. On day 4, God created the stars. On day 1, He created the earth. Framework theologians refuse to break with cosmic evolution. So, they interpret the sequence of days as non-literal. They invoke God’s literary creativity, which somehow no one in Jewish history or church history had recognized until the early 20th century.

This strategy is intellectually futile. It buys them nothing in terms of subordinating the book of Genesis to the uniformitarian-based theory of evolution, either cosmic or biological.

Modern evolutionary theory, cosmic and biological, rests on a single hypothesis: the rate of change that we see today has always existed. This is the concept of uniformitarianism. The great defender of this theory was the forgotten geologist, James Hutton (1726-1797). His most influential disciple was Charles Lyell, whose multi-volume Principles of Geology was published from 1830 to 1833.

Just before Darwin began his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle in late 1831, Captain FitzRoy, an evangelical Christian, gave Darwin volume 1 of Lyell’s book. Darwin was 22 years old. That gift changed the world. In the first edition of On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin wrote: “He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognize as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.”

Kline’s colleague at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Edward J. Young, wrote three detailed scholarly articles for The Westminster Theological Journal that were published as a book: Studies in Genesis One (1964). This was his polite rebuttal to Kline. He avoided referring to Kline directly. Instead, he targeted another defender of the framework hypothesis: Nic Ridderbos. Young showed that the 6-1 sequence of days is the correct interpretation of the text. Kline never replied to Young’s book or articles.

I delivered this talk in 2014.