God Sends *blank* into the World

When we consider the narrative framework for the biblical story, a handful of questions come immediately to mind. Who is the Sender, Object and Receiver in the biblical story? Who is the Agent, the Opponent and the Helper?

We might be inclined, given the way we’ve often told the biblical story, particularly the gospel story, to put it something like this: God sent Jesus (the object) to the world (receiver). No doubt many of us who grew up in an Evangelical church heard it something like this implicitly, if not explicitly.

If we did understand this to be the narrative structure of Scripture, what is the role of humanity? We are simply the passive receivers. We play no active role. Pastorally, at least, this kind of worldview becomes problematic if you want your congregation to do anything. What is there to do? God has done it all through Jesus.

And if this is the proper framework for the biblical story, who is the agent, the opponent or the helper? We’ve got God giving Jesus to the world—a perfectly biblical notion (Jn 3:16)—but is there anything working against God the Father? Is there anything at risk? In other words, where is the actual drama?

Further, with a brief narrative like God sent Jesus to the sinful world, we’ve entirely left out two-thirds of the Bible itself. This narrative has no real use for an Old Testament, except, perhaps, to highlight the necessity of Jesus in the first place. But that makes the Bible read like one of those old Russian novels (good as they are) that spend 500 pages on character sketches and background before anything substantive actually drives the plot forward.

No, the Bible is richer than this. God is more dynamic than this. The stakes are higher than this.

Perhaps, if we’re to sketch the narrative skeleton of Scripture, we can begin at the beginning. What kind of plat does the creation narrative set up?

People have read Genesis 1-2 in all sorts of way, with all sorts of conclusions drawn. I rather like certain aspects of John H. Walton’s interpretation in his recent works, The Lost World of Genesis One and The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Walton is keen to place the stories of Genesis 1-3 into its ancient context. That is, if the ancient Hebrews who originated these texts were, in fact ancient people living in the Near East, shouldn’t we expect them to think like other ancient Near Eastern (ANE) peoples, even if we also expect some key differences? In any event, we should not expect the ancient Hebrews to think just like modern (or post-modern, or post-post-modern) Western people in the 21st century.

So from Walton’s perspective, God is trying to do something very specific in the act of creation. In fact, we could say that the Creator primarily does two things in Genesis 1-2.

First, God is bringing order to the world. He is establishing peace in the midst of chaos. Consider how the story starts: “Now the earth was formless and empty…” (Genesis 1:2, NIV). Careful words studies of the Hebrew behind “formless and empty” (tohu and bohu) suggests that the implication is not a cosmic nothingness, but rather a chaotic, uninhabitable condition (for a quick analysis, you can see chapter 4 of Walton’s Lost World of Genesis One). Over the first six days of creation, then, God is reversing that chaotic and destructive state.

The second element to God’s creative activities is that he is establishing a temple for himself. This may be less obvious at first glance, but it’s perhaps the most clear when Genesis is compared with other ANE creation stories. For Walton, any ANE person, including the ancient Hebrews, hearing a story about a seven-day creation would have immediately communicated a profound fact: This is a temple creation story (Genesis One, 88-91).

Further, says Walton, when God rests on day seven, he’s resting in the way we might after we’ve moved into a new home and unpacked all our boxes. He’s taking up residence, not taking a nap (Genesis One, 71-76).

Lastly, the Garden of Eden, as so many scholars have recognized, greatly resembles the later tabernacle and temple still in Israel’s future. Eden itself is a natural temple for the Creator (Adam and Eve, 116-7).

What does all this tell us about the potential storyline for the biblical narrative? It begins to hint at God’s purpose in the story. In other words, we’ve found our Sender, Object and Receiver.

Actually, we’re quite close to where we began this post. God is indeed the Sender. The world is receiving something from him. But what is the Object? Genesis 1 makes no explicit reference to Christ, so I don’t think we can slot him in. What is being delivered to the world? Order, peace, shalom, a state of flourishing—in a word, life.

But I suspect even this Object (life, peace, order) ought to be subsumed within something even greater, something implied in the construction of a natural temple.

The temple in Eden is there in the midst of creation in order to house God, his presence, his glory. Consider, as a parallel, what happens when, later, Moses completes construction of the tabernacle, a mobile temple (Ex 40:34-38), or when Solomon consecrates the temple (1 Kgs 8:10-11). God’s glory rushes in to fill the place. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that the Garden of Eden, as a natural temple, would house God’s glory in the same way the Holy of Holies would.

The Creator’s purpose at the beginning is to send his glorious presence into creation. © 2016 Michael McKinniss

And it’s from that glory, from God’s presence, from that temple, that the life, peace and order emit.

So now we have the top portion of our narrative diagram. God is attempting to send his glory (and thereby life) into the world.

But we’re not done, of course. There is a bottom half to complete. From here our drama comes.

Finally, Faith and Science Make Friends

There are three big takeaways from John H. Walton’s Lost World of Adam and Eve. All three are positive developments for the church, though one will be controversial with many quarters.

1. Authority of Scripture

The first strong emphasis from Walton comes from his affirmation of the authority of Scripture. This has been a central tenet of Christianity at all times, but especially since the Reformation and its emphasis on sola scriptura, which came out of Luther’s insistence that the Bible ought to have the last word in matters of faith and practice.

Sola scriptura is a key for all Protestant traditions (except Anglicanism and Methodism) because it ostensibly provides a definitive test for all church doctrine. That is, if someone comes up with a wacky belief, we ought to be able to compare it with the Bible and judge whether it fits or not.

Sounds good in theory. But in practice, it’s a little tricky.

The Bible, it turns out, is not a depository of doctrinal proofs. Rather, as Walton reminds us, the Bible is a collection of ancient documents that are intimately tied to their original culture, as all writing is. This is not to say that the Bible is somehow irrelevant to contemporary cultures. Far from it. It simply means that if we are to properly understand and apply the authority of the sacred texts we hold dear, we need to do the hard—and ever evolving (oh no! I said it!)—work of understanding the ancient cultures in which they were written and read.

Here’s an illustration: I remember in high school being assigned A Tale of Two Cities for summer reading one year. Dutifully, I read it and understood hardly a word. That is, I knew the meanings of the individual words and sentences I was reading, but I didn’t really get the story. Fifteen years later I picked it up again and gave it another shot. Having learned a bit more about the French Revolution and its horrors, along with some of the English critique, Dickens’s masterpiece suddenly came alive to me. The lesson? I needed to know something about the culture in which the book was written in order to properly understand its full meaning.

The Bible is no different in this sense, and Walton is keen to remind us. Genesis—along with the rest of Scripture—is an ancient document, and we will best understand it the more we grasp ancient cultures. Without that understanding, he warns, we are making our own modern interpretations of the Bible the authority, rather than the Bible itself. And that is dangerous business.

2. Focus on Function

Another of Walton’s great achievements in this book is his persistent focus on function. Whether he is discussing the creation account of Genesis 1 or the various aspects of Adam and Eve, Walton again and again brings us back to the central question for an ancient culture? What are we here for?

Just this weekend, my pastor made this statement: The two most important days of your life are, first, the day you were born, and, second, the day you figure out why.

Think about it. Every person ever has wondered at this fundamental question. Every last one. Why? Because it has massive implications for how each of us will pursue life. Or, if we find that our answer to this central question turns negative or meaningless, we quickly find that the pursuit of life no longer seems worthwhile. Defining humanity’s purpose sounds like a subject of biblical importance.

Where all the stuff came from? Well, that seems like a distant question, in many ways. Whatever your theories on material origins, the stuff is all here and we need to figure out what we’re supposed to do with it. Discovering purpose is a far more primal question, appropriate for the beginnings of ancient Israel’s foundational stories.

3. Faith Makes Nice with Science

“Science and Faith” by Ryan Tracey is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

This last point is essentially a derivative of the first two. Once we begin to take the Bible on its own terms and once we concentrate our energies on the kinds of questions the Bible is keen to answer, we discover we have fewer and fewer reasons to quarrel with scientific inquiry.

Let the geologists continue to explore Manson Crater, a dimple in the earth 24 miles across, thought to have come from an asteroid whacking into the Hawkeye State 74 million years ago. It’s fascinating stuff and could teach us wonders about our own planet and the wider galaxy. But it won’t fundamentally alter the story of Genesis 1-3, intended to teach why we’re here.

Let the biologists continue to dig into the human genome. It may lead to medical advancements or clearer understanding of our biological ancestry. But it won’t touch the fact that Adam, as the ancient Israelites understood him, was the first person uniquely called by God to a special task, presaging both Israel’s and the church’s own calling.

Science is not the Bible’s enemy.

I hasten to add a pastoral note to this last point. When our churches pit the Bible against science, broadly, we place the scientifically minded among us into a potentially impossible choice between their vocational calling and their faith commitments. In effect, we hang a sign on the doors of our churches reading, “We Don’t Serve Scientists”. Ew.

Anyway, all this is to say that The Lost World of Adam and Eve is a worthy addition to the church’s ongoing rediscovery of these ancient narratives. If we are wise enough to grapple with Walton’s study, we will all be the stronger for it.

Adam in the New Testament

This is part 8 in a series of reviews of John H. Walton’s Lost World of Adam and Eve (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 5, pt. 6, pt. 7). I purchased the book of my own accord with my own money, so there’s that.

Among the strange features of The Lost World of Adam and Eve is that the best chapter in the whole book wasn’t written by Walton. Before you turn your nose up at him, however, consider his rationale. Walton is a first class Old Testament scholar, so when it came to writing on the New Testament’s usage of Adam, he shows tremendous wisdom in deferring to his friend and colleague N.T. Wright.

Wright’s chapter sets out to discuss Paul’s concerns when it comes to Adam and sin. What he ends up doing, in typical Wright fashion, is to sketch a chapter that is truly monumental in scope. When I finished reading it, I outlined it for my wife, who said, “That sounds like it could be a whole book.” “Or a dissertation,” I agreed. The chapter is just ten pages.

Wright starts, much like Walton did in earlier chapters, by highlighting some common misconceptions. As we hinted in the last post about the first couple and original sin, Adam and Eve have become a crucial component to Evangelicals’ beliefs about soteriology. Wright characterizes the common understanding like this:

(a) God demanded perfect obedience from Adam and Eve; (b) they broke his command; (c) Jesus has given God perfect obedience; (d) he therefore possesses a “righteousness” that is available to believers (172).

It’s a caricature, certainly, but Wright’s point is simply that most Christians don’t know the robust way in which the first couple fit into the story, and so are left with this over-simplified version (which incidentally leaves out the entire Old Testament following Genesis 3).

Well, then, how do Adam and Eve fit into the biblical narrative, from the New Testament’s perspective?

Wright’s sketch goes like this. The story begins, of course, with God’s creation of the earth and, critically, with humanity set in place to help the Lord govern it all. We saw this several posts ago as the central element embedded in Genesis 1:26-28. Humanity is created to aid the Creator in bringing order to the creation.

For Wright, that commission on all humanity is crystalized in Adam and Eve, who, of course, fail.

This is the first point which Wright would say most Christians miss. The problem is not simply that humans have sinned and fallen out of relationship with God. That is true, but it is not the whole problem. The wider scope of the problem is that the creation itself will continue out of whack and chaotic without humanity in its rightful place as vice-regents with God.

God’s mind quickly turns toward dealing with humanity’s sin so that he can set them back in the place they belong, exercising their full purpose in creation. His solution? Abraham and his descendants. The Lord’s covenant with Israel was established principally so that through this particular nation, God could redeem all of humanity, so that through humanity, creation could be brought to peace. This is the core purpose behind God’s initial call of Abraham. If all goes well, the whole world will be blessed through him (Gen. 12:3).

But Israel Israels. And they end up in exile.

God’s game plan looks pretty rough. Creation is a mess. The governors of creation are corrupt. The rescuers of those governors are themselves crooked. What’s a God to do?

This, finally, is where Jesus comes in. Jesus is the true Israelite, called to redeem humanity. Jesus is the true human (the last Adam), called to bring the creation into its rest. And so finally, through the death and resurrection of the Christ is there at last the birth of the new creation.

That, says Wright, is Paul’s perspective on Adam and his importance, and it is principally found in Romans 8, the key portion of which is verses 19-25:

Yes: creation itself is on tiptoe with expectation, eagerly awaiting the moment when God’s children will be revealed. Creation, you see, was subjected to pointless futility, not of its own volition, but because of the one who placed it in this subjection, in the hope that creation itself would be freed from its slavery to decay, to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified. Let me explain. We know that the entire creation is groaning together, and going through labor pains together, up until the present time. Not only so: we too, we who have the first fruits of the spirit’s life within us, are groaning within ourselves, as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our body. We were saved, you see, in hope. But hope isn’t hope if you can see it! Who hopes for what they can see? But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it eagerly—but also patiently (The Kingdom New Testament, Wright’s own translation).

The point of it all is that the New Testament places Adam in a particular place—a critical place!—in the larger biblical story. It has everything to do with sin and falling away from God, as Evangelicals have long rightly pronounced. But Adam’s failing, we’ve consistently missed, has its dire consequences because of the purpose that Genesis 1-2 proclaim over humanity.

With this in place, we can begin to make sense of not only Adam’s significance to us, but also Israel’s. With this in proper perspective, we can finally begin to recognize why it is so essential that Jesus come as a human being and as an Israelite. With this all in view, we can begin to unravel our own calling in God’s new creation.

Adam and Eve: The First Unique Humans

This is part 6 in a series of reviews of The Lost World of Adam and Eve, John H. Walton’s new book (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 5). Take it for what it’s worth: I bought the book myself.

I mentioned in the last post that Walton suggests that the biblical text does not require us to believe that Adam and Eve are the only humans on earth at the time of Genesis 2, or even that they are the very first humans.

To many, such a claim is no doubt shocking. To some, the notion of Adam and Eve not being the first people borders on heresy, if it hasn’t already leapt way across the line.

Nevertheless, we should always be cautious about our gut reactions to a new interpretation and perform due diligence in testing the idea. After all, Galileo was imprisoned by Pope Paul V, in part, because his heliocentric ideas appeared to conflict with the biblical text (most notably Pss. 93:1; 96:10; 104:5; Ecc. 1:5). That didn’t turn out well for Galileo, who died in chains, even if he has since been vindicated.

There is certainly some textual evidence that points away from Adam as the very first human—the toledoth at Genesis 2:4, suggesting the account of Adam and Eve follows the seven days of creation; the oddity of Cain’s fear of being murdered by others (Gen. 4:14); the question of how closely related Cain might have been to his wife (Gen. 4:17); and the population of Cain’s “city” (Gen. 4:17).

But it will be important, further, to ask a different question of Walton’s interpretation. If Adam and Eve are not the first couple, or if there are many other people on the earth at the same time, then what are we to make of their purpose in the Genesis story? In other words, what is special about them, if it is not that they are the first humans?

For Walton, the unique thing about Adam and Eve has nothing to do with their being the first people ever, but that they are the first people called for a unique purpose. What is that purpose? Adam and Eve are special in that they are the first priests.

Such an argument begins with the garden itself as a temple:

When we consider the Garden of Eden in its ancient context, we find that it is more sacred space than green space. It is the center of order, not perfection, and its significance has more to do with divine presence than human paradise (116, emphasis original).

This is not a new perspective. Eden has been recognized as a prototype for the tabernacle and Temple for a long time in biblical scholarship. (In fact, Walton’s endnote listing a sampling of scholarly background for the view fills an entire page. You could do no better than beginning a similar inquiry here.)

To paint a slightly fuller picture, if we think of the Garden of Eden as the singular place on earth in which the Creator particularly dwells and from which all life and wisdom is to flow, we have then similarly imagined a picture not too far off from the tabernacle in Israel’s early days and the Temple after Solomon.

There is another compelling reason to suppose that Adam and Eve are the world’s first priests and at the same time see their story’s significance in the Hebrew Scriptures. Adam and Eve, as priests, are archetypes of Israel itself.

Here’s a story for you. A people is taken by God and deliberately placed in a very special land. Among the conditions for remaining in that special land is the people’s obedience to God’s commands. The choice is ever before them. They can choose to follow God’s statutes and thereby receive life. Or they can turn against God’s ordinances and reap death. This people, sadly, choose the latter and, as a result, are banished from the special place God had given them.

Whose story is that? It is Adam’s story; it is Israel’s story.

Israel had been God’s priesthood (Exo. 19:6), uniquely called out of the rest of the world in order to display the nature of the Creator to the world. This is a central part of the nation’s identity, and it should not be surprising, then, if in their origins stories, they tell a tale of the very first people given the same purpose in the world. Adam is indeed Israel’s earliest ancestor from a functional perspective. What God was attempting through Israel, he had been up to from the beginning.

But I see you have a question: If Adam and Eve aren’t the first people, what are we to do with original sin?

Were Adam and Eve Really the First People?

This post is part 5 in a series of reviews of John H. Walton’s Lost World of Adam and Eve (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4). I paid good money for my copy of the book, but you’re getting my unvarnished thoughts for free. Go figure.

Enough about Genesis 1, already. I thought this book was supposed to be about Adam and Eve.

One of the myriad issues that convolutes our reading of the origin narratives of Genesis 1-3 has to do with the relationship between the creation account in Genesis 1 and the account of Adam and Eve in chapter 2 and following.

Specifically, when Genesis 1 is read as the story of the beginning of all matter, we quickly run into logical problems, like why Genesis 2:5 appears to paint a picture of a desert, when vegetation had clearly been created on Day 3 (Gen. 1:11-12; on this question see Meredith G. Kline’s early essay, “Because It Had Not Rained”); or how in the world Adam managed to name every animal in a day (Gen. 2:20); or why Cain, after killing his brother is worried that other people will hunt him down (Gen. 4:14).

To help resolve these and other issues, Walton suggests interpreting Genesis 2 as a sequel to Genesis 1, rather than a retelling of the sixth day.

The swift among you are already objecting: Warning! If Genesis 2 is not a retelling of Day 6, then the humans discussed in Genesis 1:26-28 are not Adam and Eve, and therefore Adam and Eve are not the first people. We’ll get to this point shortly.

But first, the argument in Walton’s favor.

The point is somewhat technical, but directly in the text. Genesis 2:4 reads, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created—when the Lord God made the earth and heavens” (NET). That opening phrase—”This is the account of …”—has long been recognized as a type of formula in Genesis. Smartypants scholars call it a toledoth, because that’s the Hebrew word that begins the phrase.

Anyway, toledoths throughout the book—there are ten others (Gen. 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 36:9; 37:2)—always begin a story about what happens after the person or thing mentioned in the formula.

For example, Genesis 25:12 talks about the toledoth of Abraham’s son Isaac. What then immediately follows is a genealogy of those who follow Isaac. It is not a return to the middle of Abraham’s life, but a way of introducing the next successive portion of the story.

But, you might say, Genesis 25:19 does leap backward in the timeline, back to Isaac after listing his descendants. Yes, but the important point is that the story leaps back to the beginning of that genealogy, not to someplace in the middle. Nowhere does a toledoth do this. This is done so that the author can proceed with the most important story line (in this case, Jacob).

Relating this to Genesis 1-2, we should expect, given the way toledoths are used elsewhere, for Genesis 2:4 to be introducing either (1) the beginning of a new story that takes place some time after the previous creation narrative or (2) a retelling of the entire creation narrative, with a focus on the most important people. We would not expect the writer to jump back into the middle of the previous account. Between the two options, number one should be favored, since number two only occurs immediately after a genealogy, and Genesis 1 certainly is not that.

Here is Walton’s own conclusion:

There is … no precedent by which to conclude that the introductory formula in Genesis 2:4 is bringing the reader back into the middle of the previous account to give a more detailed description of a part of the story that was previously told. Such introductions never do this in the rest of Genesis (66).

Further, Walton also acknowledges what we suggested at the top.

Though Adam and Eve may well be included among the people created in Genesis 1, to think of them as the first couple or the only people in their time is not the only textual option (66, emphasis added).

That sound you hear is somebody’s hackles raising. More later.

Ask the Wrong Question, Get the Wrong Answer

A funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. All of us in the West tumbled into the so-called Enlightenment along the way. Beginning sometime in the early 1600’s, with effects ranging into the present, we collectively became utterly obsessed with the observable universe. On the pro side of the revolution: Science! Among the cons is the now unconscious belief among Western civilization that if we can neither taste, touch, smell, hear nor see it, it must not exist.

Empiricism is the ultimate epistemology. Everything else is immaterial.

But—Surprise!—this has not always been the case across the globe. In fact, this has not been the prevailing worldview in most cultures throughout most of history. As far as world history is concerned, we empiricists are the oddballs.

This is one of John H. Walton’s initial—and extremely valuable—points in reference to the way we approach the origins texts in Genesis. The ancient Hebrews were a pre-modern culture, who wrote pre-modern (not primitive) literature, and we need to check our materialist mindset at the door of Scripture.

As it applies to Genesis 1-3, our primary concern in the modern world is over material origins. Since what matters to us is matter, our questions about origins surround how the matter got there. Where did the observable universe come from? How did the earth, as a substance, come to be? And when, exactly, did all this happen?

What The Lost World of Adam and Eve (see pt. 1 of the review) tries to hammer home in the first several chapters (itself a summary and extension of Walton’s earlier book, The Lost World of Genesis One) is the fact that the ancient Israelites did not view the world in the same ways that we do. As a result, neither the writers of the biblical texts and the original audiences for whom they were intended were asking the kinds of questions we ask about origins.

This is a grave error, and Walton is blunt about it: “We cannot start by asking of the Bible our scientific questions. The Bible is not revealing science, and the biblical authors would be neither aware of nor concerned with our scientific way of thinking” (25). When we ask of Genesis 1-2 the age of the earth or the material from which we came or the manner in which matter came to be, we are asking the biblical authors questions they are not interested in answering.

No, the Bible has bigger questions to explore.

Walton’s contention, which he backs up with evidence from several other cultures from the ancient near east, is that ancient peoples, the Israelites included, are interested in how things got their God-given function in the world, rather than in how things physically came to be.

For example, the language “formless and void” many of us are accustomed to in Genesis 1:2 is not a description of a shapeless or material-less world. Instead, it is a statement about a purposeless or un-ordered world:

The starting condition in Genesis 1:2, the pre-creation situation that describes nonexistence, is a condition that is not lacking material. Rather, it is a situation that is lacking order and purpose. … For Israel, creation resolves the absence of order and not the absence of material. If this “before” picture conveys “nonexistence,” we would deduce that “existence” is not a material category pertaining to an ordered condition (28).

In other words, an ancient mind perceives a thing to exist if and when it has purpose and function. If a thing is without purpose or without meaningful function, it is waste and ceases to exist in any meaningful way.

Purpose and function. That is what the ancient Israelites regarded as of ultimate importance. Their questions regarding the origins of their world centered around the question, “Why are we here?” This is a question far more powerful than asking where our matter came from (fascinating as that may be). Much more significant to ask, given the fact we are here, what our God-ordained purpose—individually and, more importantly, collectively—might be.

Just what that purpose is, we’ll explore tomorrow.