Through the Bible, Week Three

Original Sin - The Other "Original Experience"

Genesis three is one of two "hinge" passages for the Biblical story.  Both hinges are a drama of man and woman around a tree.  The first protays the first Adam and Eve around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the fateful choice that is made there.  The second portrays the second Adam and Eve around the tree of Calvary, and the fateful choice that is made there.  All of human history turns on these two episodes, what has done, not done and what was undone there.

Genesis describes how the original unity and harmony established in creation is destroyed by the first man and woman's choice to reach outside of God's will for them, to cease trusting in the goodness and reliability of God towards them. At the end of chapter two we are told the man and woman were both naked and "not ashamed."  By chapter three, verse seven, the same couple is sewing fig leaves together to cover themselves.  What transpires to change "naked and unashamed" into "sewing fig leaves together and made themselves loinclothes?"  The drama of human history (not just the Bible - which is the meaning of human history) turns on this question.

Our first parents succumbed to a lie.   John Stott's analysis of the first temptation, leading to the first sin, is one of the best short anaylsis I have read (pp30-32).  In asking the insinuating leading question, "did God really say, 'you must not eat from any tree in the garden?'",   Stott explain that the devil in the form of the serpent opened a line of faulty reasoning that ultimately denied the truthfulness of God (actually God did not say what the devil suggests), denied the goodness of God (overlooking the broad permission the LORD already gave them - "you may eat from every tree of the garden") and denied the otherness of God ("you will be like God...").  They were already God-like, being the only image-bearers in creation.  

At the heart of original sin is denial: doubt leading to denying the goodness, truthfulness and otherness of God.   This is what separated our first parents from God, from one another and, eventually, from all of creation.  Genesis 4-11 will document this progressive social deterioration. 

If doubt and denial lead us out of relation with God then it is safe to suppose that trust in the goodness, truthfulness and otherness of God will lead us back in.  And this is what scripture teaches: we are made right with God through faith.   The way out is also the way back in.  The rest of the scriptures describe the process (grace on God's side and faith and repentance on our side) of bringing people estranged from God and one another into reconciliation with God and all of their original experience.  

As suggested at the beginning, we will be confronted again with a couple, a choice and the same God of goodness and truth.  Learning how to read Genesis three teaches us how to read the passion of Jesus.  And vice versa. 

What does Genesis three teach us about combatting temptation - and the temptor?

What might you do the next time you are tempted to think God is something other than entirely good and truthful to you?

Thoughts on Marriage

Marriage is more than human.
It is a "microbasileia," a minature kingdom,
which is the little house of the Lord.

Clement of Alexandria


A harmonious marriage alliance is at once
a holy love, an honorable love, and a
peace with God.  God with His own lips
consecrated the course of this alliance, and
with His own hand he established the
coupling of human persons.  He made two
abide in one flesh, so that He might
confer a love indivisible.

Paulinus of Nola



Marriage is the sacrament of love.

John Chrysostom


As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
      So your God will rejoice over you!

Isaiah 62:5


Let us rejoice and be glad and give HIm glory!
     For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
     and His bride has made herself ready.

Revelation 19:7

Through the Bible, Week 2 - part 2

After a string of "it was good" and one "very good" God mentions something that is "not good."  Man is alone.  OF all the animals which he has named, not one is capable of entering into communion with him.  Man in the "image of God" is made for communion, for deep abiding friendship and companionship.  So the Lord God decides to make a companion, a friend, a soul-mate for Adam (which literally means "earthling").

In this creative act, like the creation of man in chapter one, the Lord God does not merely "speak" woman into existence but rather "forms", "shapes," and "constructs" her out of the very side and substance of the man.  The terms used for this procedure have architectural overtones. So they will find shelter in one another.

The first recorded words of the man are spoken after the creation of woman, and they are in verse, a naming poem in which each of the two lines begins with the feminine indicative pronoun "this one" and is also the last Hebrew word of the poem, forming a tight bookend structure:
This one at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh
This one shall be called woman for from man was this one taken.

Man speaks when he has someone who can answer.  Language's original purpose was to serve this communion of persons.

Pope John Paul II has written masterfully on this passage.  He reminds us that before "original sin" (narrated in Genesis three) there were three other and even more "original" experiences:
1) Original solitude - humans are unique "image-bearers" and stand apart from the rest of creation in their capacity for self-consciousness and communion with God
2) Original unity - human relatedness and communion is inscribed in the body as male and female.  This is portrayed in Genesis 2 through the story of Adam's Sleep, Adam's Rib, and Adam's Song.
3) Original nakedness -  is original solitude and unity as they appear in the body, making visible the person through the body.  The body is the sacrament of the person, the transparent connection between the body and love.

One commentator captures these insights this way:  "Adam recognizes that Eve shares his human nature, yet it is embodied in a different way.  This sexual complementarity of the man and woman - their bodily differences within a common nature - reveals their call to relationship.  In fact, their sexual differentiation is what enable them to become a mutual gift of self to one another.  Their bodies' natural aptitude for union is the visible reflection of their interior capacity to form a communion of persons."  Mary Healy, Men and Women are from Eden, p. 24.

Toward the end of his life and a few years after the death of his beloved wife, Mark Twain wrote his most overtly theological and contemplative work, Eve's Diary.  The voice is Eve's, narrating life outside of the garden of Eden.  She dies.  Then Adam's voice appears, as he puts the finishing touches on his wife's manuscript.  He finishes her account of life outside the garden with these words:  Wherever she was, there was Eden.  

Mark Twain understood Genesis two quite well.

Thought for the Week

This quote on the Bible is from the great 20th century theologian and rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel:

The divine quality of the Bible is not on display, it is not apparent to an inane, fatuous mind; just as the divine in the universe is not obvious to the debaucher.  When we turn to the Bible with an empty spirit, moved by intellectual vanity, striving to show our superiority to the text; or as barren souls who go sight-seeing to the words of the prophets, we discover the shells but miss the core....To sense the presence of God in the Bible, one must learn to be present to God in the Bible. Presence is not a concept, but a situation.... Presence is not disclosed to those who are unattracted and try to judge, to those who have no power to go beyond the values they cherish; to those who sense the story, not the pathos; the idea, not the realness of God.

The Bible is the frontier of the spirit where we must move and live in order to discover and to explore.  IT is open to him who gives himself to it, who lives with it intimately.  We can only sense the presence by being responsive to it.  We must learn to respond before we may hear; must learn to fulfill before we may know.  It is the Bible that enable us to know the Bible.  

God in Search of Man, pp. 252-53.

Through the Bible, Week Two

Creation and Humanity

This discussion will take two or more posts.   As we saw last week, Genesis One is more about the Creator than creation.  It is a monotheistic polemic that places all things- in six sequential days of creative activity - under the order of God's loving will.  At the apex of this order stands the creation of humanity, on the sixth day.  The pagan world which surrounded Israel would often make idols of the objects created in days one through five, which according to this picture of reality is an inversion of superiority.  Humanity is the only divine 'image-bearer" in creation and thus the only object worthy of sacred recognition (but not worship).

Genesis Two is an alternate account of creation which expands substantially on the sixth day of creation, the creation of humanity as male and female.  Whereas Genesis one portrays the creation of male and female as a fiat, simultaneous and fully equal, Genesis two elaborates on this act of creation.  There is great scholarly energy exercised over the differences between Genesis one and two which places much emphasis on the differences.  These differences are usually attributed to different sources and authorial intent.  Though the differences are surely there and not to be flattened out, it is also important to see that they belong together as complementary visions of creation.  Genesis one portrays creation from a vertical, transcendent perspective.  The primary actor is "Elohim" the high, transcendent God of the Hebrews.  Genesis two is from a horizontal,  immanent perspective.  "Yahweh" the LORD, is the primary actor.  Genesis one is the work of the ultimate God.  Genesis two is the work of the intimate God.  Creation and the character of God are too rich and multi-dimensional to be captured in one perspective.  So the first act of the Bible - creation and especially the creation of humanity - is repeated with variation. 

Repeated with variation is a key literary device of the Bible.  And this repitition works both at the macro-level and micro-level.  I will briefly illustrate

1.  Macro-level:  The history of Israel is told in the primary history of Genesis through 2 Kings.  It is then repeated with variation in Chronicles, a secondary history with its own unique perspective and purpose.  One detects the same repeating of primary history in the New Testament.  John's Gospel is a repeat with variation  of the primary history of Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke ( and these three comprise a common perspective with variation, thus known as the "synoptic" - similiar view - Gospels).

2. Micro-level: We have three sister-bride stories in Genesis, two are about Abraham and Sarah and one is about Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 12, 20 and 26, respectively).  The repetition is a way of underscoring emphasis and importance, making sure the reader gets the lesson of the narrative.  The variation, though, signifies nuance and meaning of its own.

 What we have is another "rule for reading" the Bible.   Repitition with variation is one of the Bible's signals, teaching us what is important to the Bible.  It is a way of developing the plot and the characters within the plot.  It is a primary way the Bible suggest there is a surplus of meaning in the Biblical story, one that cannot be captured in one perspective.  And differences in those perspectives are not to intimidate us but rather serve to invite us into the kind of relationship with God that demands our fullest attention and our deepest commitments in order to participate in the purposes for which the Bible was written.

Thought for the Week

A quote from one of my favorite 20th century Christian leaders, the Methodist Missionary Statesman, E. Stanley Jones:

God met life as you and I meet it - as a person, Jesus.  Jesus called on no power not at our disposal for his own moral battles.  He performed no miracle to extricate himself from any difficulty.  If Jesus had power, holding it only for the meeting of human need in others.  He never performed a miracle just to show power or to confound an [human] enemy.  Jesus lived a normal life, so normal that it became the norm.  He dwelt among us as one of his...."He has visited and redeemed his people" (Luke 1:58).  The only way to redeem God's people was to visit them...Jesus dwelt among us - amid our poverty, amid our temptations, amid our problems and choices, amid our opposition and disappointments.  He lived among us and showed us how to live by living... We cannot say our prayers to a principle, nor worship an axiom....Prayer and worship is a response on the part of the person to the Person.  So principles let you down unless they are embodied.
Hat tip, BW3

Through the Bible, Week One

The Creator and Creation

Genesis One is more about the Creator than the creation.  When read against its original background of Ancient Near Eastern creation myths, Genesis 1 comes across as a poetic monotheistic polemic - something that could have been memorized and sung in the liturgy.  Using the world- picture of the ancient world ("let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters....let the waters be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear"), it simultaneously and fundamentally shatters its world-view (the underlying vision of reality).  The sun, moon and stars are no longer seen as deities but now are parts of the one God's creation.  Indeed, the only object that shares the divine nature ("in our image") are humans, who now stand at the apex of creation.  The objects of worship in the ancient world - astral objects and animals - are actually below man in the view of reality portrayed here.  The subliminal message of Genesis one would be, "why would you bow down to something beneath you?"

Stott expresses my sense of this opening chapter: "From this crude polytheism it is a relief to turn to the ethical monotheism of Genesis 1."

Let us consider the implications of this radical breakthrough into the nature of Reality.  What does it mean to live in a world that is a product of God's free will and love (He did not make us out of necessity nor constraint) as opposed to a world that is produced from the body of a deceased god, the product of a divine battle amongst the gods, which was the basis of all the ancient creation myths.  The Bible grounds all of reality - all that is - in the overflowing love life of the Trinity.

I suggest three important implications - or matters to discuss - for our lives of discipleship:

1) Creation is a gift, not a given.  As gift, our relation to it is one of stewardship.  There is a built-in ecology in our relationship to the world.  Just as our society has developed an ecology for trees, for example, there is a deeper ecology of persons.   The gift-ness of persons places limits on our behavior, our speech toward them.  Stott wisely references James 3:7-12 in his discussion of persons as God's image-bearers.  He writes: "The sanctity of human life arises from the value of God's image bearers (9:6).  Human beings are god-like beings. They deserve to be loved and served."

2) Since creation is not a necessity, there is freedom.

3) The appropriate response to gift (and freedom) is wonder and gratitude.

Genesis three will document what occurs when wonder and gratitude, and the trust underlying them, are lost.  Paul comments on this theme in Romans one, "for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened."  We anticipate Genesis three and its aftermath in these themes.  These early chapters teach us how to read all that follow......

What do you think?