Jesus Creed Admin: February 2009 Archives

We started a conversation on Tuesday that touched on the subject of the nature of inspiration and the nature of scripture as the inspired word of God.  Many have  serious questions about the intent and interpretation of the Old Testament and how the New Testament uses the Old Testament. Some of these questions arise from science, but the problem of the Old Testament is not solely a conflict between science and faith.  There are serious issues and questions that arise from the text itself, from archaeology, from Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) studies, and from Biblical studies. The topic is often bracketed away and avoided because many find it threatening and controversial. Yet these issues come up again and again as educated Christians wrestle with faith.  I would like to take a detour here and consider once again the issue of OT interpretation.  This continues a conversation we began in a post last November (A Conspiracy of Silence?) and revisited to some extent in more recent posts on Arnold's commentary on Genesis (Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 3) and in the post on Paul and Adam.

For many of us the issue is not the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament - but the nature of inspiration and the form of the Old Testament text we have inherited.  We come not with doubts, but searching for answers, asking for wisdom before God. The traditional protestant approach that values literalism above all else appears as problematic as the emphasis on allegory among the early church fathers appeared to the reformers. Textual criticism, archaeology, history, science, - all of these subjects have made it difficult to read or study the Old Testament with exactly the same eyes and assumptions as our fathers and mothers  in the faith.  Truth doesn't change, but human understanding does.  This shouldn't surprise us.  The biblical narrative is not stasis - it is a story of God's work in creation, and this work is ongoing.

What does it mean to accept the Bible as the inspired, authoritative word of God?

Romans 5:12-21 proves to be one of the key texts in any discussion of science and faith these days.  We began a discussion of this passage last week with a consideration of the meaning and nature of the death introduced in Gen 3.  Another issue in the conflict or reconciliation of scientific knowing with the gospel message strikes us full force in v. 14:

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. (NASB)

Now we have Adam named as a historical individual alongside Moses, another historical individual. Yet it is hard to reconcile the Adam of Gen 1-4 as a historical individual with our understanding of the age and development of the world.

There are six New Testament passages that deal explicitly with Adam and/or Eve. Only one of these is in the Gospels - in the genealogy of Luke 3. One is in Jude where Enoch is identified as "in the seventh generation from Adam." The other four references are in the letters of Paul: Romans 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:20-22 and 42-49; 2 Cor. 11:2-3; 1 Tim. 2:12-14. The passage in 2 Cor. 11 is an allusion in passing, but the other three are more substantive.

In his discussion of Romans 5:12-21 NT Wright notes:

Paul clearly believed that there had been a single first pair, whose male, Adam, had been given a commandment and had broken it. Paul was, we may be sure, aware of what we would call mythical or metaphorical dimensions to the story, but he would not have regarded these as throwing doubt on the existence, and primal sin, of the first historical pair. (p. 526, The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume 10)

And this leads us to the key question of the day:

Does it matter that Paul thought Adam was a unique individual living ca. 4000 years earlier? Does the inspiration of scripture require us to assume that Paul was right?

Romans 5:12-21 proves to be one of the key texts in any discussion of science and faith these days, and the problem hits full force with v. 12:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned-- (Ro 5:12 NASB)

The issue of course is death - what is this death spread to all men through the sin of Genesis 3?

Our scientific understanding of the world leads us to conclude that the earth is old - some 4.6 billion years and the universe older still (ca. 14 billion years). We are impressed with dinosaurs that lived and died long before mankind appeared on the scene. There is an massive array of evidence for an evolutionary mechanism for creation that relies on time and the cycle of life.  How does this reconcile with Romans 5?  For the next several posts we will look at NT Wright's commentary on Romans, specifically Romans 5:12-21 in The New Interpreter's Bible : Acts - First Corinthians (Volume 10) .

For the wages of sin is death - but what is the nature of this death?

John Calvin of course was one of the principal leaders of the reformation in the 1500's.  Calvin got many things right and, like everyone, many things wrong.  In the protestant church in general and in the more reformed branch of modern evangelicalism in particular we benefit from his insights and we have payed and are paying a price for some of his errors. John Calvin wrote a commentary on Genesis - and his commentary I think sheds light on the current science and faith debates in our church.

This commentary is readily available - and can be found electronically at Christian Classics Ethreal Library (direct link to Calvin's Genesis Commentary Vol. 1 ).  It is also available from Amazon, Calvin's Bible Commentaries: Genesis, Part I: (Forgotten Books) .

Calvin opens his comments on Gen 3 with this:

In this chapter, Moses explains, that man, after he had been deceived by Satan revolted from his Maker, became entirely changed and so degenerate, that the image of God, in which he had been formed, was obliterated. He then declares, that the whole world, which had been created for the sake of man, fell together with him from its primary original; and that in this ways much of its native excellence was destroyed. But here many and arduous questions arise.

What do you think of this introduction to Gen 3?

Genesis 3 is one of the cornerstone passages of the Bible.  Bill Arnold in his commentary on Genesis reflects that Gen 3 starts a new subject and introduces a new character, the serpent or snake.  The significance and identity of the snake has been a subject of much reflection through the years. The picture to the right is a carving on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris depicting the temptation.  In this rendition the serpent is portrayed as a woman. In Christian and late (ca. 1st century) Jewish literature, especially apocalyptic literature, the serpent is identified as Satan.  In the New Testament this reference is oblique in one verse each in John and Romans and somewhat more clearly made in Revelation (if anything in Revelation can said to be clear). It also may be implicit in the temptation of Jesus.

But what about the text of Genesis itself? How are we to read and interpret Genesis 3?

Genesis 2 begins another view of creation; another voice; a narrowed focus.First a context: We have discussed the issues of evolution and common descent in several different posts on this blog.  The mounting evidence, most importantly the molecular genetic...

Genesis 1 has been studied, debated, and expounded as much as any text in world history. Scholars and amateurs alike have poured over this text for twenty-five hundred years, and it continues to demand our attention because of its arresting...

Bill T. Arnold, Director of Hebrew Studies and the Paul S. Amos Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary has a new commentary out, Genesis (New Cambridge Bible Commentary Series) .  This commentary is described as "an innovative...