Author: kevingdrendel

I am sixtiesh, an English Literature major in college and an attorney by profession. Faith informs my life, and this blog is about my faith journey.

Back to an Early Church View of Genesis

We make a critical mistake when we think that Adam and Eve and Eden were perfect. Only God is perfect.

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I have much enjoyed reading Joel Edmund Anderson’s blog, resurrecting orthodoxy. So much that I am reblogging his latest post which is part of a walk through Genesis: Making Sense of Genesis 3 (Part 1): The Big Picture, Nakedness, and Two Trees. Knowing history allows us to avoid the mistakes of those who came before us, but not knowing history makes it likely that we will repeat those mistakes.

So it seems that some have made the mistake in this modern day and age of reading Genesis too literally. Just suggesting that triggers a slight shudder as I can imagine someone taking umbrage with the suggestion that we shouldn’t take the Bible literally.

I maintain that we should take the Bible seriously, which means that we should let the Bible inform us when we should read it literally, when we should read it figuratively, and when it has both literal and figurative meanings. (Should we take the Bible Literally? Or Seriously?)

Anderson reminds us that this is how some of the most influential early church fathers viewed Scripture. For authority, he cites all the way back to Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp who was a direct disciple of John –  the disciple of Jesus and writer of the Gospel, epistles and Revelations. Irenaeus is just one spiritual generation removed from Jesus.

I realize that people might want simple formulas for Bible interpretation, but there is nothing simple about the universe we live in, reality or (most of all) God.

His ways are higher than our ways. We shouldn’t lean on our own understanding. Jesus left the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, and Jesus said we must learn to worship God in spirit and truth.

I am  not talking about New Age spiritualism or secret Gnostic knowledge. The Living God spoke to Abraham and David and took on human form in the body of Jesus, lived obediently to His own purpose as a man to the point of dying on a cross for our sins and rising from the dead in that same body to give us hope. This is the uncreated Word of God who was with God in the beginning, and was God, and through whom all that was created was made – the seen from the unseen.

Anderson says in his latest article:

“Genesis 3 was not claiming that God had created a ‘perfect’ world, because God alone is perfect. In fact, Irenaeus called the teaching that Adam and Eve were originally ‘perfect’ a gnostic heresy. Irenaeus was emphatic: God didn’t create Adam and Eve as ‘perfect’ beings.”

God called the world He made “good” (not perfect). It was good for His intended purpose, and it still is.

He certainly knew humanity would fall and fail. That was inevitable because we are not perfect; we are not God. God knew we would fail because He can see the end from the beginning, and everything in between. When He hit the “start” button on the creation, He saw how His purpose would unfold before the foundations of the earth. And, He saw that it was good.

Through our experience we learn good and evil, and the value of embracing good and rejecting evil. In this way, our experience is intended to lead us to God who alone is perfect. Through our experience, we learn to rely not on ourselves, but on God. Through our experience we learn to embrace God and His purpose. As we yield ourselves to Him, God works in us what we could never do in ourselves – perfecting us in Him.

We make a critical mistake when we think that Adam and Eve and Eden were perfect. Only God is perfect.

I’ve heard people say that there was no pain or death before the fall. Why, then, does God tell Eve that her pain in childbirth will increase (multiply)? (“To the woman He said: “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16)(Berean Study Bible))

We need to be careful not to let the agendas and theological constructs of others inform us rather than the Word, itself. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than a double edged sword, and is able to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12-13) We need to let God’s Word inform us through the guidance of His Holy Spirit.

The danger of systematic theologies and secret formulae is that we don’t know how much of the system or the formula is our own invention. We need to be guided by the Word of the Living God, the Bread of Life.

All Scripture is God-breathed and “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

The idea that Genesis should be taken absolutely literally and historically is more of a modern construct than a biblical one. (See Is Young-Earth Creationism Another Gospel?) That doesn’t mean Scripture isn’t God-breathed and we shouldn’t take it seriously.

From the beginning the followers of Jesus read Scripture as the word of God. They took it so seriously they were willing to die for it – not for it alone, but for the God it revealed. And though they clung to the Scripture, for in it was revealed the Messiah, Jesus, who they followed, they didn’t read Genesis as literal, historical record.

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Postscript:

Irenaeus was born in Smyrna (now Turkey) to a Christian family in 130 AD, just a generation after John the apostle died. He stood against heresy, being one of the first theologians to use apostolic succession to protect the integrity of the Gospel. His close connection to Jesus, Himself, through Polycarp who was mentored by John the apostle, was his authority.

“Irenaeus’ point when refuting the Gnostics was that all of the Apostolic churches had preserved the same traditions and teachings in many independent streams. It was the unanimous agreement between these many independent streams of transmission that proved the orthodox Faith, current in those churches, to be true.” Irenaeus is credited with arguing that all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John), and only those four Gospels, were Scriptural. (See Wikipedia)

He preached the rule of faith, one of the earliest church creeds, as a standard for orthodoxy:

…this faith: in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all the things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise anew all flesh of the whole human race…

We might credit Irenaeus for solidifying and defending the idea of the Trinity, being one God in three persons. “Irenaeus used creation to distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from that which is created, to identify the Three as the one Creator God, and to secure their distinction. In so doing Irenaeus became the first to support his belief in the Three as God with an account of God as three.” (See Iranaeus: the Creation and the Father’s Two Hands)

Hard Time Killing Floor

Successive generations find inspiration in Hard Times Killing Floor

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Skip James live in TV-Studio 1967

Skip James was born and grew up in Mississippi where his father was a bootlegger who found Jesus and became a preacher. Life was tough for a young black man in rural Mississippi at the turn of the century. Young Skip knew it well as a worker on road crews and levees in his 20’s. He no doubt drew from his experience as inspiration for one of his most famous songs, Hard Time Killing Floor.

 

Skip James’s musical prowess was developed early, likely honed in his father’s church. His talent was recognized by somehow by Paramount. They paid for his travel to Grafton, Wisconsin in 1931 to record his songs. Skip drew influence and style from blues and spirituals, bending genres with original and cover compositions, but the latent emotion and authenticity in his music was the substance of his own life.

The slaughterhouses that employed many black men at the time may have inspired Hard Time Killing Floor, though it isn’t clear whether Skip James ever worked in one. A blues song by nature, one might imagine a modern day psalmist pouring his heart out to God, expressing the emotional anguish of the drudgery of life under the sun. Inherent in the plaintive heart of the blues, though, is a sorrowful note of hope, a certain resigned peace and satisfaction in the singing of which hope rises above the pain.

Skip’s musical career never got off the ground with the heavy air of the Great Depression flattening out the wind under his wings. Skip James turned his attention to directing the choir in his father’s church. He was ordained into both Baptist and Methodist churches. His musical career was quashed even as it started. Not much would likely have survived about Skip James, the musician, if it wasn’t for the blues and folk music revival of the 50’s and early 60’s.

Continue reading “Hard Time Killing Floor” →

And God Said

God is a communicator, and He made us for communication with Himself.

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The parallels between Genesis 1 and John 1 are obvious. Genesis 1 reads:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

John 1 reads:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3)

These parallels convey the idea that God is “verbal” by His very nature, and He communicated the universe into existence. Indeed, the creation story as it unfolds in Genesis bears this out:

  • And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (gen. 1:3)
  • And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” (Gen. 1:6)
  • And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” (Gen. 1:9)
  • Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation…. (Gen 1:11)
  • And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night….” (Gen. 1:14-15)
  • And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” (Gen. 1:20)
  • And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds…” (Gen. 1:24)
  • Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness….” (Gen. 1:26)

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that a plural pronoun is used for God in Genesis 1:26. To be verbal by nature, communicative by His very essence, God must have relationship within Himself. In John 1, we read that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, and then John goes further to say this:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:14)

Of course, he is talking about Jesus – God who became like us, the creatures He created in His own image. Of God and Jesus, John said,

“He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God….” (John 1:11-12)

Continue reading “And God Said” →

Taking the Bible Literally? Or Seriously?

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Some people urge Christians to take the Bible literally. I don’t think taking the Bible literally is taking the Bible seriously enough. I think it’s a far more important matter to take the Bible seriously.

Consider John 1:1-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

John Lennox, the brilliant Oxford mathematician, relates a conversation he had with Peter Atkins, the prolific atheist scholar. When Lennox referred Atkins to John, Chapter 1, Atkins called Lennox naïve to believe that God has lungs, a voice box and a voice. Of course, that isn’t how Lennox (or anyone who takes the Bible seriously) understands those words at all.

I find it interesting that both atheists and fundamentalists tend to adhere to a literal reading of the Bible. The only difference between them is that one believes all of it, and the other believes none of it.

A literal reading of John 1:1-3 clearly misses the point. No one believes that God has lungs, a voice box and a voice. Rather, God is so “Other” from us that we must use devices, like metaphors, to conceptualize God. Metaphor conveys meaning in ways that meaning cannot be conveyed literally.

People often misunderstand what it means to read something “literally”. Lennox suggests that understanding the metaphor is reading the Bible literally. The metaphor is the literal meaning that is intended.

We have to take the Bible very seriously in order to understand this and to see the actual meaning that is there. When we read the Bible always “literally”, we are not taking the Bible seriously enough! (Not to mention that no one actually read every verse of the Bible literally, not even the literalists!)

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Love: Who is Your Enemy?

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Asking who is your enemy may seem like a strange way to begin a blog article about loving your neighbor, but bear with me. My question is inspired by a different, but related, question. My question is inspired by the question asked by an expert in the law many years ago: “Who is my neighbor?”

This question followed a theological dialogue between the expert in the law and Jesus in which the expert in the law sought to test Jesus. (See Luke 10:25-29) As Jesus often did, though, the test put to Jesus turned into a challenge to the so-called expert.

The expert in the law asked Jesus the loaded question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered with his own question, “What is written in the law?… How do you read it?” Not to be shown up, the expert in the law answered:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (quoting Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18)

The expert in the law was probably looking for some debate, but Jesus wasn’t interested in debate. Instead, he simply concluded, “You have answered correctly…. Do this and you will live.”

The expert in the law had the tables turned on him. He wanted to test Jesus, but Jesus put the test to him, and now he was in defensive mode. He might said, “Wait a minute!” And then the question followed that leads me to my question, “Who is my neighbor?” If we have to love our neighbors, and if loving our neighbors is the measure for inheriting eternal life, we better know who are neighbors are!

But there is a back story here that leads from the one question to the other question. Apparently, the First Century Palestine Jews had interpreted Leviticus 19:18 to mean, “Love your neighbor; hate your enemy.”

How do we know that? It isn’t found anywhere in Scripture, but Jesus quoted the statement in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy….’” Ah, and now you know where I am going, because Jesus followed with this:

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)

Lest there be any doubt who my neighbor, Jesus stretched it so far that love must reach all the way from my friends to my enemies and everyone in between!

And that leads me to the question, “Whos is my enemy that I must love?”

Continue reading “Love: Who is Your Enemy?” →