The book of Genesis and especially its story of creation in six days has long been under siege by liberal critics, but now increasingly it is also under attack by those who call themselves evangelicals.
Well-known theologian, author, and teacher John Schneider resigned from the faculty of Calvin College because he has begun to question whether we can, in the face of evolutionary science, continue to believe that Adam and Eve were real, that Eden existed, and that a fall happened (see this article in HigherEd). He is not alone in his doubt, neither at Calvin College nor beyond.
Schneider’s skepticism comes from science, particularly genetic mapping. Genome science is proclaiming that we couldn’t all have come from just two human beings or even from a human original. So, rather than question whether this new science in fact knows everything, Schneider has chosen to throw Adam and Eve overboard—and along with them he is also jettisoning centuries of church teaching about the Scriptures, sin, the work of Christ, and God himself. (Don’t take my word for it; read the first few pages of his article.)
How, you ask, could questioning whether Eve is really “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20) affect all these doctrines?
Well, first of all, the Scriptures say that Eve did become the mother of all the living. The Scriptures say that Adam and Eve are not evolved animals, though Adam and the animals share some characteristics: both were made from the ground as “living, breathing creatures” (the Hebrew is nephesh chayyah; Genesis 1:24, of animals; 2:7, of man—to learn more about this see Into the Weeds: What we have in common with animals--and what we don't). The Scriptures say that man and woman are the only beings made in the image of God, each created by God’s own distinct acts, not by evolution from apes. In fact, the Scriptures say, Adam was formed before the animals (see Genesis 2:4-20).
The Scriptures say Eve did take the fruit, eat, and give it to her husband and that he ate. They say that God came down in judgment and laid out for Adam and Eve the consequences of their disobedience. They say this first sin was imputed to all who are born in the line of Adam and those consequences affect every human being, because we are descended from Adam. They say that the Savior has come as the fulfillment of the promise God made to Eve that her seed would crush the serpent.
What Schneider and others are doing is no different from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics who decided Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead—because that was unscientific. They too would make all such Scripture merely literary devices and man-made stories about the general human condition, not actual history. But Christianity, it has often been said, is a historical religion. If Adam were never Adam, and Eve were never Eve, then we are most to be pitied (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-19), because our salvation is not sure in Christ.
Paul tells us that Christ is the second Adam. This means, Paul says, that as sin came into the world through one man (Adam) so “the free gift of righteousness” comes through one man (Jesus Christ) (see Romans 5:12-21). It means that in Adam we all died, but in Christ all shall be made alive (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-23). And it means that “just as we have born the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [Jesus Christ]” (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-57). Christ as second Adam guarantees our whole salvation: justification, sanctification, glorification.
All the elements of the story the Scriptures tell from Genesis to Revelation fit together because they have one Author who inspired and oversaw the writing of each piece throughout. Throwing out one element (in this case in favor of unproven science) undermines the integrity of the whole. The historical life of Adam and Eve is just as important to our salvation as is the resurrection of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15).
Systematic theologian Robert Peterson, in Salvation Accomplished by the Son: The Work of Christ (forthcoming from Crossway), argues that there are prerequisites, things that had to happen, for Christ to save us by his obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension. If you deny that the prerequisites ever happened, how long is it before the logical next step is that you must also deny the work of Christ? Schneider seems to be on that path, one already taken and well-traveled by nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century critics. Schneider too wants the church to reconcile science and Scripture in a way that puts Scripture in the back of the bus.
So let’s take the road less traveled: Christ is the seed of the very same woman who picked the fruit in the garden, ate it, and handed to her husband; the very woman about whom God himself said, “… her seed will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel” (see Genesis 3:15); the woman Adam named Eve, because she became the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20).
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Into the weeds: What we have in common with animals—and what we don’t
Genesis 1 and 2 teach us that there is a certain amount of commonality between animals and people. Both are nephesh chayyah made from the ground. (All Scripture quotations are from the ESV.)
The Hebrew phrase translated “living creature(s)” is nephesh chayyah. Chayyah means living, alive. L’chaim, the Jewish toast (“To life!”), comes from the same root. But nephesh can mean many things: breath; anything that breathes, i.e. an animal; person; soul; life; self; spirit, feelings; inclination, desire. Some translations call Adam a living soul, though never the animals. Both Adam and the animals are living, breathing creatures.
Both Adam and the animals are made from the ground, and God “forms” both. Thus Genesis calls our attention to something scientists know: human being and animals are alike. That’s why medical researchers can test new drugs on rats and new surgical procedures on dogs. That’s why we find the sorts of physical similarities that fuel the theory that man evolved from the apes. God made man and animals from the same raw material and both sets of creatures became nephesh chayyah.
But that’s not enough—and that’s the big joke in Genesis 2. Notice that in Genesis 1, we read that God makes the animals, then man and woman in his own image. But in Genesis 2, God makes the man, and says, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Readers of Genesis 1 expect Eve to come next, but that is not what God does. Instead God makes every kind of animal—the cows, the sheep, the lions, the elephants, and so on and so on—as well as every kind of bird and brings them to Adam.
And none of them is suitable for Adam. (See Genesis 2:19-20). Only after Adam has seen all of the animals and named them does God put him into deep sleep and make Eve. None of the animals is suitable to Adam, because out of all God created, only Adam and Eve are made in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27). Humans and animals are alike, but not alike enough.
So perhaps the bigger joke is the one that evolutionary scientists have pulled on many Bible scholars, convincing them that scientific discoveries nullify the word of God. Except this one is not funny. It’s harmful.
“God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth …’ ”
“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth [i.e. wild animals] according to their kinds.’ ” (Genesis 1:24).
“—then the LORD God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)
“So the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” (Genesis 2:19)
The Hebrew phrase translated “living creature(s)” is nephesh chayyah. Chayyah means living, alive. L’chaim, the Jewish toast (“To life!”), comes from the same root. But nephesh can mean many things: breath; anything that breathes, i.e. an animal; person; soul; life; self; spirit, feelings; inclination, desire. Some translations call Adam a living soul, though never the animals. Both Adam and the animals are living, breathing creatures.
Both Adam and the animals are made from the ground, and God “forms” both. Thus Genesis calls our attention to something scientists know: human being and animals are alike. That’s why medical researchers can test new drugs on rats and new surgical procedures on dogs. That’s why we find the sorts of physical similarities that fuel the theory that man evolved from the apes. God made man and animals from the same raw material and both sets of creatures became nephesh chayyah.
But that’s not enough—and that’s the big joke in Genesis 2. Notice that in Genesis 1, we read that God makes the animals, then man and woman in his own image. But in Genesis 2, God makes the man, and says, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Readers of Genesis 1 expect Eve to come next, but that is not what God does. Instead God makes every kind of animal—the cows, the sheep, the lions, the elephants, and so on and so on—as well as every kind of bird and brings them to Adam.
And none of them is suitable for Adam. (See Genesis 2:19-20). Only after Adam has seen all of the animals and named them does God put him into deep sleep and make Eve. None of the animals is suitable to Adam, because out of all God created, only Adam and Eve are made in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27). Humans and animals are alike, but not alike enough.
So perhaps the bigger joke is the one that evolutionary scientists have pulled on many Bible scholars, convincing them that scientific discoveries nullify the word of God. Except this one is not funny. It’s harmful.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Into the Weeds: Understanding the Hebrew of Genesis 3:16a
How should we translate the first two lines of Genesis 3:16?
The KJV, ILB, NKJV, and RSV read something like this:
line 1: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
line 2: in sorrow you will bring forth children.
Other (generally newer) translations (NIV, ESV, JPS, NASB) read something like this:
line 1: I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth;
line 2: in pain you will bring forth children.
The question for translators is really how to interpret the Hebrew conjunction ve- ("and") in the phrase itsbonek veheronek (line 1: "thy sorrow and thy conception" KJV). Perhaps the translators of newer versions have been influenced by Keil and Delitzsch, who in their commentary on the Hebrew of this verse say:
In other words, ignore the ve-! Many translators think the two nouns in our phrase are a hendiadys (two coordinate terms joined by a conjunction to express what in English would be expressed by a adjective and a noun). Carol Meyers discusses at length whether this phrase is a hendiadys in Discovering Eve, pages 100-109, and concludes that it is not. Nor, she points out, did the translators of the Septuagint.
The word heron also more properly refers to conception than to childbearing or childbirth. It means "to become pregnant," that is, "to conceive." As Carol Meyers says, it is "more associated with the initiation of pregnancy than with the duration or conclusion.... It does not refer to the sexual act itself but indicates the physiological condition that was the desired result of intercourse in Israelite society" (Discovering Eve, 102). We associate pain with labor, but not with conception. Maybe that also influenced translators!
All translators are also interpreters. Here, I think we miss connections if we ignore the ve- (pun intended!). Genesis 3:16-19 is full of parallels evident in the Hebrew that we miss in English translation. (We'll get into those weeds another time.) The curse on the woman of increased conception connects to the curse on the ground of bringing forth weeds and thorns. But modern translations don't let us see that both the woman and the ground will experience changed fertility as a result of the fall.
The KJV, ILB, NKJV, and RSV read something like this:
line 1: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
line 2: in sorrow you will bring forth children.
Other (generally newer) translations (NIV, ESV, JPS, NASB) read something like this:
line 1: I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth;
line 2: in pain you will bring forth children.
The question for translators is really how to interpret the Hebrew conjunction ve- ("and") in the phrase itsbonek veheronek (line 1: "thy sorrow and thy conception" KJV). Perhaps the translators of newer versions have been influenced by Keil and Delitzsch, who in their commentary on the Hebrew of this verse say:
As the increase of conceptions, regarded as the fulfillment of the blessing to
'be fruitful and multiply' (1:28) could be no punishment, [heronek] must be
understood as in apposition to ... thy sorrow (i.e., the sorrows peculiar to a
woman's life), and indeed (or more especially) thy pregnancy (i.e., the
sorrows attendant upon that condition).
In other words, ignore the ve-! Many translators think the two nouns in our phrase are a hendiadys (two coordinate terms joined by a conjunction to express what in English would be expressed by a adjective and a noun). Carol Meyers discusses at length whether this phrase is a hendiadys in Discovering Eve, pages 100-109, and concludes that it is not. Nor, she points out, did the translators of the Septuagint.
The word heron also more properly refers to conception than to childbearing or childbirth. It means "to become pregnant," that is, "to conceive." As Carol Meyers says, it is "more associated with the initiation of pregnancy than with the duration or conclusion.... It does not refer to the sexual act itself but indicates the physiological condition that was the desired result of intercourse in Israelite society" (Discovering Eve, 102). We associate pain with labor, but not with conception. Maybe that also influenced translators!
All translators are also interpreters. Here, I think we miss connections if we ignore the ve- (pun intended!). Genesis 3:16-19 is full of parallels evident in the Hebrew that we miss in English translation. (We'll get into those weeds another time.) The curse on the woman of increased conception connects to the curse on the ground of bringing forth weeds and thorns. But modern translations don't let us see that both the woman and the ground will experience changed fertility as a result of the fall.
The blessing of birth control
When pastor Kevin DeYoung asks Christians to give each other the benefit of the doubt and love one another regardless of the size of our families, he appeals to 1 Corinthians 13 love. Let’s be sensitive to one another’s feelings, he says, and admit that we don’t know the situations of other families well enough to judge their choices.
Good advice—not followed by some of his blog readers. Not too far down in the comments to his post the flame throwing starts. One side calls the other side pagans and the other side responds by calling them Pharisees. So much for practicing love and humility!
When Christians debate birth control, they usually only talk about Genesis 1:28 and how we should fill the earth. But this is only half the story. Yes, when God commanded Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28 ESV), he certainly meant for them to have children. And they did: Cain, Abel, Seth, and “other sons and daughters” (Genesis 5:4)—a large family. Children are a blessing from the Lord (Psalms 127:3-5; 128:3-6)—but so is birth control. Birth control is a blessing in a world Christ is redeeming from death and curse.
After the fall, the first consequence God tells the woman is “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conceptions; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16 KJV). Modern translations have chosen to drop this idea of increased conception and make this curse all about pain in childbirth: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbirth; in pain you shall bring forth children” (ESV). (More on this here: Into the Weeds: Understanding the Hebrew in Genesis 3:16a.) And that’s a shame, because we miss the connection that the fall resulted in changed fertility, for both man and woman and for the ground (Genesis 3:17-18).
Increased conception is one consequence of the fall. Sin’s consequences on our bodies also mean some women are infertile or some husbands sterile. Some women experience debilitating, even life-threatening, illnesses during pregnancy. Some babies are born with birth defects, genetic and otherwise, and some infants die. Sin’s consequences also mean some families can’t make the ends of their budget meet, even though they work hard (see Genesis 3:17-19). These are just some of the new realities after the fall.
But God is gracious. Increased conception was also a blessing for Adam and Eve. Before the fall, they would have had all the time in the world, literally, to be fruitful and fill the earth. Now they were dying. The earliest patriarchs lived almost a thousand years, and according to Genesis 5, they had their first sons at the age of 100 or later. By Genesis 11, men and women are living fewer years and having children at younger ages. By the time we read of Sarah and Abraham, 70 years is past the age of childbearing, and by age 90 Sarah can only laugh at the absolutely impossible notion of ever having a child from her own body (see Genesis 16, 18).
Keil and Delitzsch, in their commentary on this verse, say increased conception “could be no punishment.” In a pre-Industrial agrarian society, where infant mortality was high and family farms needed laborers, that was largely true. (However, I would also point out that this was said by men, who never had to go through the “discomforts” of morning sickness, labor, etc.!) But in a postindustrial world, smaller families are “no punishment” either. In fact, birth control is a blessing.
Birth control is a blessing because it is the gift of God, like other medical knowledge that helps solve the problems of infertility, painful childbirth, infant mortality, and much more. God’s command to be fruitful and multiply was never a command to have as many children as a couple possibly can, nor was having children the only thing God had in mind when he said, “Be fruitful …” Genesis 1:28 is a call to be fruitful in all aspects of life, so that the world is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9) and God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Within this kingdom-building task, God has given women many callings alongside that of motherhood. (See the woman of Proverbs 31!)
In a world still awaiting Christ’s final removal of every curse and sorrow and pain (see Revelation 21:4), birth control is a good thing!
Good advice—not followed by some of his blog readers. Not too far down in the comments to his post the flame throwing starts. One side calls the other side pagans and the other side responds by calling them Pharisees. So much for practicing love and humility!
When Christians debate birth control, they usually only talk about Genesis 1:28 and how we should fill the earth. But this is only half the story. Yes, when God commanded Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28 ESV), he certainly meant for them to have children. And they did: Cain, Abel, Seth, and “other sons and daughters” (Genesis 5:4)—a large family. Children are a blessing from the Lord (Psalms 127:3-5; 128:3-6)—but so is birth control. Birth control is a blessing in a world Christ is redeeming from death and curse.
After the fall, the first consequence God tells the woman is “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conceptions; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16 KJV). Modern translations have chosen to drop this idea of increased conception and make this curse all about pain in childbirth: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbirth; in pain you shall bring forth children” (ESV). (More on this here: Into the Weeds: Understanding the Hebrew in Genesis 3:16a.) And that’s a shame, because we miss the connection that the fall resulted in changed fertility, for both man and woman and for the ground (Genesis 3:17-18).
Increased conception is one consequence of the fall. Sin’s consequences on our bodies also mean some women are infertile or some husbands sterile. Some women experience debilitating, even life-threatening, illnesses during pregnancy. Some babies are born with birth defects, genetic and otherwise, and some infants die. Sin’s consequences also mean some families can’t make the ends of their budget meet, even though they work hard (see Genesis 3:17-19). These are just some of the new realities after the fall.
But God is gracious. Increased conception was also a blessing for Adam and Eve. Before the fall, they would have had all the time in the world, literally, to be fruitful and fill the earth. Now they were dying. The earliest patriarchs lived almost a thousand years, and according to Genesis 5, they had their first sons at the age of 100 or later. By Genesis 11, men and women are living fewer years and having children at younger ages. By the time we read of Sarah and Abraham, 70 years is past the age of childbearing, and by age 90 Sarah can only laugh at the absolutely impossible notion of ever having a child from her own body (see Genesis 16, 18).
Keil and Delitzsch, in their commentary on this verse, say increased conception “could be no punishment.” In a pre-Industrial agrarian society, where infant mortality was high and family farms needed laborers, that was largely true. (However, I would also point out that this was said by men, who never had to go through the “discomforts” of morning sickness, labor, etc.!) But in a postindustrial world, smaller families are “no punishment” either. In fact, birth control is a blessing.
Birth control is a blessing because it is the gift of God, like other medical knowledge that helps solve the problems of infertility, painful childbirth, infant mortality, and much more. God’s command to be fruitful and multiply was never a command to have as many children as a couple possibly can, nor was having children the only thing God had in mind when he said, “Be fruitful …” Genesis 1:28 is a call to be fruitful in all aspects of life, so that the world is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9) and God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Within this kingdom-building task, God has given women many callings alongside that of motherhood. (See the woman of Proverbs 31!)
In a world still awaiting Christ’s final removal of every curse and sorrow and pain (see Revelation 21:4), birth control is a good thing!
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