Interpreting Eden

A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1-3

Vern S. Poythress

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781433558764
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

"No interpreter of the creation narratives can avoid interacting with this book." —Derek W. H. Thomas

Christians have long discussed and debated the first three chapters of the Bible. How we interpret this crucial section of Scripture has massive implications for how we understand the rest of God's Word and even history itself. In this important volume, biblical scholar Vern Poythress combines careful exegesis with theological acumen to illuminate the significance of Genesis 1–3. In doing so, he demonstrates the sound interpretive principles that lead to true understanding of the biblical text, while also exploring complex topics such as the nature of time, the proper role of science, interpretive literalism, and more.

Part 1

Basic Interpretive Principles

1

God

Let us begin with some basic interpretive principles.

Behind all of the particular questions about various verses of Genesis 1–3, and behind most of the interpretive issues as well, we find the question of God. Understanding who God is influences our interpretation of Genesis 1–3. In fact, the question of God is all-important for interpreting the Bible as a whole. Indeed, it is the most important question for Western civilization today. Apart from a significant minority, elite culture within Western civilization has given up on the idea that God is the Trinitarian deity described in the Bible. Education, media, and the arts travel in other directions.

One direction that is being explored is materialism or naturalism. The philosophy of materialism says that the world is composed of matter in motion. That is all that there is at the bottom of the world and the foundation of human experience. All the complexity that we see has built up gradually out of simpler constituents of matter. In particular, there is no God. Genesis 1–3 is viewed as one of many made-up stories of origins. (Note that philosophical materialism has its own story of origins. See Fig. 1.1.)

But is philosophical materialism really viable? If matter is all that there is, it would seem that our thoughts and ideas are not real. They are illusions. Some materialists do say that consciousness is an illusion. But if that is so, the ideas of materialist philosophy are also illusory. So it seems that materialist philosophy cannot give a coherent account of its own basis.

Fig. 1.1: Philosophical Materialism versus Biblical Theism

Not everyone is a materialist these days. Pure materialism seems too grim. Therefore, some people edge closer to pantheism, which says that everything is god. Though this position is “spiritual” in a sense, it radically disagrees with Genesis 1–3. It discards Genesis 1–3 or treats it as a confused reaction to the actual reality that everything is divine.

The question of God is important because God himself is important. But the question is also important because it has implications for morality and human living. What does it mean for an action to be morally right or wrong? Does morality have its root in the moral character of God? And if God exists, does he have purposes for human living, purposes that tell us who we really are?

Suppose we think that there is no God. Is morality no more than a personal, subjective preference, like regarding chocolate ice cream as better than vanilla? Is morality merely the product of mindless, unguided, random evolution? If so, it would seem to follow that everyone’s notions of morality are equally products of evolution. So the desire to help others has the same standing as the desire to steal from others. There is no real basis to consider one person’s moral preferences to be superior to another’s.

Since the question of God is important, Genesis 1–3 is important. It is one of the central texts in the Bible that tell us about God.

Who Is God?

From the standpoint of the elite in Western culture, maybe God exists and maybe he does not. But life goes on. According to this kind of thinking, life can be conducted mostly without reference to God. If someone wants to add a religious dimension in his private life, that is up to him. And, indeed, many people think of themselves as “spiritual” in some sense. They are seeking contact with something transcendent. But many of them are not really seeking the God described in the Bible. They are seeking a substitute elsewhere, in meditation, in communion with nature, in spiritualism, or in reading and listening to a host of sources.

The Bible is at odds with this atmosphere. God is at the center of its message. And God has particular characteristics. There is only one true God (Deut. 4:35, 39). And because he alone is God, it is fitting to worship him alone. He requires exclusive allegiance, by analogy with the exclusive allegiance that a man and a woman used to be expected to give to each other in marriage. This requirement of exclusive allegiance sounds oppressive to many modern people, but that is because they do not understand either God or themselves. They do not understand that they have been created for communion with God, and that such communion alone fulfills their true natures. They have lost communion through human rebellion.

So not just any idea of God and any kind of response to the transcendent is adequate. We must come to know about this particular God and resist the temptation to bring in all kinds of other ideas as to what we would like God to be.

Miracles

When we actually pay attention to the Bible, we find out what it says about God. This God, it turns out, works miracles when he wishes. The four Gospels all indicate that Jesus worked miracles. And the greatest miracle was that Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of God: “But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people” (Acts 13:30–31). The Old Testament contains other striking instances of miracles. God appeared to Abraham in human form (Gen. 18:1–2). God rained fire and sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah (19:24). God divided the waters of the Red Sea (Ex. 14:21). God spoke in an audible voice to Israel from the top of Mount Sinai (Exodus 19). God through Elijah raised from the dead the widow of Zarephath’s son (1 Kings 17:21–22).

Many Western people today are skeptical of such claims. But if we ask why, we soon confront the fact that Western culture has already given up on the idea of such a God before reading any passage from the Bible. Allegedly, “modern science” has shown that miracles are impossible. But the empirical investigations that scientists conduct can only uncover regularities, to which scientists give the name of “law.” They cannot rightly say that there can be no exceptions. People say that there are no exceptions because they are already influenced by a philosophy that says that God does not exist, that the world is run by mechanism, and that therefore there can be no exceptions.1 (See Fig. 1.2.)

Fig. 1.2: Miracles according to Mechanism versus the God of the Bible

God’s Rule over All

But miracles are only the beginning of the ways in which we must reckon...