Why Care about Genesis?

[rjp34652]

For years I had always been of the opinion that the book of Revelation was the most controversial book in the Bible what with all of the debates and controversy surrounding the various rapture views, the identity of anti-Christ and the varied and sundry views pertaining to the Millennium. I have discovered that there is a far more controversial book in the Bible. That book is Genesis.

Granted, there have been no small number of debates on this board surrounding eschatology and the contents of Revelation, but I think that Genesis is arguably the most hotly debated portion of Scripture on these boards. In particular, I am speaking of Genesis 1-11 and if we narrow it down even further, the hottest part seems to be the first three chapters of Genesis.

There is a view in the Church that is gaining a lot of steam in our day, that Genesis isn’t really all that important, and that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are more of a parable, an allegory or perhaps just a really big metaphor. The argument seems to be based on an assumption that Genesis is disconnected from the rest of the Bible, in particular, the New Testament. The argument reasons that as long as you believe the right things about Jesus, that Jesus died for your sins, and rose again and as long as you believe in Jesus as your Savior, what you believe about Genesis doesn’t matter. In effect, for the Christian, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are expendable and are at best a fictional parable or clever allegory. The end result of this line of reasoning is that the first eleven chapters of Genesis don’t matter.

Why is it so important to view Genesis 1-11 as a collection of actual, historical events? If you believe the right things about Jesus, then how is an allegorical view all that dangerous? Those historical events are a chronicle of God’s dealing with man. They demonstrate why we need a Savior. These events recorded in Genesis 1-11 are the seedbed for all of the theology that comes later in Scripture. The Bible is a system of progressive revelation. Think of it this way. A painter wants to paint a beautiful nature scene with mountains, a beautiful sunset, waterfalls, animals, etc. He doesn’t begin with the foreground. He has to paint the background or the foundational elements first like the sunset, the mountains, grass and so forth. The waterfall, the trees, flowers, animals and so on, are part of the foreground that comes later. In the same way the Bible has to lay the foundation, the background to the plan of redemption that is progressively unfolding as go from Genesis through the Old Testament to the New Testament. Genesis 1-11 forms the background information about the need for man’s redemption. These chapters are like the sunset and mountain range that form the background of the painting. Yet there is an even more important point to make about the absolute necessity of viewing Genesis 1-11 through the lens of literalism: Genesis 1-11 is the foundation for biblical doctrine.

Genesis 1-11 matters as a literal account because of all of the biblical teachings/doctrines that it addresses:

• The origin of sin and the sinfulness of man;
  
• The institution of marriage;
  
• Moral absolutes; justice;
  
• God as man’s eternal Judge;
  
• The origin of death and suffering;
  
• Personal modesty;
  
• The existence of God;
  
• God as Creator of the universe and the source of all life;
  
• God as man’s righteous and merciful Redeemer;
  
• The sovereignty of God;
  
• The omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of God
  

I don’t have time right now to deal with all of these individually, but this thread, in the coming days, will be about discussing the above eleven doctrinal issues dealt with in Genesis 1-11 and why this portion of Scripture MUST be understood as written in order for the rest of the Bible to make sense.

There is some evidence, albeit unsubstantiated by the general archaeological community, that an advanced culture existed upon the earth thousands of years before the beginning of the Genesis account.(*) Additionally it has been argued that this culture was destroyed, according to our present calendar, on or about 10,500 BC.

Don't choke on me just yet, please hang on for another minute.

According to cultural legends, which exist throughout the planet, mankind had to relearn how to live and build and remember. Mysterious artifacts still exist which point to this time. They cannot be denied or easily explained away.

Interspersed in all of these legends and stories are numerous references to some sort of external influence upon the affairs of man. Something terrible and wonderful all at the same time happened about 6,000 years ago.

The Bible says there was war in heaven, or the heavens, depending upon the translation. Six thousand years ago this battle came to earth and it has been waged here ever since. It was so bad and so heavy that God Himself became a combatant.

"According to a strict interpretation of its pages, the Bible states that earth is the only planet in the universe in rebellion against God."

- Billy Graham

To date, there has been no evidence or logical argument whatsoever to dispute the actual facts recorded in the first chapter of the Holy Bible. The earth was once a garden it says, and ever since has been a combat zone. Rather than being a metaphor, it is quite possible that Genesis records a horrible truth. That man was once innocent before God and that some cruel power entered our world and caused us to fall away from our first love - God Himself.

If the Genesis account is true and I personally believe it is, then the intervention of God into the affairs of mankind is perhaps the greatest gift and mercy the universe has seen since creation itself.

and that's just me, hollering from the choir loft...

(*) The name of the culture is unknown, but it isn't and wasn't Atlantis. That particular culture was destroyed in 1,300 BC, well within the time period covered by scripture. I wrote a book about it, but that's another story - quite literally.

Edited May 5, 2013 by rjp34652

[BlessedByTheBest]

It was so bad and so heavy that God Himself became a combatant.

this got a good chuckle out of me.. lol

[JohnD]

For years I had always been of the opinion that the book of Revelation was the most controversial book in the Bible what with all of the debates and controversy surrounding the various rapture views, the identity of anti-Christ and the varied and sundry views pertaining to the Millennium. I have discovered that there is a far more controversial book in the Bible. That book is Genesis.

Granted, there have been no small number of debates on this board surrounding eschatology and the contents of Revelation, but I think that Genesis is arguably the most hotly debated portion of Scripture on these boards. In particular, I am speaking of Genesis 1-11 and if we narrow it down even further, the hottest part seems to be the first three chapters of Genesis.

There is a view in the Church that is gaining a lot of steam in our day, that Genesis isn’t really all that important, and that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are more of a parable, an allegory or perhaps just a really big metaphor. The argument seems to be based on an assumption that Genesis is disconnected from the rest of the Bible, in particular, the New Testament. The argument reasons that as long as you believe the right things about Jesus, that Jesus died for your sins, and rose again and as long as you believe in Jesus as your Savior, what you believe about Genesis doesn’t matter. In effect, for the Christian, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are expendable and are at best a fictional parable or clever allegory. The end result of this line of reasoning is that the first eleven chapters of Genesis don’t matter.

Why is it so important to view Genesis 1-11 as a collection of actual, historical events? If you believe the right things about Jesus, then how is an allegorical view all that dangerous? Those historical events are a chronicle of God’s dealing with man. They demonstrate why we need a Savior. These events recorded in Genesis 1-11 are the seedbed for all of the theology that comes later in Scripture. The Bible is a system of progressive revelation. Think of it this way. A painter wants to paint a beautiful nature scene with mountains, a beautiful sunset, waterfalls, animals, etc. He doesn’t begin with the foreground. He has to paint the background or the foundational elements first like the sunset, the mountains, grass and so forth. The waterfall, the trees, flowers, animals and so on, are part of the foreground that comes later. In the same way the Bible has to lay the foundation, the background to the plan of redemption that is progressively unfolding as go from Genesis through the Old Testament to the New Testament. Genesis 1-11 forms the background information about the need for man’s redemption. These chapters are like the sunset and mountain range that form the background of the painting. Yet there is an even more important point to make about the absolute necessity of viewing Genesis 1-11 through the lens of literalism: Genesis 1-11 is the foundation for biblical doctrine.

Genesis 1-11 matters as a literal account because of all of the biblical teachings/doctrines that it addresses:

• The origin of sin and the sinfulness of man;
  
• The institution of marriage;
  
• Moral absolutes; justice;
  
• God as man’s eternal Judge;
  
• The origin of death and suffering;
  
• Personal modesty;
  
• The existence of God;
  
• God as Creator of the universe and the source of all life;
  
• God as man’s righteous and merciful Redeemer;
  
• The sovereignty of God;
  
• The omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of God
  

I don’t have time right now to deal with all of these individually, but this thread, in the coming days, will be about discussing the above eleven doctrinal issues dealt with in Genesis 1-11 and why this portion of Scripture MUST be understood as written in order for the rest of the Bible to make sense.

Shi, I look at scripture like an architect or builder would. Both Genesis and Revelation are books reflective of the interior of the whole Bible like the foundation (Genesis) and the roof (Revelation) would be of the interior of the Bible the same way the roof and foundation would give indications of how many rooms and walls etc there are in a building.

Naturally they would be the most complex.

Take the akidah (Genesis 22) contains prophetic elements of the crucifixion and even its location

[Guest shiloh357]

The Authority, Inspiration and Inerrancy of Genesis 1-11

I have often made the point in the past that the truth of Scripture, all that it teaches is rooted in historical and geographic fact. All of the converging lines of evidence are in a setting of real, historical people, places and events. That holds true for Genesis 1-11, as well.

Many doctrines in Scripture find their origin in these first eleven chapters of Scripture and it is my intention to demonstrate that the historical approach to Genesis 1-11 is essential to a healthy biblical worldview. Let’s begin looking at the doctrinal casualties created by the allegorical approach championed by BFA and others.

There is a three-fold doctrine directly affected by this discussion of the allegorical approach. I am referring to the inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture as the Word of God. The Bible is of divine origin according to a proper approach to Scripture. The allegorical approach to Genesis 1-11 serves to deny the authority of Scripture, as well as both its inerrancy and inspiration. Let’s first look at its authority

Stripping away the Bible’s Authority

The Bible is designed so that there is no single chapter, verse or even an entire book that contains all of the truth on any matter. For our purposes here, the Bible as a lot to say about the creation of the world and most of it is not Genesis. The Bible has a lot to say about the creation account in Genesis 1 in other books, like the prophets, the Psalms, and the New Testament.

The allegorical approach to Genesis 1-11 dismisses what the Bible says and therefore dismisses the Bible’s authority to tell us how the world was created and this by extension dismisses God’s authority as Creator. In the allegorical approach, none of the events listed Gen. 1-11 actually occurred and thus the remainder of the Bible, which treats these events as actual history, is wrong.

The allegorical approach dismisses the divine origin of Scripture and thus it carries no divine authority over us. In this view the Bible has no authority to define sin, it has no authority over marriage, it has no authority to judge our actions as sinful and thus God’s authority as our Judge is dissolved. The Bible finds its authority in the authority of God and God has all authority. The Bible is God’s word, unless you can dismiss certain parts of it as allegory written hundreds of years after the Exodus (if you believe that actually happened) and serves as nothing but poetic polemic against the gods of Babylon.

Disregarding the Bible as Wholly Inspired and Wholly Inerrant

The allegorical approach dismisses Genesis 1-11 as the inspired Word of God. It also dismisses the inerrancy of the Bible. Those who assume that Genesis 1-11 is nothing but an allegory view this as a document of human origin. In liberal circles, two anonymous authors write Genesis. Neither is considered to be “inspired.” The alleged “allegory” is merely and uncritically accepted and assumed. Those parts of the Bible outside Genesis that treat the creation story, the fall of mankind in the Garden, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel as literal history are simply wrong and this viewed as evidence that the Bible is not inerrant.

I find it important and instructive that the first thing Satan does in Scripture is challenge the authority, inspiration, and inerrancy of God’s word. “Hath God said…?” Satan’s first tactic was call into question God’s word. And he did it twice. He came to Eve and said, “Hath God said you shall not eat of every tree of Garden?” Actually Satan was misquoting God, but the point was to challenge God’s authority. Secondly, he challenged God’s clear indication that man would die from disobeying God. “You shall not surely die.” See Eve was not present when God told Adam not to eat of the tree. So Adam passed the information on to Eve. Eve was essentially divulging hearsay when she responded to Satan.

“Hath God said…? Do you really know if God said that? That’s just what Adam said and since you have no outside evidence to corroborate Adam’s account, you have no way of knowing if God really said that, or not.” Satan was attacking the inspiration of God’s word to Adam and Eve. He was also attacking the authority of God’s Word. “Hath God said…? So what if God said it?? Who is he to deny you what you really, really want? You are a free moral agent and free to make your own choices. Who does God think He is denying you this fruit? Go ahead take it and eat, you know you want it.”

“You shall not surely die…” You are not going to die. There is no reason to believe that you will. God is trying to shortchange you. He isn’t the good God you have been led to believe He is. He knows that you will suddenly become gods yourselves and He is just trying to keep you down.” Satan was attacking the inerrancy of the Scripture and its authority at the same time. Once he challenged the divine origin, and divine authority of Scripture, any sense that the Word of God is inerrant simply dissolves.

The irony here is that those who deny the historicity of the fall of mankind are the ones committing the same kind of sin that led to the fall of man in the first place. In order to deny authority, inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture must repeat the very sin they said never really happened. They are repeating the very lies of the serpent that they reject as existing. It’s a Genesis three all over again.

So the first doctrines that are adversely affected by the allegorical approach are the authority, inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures, and by extension the authority of God Himself. "Hath God said He created the world?" "Hath God said that marriage is between a man and woman only?" "Hath God said, that man fell in the Garden and became sinful because of his disobedience?"

Stay tuned for more doctrinal discussions over Gen. 1-11

[Guest shiloh357]

Genesis 1-11 and the Doctrines Associated with God

We now come to the doctrines associated with God that find their origin with in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In the previous section we dealt with the first eleven chapters of Genesis in the light of God’s Word and the point is made that if one adopts the view that Genesis 1-11 is nothing but an allegory, nothing these eleven chapters teach us about God or any other doctrine is authoritative. Furthermore, none of the events it claims to have occurred ever happened.

The Existence of God

The first verse of Genesis tells us that God exists. “In the beginning, God…” The Bible makes no attempt to defend God’s existence. It offers no apologetic to prove God’s existence. The Bible simply assumes the existence of God. The Bible further tells us that all of creation testifies of His existence. There is no lack of evidence that God exists. There is, however, a severe and stubborn refusal on the part of mankind to accept what the evidence reveals. The allegorical view of Genesis 1-11 has been an enabler for those who reject the very existence of God. While not everyone who adopts this kind of sloppy theology denies the existence of God, it does make room for atheists to point to a “Christian” view that gives atheism and doubt about God’s existence a foot in the door. There have been a number of Christians whose faith in God’s existence has been shipwrecked because they were convinced that the Bible, and Genesis 1-11 in particular, are nothing but a collection of stories of events that never happened.

Jesus as Our Sovereign Creator

Genesis 1 not only establishes God’s existence but it also reveals that God is our sovereign Creator. There is, however, a very strong movement to remove any worldview that espouses God as Creator, particularly as the Creator of mankind. If Genesis 1 is just an allegory, then the creation account as offered in Genesis 1 never happened. Jesus, though, links belief in Him with belief in and acceptance of, the writings of Moses: “For had you believed Moses, you would have believed me; for he wrote of Me. But if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe My words?” (John 5:46-47) Jesus is written about in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In fact, Jesus is mentioned over and over again in Genesis 1.

The book of Genesis is not disconnected from the New Testament. In fact, the resurrection of Jesus is the vindication of all that is taught and said in Genesis, as well as the rest of Scripture. If Jesus is not raised, nothing else matters. But if Jesus is raised, nothing but that matters. Jesus is the Creator (John 1:1-3, Col. 1:15-18; Heb. 1:2). So there is a direct connection between Creation and faith in Jesus. Every time God is mentioned in Genesis 1, it’s talking about Jesus. Jesus is the one doing the creating.

Jesus is not just Creator; He is our “sovereign” Creator. The Creator is always greater than the creation. Jesus is God and Jesus was able to not only to create but to micromanage every part of the universe down to the last molecule. Jesus is the one who created and now He is the One who guides and sustains all that He made. He is the sovereign Creator, meaning that He is in control of all that He made. It would take an omnipresent God to be able to manage the entire universe at once, to be able to watch all of the countless stars, galaxies and still have time to look after our planet. It would take omnipotent God to have created all that there is in the first place. The power needed to create all of the stars and planets and the forces that operate in our universe is beyond imagination. It would have taken an omniscient God to have the knowledge required to make all of the laws, forces molecules, chemicals and elements of the physical universe to work in harmony, to design biological life that not only works in harmony within that sphere, but to also work in harmony and unity with the geological aspects of creation.

The problem is that those who view Genesis 1-11 as nothing but allegory have an anti-creation agenda. The allegorizing of Genesis is meant to make room for an evolutionary interpretation of Genesis. In evolution, God is not the one responsible for life on earth. The workhorse of evolution is natural selection and this is an unguided, impersonal, unplanned system whereby life as we know it came to fruition. Theistic Evolution (TE) seeks to resolve the problem by assigning evolution to God’s means of creation. But far from the resolving the conflict between the Theory of Evolution (ToE), TE has only served to create more confusion and has caused many to question the plain statements of Scripture. Christians are no longer sure of what is truth and what isn’t. TE is as oxymoronic as “atheistic Christianity.” The ToE makes no room for any kind of intelligent, personal catalyst for evolution. Hence, “natural selection.” TE is an attempt to fit square pegs in round holes.

I have found that atheists delight in finding liberal Bible scholars on which they can hang their hat. They love quoting liberal scholars who posit that the book of Genesis 1 was not written by Moses, is not an “inspired” or and was in fact written as late of 850 BC and was not a factual or historical account of Creation that had another purpose altogether. As stated earlier, the allegorical method applied by liberal Bible scholars to deny the historicity only lends fuel and ammunition to the atheistic community that is looking for anything they can latch on to in order to discredit the biblical record and to call into question the Bible’s overall authority.

Jesus as Our Righteous Redeemer

Jesus, in the book of Genesis is first mentioned as our Savior/Redeemer in Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Note that this prophecy is the first ever mention of Jesus’ virgin birth. It refers to the “seed of the woman.” But the woman doesn’t carry the “seed.” It is her husband that carries the “seed.” But here we have a reference to a woman carrying the seed that will one day destroy Satan. Her seed is our Savior/Redeemer Jesus who is going to conquer Satan. Jesus did that on the cross.

Allegories in Scripture don’t contain prophecies, so this is evidence against the allegorical claim being made by BFA and others. What we see here is a misuse of the concept of an allegory. An allegory is meant to teach a lesson, but to allegories God’s words to Satan about the coming virgin-born, Messiah means that we have an egregious error on the part of those claiming that the events in the Garden of Eden very really occurred. The presence of the first Messianic prophecy discredits the claim that these events are allegorical. Rather what we have is the set up for the plan of redemption.

Jesus as Our Eternal Judge

Genesis chapter three reveals that Jesus is our Eternal Judge. When man sins in the Garden, God judges Satan, Adam and Eve. He then casts them out of the Garden. The sentence is immediate. Man is now separated from God and is under the curse of death. It was God’s authority as our Creator that gives Him the authority to be our Judge. What’s more as our Judge, He has the authority to define what is and is not sin. He has the absolute authority to judge between right and wrong. He is the God of moral absolutes.

If Genesis is just an allegory, and God’s judgment of man never really happened, there was no fall in the Garden of Eden. There is no absolute standard of right and wrong, and there is certainly no sin committed that offended God’s justice, nor is there any sin to be redeemed from. God’s plan of redemption has no basis, no point of origin if the events in the Garden are fictional.

Now BFA tried to argue earlier that perhaps the fall occurred some time in the infinite past (which is rather ambiguous) but the argument amounts to accepting the claims of Scripture but only on one’s own terms. BFA rejects the fall of man occurring as recorded in Genesis and tries to reassign it to some other point in history. The problem is that Paul correctly assigns the origin of man’s sin and the fall directly to Adam’s disobedience (Rom. 5:12-21), as well as in other places in the New Testament.

The point behind the allegorical approach here is to deny God’s (Jesus’) authority as our sovereign Creator, righteous Redeemer and Eternal Judge. If God can’t define sin, He can’t judge it because it doesn’t exist Ergo, the moral standards held up in the rest of the Bible have no real authority. Right and wrong become defined by subjective and arbitrary human opinions. Thus the moral code in Scripture is relegated to human origins. What the Bible calls sin is viewed as no longer relevant to our modern age.

[Guest shiloh357]

Marriage and Genesis 2

Another important teaching that finds its origin in Genesis is that of Marriage. We, here in the United States are seeing the institution of marriage devalued and redefined. We are seeing the biblical concept of marriage cast aside for a perverted and secularized version that bears little to no resemblance to the real thing.

The biblical and historical model for marriage is as follows:

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:21-24)

One man marries one woman and they stay married until they die. The biblical model for a healthy view on human sexuality and a healthy family springs forth from the biblical marriage model.

Everything the Bible says about God’s plan for marriage outside of Genesis is rooted in the original marriage officiated by God himself. One important feature, in fact it is probably the most important feature of marriage is that it is intended to be a blood covenant between a man and a woman. That is why it is important for married people to be virgins when they get married. In the Bible, blood covenants are unbreakable. You are not released from the blood covenant of marriage until you or your spouse pass away. Only then, in a blood covenant model, would you be free to remarry. That type of covenant paradigm is very difficult for people who view marriage from a godless and/or secular perspective.

What About Gay Marriage?

To put it plainly from the outset, gay marriage and homosexuality as a lifestyle are an unnatural perversion of God’s biblical model for human sexuality and marriage/the family. God calls it an abomination. He uses the strongest terms possible to communicate His hatred of these perversions. There are actually two Hebrew words that are translated “abomination” in English. One word is used in reference to ritual impurity (Shekhets). But the Hebrew word translated abomination in reference to homosexuality is different. It is the word “toevah” (to-ay-vah) and it refers to something God never uses the word for “ritual impurity” in reference to homosexuality. Toevah always refers to something that is contemptible, disgusting and offensive. The Bible, in using that same word, places homosexuality in the same category as idolatry (Is. 41:24), and child sacrifice (Deut. 12:31).

When the divine origin of marriage is disregarded, everything else the Bible says about marriage and human sexuality is disregarded. Because Genesis is being viewed as a fictional allegory and not as divinely inspired, everything else the Bible has to say about marriage is viewed through the same lens. If I don’t have to be accountable to a sovereign, holy and eternal Judge and Lawgiver, then you are free to define marriage as you see fit and the commandments pertaining to marriage and human sexuality outside of Genesis are viewed as the words of dumb, naïve shepherds who had no knowledge of how the world works.

In the minds of some “Christians” who support gay marriage and reject and/or ignore the Bible’s clear stance against homosexuality, Jesus never addressed the issue and if Jesus didn’t say it was wrong, we have no right to say it is wrong or sinful. They are very mistaken.

Jesus created us. As our Creator, He owns us and has the authority by right of creation to determine what is right and wrong. Jesus quoting from Genesis: He said: “…Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19:4-6) I understand that Jesus was addressing the question about divorce, but the statement above would also apply to the gay marriage issue. Jesus is explaining the doctrine of marriage.

God created man from the dust of the earth, but Eve was not created from the dust. She was created out of the substance of man, making her one with her husband. Jesus points to the passage from Genesis to demonstrate an historical basis for marriage. He treats it as literal history and he demonstrates that marriage is between one man and one woman, not a man and a man or between two women.

Marriage between a man and woman is also used as an analogy to describe Jesus’ relationship with the church.

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:25-32)

Furthermore, the homosexual issue is dealt with in the New Testament in Rom. 1:26-27, I Cor. 6:9, and I Tim. 9-10.

Other Marriage Issues

Abandoning God’s historical plan for marriage has resulted in higher divorce rates, men and women living out of wedlock. It has also resulted in marriages where the man is not spiritual head of the home, as he should be. I have often seen abusive marriage relationships that are more like a “boss” relationship where the man rules the family like a despotic overlord.

It has been argued that the divorce rate among Christians is just as high as non-believers, but that statistic is probably flawed. The statistic is the result of a poll that doesn’t take into account that the divorcees who answered the poll claiming to be Christians may not have been authentic followers of Jesus. The poll simply asked their religious affiliation. It doesn’t differentiate between those who call themselves “Christians” because they were sprinkled as an infant and haven’t’ darkened the door of a church since then, and those who are authentic, faithful, bible believing Christians. Many feel they are “Christians” because they were confirmed at six years old, or because they were baptized as an infant, or because their parents were Christians or they believe they are Christians because they go to church. Were the poll to be conducted making that differentiation, the results would be far different and the divorce rate among authentic followers of Jesus would be far lower than that of Christians-in-name-only who simply participate in the external Christian culture/community.

The Bible’s authority to define the exact parameters of marriage and human sexuality is derived from the authority of an all powerful, all knowing God who created us and who owns us. The Bible in several places also draws on the marriage in Genesis as its historical basis for defining marriage, as has been demonstrated. The Bible clearly contradicts the notion that Genesis has no historical value and is nothing more than an allegory.

[Guest shiloh357]

Genesis 1-3 and the Origin of Sin, Death and Moral Absolutes

Some other important doctrinal issues that have their origins in Genesis is sin, death and suffering. As with the other issues I have raised in this thread, it all comes to down to authority. Does the Bible have the authority to define sin? It will become very clear in this thread and in this post in particular that the Bible lays out a definite historical explanation for the origin of sin.

Before we go any further, we need to discuss what sin is. “Sin” (our default human condition) and “sins” (the things we do that violate God’s laws) are not the same thing. Jesus died to pay for both. “Sin” is spiritual death. It is spiritual separation from God. Adam and Eve were both created with eternal life. So when I speak of man’s sinful nature, I am referring to part of man that is dead and separated from God. It is what put man under God’s judgment.

God did not engineer death, either spiritual or physical, into man. When God created man, He designed us to live forever. Adam and Eve received their life from God. He personally breathed His life into man. In Scripture, man is a spiritual being. We are designed to receive our life from God. We are made in His image and in His likeness and we are the only creatures that are designed to be able to relate to and fellowship with God. When Adam disobeyed God, he was severed from the eternal life giving power of God. Adam and Eve were instantly separated from the Lord. They died spiritually.

As a result, the sinful nature of Adam has been passed down to everyone. In Adam all die…” (1 Cor. 15:22). Adam was man’s federal head in the Garden of Eden and when Adam fell, all of mankind fell with him. The historical origin of sin is very simple, then. It originated in the Garden of Eden when Adam disobeyed and God and ate of the tree God told him not to eat from. This the clear teaching of Rom. 5:12-21 and I Cor. 15:20-23, 45, and 47. In both places, the origin of sin is treated just as historically as the death of Jesus on the cross. In fact Paul juxtaposes the disobedience of Adam with the obedience of Jesus in Rom. 5:12-21. In Cor. 15, the historicity of Jesus' resurrection and our future resurrection is directly linked to the historicity of Adam and the fall in the Garden of Eden.

The Problem

As stated earlier the crux of the matter, the central issue in this thread is the Bible’s authority. In particular, it is the Bible’s authority to define what sin is and its integrity relative to its historical claims. If the Bible’s record of history over the span of eleven chapters cannot be trusted, then how can any of its claims really be trusted?

The claim that these first eleven chapters of Genesis are not really historical, but are merely an elaborate set of allegories presents some really major theological problems given that there are numerous places in Scripture that derive their authority to teach certain doctrinal issues from these eleven chapters and they treat these chapters as an historical record of creation, sin and God’s dealing with mankind (Ex. 20:11; Rom. 1:19-20; 11:36; I Cor 8:6; Eph. 3:9; Col.1: 16-17; Heb. 1:2, Matt. 19:3-9; Mark 10:6-12; Rom. 7:2; I Cor. 6:16-17, I Cor. 7:2-4, Eph. 5:28-31, II Cor. 11:3, Matt. 23:35; Luke 11:51; I John 3:12-15; Jude 1:11, Luke 3:37; Luke 17:26, Heb. 11:7, I Pet. 3:20; II Pet. 2:5-9).

Now, the problem with taking Genesis 1-11 as an allegory is that it defies the Bible’s historical record pertaining to sin. BFA claimed that this is a slippery slope argumental fallacy, but it isn’t. A slippery slope argument refers to a chain of events that will occur from a small initial act. That is not at all like what I am arguing here.

If the account of mankind’s fall in the Garden is nothing more than allegory:

• Sin didn’t come into the world through Adam and death did not pass to all men;
  
• Man is not separated from God because of sin;
  
• Man has not inherited a sinful nature from Adam;
  
• Sin doesn’t exist. It was just part of an elaborate allegory;
  
• Jesus’ act of obedience by giving Himself as a sacrifice for sin was a pointless act;
  
• There was no reason for Paul to call Jesus “the last Adam” in I Corinthians 15:14 if Adam wasn’t even a real person to begin with;
  
• Luke lied when He places Adam in Jesus’ genealogy;
  
• Paul is lying in I Timothy when he claims that Eve was deceived, but Adam was not;
  
• God’s justice was never violated and there is nothing to be redeemed from;
  
• The Bible has absolutely no authority to regulate man’s behavior in any portion of Scripture because apart from Genesis, no authoritative definition of sin exists;
  
• There is nothing for God to judge, since He lacks the authority to define it;
  
• The Bible cannot be trusted as an accurate and absolute standard against which to measure right and wrong.
  

Everything the Bible has to say about living a holy life, every moral standard the Bible erects has absolutely no authoritative basis if we cannot nail down precisely what sin is. The laws of God would have no meaning, as they find their origin in a divine Lawgiver.

Something else that bears pointing out: If this story were just an allegory, it would not have been written as it was written. The Scriptures are rather unique in some ways to the conventional ancient near eastern mindset. While the Bible does use ancient Israelite culture as a vehicle for communicating God’s truth, and while there are aspects of ancient near eastern culture that the ancient Israelites share in common with those around them, but the Bible does present a value system and worldview that stands in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom of the time period.

Sin, as it is represented in Scripture, is not at all, an ancient near east concept. When you study ancient near eastern mindsets, you will find that the Bible’s commandments about what not to do and what to in the Pentateuch stand in stark contrast to the social, political and religious conventions of that region of the world. Everything from the very concept of monotheism, to things like the sanitation and hygiene laws, redemption, atonement, and so forth are unique. Things like temple prostitution, idols, drinking blood, sacrifice of children, the use of human waste in medicine and in religious practices were common. The very attributes of God are in stark contrast to the attributes of the gods of the ancient pagans. The pagan gods, not surprisingly, were very human and possessed the same frailties of human beings. The God of Scripture loves humanity sacrificially and offers mercy, forgiveness and hope to mankind. The gods of the surrounding nations had no love for man and they often viewed man as an annoyance. The point I am making is that a person living in the ancient near east would have had no point of reference for the God of the Bible. There was no deity in existence that shared anything commonality with the God of the Bible. The notion of an all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere present deity that loves mankind and seeks to redeem man from sin simply didn’t exist and would not have occurred to anyone living at that time, anymore than a cell phone would have entered into the mind of someone living in the 15^th Century AD.

In addition, since the Bible’s concept of God didn’t exist, the Bible’s concept of sin would not have occurred to anyone trying to write such an allegory. Nor, would the fall of man have occurred to them. The fall is precipitated by a concept of sin that was not known about at that time. What we call “sin,” didn’t exist in the contemporary ancient near eastern nations that surrounded Israel. An ancient allegorist would not have been able to even imagine a story like Genesis 1-11. The theological concepts and the attributes of God that are depicted in those chapters simply could not have come from the mind of man living in that day and age in the ancient near east.

[Guest shiloh357]

Man Created in the Image of God

While I did not present this in the list I made in the OP, the fact that man is created in the image of God is a very important teaching of Scripture that is damaged by the allegorical approach to Genesis 1-11.

The allegorical approach, as has been stated before, is mostly an attempt to replace what the Bible records with an alternative explanation for the origins of man, namely the Theory of Evolution. I have yet to find a single allegorist who doesn’t have that agenda at heart.

The Bible says that God created man as a special creation from the dust of the earth and was made in God’s image and likeness. But sin marred that image. Man was created in perfection but lost that perfection when Adam fell in the garden. When Adam fell, all humanity fell with him. Even so, there remains visible evidence that man is made in God’s image.

Men and women are hardwired to reflect different aspects of God’s nature. I always recoil when I hear someone claim that God has male and female attributes. They have it backwards. Men and women reflect different aspects of God’s character.

Mankind is endowed with the intelligence, passion and ability to “create.” God created us with an innate curiosity about our world and even the universe. God has created us with the ability to invent, discover. We are always designing and making things, always trying to improve on what we have already made. We have taken the raw materials God provided and have made incredible things, for better or worse.

Mankind is hardwired to seek a relationship with God. Why do we appreciate good music and beautiful art? Why are coffee table books with nature scenes photographed by Ansel Adams a multi-million dollar enterprise? Why are we inspired by stories of heroes and people who have overcome impossible odds to become a great athlete or some other kind of celebrity? All of us, believers or not, can stand on a mountain and simply be overwhelmed by the awe-inspiring view in front of us. We are made by God to admire beauty and greatness. Why is that? It is the part of us (whether we are honest enough to admit it or not) that is made to appreciate God.

The part of us that appreciates beauty and greatness is the part of us designed to appreciate God. We are, whether we admit it or not, are drawn to Him and it is reflected in our nature and our desire to be inspired and awestruck. We have innate desire to be in relationship with Him. There is a longing in us to be connected to Him, no matter how hard some people try to suppress it, it is there.

Think of it like this: Who wouldn’t want to shake hands with their favorite sports athlete or actor/actress? We want to connect with greatness, and so often people settle for less greatness. God hardwired us to want to be with Him and to connect with Him. That very fact tells us that God wants to be with us, to connect and fellowship with us. God doesn’t just love you; He likes you. He designed you to like Him.

Man and God share communicable attributes. There are two different types of attributes that God possesses: Communicable and non-communicable. Non-communicable would be things like omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. God’s communicable attributes are things like compassion, mercy, forgiveness, love, hate, etc. God created us with the ability to relate to him through the attributes that we have in common with us. He put those attributes in us. He did not put these attributes in the animal kingdom.

If God didn’t really create man from the dust of the earth to be in His image and likeness, it would mean that man is nothing but a higher animal. It would mean that man has no purpose apart from eating, sleeping, pro-creating and dying. The problem is that man is able to do far more than to simply live like a higher animal. Man is able to think in abstract terms. He is able to consider self-evident truths like equality and liberty. Man is able to make himself better to make the world better. There is a general desire in human beings to make the world a better place. There is a lot in humanity in spite of the marred image of God, that still looks and acts like God. This is an important piece of evidence in favor of the literal reading of Genesis 1-11.

[Guest ninhao]

I am being educated greatly by this thread !