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The following commentary does not necessarily
represent the views of BCCN’s staff or board.
By Alan Reynolds
THE first installment of this two-part meditation,
‘The Bible is God’s Word – told through human
words,’ appeared
in BCCN’s
November edition.
Part One made the case that the Bible was the Word of
God – but not the words of God. We should not try to read the Bible as though it were
a history book, or a science book.
We must look through the words of the Bible – the history, the
science, the human words – to see what the Bible itself is witnessing:
the Word of God, Jesus Christ. We must listen not just to the words,
but listen for the Word of God coming to us through the words.
The Bible is like a telescope – it’s not to
look at, it’s to look through.
Come back to those first chapters of the Bible as
examples. These are passages that have caused Christian faith much
grief in the last 100 years – misunderstandings by both those who
sought to uphold the Bible, and by those who sought to discredit it.
Adam and Eve
Consider the story of Adam and Eve, found in the second
and third chapters of the book of Genesis.
Do you think this story is true?
If you asked me this question, I would most
emphatically say, “Yes!”
But I might not mean it in the same way that you meant
it when you asked the question.
I don’t gamble, I only bet on sure things. But
I’d be willing to bet that you are wondering if the story is true as
history. Is it true that a man named Adam and a woman named Eve lived
in a place called the Garden of Eden some place back in history?
It was in the year 4,004 B.C., if we go by the date
ascribed to the creation of the world by Archbishop Ussher, a Bible scholar
who lived about the beginning of the 18th century.
Now historically, it’s impossible to say.
According to historical methods, we cannot know. We can only say it’s
true if we believe the Bible to be a history book – and that’s
what I am claiming that the Bible is not.
And I would claim further that this particular passage
was never intended to be understood simply as history.
Besides, what difference does it make –
unless you are an historian or an anthropologist?
We find trouble in believing what is in the Bible
– not because we find it unbelievable, but because it seems
irrelevant. Quite frankly, I don’t know whether this story is
historically true or not.
Well then, what did I mean when I said I thought it was
true?
I meant that I thought it was true to life, to human
experience, as I have known it.
I believe that this story is true in a religious or
spiritual sense. And I believe that this is the way we must understand it,
if we are to understand it at all.
Historical facts
If I say to you that World War II ended in 1945, you
would probably agree without hesitation that this is a true statement. It
seems an obvious statement of historical fact.
But if you live in an Islamic country, this statement
would not be true. It is true relative only to the Christian era.
World War II ended in 1945 AD – the AD
standing, of course, for Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.
World War II ended for Christians – and those who
keep track of the years by the Christian calendar – in the year 1945.
By the Muslim calendar, World War II ended in 1324 AH
– After the Hejira, the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to
Medina, from which the Muslim calendar is dated.
If I say to you, on another note, that war is a
terrible thing, this statement may cause a conversation, even a bit of
controversy.
Isn’t war sometimes necessary, even
‘just?’ Are there not other things worse than war? Don’t
wars, after all, cause some good things to happen? Yet we might finally
agree that war is a terrible thing.
Notice that the first of these statements, which we are
apt to consider obviously true, is only relatively true; it is true only relative to our own system of
counting the years. This is an ‘empirical’ statement, a
quantitative statement.
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The second statement, “War is a terrible
thing,” seems initially a more controversial statement. Yet insofar
as it is true, it is always true. It is a qualitative statement, a
statement about human values.
Statements of value
Statements of historical and scientific truth tend to
fall into the category of the first statement. Statements of value,
moral and religious statements, tend to fall into the second kind of
statement.
It is this latter kind of truth with which the Bible is
primarily concerned, and it is in this sense that I said that the story of
Adam and Eve is true.
We need to realize that this is not just a story of a
dead ancestor of the distant past, the original great-grandfather of us
all, whose wife led him to sin against God – and as a consequence, we
all must pay the penalty.
That’s a neat way of blaming someone else for
what we know to be our own fault!
The Hebrew word adam means simply humanity. It means ‘man’ (in the
generic sense) – humankind, everyman and any man. It is related
to the Hebrew word adhamah, meaning earth.
The intimation is that ‘Adam,’ humankind,
is created of the earth, dust – and yet is also created “in the
image of God.”
Do you now see what the story is saying?
‘Adam’ is you, and me! The story of Adam and Eve is the story
of each one of us.
That’s why I believe this story to be true
– because I know it to be true of myself, and I believe it is true of
other people I have come to know.
It is the story of how we destroy our innocence, how we
break our relationship with God. It is the story of how we, in seeking to
become like gods, only end up trying to deny that we are human.
Read Isaiah 5:1-2 for a good synopsis of the story of
Adam and Eve.
Now the story becomes as up-to-date as today’s
newspaper. Now it takes on a keen relevance, perhaps a too-keen relevance
for many of us. Now we can understand why this story takes on a power that
causes us to think of it as ‘the Word of God.’
Back to Genesis 1
Just as the narrative of Adam and Eve uses the medium
of story to speak to us a deep and eternal truth about ourselves, so the
opening chapter of the first book of the Bible uses a primitive scientific
understanding of the world to say certain things that are primarily
religious statements.
Read this chapter again (Genesis 1) and ask yourself
what it tells you about God, about God’s purpose in creating
humankind.
Ask, not the scientific question “How?’ but
the religious question “Why?” It’s not an easy
question, and you shouldn’t expect an immediate answer – but at
least, now you would be asking the right question.
There are other ancient stories of creation –
Akkadian, Babylonian – but the story of Genesis is quite unique.
For instance, God’s Word is sovereign. God
speaks, and it is so. It is an orderly creation, and God looks on all
that has been created, and “it is very good.” (Generally most
religious understandings of the created order see it as evil, not good.)
The climax of the creative process is the creation of
the human being, and to humanity God gives the responsibility for the care
and keeping of creation!
Read Psalm 33:6-9, Hebrews 11:3, and II Peter 3:5-7.
It is the same Word – which is revealed in
fullness in Jesus Christ – who created the world in the beginning.
Based in Richmond, Alan Reynolds is author of A Troubled Faith (Word Alive,
2006), which is recommended by Eugene Peterson, Walter Brueggemann and
others.
January 2009
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