David Ball writes: David Runcorn, one of the convenors of Inclusive Evangelicals and the author of the forthcoming book, Playing in the Dust—a pilgrimage with the creation stories (Canterbury Press), has recently posted a blog on the Inclusive Evangelicals website asking the question ‘Is Genesis chapter 2 a definition of marriage?’
In this article, I seek to summarise and then respond to David’s blog. For those who don’t know David, he is a pastoral theologian who has written and taught widely in the area of spirituality. Along with others, David is a key advocate of ‘Inclusive Evangelicals’ who believe an open and including welcome of same-sex relationships can be held with biblical integrity. For this reason, a blog which deals with the text of Genesis 2 in the context of the current discussion of same-sex relationships is a welcome and much-needed contribution to the debate.
Summary of David Runcorn’s argument
David starts his blog on Genesis 2 by acknowledging his recent debate with Vaughan Roberts, who
describes himself as “same sex attracted” and believes this must require celibacy, as this attraction is contrary to God’s will and purpose as revealed in scripture.
In response, David sets out his own view that
within the same scriptures I find welcome, inclusion and the theological basis for equal marriage.
In their debate with each other, David says that Vaughan
repeated the familiar claim that Genesis chapter 2 is “a definition of marriage”.
Thus, David’s blog seeks to address this claim by a discussion of the text and meaning of Genesis 2.
Before delving into the text of Genesis 2, David begins with an overview of how the understanding of marriage (especially within the Church of England) has developed and expanded over the last 70 years, suggesting that the revised marriage service of 1980 and the decision to allow divorced people to remarry in church in 2002 are key examples of how the Church of England has ‘expanded its doctrine of marriage’. He concludes the section with the statement that
If this is a definition [by which I assume he is referring to Genesis 2], we have been changing it, and have been doing so for some time.
This is an important point, to which I respond below.
Now David gives us a dictionary definition of a definition as ‘a statement of the exact meaning of a word.’ He goes on to question whether this is what we find in Genesis 2. Here is David’s key question:
Is there any basis for the claims in the current debates that in Genesis 2 God definitively reveals his founding, unchanging intention for humanity and human relationship: marriage—exclusively between a man and a woman?
I will respond to this question in more detail below, but simply note here that these claims are not just claims ‘in the current debate’, but claims that run throughout the history of interpretation and which many would see as being founded on Jesus’ own use of Genesis 2 in Matthew 19 in his debate with the Pharisees about divorce.
Now we turn to the heart of David’s argument. First, David points out the important point that
To discern what the Bible is saying at any point we must pay close attention to how it is saying it’ [his emphasis].
He rightly points out that we need to pay attention to the genre of a text and (in this context)
how narrative and story are used to creatively mediate meaning and purpose.
Here David claims that Genesis 2 is ‘plainly not a definition’. If by, definition he means that Genesis 2 is not a dictionary definition, he is correct. He goes on to define Genesis 2 as ‘a very subtle and imaginative Hebrew wisdom tale—a kind of parable.’
In passing, David mentions that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are ‘two contrasting stories of human beginning.’ I would prefer to see them as complementary, but that is not important here. In this passing comment on Genesis 1, David claims that ‘male and female’ in Genesis 1 are not ‘binary opposites’. Instead, he states:
In this story-telling, pairing is a way of expressing the whole width of life, like night and day, light and darkness, land and water. This is speaking of all humanity, not making a defining point about gender.
I would be very interested to hear David’s argument for this far-reaching and somewhat controversial re-interpretation of Genesis 1, but, unfortunately he does not give it here.
David then gives his interpretation of Genesis 2. He does not use the usual term ‘man’ to describe humanity, but ‘creature’. Using gender-inclusive terms, that do not seem to reflect the Hebrew of this text (Adam/man – see vv.7,1), David says
The creature is not good on their own for the task that is theirs. God creates a partner for them.
He suggests that marriage is ‘only spoken of in an aside by the storyteller. The word itself is never used’. David goes on to suggest that, in the giving of names to the humans, ‘there is a subtle, evolving understanding of human personhood and identity going on.’ Despite v 24, David suggests that ‘there is no leaving and cleaving’ in the narrative itself because there are no other human beings present. Finally, without giving any significant amplification of his point of view, David concludes that ‘the language of ‘one flesh’ needs clarifying (2.24). He suggests that it has more to do with kinship and
It refers to the way the uniting of a couple in marriage is part of a greater uniting of two families and their wider communities.’
David concludes his explanation of Genesis 2 by suggesting that the story is descriptive and not prescriptive. He does, however, acknowledge that:
In this profound wisdom parable, five guiding principles are found at the heart of the covenant heart of marriage:
joyful recognition
human choice
leaving and cleaving
community kinship
and
the care of creation
David’s article concludes that there is no definition of marriage here and that the Bible does ‘not treat this story as a definition.’ He lists various Old Testament stories of complex marriages (and relationships) which do not align with the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman and suggests that all of these are related in the biblical narrative ‘without censure’. He states that:
We must conclude it is simply not that kind of story. To try and make it so is to make a category error.
And so David concludes his blog:
The question that is ours today is whether there is any reason why marriage could not include those who have found love, delight, blessing and divine gift in someone of the same sex? On this, Genesis 2 offers us no definition. Of course it doesn’t. Wisdom tales and parables are not definitions.
My Response
I am grateful for David’s article, which clearly sets out his viewpoint and argument and which seeks to relate the current discussions about marriage and sexuality to scripture. I am also grateful to David for reminding us of the importance of understanding scripture on its own terms and to seek to understand the ‘type’ or genre of writing to which a passage belongs in order to understand it properly. I am also grateful to David and the others with whom he is associated to be Biblical, Evangelical and Generously Orthodox. I hope that this is true of all evangelicals and not just those who name themselves as ‘Inclusive Evangelicals.’
I will try and respond to David’s article in the order which it is written.
1. The ongoing expansion and redefinition of marriage in the church:
David helpfully points out that the church has altered its understanding of marriage especially in the last 70 years and that this has much to do with our context, first in the light of contraception and the place of procreation in marriage and secondly in light of the question of divorce and remarriage. While this is undoubtedly true, I wonder if it is fair to say that the traditional definition of marriage has altered.
To use an analogy, cars have changed beyond recognition in the last 70 years, but we can still distinguish between a car and a motorbike. There is something that is still distinctive about a car that has not changed that allows us to distinguish between it and other vehicles. Likewise, I would suggest the distinctive understanding (definition, if you like) of marriage has not changed theologically or biblically. Biblically, I would argue, there is no sense in which marriage is seen as anything other than between a man and a woman.
It is true that there are biblical marriages (and biblical relationships) that do not fall into the category of one man and one woman, but more of that below. So while there has been a change in how we understand marriage, I would suggest that there is nothing in the biblical narrative and our interaction with it that suggests we should change its definition.
2. What do we mean by definition?
One of the really positive features of David’s article is the fact that he is wanting to understand the biblical text on its own terms. In that sense, he is quite correct to say that the biblical text of Genesis 2 does not give us a dictionary definition of marriage. I do not know that there is anyone who would argue that it does.
It is a shame that David’s article does not deal with both Genesis 1 and 2 together. As I mentioned above, I do not see these two narratives as contradictory but as complementary. And the reality, I believe, is that both of these creation stories provide for us (among other things) a basis for a biblical anthropology—biblical anthropology which must then be examined in the light of the rest of scripture. Genesis 1 provides a narrative of creation from which we can quite rightly derive a theology of creation care. It is also a narrative which reaches its climax in the creation of human beings. God decides to create human beings in his image and likeness (v.26):
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. (v.27)
While David skips over this verse, it is key to an understanding of humanity and the relationship between male and female. In his commentary, Gordon Wenham (Genesis 1-15: Word Biblical Commentary, 1991, 33) states:
The three clauses are in apposition. The first two are arranged chiastically and emphasize the divine image in man, while the third specifies that women also bear the divine image. The midrashic suggestion “that man as first created was bisexual and the sexes separated afterwards is far from the thought of this passage” (Skinner, 33). The expression “male and female” is most frequent in legal texts and highlights rather the sexual distinctions within mankind and foreshadows the blessing of fertility to be announced in v 28.
In other words, David’s statement that ‘male and female’ are not ‘binary opposites’ in this passage but ‘is a way of expressing the whole width of life’ is a questionable reading of the text. It is true that humanity is both male and female (not just male or female). However, Genesis 1 emphasises the different characteristics of male and female. In fact, it is their difference that makes them complementary, a point that is taken up in Genesis 2. It is the distinctive nature of male and female (particularly in the area of sex) that enables them to fulfil God’s blessing in 1:28: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’.
Moving on to the main text of David’s article in Genesis 2, we find that in this second narrative about the creation of humanity, we are given additional resources to understand what it is to be human. David rightly points out the ‘earthly’ nature of our creation and the fact that the Hebrew narrative is a word play (pun) between the word Adam (man) and Adamah (earth).
However, it is very strange that David avoids the ‘man’ and ‘woman’ language that are clearly part of the narrative. In this creation narrative, we are given a counter-cultural definition of humanity in which God declares that ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner’ (2:21). In the male-dominated, patriarchal culture of the ancient near east, the most natural partner for a man would be another man. But here, instead God’s creates woman to be man’s partner. Again, Wenham (1987, 69) states:
… the whole account of woman’s creation has a poetic flavour… It brilliantly depicts the relation of man and wife. “Just as the rib is found at the side of the man and is attached to him, even so the good wife, the rib of her husband, stands at his sde to be his helper-counterpart, and her soul is bound up with his” (Cassuto, 134)… Here the ideal of marriage as it was understood in ancient Israel is being portrayed, a relationship characterized by harmony and intimacy between the partners. The destruction of this relationship is described in the following chapters, but like other aspects of man’s existence set out in Gen 1-2, the first days of the first marriage remain a goal to which Israel hoped to return when the promises to Abraham were fulfilled.
In other words, David’s definition of definition is too narrow. It is true that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 do not give us a dictionary definition of marriage. However, these narratives provide a rich and clear (if poetic) narrative in which we see what it is to be human. Part of that is that we are made in the image of God ‘male and female’ (Genesis 1). Part of that is that, in our differences as man and women, we are made suitable partners for one another (Genesis 2). And so the narrator of Genesis 2 makes a clear connection between the creation of woman out of man and marriage:
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Gen 2.24)
This is not a dictionary definition, but it is nevertheless a clear explanation that male and female (in their difference) make up humanity and that the closest partnership is between the woman and the man which finds expression in marriage. It is true that ‘one flesh’ expresses more than sexual union, but it clearly forms part of what it means for a man (male) to leave his father (male) and mother (female) and cling to his wife (female).
The reality of the Christian scriptures is that they very rarely give us propositional (dictionary) definitions. They are narratives. But they are narratives which have clear meaning from which we can derive clear definitions. To suggest that the narrative of Genesis 2 is not a definition is both true and false. It is not a definition in the sense of a dictionary definition. Nevertheless, it is a narrative that defines. It is a narrative that seeks to be normative. That is what most of the Torah (law) is. Not propositional laws, but narratives from which we are able to derive normative behaviour. In the case of Genesis 2, the normative behaviour clearly includes the role of male and female in marriage as partners who were literally made for one another.
3. What about complex marriages and relationships in the Old Testament?
David’s article lists the examples of Jacob (adultery), Abraham, David and Solomon (many wives and concubines) and marriages for reasons of state. He also mentions the legislation that permits a man to ‘take a second wife as long as he doesn’t neglect the first one (Ex 21.10)’. In his blog, David suggests that all these relationships are narrated in the biblical account ‘without censure’. It is true that these narratives could potentially be read in this way. However, if they are read in the context of the rest of the Torah and its stipulations, we find that they are often presented as examples of how not to live rather than without censure. For example, the life of Solomon with his many wives and concubines, is probably meant to be read intertextually with the warning of Deuteronomy 17:14-20 with its clear stipulations about how a king should not behave, concluding with:
And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. (Deuteronomy 17:20)
Despite other passages of scripture that talk about Solomon’s greatness, the Deuteronomic law clearly condemns his marriages (and the marriages of other kings such as King David). There is not time here to go into other examples of how the complex and dysfunctional relationships and marriages of the people listed by David in his blog are actually set up as examples to avoid rather than examples to follow.
4. What about Jesus?
As I mentioned in passing above, it is not just current commentators, but the church throughout history and throughout the world that has taken Genesis 2 as normative for our understanding of marriage. The main reason for this is that Jesus seems to do so in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19. R T France (Tyndale Commentary on Matthew, 1985, 280) comments:
The principle is drawn from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, which show not only that sexual union is God’s creation purpose for man, but also that that union is exclusive and unbreakable.
Jesus affirms therefore that marriage is between one man and one woman (Genesis 1) and that the ideal is that it should be a life-long relationship (based on Genesis 2). If Jesus understood Genesis 1 and 2 in this way, then there is a serious question to be asked. Did Jesus misunderstand the narrative of Genesis 2 by using it to define marriage? I do not know where we go as Christians, if this is the case.
If, however, Jesus is correct in using Genesis 1 and 2 to define the ideal marriage in terms of male and female in a life-long union, I wonder whether David’s blog has simply resulted in making words mean what we want them to mean and ultimately reading Genesis 2 on our terms rather than its own, which is the opposite of what he intends.
Dr David Ball leads the GOLD Project, which offers small-group-based learning about scripture, theology and discipleship. There is an interview with David about how the GOLD project helps people grow in their faith here.
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You only need to read Ecclesiastes to see what became of Solomon: a man who was given wisdom unexcelled yet who preferred the pleasures of the flesh (in the general sense – sarx) and who bitterly regretted it at the end of his life, finding existence futile despite his belief in the God of Israel and the covenant.
The self-description in this Book fits nobody except Solomon.
There are two main aspects here in Genesis.
1 Forming
2 Filling, after its kind
Woman is not named immediately, not until God’s curse and promised seed, when woman, who is Adams female wife , is named Eve, ‘ mother of all living’, Genesis 3:20.
Then Genesis 4:1-2. Sexual reproduction, (after their kind), sexual, with the help of the LORD. Filling starts, on a male (husband) and female wife paradigm.
In the podcast I’ve listened to, Adam’s wife is called Woman which describes her status, she only becomes Eve after the fall when Adam describes what she can do for him, provide children.
I’ve posted a link to the podcast above.
Pure gold, predictably.
Marriage is the first human relationship in scripture. It was instituted before the Fall and before society. In Genesis 2:24 God says that a man will leave his father and mother and bond to his wife, and they become one flesh. Conjugality, intimacy, total mutual giving of self, occurs between man and woman. Starting their own household, they bond and become one flesh. Although the meaning of ‘one flesh’ includes sexual union it runs deeper still, for they are one flesh even when physically apart, in a unity so deep as to be inexpressible, reflecting mysteriously the love between Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:31-32). One flesh is because woman was made from man (Genesis 2:22). Men take a view of woman that is ultimately mystical; that is the basis of pagan fertility religions.
The phrase ‘bond [dabaq] to his wife’ shows that marriage should be permanent – ‘adhere to’ or ‘stick to’ are alternative translations – and exclusive. Adultery, meaning sex between a married person and someone he or she is not married to, is a general taboo. Children are literally a shared flesh of the couple and are a normal and happy result, although scripture never discourages post-menopausal women from marrying. God intends marriage as a joy (see the Song of Songs). A newlywed Israelite was to be kept out of military service and other civic duties for a year (Deuteronomy 24:5).
The living relationship that is marriage between a man and a woman begins with a mutual pledge to live together Publicly in Intimacy that is Permanent and Exclusive (acronym: PIPE), sharing space, lives and bodies. Both parties should consent to the marriage, normally with eagerness (although adults are responsible for their own words whatever: Matthew 12:36). To enjoy exclusive intimacy the couple should set up their own dwelling space, indicating that they have moved from their parents so as to become each other’s first priority. Provision is man’s primary role and woman’s is child-bearing (these are the roles cursed after the Fall in Genesis 3); correspondingly marriage involves, in most cases, a commitment in which the husband provides for the family and the wife bears children. Husbands are to love their wives with both eros-love (obviously) and agapē (sacrificial committed love, as shown by Jesus). Conversely, wives are to obey their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-33). They give their very selves to each other; they become mutually indebted (1 Corinthians 7:3-4) – “I owe you so much.” By their commitment, in vows and after that in their increasingly intertwined lives – and particularly in sexual union – the two are ‘coupled’ into one.
God intends monogamy. He made one wife for Adam, not more. Genesis 2:24, and Jesus’ emphasis (Matthew 19:5-6) that two become one in a deeper sense than sexual, make no sense under polygamy. Paul says that each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband (1 Corinthians 7:2), and that a church leader should be a ‘man of one woman’ (1 Timothy 3:2). God arranged human biology to conceive boys and girls in similar numbers. Polygamy arose because wealthy men were able to provide for more than one woman. In polygamy a man must still commit to a woman before having sexual relations with her (since she might conceive); therefore it is a marriage. Polygamy was tolerated by God but it was never his plan.
The idea that a sexual relationship between two persons of the same sex can be a marriage is totally unbiblical. Between two men, Leviticus 18 & 20 further stands against it.
Small but important point: the command in Ephesians for wives to obey their husbands is post-fall. Hence, some couples quite legitimately miss out ‘obey’ in the marriage vows.
Yes…but there is no command to ‘obey’. ‘Submit’ is something we all do to one another.
Even if you are suggesting that the Fall is reversed for Christians (Yes and No!), Paul was writing to believers, and would have made clear if any distinction was to be made between them and nonbelievers, like he did in the early part of Romans.
There is no command in Ephesians for a wife to obey her husband, except is hupotasso/submit is mistranslated.
And yet, in other parts of the HB, God mandates polygyny. Did God change Their mind?
I stated above that polygamy was tolerated by God but it was never his plan, and explained why.
And I replied that God sometimes mandates it.
Which is not the same as tolerates or condones.
Please specify where he mandates it, distinct from tolerating it.
Penelope – I have seen absolutely nothing in Scripture suggesting that God mandates polygamy. Indeed, this goes against the ‘plain man’ reading of Genesis – whereby in Genesis 2, the principle of one man and one woman is established (at least that’s how Jesus tells us to understand Genesis 2 in Matthew 19) – and then the authors go on to show the down-side of polygyny. The striking example is Jacob – where he was not obliged to accept the deception, but he chose to go along with it – resulting in serious family strife. Also, example of King David – the rape of Tamar and all the other family difficulties caused by having children with different women.
So it seems crystal clear to me – from Scripture – that God does not mandate polygyny at all – quite the opposite.
Anton – I also don’t see where he tolerates it – it gets the divine disapproval – at the same time, the grace of God is operational ….
Jock: by ‘tolerates’ I mean that there is no Mosaic law against polygamy. But there is not a good word in either Testament about it.
Anton – ultimately, God didn’t tolerate anything that was sin – and that is basically why a redeemer was necessary. Romans 7:14-25 – through the atoning work, the ‘sinful nature’ is ‘no longer I’ and not part of the ‘innermost being’. So, ultimately, sin isn’t tolerated at all.
I don’t think we disagree. This is a matter of dictionary definition.
Anton – yes – I think we probably don’t disagree here – but there’s more to it than dictionary definition.
It’s curious that in the bible stories, anything that can go wrong does go horribly wrong. So King David takes several wives and – whaddayaknow? You find one of his sons raping the half-sister (something horrible, and which wouldn’t happen if it was a full sister). You then find the divisions between the sons largely along the lines of who they had for mothers. That whole business of 2 Samuel 16:22 where Absalom sleeps with Davids concubines in a specially erected tent ….
I mean there is a lot more than simply dictionary definitions going on here. You see clearly that, with David and his multiple women, God has a hand in punishing this wickedness.
There is no command in Eph 5 for a wife to obey her husband as the verb is submit, not obey unless it has been mistranslated. Submission to one another is one of the “one another” signs of being a believer.
‘it is very strange that David avoids the ‘man’ and ‘woman’ language that are clearly part of the narrative.’
– not strange at all. If you want to change the meaning of a text to make it mean what you want it to mean, you typically have to change the meaning of individual words or phrases, or ignore them completely. In this case DR has removed any reference to gender despite it being referenced in the text. Rather convenient, which any objective person would notice.
Regarding other types of marriage/relationship in the OT, I strongly suspect these fall into the category of ‘permitted at that time’ but only because of the hardness of men’s hearts, which Jesus referred to when God had previously ‘permitted’ men to divorce their wife for this or that reason. Jesus made it clear that excuse would no longer be tolerated.
If DR is arguing that people often use Genesis 1 & 2 as a ‘definition’ of marriage then he’s probably right. But they are only using it in that way because that is how they understand the text, just as Jesus did. It is an ‘understanding’ of the text, in my view the correct understanding. You can hardly fault Christians for that.
…. so they are using it in that way because they are following the teachings of Jesus. What is the definition of a Christian?
Peter, yes, though the one thing that David R does recognise is that, when first mentioned, ‘adam’ does not have a primary meaning in relation to sex, but points to his creation from the ‘adamah’.
As the narrative develops, the sense is transformed, something that I think he fails to engage with. But precisely when this happens is a point of scholarly debate.
Ian – spelling it out – Matthew 19:4-6 – the teaching of Jesus is “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
So whether or not ‘adam’ in the original Hebrew has a primary meaning in relation to sex is irrelevant, because if we consider ourselves to be Christians, we are obliged to take the text of Genesis in the way that Jesus told us to take it in his words as passed on to us by the gospel writer Matthew. Jesus has pointed out that there isn’t a spectrum of sexual identity, but that there are two categories, male and female. The ‘plain man’s’ meaning of Mathew 19:4-6 is that, unless Jesus is seriously trying to fool us by using a seriously contorted use of language which has a hidden double meaning, ‘man’ here is ‘male’ and ‘wife’ is female and it is absolutely unambiguous.
We are (of course) aware that there exist people whose biological sex may not be completely clear at birth (this is very rare, but it does exist) – and this is not a new phenomenon – it was around at the time of Jesus when he was teaching. He was aware of this when he gave his ‘take’ on Genesis and how it applied to marriage.
Sure. But Jesus is drawing a specific point from the end of the story. He is not giving us a verse by verse exposition. There is a debate to be had here—though I think David R fails to engage with it.
The plain man’s reading of Matthew 19 is that Jesus is discussing the permissibility (or not) of divorce and whether that means you should avoid getting married.
…. and, for an encore (plain man’s reading) he also explains what marriage is all about, to put the divorce teaching in context.
I dont get any sense that Jesus is referring to avoiding marriage. It was the norm in that culture to be married relatively young. The frequency of marriage was not going to change, rather Jesus is correcting the mindset of men (primarily) who traditionally were divorcing their wives for unimportant reasons. He was putting a stop to those excuses.
The disciples literally say it is better not to marry, and Jesus corrects them.
Adam, the thoughtful man’s reading is that Jesus refuses to get into a debate on the minutiae of the text in Deuteronomy on divorce, and instead goes back to the underlying principle—what is marriage? How is it related to God’s creation intention?
This is a good model for us. Instead of having endless debates about Lev 19 and 22, we should go back to the creation: male and female, given by God to be fruitful in every way.
This certainly forms the foundation for Jewish ethics of male-female marriage.
“Jesus has pointed out that there isn’t a spectrum of sexual identity”
Frankly, I doubt that he was intending to point out any such thing, since I see no reason to suppose that such a thoroughly daft idea as male and female being on a spectrum would have occurred to him in the first place.
William – yes! you hit the nail on the head! (as is often the case with your comments)
William, that is true, but given that same-sex sex was well known in the ancient world, and that Jewish rejection of it was a top-four ethical distinctive, it is impossible to suppose that either Jesus or the gospel writers were unaware of this.
Ian, that’s as may be, but same-sex sexual attraction/behaviour is one thing. The anti-factual concept of human sex as a spectrum is – despite the invention of the phoney LGBT(Q)(I)(A)(+?) category – quite another.
This is why men have a greater tolerance of dust than women…
True, but the stage is set in Genesis 1 which then leads into Genesis 2. G1 spells out that humanity is ‘male and female’. Genesis 2 then uses a representative couple to provide theological truths. So male and female is there in the narrative BEFORE ‘Adam/adamah’.
By this argument a colour photo could, it seems, be described as black and white since these two terms represent the whole width of the colour spectrum
‘This’ meaning David Runcorn’s?
Of course the story is descriptive, not prescriptive. Had it been prescriptive, you’d expect Israel to have noticed though the centuries but Jewish marriage makes no mention of Adam and Eve whatsoever and never has. Not in the Ketubah, not in any of the rites. The veiling refers to Rachel and Leah (no mention of ‘G-d intended’ monogamy there at all). Not in the chuppah, kiddushin… not anywhere. It is this that Jesus had in mind, the ‘acquiring’ of a wife, when he gave a rabbinical ruling (a binyan av, as it happens) on the permissibility of repudiation. Dr Ball is reading much later Christian theological developments back into the text.
‘The church throughout history and throughout the world that has taken Genesis 2 as normative for our understanding of marriage.’ Maybe a few patristic sources could be given as proof of this?
“Dr Ball is reading much later Christian theological developments back into the text.”
Exactly so no thank you for pointing this out
Should read
Exactly so and
thank you for pointing this out
(And it’s worth saying twice )
Ah ha – I suppose that Jesus is one of these ‘late developments’.
Modern Jews seem to think marriage goes all the way back to Genesis 1 & 2:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-marriage/
So they agree with Jesus from 2000 years ago!
No they don’t, it’s just an article from ‘My Jewish Learning’ (my mum’s a fan) quoting ‘it’s not good for man to be alone.’ Of course procreation is a mitzvah, but even incredibly orthodox rabbis will discourage gay peeps from marrying. They issued a common declaration signed by hundreds of them recently. And when push comes to shove, even MJL has to admit: ‘Over time Jewish marriage has evolved from a property transaction to a more spiritual commitment. In biblical times the fathers arranged marriages. Because the father of the bride would be losing a valuable household worker, he received from the groom’s father a bride price, called mohar, in exchange for his daughter. The groom would also give gifts to the bride, called mattan. Over time, the mohar evolved into a gift to the bride’s father, a portion of which he passed on to his daughter.’ Nothing to do with Adam and Eve
MJL: ‘Over time Jewish marriage has evolved from a property transaction to a more spiritual commitment. In biblical times the fathers arranged marriages. Because the father of the bride would be losing a valuable household worker, he received from the groom’s father a bride price, called mohar, in exchange for his daughter. The groom would also give gifts to the bride, called mattan. Over time, the mohar evolved into a gift to the bride’s father, a portion of which he passed on to his daughter.’
This summary fails to state that marriage was not originally a property transaction, but had been reduced to that by human hardheartedness.
The financial exchanges served to stabilise the relationship, as breaking up was consequently discouraged by the older generation, and the couple knew this.
And I replied that God sometimes mandates it.
Which is not the same as tolerates or condones.
[sorry Ian and Anton duplicate comment]
And your evidence that Jewish marriage was not initially a transaction is what exactly?
Here’s a translation of a trad Jewish marriage ketubah, Anton, it’s basically remained unchanged since the first century
On the […] day of the week, the […] day of the [Hebrew] month of […], the year […] after the creation of the world, according to the manner in which we count [dates] here in […], the bridegroom […] son of […] said to this […] daughter of […], “Be my wife according to the law of Moses and Israel. I will work, honor, feed and support you in the custom of Jewish men, who work, honor, feed, and support their wives faithfully. I will give you the settlement of […] silver zuzim, which is due you according to […] law, as well as your food, clothing, necessities of life, and conjugal needs, according to the universal custom.”
Ms. […] agreed, and became his wife. This dowry that she brought from her father’s house, whether in silver, gold, jewelry, clothing, home furnishings, or bedding, Mr. […], our bridegroom, accepts as being worth […] silver pieces (zekukim).
Our bridegroom, Mr. […] agreed, and of his own accord, added an additional […] silver pieces (zekukim) paralleling the above. The entire amount is then […] silver pieces (zekukim).
Mr. […] our bridegroom made this declaration: “The obligation of this marriage contract (ketubah), this dowry, and this additional amount, I accept upon myself and upon my heirs after me. It can be paid from the entire best part of the property and possessions that I own under all the heavens, whether I own [this property] already, or will own it in the future. [It includes] both mortgageable property and non-mortgageable property. All of it shall be mortgaged and bound as security to pay this marriage contract, this dowry, and this additional amount. [it can be taken] from me, even from the shirt on my back, during my lifetime, and after my lifetime, from this day and forever.”
And the surety for all the obligations of this marriage contract (ketubah), dowry and the additional sum has been assumed by […] the said groom, with the full obligation dictated by all documents of ketubot and additional sums due every daughter of Israel, executed in accordance with the enactment of our Sages, of blessed memory. It is not to be regarded as an indecisive contractual obligation nor as a stereotyped form.
And we have completed the act of acquisition from Mr.[…] son of […] our bridegroom, to Ms. […] daughter of […], regarding everything written and stated above, with an article that is fit for such a kinyan. And everything is valid and confirmed.
[…] son of […] Witness
[…] son of […] Witness
Lorenzo,
I’m looking farther back than the Judaism of Jesus’ era, and indeed farther back than the foundation of Israel. The point is that women should be seen as being in the image of God, rather than property, and respected as such. Where that has not happened it is due to hard-heartedness. But in the beginning hearts were not hard; Matthew 19:8 comprises words of Jesus which make that point. And notice that the written Laws of Moses, unlike human legal codes, treats humans on a different level from property.
So no evidence then
Lorenzo: I never addressed the question of whether early Jewish marriage was regarded as a property transaction, as it was in Jesus’ time. Man’s heart was hardened well before Israel existed. What I am saying is that if it *was* regarded primarily as a property transaction then that was not God’s view of marriage; Malachi (2:14) tells us that marriage is a covenant – a contract in the context of a relationship.
Remember that Israel became a nation at the Exodus, before which the Israelites were slaves and had no material property to transact.
I think you are confusing a theology of marriage with the rite of marrying. You could make the same comment about Church of England services, but there is little doubt that the C of E draws its doctrine of marriage from biblical anthropology rooted in creation in gen 1 and 2.
No Ian, the Jewish ‘theology of marriage’ makes next to no mention of Genesis. You get married ‘according to the law of Moses and k’lal Israel’. Western theology, Augustine, Aquinas etc. does not draw its doctrine of marriage from Genesis either. None of the Fathers do, as far as I can see. It’s a very late theological development, mostly Tridentine, conjured up to defend the sacramental institution of marriage against the Reformers. I struggle to think of an Anglican reformer who believed that marriage was instituted in Eden.
It’s a pity you used the example of motorbike and car since that is one of the more ambiguous examples. This summer I looked at an electric vehicle for round town. It has four wheels and a chassis to protect from the elements. But it’s defined in law as a motorcycle and you only need a motorbike license to drive it. In a sense you’re shooting yourself in the foot using that example because it demonstrates exactly the ambiguity you’re arguing against.
‘The church throughout history and throughout the world that has taken Genesis 2 as normative for our understanding of marriage.’ Maybe a few patristic sources could be given as proof of this? Augustine’s De bono conjugali and De sancta virginitate, which are the go-to works for medieval theologians on the matter make no mention of Gn 2. Aquinas’ summa makes no mention of it either. Who does Dr Ball have in mind?
Perhaps he has Jesus in mind?
And all the fathers after him failed to understand what the Lord said? Sad
I think your logic is inverted here. Saying that we have read Gen 2 as about marriage is not the same as ‘every comment on marriage comes from Gen 2’.
Augustine doesn’t cite Gen 2 as about marriage—but where does he get his idea that the first good of marriage is procreation, if not from the creation accounts?
Lorenzo, I have just looked again at De bono conjugali, and it is not possible to get past the first paragraph without stumbling across allusions to Genesis 2. The fact that Augustine does not cite the verses he is using is immaterial.
Your jibe here seems rather disingenuous.
One pretty obvious point against Runcorn is that a male-female union normally produces babies. Other unions don’t. They cannot be fruitful and multiply in the way envisioned by Genesis.
Talking about begetting babies clarifies a lot of things!
A sexual relationship is fruitful whether a baby is produced or not. Part of its fruit is in the binding together of a couple intimately.
The writer(s) of Genesis are offering interpretation in this respect, and not law.
Andrew how do you deduce this? The context of Gen 2 is Gen 1. Trees are fruitful when they produce fruit containing seeds which give rise to new plants. In John 12 and in the parables of the sowers this is precisely the point: fruitfulness means reproduction.
And Paul’s argument in Rom 1 to 4 is that pagan engagement in same sex relationships is unproductive, in contrast to Abraham.
I deduce it because it’s obvious.
Genesis is a guide, not a jailer.
Spot the fallacy.
The infinite Goodness of the Triune God of Christianity includes delineation and setting of boundaries and and his omniscience in determining good and evil, which is beyond the capability of fallen humanity which according to Nietzsche as developed by Satre, is reduced, to useless desire, or is based on God evacuated, humanism or even Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism.
‘Genesis is a guide, not a jailer’.
Does that mean that any theology that you don’t like in Scripture, you decide is optional?
Of course it doesn’t mean that. You are perhaps misunderstanding the word guide. A guide is somebody who shows you around the rooms and how they were designed etc…a jailer is someone who locks you in. An obsession with the law, as Paul discovered, imprisons you. Human reason has to be part of our discernment about things that must be adhered to and and things that might be regarded as things we can differ about.
Which rather ignores the biblical strands which speak of generativity happening through the barren and the eunuch. In Isaiah particularly and, of course, in the NT which never (I think) sees procreation as a good of marriage.
As Robert Song argues – and no I don’t agree with the whole of his argument – the Christ event relativizes the goods of procreation in the New Age.
Neither Jesus nor Paul seems invested in blood families.
Jesus had a mission that he knew was incompatible with family. Paul may have been a widower.
Indeed, Paul may have been a widower, and Jesus was undoubtedly single. But that is not my point. Neither has any teaching about procreation not are invested in blood families and their future.
But that is precisely the point. The generativity of the barren is miraculous because male-female marriage is the place for human generativity, and no other.
In the New Age, fruitfulness comes by our having children of new birth by the water and the Spirit. In This Age, fruitfulness comes through marriage and children.
Ian
But Song’s point, with which I largely agree, is that we are already living in the New Age. For example, celibacy has now become a calling. It wasn’t/isn’t a Jewish charism. I think Song doesn’t take his argument to its logical conclusion, but I agree with him that the coming of Christ relativises the goods of procreation and families.
And Jesus adopts the eunuch slur for his followers and himself as people contemporaneously adopt skurs like slut and queer.
There is a greatly enhanced risk of serious medical problems in a male-male sexual relationship, relative to male-female, even if the two do not take other partners. Why did God arrange that?
Fifty years ago, Desmond Morris in “The Naked Ape” asked the question, “why is the human female sexually receptive when not in oestrus?” His answer, which others also make, is rooted in the long infancy of human children. The children benefit, particularly in the early years, from having the father provide for them as well as the mother. In short, the binding of the father and mother is to benefit the children. The intimacy has a purpose beyond the relationship.
Absolutely. The idea that this is simply about existential fulfilment is to impose a modern concern on this text. This also confirms its link with Gen 1.
I think if you were to ask just about anyone, what does ‘be fruitful and multiply’ mean after just talking about male and female, everyone would answer the same way.
Of course it’s taken on that association becasue of the context. I’m not arguing that.
I’m saying that there are other fruits of an intimate relationship. Not evenly heterosexual married couple is able, or choose, to have children.
And I mean, do you really want to argue that, say, Alan Bennett and Rupert Thomas did not have a fruitful relationship?
Or David and Jonathan.
I think youre using fruitful in a different way from the Genesis text, which is what we’re talking about. We all know ‘fruitful’ can mean multiple things depending on context, and the context of the text in Genesis is that of reproduction – you cant fill the earth otherwise, one leads to the other.
If we’re honest about wanting to understand the text rather than extrapolating from it and then arguing for a different meaning for the original text, then that is the only understanding you can have. God made it very straightforward in this instance.
Peter, as I’ve said above, it’s clear from the context of Genesis what is being said there, but we are no longer in that context.
As I said above also, Genesis is more like a guide – showing us around – and not a jailer.
What do you think Genesis has to say to a heterosexual couple who are not able to have children?
‘We are no longer in that context.’
On what grounds can you claim that? We are still in the context of being humans created by God as male and female. Without procreation as a race we will die out.
In most ways, we are in the same context. Your claim looks completely arbitrary.
God’s intention for marriage is recapitulated in his salvation of Noah through his judgement of de-creation of the flood.
Any examples in the flow of God’s history redemption through flawed leaders, Kings are not generalised approvals by God to the behaviour, but point to declension, sin and assimilation of surrounding cultures, a drop from required Holiness.
You refer to the midrashic interpretion which is interesting. A former curate at cburch of which I was a member spoke on that. Firstly to remember that the word “man” has been understood to have two dictinct meaning 1) a single male human and 2) the whole of humanity thus when reading a translation into English we need to understand the original. As I understand it arguament is that the original (Hebrew?) refers to Adam as “the one drawn from the earth” until the creation of woman drawn from the “one drawn from the earth” now man (male) and the word therefore a man will…be united with his wife and they will become one flesh – (re)uniting that which was formerly one. Thus only a male/female union would be a reuniting and forms in Genesis 2 a definiton of marriage that continues throughout scripture. This is not postulating a bisexual adam just that “the one drawn from the earth” has no asigned gender.
I really would appriciate correction if I am in error
Richard,
I have found this interesting:
https://www.bemadiscipleship.com/episodes
Start at 1
Johnathan Sacks in the introduction to the first of his “Covenant and Conversation” books describes how Jews ‘do’ philosophy by telling stories, rather than by advancing propositions. If Genesis is philopsophy, then it is close to ‘definition’, and not just “wisdom stories.”
That’s really interesting, thanks.
There is this statement from Runcorn’s article, based, allegedly on Gen 2:24, quoted in this post:
“It refers to the way the uniting of a couple in marriage is part of a greater uniting of two families and their wider communities.”
I think that the verse actually refutes this itself. It speaks of the man “leaving his father and mother.” There is not much uniting of families in that. If the “one flesh” refers to the making of a kinship group, then this is a new kinship group. The children have in quite a literal sense the combined ‘flesh’ of their parents.
There is benefit to the wider families and community (with no clear boundary between those in societies with healthier relationship than our own fractured, industrialised, Western societies). This is benefit is the children. Without children a community is dying.
Yes indeed. It is about the creation of a new family unit, not the binding into existing ones.
The fact that the man *leaves* his own is remarkable, and seems counter cultural.
As soon as ‘evangelicals’ go down the road of thinking it important, distinct from trivial, “to seek to understand the ‘type’ or genre of writing to which a passage belongs in order to understand it”, they have lost the plot. It should be obvious that Genesis 1-9 are intended to be taken as factual accounts. Genesis 1 may be sui generis, but only inasmuch as the account cannot have been based on human eye-witness testimony, in the nature of the case.
Of course, once you conclude – on biblically external grounds – that Genesis 1-2 cannot be factual, then the question of genre necessarily follows. But we should be clear that the determination of genre here proceeds not from the nature of the text itself but from an a priori commitment to the modern atheistic narrative that the Universe is 14 billion years old, the Sun and the Earth 4.6 billion years old and Man, emerging from the apes, less than 3 million years old. This is a failure to question the teachings of modern cosmology (whether in the light of God’s Word or in the light of science itself), not principled hermeneutics.
If Genesis 1-2 are not factually true, the doctrines based on them are mere sand. You can’t say that the doctrines are true and authoritative if they are based on a story that is not true, any more than the teaching of the New Testament can be authoritative if the account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not factually true.
Christ himself treated Genesis 1-2 as true in fact (Matt 19:4). Christians who reject the factual truth of these chapters are not merely like the Pharisees but worse than them, since the Pharisees accepted both their truth and authority. (That is why they had nothing to say in response.) If Jesus were to ask today’s evangelicals the same question, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” they would reply, “Yes, and we accept its teaching, but we don’t accept that God created them and certainly not ‘in the beginning’. We have our own theories. Perhaps God have breathed the spirit of humanity into some ape-like creatures 3 million years ago as a way of creating man. With all due respect, we suggest you rephrase the question.”
Jesus does not merely affirm that marriage is between one man and one woman in the passage; he affirms that Adam and Eve were created by God in the beginning. That is the core of the issue.
It is indeed the core, Stephen. Is it truth? What is it based on?
Revelation of and by God? As part of, the beginning of the evangel?
And if so, it is far from a matter of indifference, indifference being a reflection of the sovereignty of humanity and rejection of God, In the beginning God, who is before everything. If not God, this whole question is void, ab initio and finite humanity is the subjective and changing measure of everything.
a poem can be full of truth and meaning, doesnt mean you take it literally. Genesis 1 has evidence of Hebrew poetic structure. Funny that…
Yes and No! We need to know genre when speaking about the poetry in the Old Testament, for God does not have a material arm or hand or arm.
What I think you mean is that the early parts of Genesis should not by taken as myth. Upon that statement (plus the fact that Genesis is truth) I hope we can agree.
Beyond that, though, this evangelical Christian and research physicist is tired of rants by atheists who grant scripture no authority, and by fundamentalists who grant science no authority. I have chosen to live in the tension betwen the two for 30 years now, and doing so has led me to insights into both scripture and science not available by defaulting to either pole of the disagreement. Examples on request – this is not the main subject of the present thread – but please consider the double meaning of YOM in Genesis 1, as 24 hours and as era. YOM can only mean era in Job 15:23 and 18:20, for instance, so which meaning has it in Genesis 1? If you think that ‘evening and morning’ settle the issue, there is more to the original consonant-only Hebrew of those words than you might think – which I’ll leave as a teaser. As for science, I am willing to consider the hypothesis that the laws of physics changed at the Fall (something that secular cosmologists never throw into their models).
We can identify poetry without first identifying genre, and poetry is not essentially about whether similes and metaphors are present in the writing. Nor, in the Bible, is it about the expression of the creative imagination. All biblical Hebrew literature is worked to some degree, and poetry is merely language at its most heightened. The concept of genre as deployed by theologians is foreign to biblical literature. In any case, Genesis 1-2 is not poetry.
That God created the heaven and the earth – in the proper sense of ‘create’, in the beginning and by his word – is the prime revelation about God in the Old Testament. It is the basis of the command to worship him, to have no other god but Yahweh, to make no graven image of him and to rest on the 7th day. Creation is affirmed in 15 of the 36 books of the OT and again in 13 of the 27 books of the NT. It is foundational also to the gospel, as Paul explains in Romans 1 and 5. In denying that God created heaven and earth one is both undermining the gospel and contradicting Jesus’s own testimony. This denial, to my mind, is not the mark of an evangelical mind.
As regards definitions, there are some in the Bible. The first two are in Gen 1:5, where ‘day’, precisely as in English, is defined as (i) the opposite of night and (ii) the whole period of day and night.
The idea of ‘the Fall’ is meaningless in the context of a Big Bang origin of the world, and I certainly would not advocate changing the laws of physics in order to save an ostensibly biblical interpretation. Changing the laws of physics is just supernatural intervention by another name, whereas once the world is created, the creation is finished, by definition, and the properties of elemental nature fixed.
A background in physics is of limited value when seeking to understand Earth history. The relevant knowledge domains are geology and palaeontology. That is my background. At the beginning of the geological and lunar record there is a global, cataclysmic event of total destruction, reflecting Gen 6:13. At the start of the Archaean the whole earth apart from a few islands is under water. The rest of the geological record shows an unstable earth gradually recovering from that cataclysm and phyla recolonising it, diversifying as they do so – cf. Gen 9:19. The fossil record does not show bacteria-to-people evolution. I gave you a link to the site that explains this in depth. As far as I am aware, you ignored it.
This thread is not about creation/evolution, which is why I didn’t take you up on that subject. Be assured that I have read a good deal – from both sides – of this debate, and writen my own lengthy essay on the subject. The only point I wish to respond to here is that you seem to think I am denying God made the universe – and everything in it – just because I question the fundamentalist’s timescale for the process. I affirm, ardently and explicitly, that God created everything that is not Him. As for the timescale, please see my comments about YOM above, including my teaser about “evening and morning”. I find it particularly painful that my fundamentalist brethren deny the Big Bang, a fruit of science which states that the universe had a beginning, given that the opening sentence of holy scripture is “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Thousands of years after God inspired Genesis 1:1, man works out (thanks to Einstein) in his own strength that there was a beginning. Pagan eastern belief systems, in contrast, hold that the world has always existed, eternally. The Big Bang actively agrees with Genesis and disagrees with paganism.
So ‘the beginning’ in your book means the Big Bang, and that’s how Genesis gets reconciled with the atheistic narrative. God having lit the touchpaper, out of the chaos Nature creates itself. That’s a million miles from what the Scriptures say.
Try it out on the Matthew passage. [v. 4] “Have you not read that he who created them from the Big Bang made them male and female?” … [v. 8] “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the Big Bang it was not so.” If it’s not clear from v. 4 that ‘from the beginning’ means the same as ‘in the beginning’ (or ‘ever since the beginning’), it is from v. 8. According to your interpretation, there were men and women even from the time of the Big Bang. Of course Genesis does say that the earth was in existence from day one – unlike the sun. However, in the Big Bang story that you believe in, Earth does not appear until 9 billion years later, and man not until the end of history.
This is syncretistic Baal worship, not Christianity.
The history of the world is not that of continual creation, going on even today. Geologists and biologists never deduce supernatural creation from the phenomena they observe, because they rightly exclude supernatural action and, unlike theologians, know the difference between creation and evolution.
Genesis says God created the whole universe in the beginning, and when that beginning was over, the work of creation was finished; it was ‘very good’, complete with the ancestors of all the plants and animals that exist today, man included. Thus the beginning had come to an end. As Hebrews says, his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Tarring the scripturally faithful viewpoint with the rhetorical word ‘fundamentalist’ should have been beneath you. Jesus was a fundamentalist in these matters. Your difference of opinion is with him, not me.
I never said, nor does if follow from what I said, that men and women existed from the Big Bang. If you differ from me, please take issue with my words or take the trouble to explain what you think are their implications before condemning them.
God created the universe and God ordained the ‘laws of nature’ (see e.g. Jeremiah 33:25-6) which – unless God intervenes with miracles – allow order to unfold in it.
I could explain my position more fully, but I am not inclined to do so to someone who puts words in my mouth and considers that to differ with him in interpretation of scripture is to differ with Jesus and equivalent to Baal-worship. Have the humility to accept that you might be wrong in your understanding of the scriptures we share.
I don’t think I have misrepresented what you have written and you seem not to have noticed that I did address your comments re YOM (why capitalised?). But let the reader judge.
As for Baal, maybe you don’t know anything about Canaanite Baal theology and its attempt to take over the belief system that God gave to Israel. Just as Yahweh’s having created the universe by the breath of his mouth was the prime truth that God revealed about himself in the OT, so the threat posed by Baal theology and worship was the prime manifestation of the struggle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Western Europe, mutatis mutandis, has gone through it all over again, with the Church offering no resistance.
Purely in NT terms, ‘What accord has Christ with Belial? What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?’ ‘We refuse to tamper with God’s word … [For] the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers’, i.e., those who have come up with a ‘Big Bang’ substitute for Genesis 1. ‘Claiming to be wise, they became fools … [and] changed the truth of God into falsehood.’ ‘Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.’
Of course I noticed your comments about YOM. (Capitals are faster than italicising, that’s all.) They were a good example of choosing a definition so as to win the argument. I pointed out that a further meaning, namely ‘era’, is found in the Book of Job, which is the only other book of comparable antiquity to Genesis – it too calls angels ‘sons of God’, and Job does his own sacrifices so it is before Sinai. You simply blanked my argument. I didn’t take you up on it because I didn’t intend to respond to you with a list of disagreements, for the reasons I stated.
You surely don’t believe Alexander Hislop’s nonsense about disguised Baal-worship creeping in with Constantine? I share the nonconformist protestant view that much went wrong with the church when Christianity became the Established religion of the Roman Empire (several decades after Constantine), but the claim that Baal-worship entered the church in disguise at that point is absurd. The mediaeval Catholic church had two idols, itself and Mary.
Not content with stating that to disagree with your understanding is to disagree with Christ, and labelling me a Baal-worshipper, you now slander me as a fool. The plausible deniability you employ won’t wash when you find yourself compared against Matthew 5:22.
Wow.
Regarding yom and your suggestion that, notwithstanding the express definition of the term <ad loc., the reader of Gen 1 should wait until he finds the same word in Job 15:23 and 18:20 (though you might have mentioned Gen 2:4) before deciding what it means goes against one of the basic rules of interpretation and basic skills of reading, that one respect the context. I passed this over because I thought on reflection you might have realised that for yourself.
In your “Yes and no” comment (amongst others) you did not address the points I made, so the idea that I was blanking out what you said seems to me unwarranted.
No, I don’t think Alexander Hislop’s work has any merit.
You obviously do disagree with Christ, and that is a serious matter. I didn’t label you a fool, but pointed out that you have adopted the wisdom of the world in this absolutely crucial question of whether God created all things, by his word and will, and God himself, via Paul, labels that as folly.
“Labelling me a Baal-worshipper” is also putting it too touchily. I said that the syncretism you have lived with for 30 years, albeit conscious of the ‘tension’, is akin to Israel following Baal. I’m reacting against your hermeneutics, not against you personally. As a person, I hardly know you at all – not even your surname.
On Mount Carmel Elijah asked Israel, “How long will you go on hobbling on two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.” That’s the question which arises in the present context.
‘These things became examples for us, that we might not desire bad things, the way they did’ (I Cor 10:6). The Old Testament is still God’s living word, sharper than any two-edged sword if you will let it be.
Stop playing games with insults which have plausible deniability. I am uninterested in receiving advice from someone who does that.
Neither of us knows the detailed position of the other in the Genesis/science debate, nor is inclined to offer it here. But it might be worth pursuing our main point of disagreement, over the Big Bang. The use of Einstein’s well-verified equations of general relativity, in conjunction with observations about the rate of expansion of the universe, enable us to say that the universe grew to what we see today from a very hot and very small volume some 14 billion years ago. Whether it actually began as a point a little before that is unknowable (quantum corrections become significant, and we don’t have a quantum theory of gravity today); but compared to its present size the universe was effectively a point, and the explosive early part of that expansion is well described as a Big Bang.
So science affirms that the universe had a beginning, just as Genesis says and as Eastern monism denies. One would hope that this accord would be grounds for satisfaction among Jews and Christians. The only possible thing wrong with this argument is if the laws of physics themselves fell and changed at the Fall, which is something I am prepared to consider but secular scientists are not.
I find it awesome that God started the universe so small, and ordained laws by which it runs which have led to the stars, the earth and life. I find the scale and ingenuity of the whole plan utterly jaw-dropping.
If you disagree with what I have said, please state exactly where and why.
PS Bacteria don’t leave fossils, and can give rise to complex cells capable of making up multicullular life according to the processes explained in Nick Lane’s book The Vital Question. But let us concentrate mainly on the Big Bang.
I’m afraid the charge of ‘playing games’ is just you being evasive. I have tried to restrict the issues to those affecting how we read Scripture. You keep on countering with complaints of personal offence, references to people like Alexander Hislop, Einstein, Nick Lane, vague allusions to ‘the Fall’ at some unknown point in time and so on. Even your charge of ‘plausible deniability’ is not straightforward. You admit that denial is plausible but forbid me from denying it, lest you be deprived from the sense of personal insult.
The Big Bang is not dependent on Einstein. Indeed, when he conceived of general relativity, in the 1910s, he believed in a static universe. It was much later that others persuaded him that redshift was evidence of an expanding universe, and that this, taken to its absurd ultimate conclusion, indicated an origin in a singularity the size of a pea. And it was only later still, in the 1960s, that the Big Bang became the ruling paradigm. Yes, we can all agree that the universe had a beginning. Even the pagans of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan and Greece believed that. How comforting to know that the eastern monists do not!
Unlike yours, my position is not, “If science confirms something that Genesis says, then I can accept it is true. If science denies it, then I deny it.” Of course it is possible to find common ground with other belief systems; even with Islam. But a Christian does not need to know anything about Einstein in order to be confident that, as Exodus 20 puts it, “In six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” These are plain words and the Israelites knew what God meant. The meaning has been perspicuous for three millennia. But for the past two centuries there have been people undermining the witness of the Holy Spirit in Scripture and teaching a different doctrine, ‘desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.’ (I Tim 1:7)
Scientists who believe in the Big Bang do not suppose that before then there was nothing. They can only speculate, but all believe there was something. The Big Bang was a moment. It was not the creation of anything ex nihilo.
But the issue is not whether the universe had a beginning but rather whether God – the one who revealed himself to Israel and latterly to us – created the heavens and earth in the beginning, fully formed, populated with the full range of plant and animal life. Whether ‘life’ is just highly organised molecules or something that comes directly from God. Whether nature creates itself so as to end up as the world is today or is incapable of organising itself into ever higher states of complexity.
Unfortunately, it is clear you don’t know much as regards palaeontology. Bacteria do leave fossils – both form fossils known as stromatolites and isotopic chemical traces. There is a vast literature on this. But I can see what informs and moulds your thinking – the atheistic speculations of Nick Lane and such. You want to talk about the Big Bang – a notion that, with all that JWST has recently revealed, is now collapsing – because that’s what determines your reading of Scripture. You want to be able to say, “Genesis 2 is authoritative concerning a godly understanding of marriage, but not concerning creation, how and when male and female human beings came into existence. Spiritual truth does not have to be based on historical, scientific truth.” Only inhabitants of the peculiar world of modern theology find this convincing. If there’s any question to do with humility, the proper exercise of humility is for both of us to submit our minds to the mind of God, even when one finds his Word difficult. His thoughts are not our thoughts. “Let God be true though every man be a liar” (Rom 3:4) – for he will be justified in his words.
When you can derive the field equations of general relativity from the equivalence principle, preach to me about the Big Bang. I gave a simplified but not inaccurate version for the benefit of readers.
If you think science cannot assist in the interpretation of scripture, you presumably believe that the earth is flat because of the “four corners” reference in Isaiah, and believe in geocentricity because of statements that the sun rose.
General relativity can solve one of the trickier conundrums. Time. Time itself started in the Big Bang – asking what happened before it is like asking what is north of the North Pole. All that is not God was created by him. This is how he created time.
“As soon as ‘evangelicals’ go down the road of thinking it important, distinct from trivial, “to seek to understand the ‘type’ or genre of writing to which a passage belongs in order to understand it”, they have lost the plot. “
Have evangelicals who predict the day of trumpets lost the plot too? I note another September 16th has passed and we all still seem to be here
Scripture does not tell us the year of Christ’s return, but we can infer the time of year: Tabernacles, the harvest festival, the only one of the three OT festivals requiring all able-bodies adult males to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem that has not yet found fulfilment in Christ. (Exodus – the Crucifixion/Resurrection; Firstfruits – Pentecost.) We cannot know the year until 7 years beforehand, and even then only those who know what to look for will recognise the prophesied signs, which haven’t happened yet. You would do well to desist from scoffing.
But Jesus tells us *not* to look for signs, and that *no-one* can know the time. I am unclear why you ignore his very clear teaching here.
Because no-one could know the time in the era he spoke. On the Mt of Olives he gave the signs to look for – why do that if we were not meant to look for signs?
Revelation and some eschatological prophets make clear that he comes back to destroy a world dictator who is threatening Israel. So the world has to be politically unified first. Another world war fought with WMDs could accomplish that. And Israel is back in the land, something inconceivable as recently as 200 years ago.
You are open about your eschatology, Ian, and my question is: what triggers his return? And to where on earth does he come back, and why there?
Anton, let me assure you I am not scoffing. I am simply trying to understand Steven’s claims about this.
What other than scoffing is “Have evangelicals who predict the day of trumpets lost the plot too? I note another September 16th has passed and we all still seem to be here”?
I can put up with it, but let us call it what it is.
It’s an enquiry about a statement that Steven has made in the past. No scoffing. Steven doesn’t wish to answer but that doesn’t rule the enquiry out or make it other than a genuine enquiry.
The lost the plot phrase was Steven’s. I am asking if it applies only to things he mentions.
Having a crudely literal, simplistic, misunderstanding of Genesis 1-3 is likely to produce a spirit of insecure anxiety about scientific enquiry and a bullying spirit towards those who believe every part of Scripture but acknowledge the different genres. You yourself subconsciously interpret the Bible according to genre whenever you identify a piece of Scripture as parable, letter, history, philosophy or poetry.
Steven
But when Jesus was talking about Genesis, he was talking about divorce and remarriage amongst straight people. He wasn’t talking about same sex marriage or gay people
Of course he was. He was speaking in the context of Judaism which rejected same-sex relationships (occurring in the world around them) precisely on the basis of the creation narratives.
Your bracketing these out seems completely arbitrary.
Genesis 1 & 2 are clearly not historical narratives, as if that is what you would have actually seen if youd been there with a video camera. It is the truths that God is speaking through the stories that is important.
And just to point out, Jesus doesnt actually refer to Adam and Eve but rather that God created humanity as male and female, so you shouldnt put words in His mouth. Perhaps He knew something you dont want to admit…
I think when it comes to the weight of the argument, whether Genesis 1-2 is prescriptive or descriptive on it’s own merit is hard to judge. I am unsure.
The more important thing has always seemed to me that both Jesus and Paul treat it as if it is the former. Trying to read Genesis 1-2 without the interpretation of the rest of scripture feels like an attempt to divide scripture against itself.
I would want someone arguing for a descriptive Genesis to be arguing for a descriptive reading of Matthew too, and that doesn’t seem to happen very often..
Mat
Mat
It can be prescriptive without prohibiting same sex marriage for gay people
‘Marriage is between one man and one woman because God created humanity male and female, and sex in marriage is intimately connected with procreation’.
In what sense does that not prohibit same-sex sexual relationships? All of scripture, and the whole Jewish tradition in Jesus’ day read it as saying precisely that.
Did you know that there are now ongoing scientific experiments to allow procreation between 2 females or 2 males with some progress being made among animals?
Also, the assignments of sex at the time were only based on external genitals, as that was what they knew. This means that some of the “barren women” of those times were XY genetically with internal male genitals, for example, those with androgen insensitivity syndrome. The point is that procreation was not required for it to be a valid marriage, for this and many other reasons.
The whole Jewish tradition, except for Jesus himself, who omits any reference to procreation?
Regarding some comments above:
The church’s movement on divorce and remarriage – as has been pointed out – is the divorce and remarriage of heterosexual couples and has little or no bearing on same-sex marriage.
It was simply a move away for protestant churches from their Roman Catholic heritage to a more biblical position.
The text of Mathew 19:9 cannot be more clear – Jesus permitted divorce for the wife’s sexual immorality – so marriage is not ‘unbreakable’.
‘Adultery’ is not as defined as above – it is when a married woman has sexual intercourse with a man who is not her husband. The Bible knows no other teaching . If this were not so every plural marriage in the OT would be adulterous.
Regarding Ephesians 5:31-32 – the mystery is not in human marriage – the mystery is how the Gen 2:24 human marriage illustrates Christ in the church.
Just as when we hear that the seed ‘is the word of God’ – the explanation of the teaching is to be found in how the seed illustrates the word of God. It is not giving new teaching about seeds.
In the context of Genesis, Jesus is God’s ‘promised seed’.
He is aso the last Adam, with a new humanity, born from above, in Him.
We are either in Adam or in Christ.
Ah! So not as Genesis 3:15 says then?
But that would take us off track on this blog. Perhaps for another day.
Colin –
1. your take on adultery strongly violates the commandment ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ – which in this context means that if you don’t want your wife fooling around with other men, then you don’t fool around with other women – your take on adultery is not only wrong, it is utterly offensive to basic Christian principles (of love your neighbour as yourself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you).
2. Genesis is a connected piece of work. Irrespective of how many different authors and different styles we think there may have been, we see clearly that it is, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is a beautifully constructed coherent piece of work which is not self-contradictory. The one-man-one-woman principle is set out in Genesis 2 (Jesus explains this to us – even if incredibly brainy theologians fail to see it) – and then all the examples of polygamy (polygyny if you prefer) are pointedly there to show us that things go severely wrong when the principles are violated; the fact that Jacob had four wives leads to enormous family strife.
Another example is the incestuous way in which Lot’s two depraved daughters got up their families. Please don’t try suggesting that this was somehow OK. We see the grace of God working in all of this – the son of the older daughter was Moab (from whom King David was descended – Ruth was a Moabitess).
So every plural marriage in the OT *is* adulterous – and we see the grace of God over ruling. Also, the activities of Lot’s daughters are indeed depraved, but nevertheless form part of God’s plan of salvation.
anyone who divorces his wife, not for porneia, and marries another woman commits adultery – Matt 19:9.
Jesus makes clear here that the definition of adultery is wider than the one you give. He also says nothing at all about a man who divorces his wife for porneia. If that man marries again (during the lifetime of the first wife), he might or might not be committting adultery – we cannot tell.
Why did Jesus decline to discuss divorce for porneia? This was not a dry philosophical disputation but a hot-blooded confrontation with Pharisees who often divorced for trivia. He didn’t want to get diverted into a discussion on the meaning of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, so he stuck to exposing the Pharisees’ hypocrisy for something obvious.
If you think that a man is free to divorce his wife for porneia and then remarry without committing adultery then you have to explain why Luke (16:18), the most fastidious of the gospel writers, did not make an exception for porneia. Luke had no idea that Christians centuries later would have access to the other gospels.
Colin
The problem is when a church won’t allow same sex marriage because of Matt 19, but then allows remarriage after divorce caused by adultery. It’s the relaxing of teaching for straight people, but then adding extra rules for gay people using the same passage, that’d the hypocrisy.
When Boris Johnson can get married a third time in a (RCC) cathedral, but I can’t marry once in church, it’s hypocrisy.
When the CofE will marry Meghan and Harry, but not Tom and Dustin, it’s hypocrisy.
When the governor of the church is married to his once mistress, but a gay person in a faithful stable marriage cannot be even a reader, it’s hypocrisy
When church leaders here in the US tell their flock to vote for Trump because he opposes LGBT equality, it’s hypocrisy
It may be hypocrisy but I dont see how that helps your argument for same-sex marriage. Being hypocritical about marriage and divorce doesnt logically lead to same-sex marriage being good in God’s eyes.
‘It was simply a move away for protestant churches from their Roman Catholic heritage to a more biblical position.’
Spot on.
The Orthodox Churches have permitted remarriage after divorce of pastoral grounds of ‘economia’, based on their interpretation of Matthew 19.9.
I do not know how long this has been the law in Orthodoxy; perhaps some reader with greater knowledge of the Orthodox churches can comment?
In any case, it does not appear to be true that Western Protestant churches permitting remarriage after divorce have changed a universal doctrine of the Church but rather the understanding of Western (Roman) Catholicism, from which the Protestant churches emerged.
I think all truth is God’s truth, so I accept the evidence for science being the best explanation for Creation from the perspective of methodological materialism, in other words I accept the claims of modern science overall. I think the stories in Gen 1-11 are all in the literary genre of parables if one is restricted to generally accepted Biblical genres or creation/decreation/recreation myths if not. One of the characteristics of a parable/myth is only mentioning what it wants to mention and does not cover lots of things that might be relevant in reality. Given the 2 sexes of humans both of which are needed for procreation, those are the initial main human characters in the first stories. But we now know other types of humans exist, such as intersex people which are now referred to as having differences in sexual development (DSD) from the usual male or female. I think such people deserve our compassion in navigating life with challenges that people without a DSD have little to no ideas about. Genesis talks about night and day, but that does not mean Creation knows nothing about morning or evening; it is just that those early stories do not mention them.
Maybe there is help from CS Lewis in determining “myth.”
Is the incarnation of God in Jesus a myth?
Is the resurrection of Jesus from death after 3 days a myth?
Is the ascension of Jesus a myth?
Is sin a myth?
Do the Gospels record history, or are they myths?
And what about miracles?
Is the Jesus of history, different from the Jesus of faith?
Or as some liberals maintain what is written of Jesus in scripture is not historical, in space, time and place, but is but a parable.
Are there underpinning philosophies to science? Which can extend to scientism?
Do we live in a closed material world system?
All the things you mentioned are not expressed in a mythological style, unlike Genesis 1& 2 which stylistically resembles other ancient myths, but which teaches very different things from them about God, his character and purposes in creation.
Indeed. It is hardly a coincidence that the author of Genesis 1 appears to deliberately tackle some of the false elements of other Near Eastern creation stories, such as regarding the sun and moon (no theyre not ‘gods’ just created objects with functions). There is no excuse to be ignorant of this today given how much has been written about it.
Not only because Paul says it but also because the logic of the situation rather requires it, a literal resurrection of Jesus is needed to variously vindicate Jesus as an innocent sacrifice for our sin, declare his divine nature, and guarantee our own bodily resurrection.
With Genesis on the other hand, are we intended to take totally literally a story of Adam and Eve tempted by a talking serpent revealed later in the Scripture to have been Satan? I have no problem with the concept that coming from a time probably before writing, this may be in a different ‘genre’ but true in important ways, similar to the way George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a true (but not literal) history of the Russian Revolution….
CS Lewis seemed to have a lot of time for evolution:
“To the biologist Evolution […] covers more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. […] It makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements”.
Yes, the genre of the gospels are ancient biography, so the gist of the stories should be understood as actually happening even when the specific details of some of them we are unsure about because of gospel differences. Mike Licona has done some excellent work in this area explaining the apparent contradictions between the gospels.
Biographies, certainly, but there is nothing stopping genres being hybrid, or sui generis.
The book of Mark does not announce itself as a biography primarily. It entitles itself euangelion not bios. Naturally it is a biography, but it is a lot more than that.
This in turn needs to be read in the light of the title of the only other existing Christian narrative at the time, Rev, which announces itself as an ‘unveiling’. Both are combative titles, pitting Jesus’s claims against those of the emperor. Nero’s statue may have been unveiled in all its majesty and height, but wait till you see our unveiling. The emperor may have numerous proclamations of his res gestae and aristeia, but wait till you compare that with what Jesus has done and achieved. That need produced the genre. Genres are no-one’s master, in fact they arise in the first place only from a specific real life need. (Griffin, pace Cairns.) Wherever there is a different real life need, that spawns a different genre.
The preface to Luke speaks of all the gospels being fulfilment programmes.
So our main pieces of evidence speak of generic considerations looming even larger than the crucial element of bios.
Indeed. There’s a reason why scholars differ as to the precise genre of the Gospels. They reflect different types of writings.
I think it’s more important to question whether “suitability” or “gender” is more important for marriage and ultimately that’s kind of the core disagreement in the same sex marriage debate.
90-99% of humans can marry someone who is both suitable for them and opposite gender or are genuinely more suited to solitude or called to solitude.
The discussion is really what should happen for the people who are not suited to solitude, called to solitude or attracted to the opposite sex.
I think it’s reasonable to say this is one of the questions about sexual morality that the Church of England has failed to answer.
There are really three options
1 be lonely and miserable your whole life, possibly find some support from like minded people
2 marry someone of the opposite sex who you don’t love in a romantic sense and aren’t attracted to
3 marry someone of the same sex and have as good a shot at a happy caring relationship and children as a straight couple
Genesis 1-3 cannot clearly answer this question because Eve was deliberately made for Adam to be “suitable” for him. If Adam had been gay would God have made Steve instead?
Here is my short response. After loving God, Yeshua said to love others as one loves yourself. I need to ask what would I want if I was a gay person and it simply is that I would want the same options as a straight person, given the implications of my differences. Yes, there are some verses to discuss to get there, so let’s discuss them.
God made Adam to be not gay. This raises a core underlying question: is gayness a consequence of the events in Genesis 3?
Anton
Basic deal – people are meant to love people, and indeed it is meant to be pretty intense even between people of the same sex; remember David and Jonathan had a ‘love greater than the love of women’ and the phrasing of that suggests it should be interpreted not as “we had better sex” but rather that at least in their case it was “better than sex”.
However, God has effectively told us that he has designed sexuality as a thing for males with females, and it is inappropriate to do sex on a same-sex basis. Paul makes it rather clear in Romans 1 that the choice to do same-sex sex, and the underlying desire to do it, is part of the disorder brought into human life by sin. And note, a point I’ve repeatedly made here, that ‘gay’ is not something people simply ‘are’ in the innocuous sense in which they are things like Black African, it is very much about things people do and choose, a different moral category.
No
So without a sexual relationship, someone is ‘lonely and miserable your whole life’? What an impoverished and sexualised vision of humanity!
Some people may be asexual/celibate, but most are not. I am a believer and a married heterosexual as I am sexually attracted to women and not men. But if I was gay, I would ask for the same faithful options as heterosexuals have and not only be considered faithful if I acted as an asexual/celibate when I was not.
If you were gay and God said there are no same-sex sexual relationship options for you as a believer. What would your response be to Him?
Do you mean if God audibly spoke to me as a charismatic? Or do you mean by trying to figure out what Scripture teaches? Assuming the latter, I would want to make a thorough study of this area, try my best to see what different understandings are, and then try to make the best decision. Since Scripture is all ancient text, I would NOT immediately assume everything would be obvious.
Donald,
Some people are celibate through choice, others through circumstances beyond your control.
– What would you say to a heterosexual Christian that nobody wanted to marry? To have an affair, if possible? To use prostitutes, if possible? Or to seek the grace of chastity? Does God enable to live in ways we would not have chosen?
– Do you think the desire for sex is the same as the need for food and drink?
– And what do you say of older people who have little or no libido? Even married couples?
Are you speaking as a married man or a lifelong celibate James?
I don’t think you’ve understood the difference between a rule of lifelong celibacy and happening to be single.
I think each person that wants to marry should work on themselves with the Holy Spirit’s help to strive to become a person another wants to marry. Mostly this means becoming more and more sanctified and faithful. Yes, there can be someone that wants to marry but they cannot find another yet, but they can choose to widen their circle of looking. One can “make the first move” and possibly get rejected; personally, when I was dating, I have made the first move a few times and had the first move made by a woman a few times; I have been rejected a few times also, but I have learned that such is a truth gift. My point is that no one needs to just sit back and hope another falls into their lap, they can get out and try.
Though not nearly as sexualised a view as St Paul had. He didn’t think the people not cut out for celibacy would simply be lonely and miserable, he worried that they’d fall into sexual immorality and scandal (1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Timothy 5). He even fretted that people who were married, but not sleeping with their spouse, would stumble in similar ways.
Yes, Martin!
Geoff, also, did there need to be a certain man who went from Jerusalem to Jericho who was beaten and robbed etc before Jesus’ ‘go and do likewise’ becomes ‘true’? Please think about how we humans actually use and understand language.
Indeed. Truth can be expressed in multiple ways. The trick is not to throw out the baby with the bath water – just because one part is a story expressing theological and other truths doesnt mean it all should be understood that way.
I have and do! Though it seems that you have not address the question of myth on the way CS Lewis does.
Sure there are different genres in scripture. I’m honing in on the specific question of, ‘myth: which is frequently bandied about when scripture is ‘discussed’.
Steven Rakes an important point, of biblical theology, over the whole canon.
There have been various comments about the Bible’s definition of adultery. Why is this important? If we don’t understand the Bible in its original context before we try to put it in today’s context we are sure to go wrong.
To read a new definition of adultery into the NT is no different to reading SSM into the NT.
If Jesus in one conversation was looking to change the understanding held of adultery by Israel and throughout the ancient Near East for thousands of years, he would have to articulate it.
It is too late in the post to demonstrate this — but just to take one specific that has been mentioned — in Matthew 19:9 there are several manuscript variations footnoted in many bibles. Furthermore, and I suggest more importantly, before we try and push a Western modern definition of adultery back into the NT, we need to tale into account that ‘adultery’ is used both rhetorically and metaphorically, for example in Matthew 5:28 and Mathew 12:39.
Colin,
Who was Jesus primarily addressing here, where Jesus recognises wifely marital unfaithfulness, and becoming an adulteress?
It falls well short of the righteousness required by the law of God, which will not pass away. Mat 5:17-20. Righteousness is key here.
Adultery, male or female was a breach of some of the commandments , though not specifically termed adultery which Jesus alludes to ( such as not to covet) in Matthew 5:28, expressed sexually, (and as put by Jock above) and certainly of the Wisdom literature.
It is based on a false premise to seek to extend this to ssm, sss, revisionism.
Geoff,
I am not sure what you are saying here. But Matthew 19:9 ESV has:
‘And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.’
If we go with that and not engage with MS variations, in light of the contextual historical and contemporary understanding we need to ask if Jesus is using ‘adultery’ rhetorically as in Matthew 5:28, or metaphorically as in Matthew 12:39 — and I suggest the latter.
In Matthew 12:39 Jesus is telling the Jews they have been ‘adulterous’ in that they not been faithful to their covenant with God — ‘adultery’ is used this way a great many times in the OT.
This what Jesus seems to be saying in Matthew 19:9 — if a husband divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, he is being unfaithful to his covenant with her.
In other words, the adultery is in the divorce —it is a view that Blomberg takes (Craig L. Blomberg, “Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, and Celibacy: An Exegesis of Matthew 19:3–12,” TJ 11NS (1990), 174–75).
Colin,
This is so far away from the article.
Matthew 5 is not primarly about the biblical theme of covenantal faithfulness, but to repeat, righteousness of the law of God.
Mat 5:1-17
Sexual adultery here isn’t;
1 a metaphor for Israel’s covenantal unfaithfulness
2 isn’t only one way, it is a two was street by men and women, husband and wife.
(It is a breach of other righteous commandments, such as not to covet.)
3 Isn’t support for your thesis that God divorced Israel
The false premises that you appear to be making:
A) Jesus is revising the law of God, of righteousness. (He isn’t, he doubles down on it).
B)Just as Jesus then, so may we contemporary human beings today in the revision of ssm marriage.
But enough.
Geoff,
Ok. I am completely lost now!
You said you were using the above text of Matthew 19. Is not the ‘and marries another’ not an important part of the equation? Or does the Greek have a different meaning iyo?
I dont really see how it is the divorcing itself that constitutes ‘adultery’ but more importantly joining with another. Using your analogy of the Israelites and God, they committed adultery because they ‘joined’ with other ‘gods’, no?
Hi PC1,
Because it was possible to take a second wife without committing literal adultery. Thus I suggest it is difficult to believe Jesus was answering a question about divorce and simultaneously changing the definition of adultery and thus invalidating, for example, levirate marriages – all in one sentence in the NT.
PC1,
Craig Blomberg suggests the concept – I understand he was on the translation committee of the NIV – so presumably he knows NT Greek.
True, objective Truth.
” I AM The Way, The Truth, The Life.”
Is he God incarnate?
Did he refer to Adam? Was it expressed by Jesus as a (false) myth? As truth?
Bearing in mind that there is an irreducible correspondence factor to objective truth.
A parable can be true. If someone asks you to act like the good Samaritan, you know what they mean, even if there never was such a person in reality.
Quite. The parables contain important and insightful teaching we should pay close attention to. They’re also completely made up (by Jesus).
Yes…
Though “completely made up (by Jesus).” could sound a bit weak?
I can make stories up but the truth basis is rather more questionable. In Jesus “making things up” the story is made up but is only the vehicle for divine revelation, which is the bit which counts. Authorship matters for authority.
Does it make it weak? Is the parable of the pearl of great price made less serious if you realise there was no pearl and no merchant and it was ‘just’ a parable?
Western culture has a history of using properly fantastical made-up stories to impart moral lessons – e.g. the Emperor’s new clothes, or the frog prince, or the little mermaid. Jesus’s parables are quite grounded by comparison.
But such a person had to be at least *possible. If the parable told something that was intrinsically impossible, it is hard to see how it could serve as an example for living. The teacher of the law was doubtless hostile toward Samaritans as most first century Jews were (and not without reason – Samaritans had massacred Jews before), but here he was forced to see God’s love at work in someone he probably considered an enemy. It is not hard to think of real world examples of this idea.
Exactly!
So, Geoff, have you really thought about how language works in human communication?
My ‘exactly’ was in response to Donald and AJB
James, is ‘possible’ not slightly different from ‘an irreducible correspondence factor to objective truth’?
No, Bruce, that’s just barbaric – and a sin against Sir Ernest Gowers.
I bid you a good and restorative night and pray that no colorless green ideas will dream furiously in your slumbers.
Very droll James. But I think your ‘quotation’ does support my point 🙂
As opposed to what other kind of communication? Angelic?
Geoff’s a (retired) lawyer, he has used language all his life for human communication (which I am told includes lawyers).
James, can you convince me that cats and dogs rely on inference to communicate with other cats and dogs?
And if communication between human beings did not rely on inference then we would never have needed lawyers 🙂
To come back to the title of the post – I suggest that Genesis 2 offers an aetiology of marriage from which it is very difficult to project a validity for ssm.
Not very difficult – actually impossible. The whole point of thd story is sexual dimorphism constituting “one flesh”.
It’s interesting though that Jesus omits the “be fruitful and multiply” instruction. As Penny points out, St Paul is also conspicuous in not talking about procreation as an instruction or purpose of marriage.
I’m not sure I’d say Genesis 2 is the “definition” of marriage. It’s a foundational text, but alongside 1 Corinthians 7, Ephesians 5, Ecclesiastes 4 and others. I remain unconvinced by this argument that the point of the Genesis text has been to secretly prepare the Church to reject same-sex partnerships.
So what is going on?
Genesis 1: the central point of the “male and female” reference is to be clear that we are all made in God’s image, not just the men (as you might mistakenly think if you just had Genesis 2). The instruction to be fruitful and multiply is a repetition of the instruction to be fruitful and multiply given to the fish and birds. That can’t be the basis of a marriage definition, unless you’re going to argue that fish and birds are married. I’d suggest it’s dubious as an ongoing instruction, rather than a creative act (like “let there be light”), given Jesus doesn’t repeat when referencing Genesis in Matthew 19.
Genesis 2: the story of marriage begins with God observing that it is not good for man to be alone, and then setting about to get him a helper. There’s a temptation to tie that to being fruitful and multiplying (if you think that’s an ongoing instruction), but I don’t think that works. Adam is searching for a helper amongst the animals, and not finding one suitable. What do you think is going on? And when woman is created, there is no suggestion at all that they start having children. Rather, the emphasis is squarely on their union: they become one flesh. Sometimes this can be read as a literal description of sex, but I think you get a better idea when you read Ephesians 5: spouses are to love each other as they love their own bodies – i.e. they are one flesh.
The debate isn’t about whether Genesis 2 is important, but rather what you think it’s trying to tell you. I think it’s telling us that we are all in God’s image, and the purpose of marriage is union and companionship. Others are of course free to argue that it’s telling us men are obliged to have sex with women, sexual orientation doesn’t matter, and we’re all mandated to sire children, but I don’t see how the case has been made for that.
Hello AJ,
You make some good points.
I think the primary meaning of ‘one flesh’ in its original context in biblical Hebrew – there has been extensive study about this – means ‘one [new] family’. I cannot think why Jesus would want to change that primary meaning.
Also, I suggest it has considerable soteriological significance in light of the Genesis 3:15 Protoevangelium – which projects the future of humanity into two ‘seed’ groups, i.e., two family groups. Hence Ephesians 5:31-32.
Surely Jesus doesnt refer to the be fruitful and multiply part simply because he is answering the specific question about divorce.
And because the instruction to be fruitful and multiply is in Genesis 1 and he’s talking here about a verse in Genesis 2, about one-flesh unity. Divorce means tearing apart what God has joined together (Matthew 19.9), hence its grave sinfulness.
But some commentators here may be a little too quick to dismiss any thought of childbearing from Genesis 2. Eve is created to be a “helper” for Adam (2.19). How exactly does she “help” him? David Clines in ‘What Does Eve Do To Help?” answers this from Gen 4.1: “She said, ‘With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” Childbearing was always part of the divine purpose in the creation of Eve (Genesis 3.16), it was not an afterthought or – if you want to be a JEDP-ite – “Priestly” idea but not a “Yahwist” one.
Jesus quotes from both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 in Matthew 19. He just omits over the be fruitful and multiply bit. And when the disciples say it would be better not to marry (once they’re told divorce is supposed to be exceptional) Jesus doesn’t remind them that they’re supposed to be making babies.
If the helper that Adam is searching for is for him to have sex with in order to have a child, then some odd things are going on in Genesis 2. Firstly the search for the helper involves Adam going through all the livestock, wild animals and birds. If you think this is all about siring a child, what do you think is going on?Why does Genesis 2 bring the animals into the search at all? Secondly, Genesis 2 makes no mention of childbearing. That is all after the Fall, once death enters the picture. Instead what we get in Genesis 2 is a union – that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
‘doesn’t mention’ isn’t the same as “omits” when the latter means “intentionally excludes”. If a man introduces his wife to somebody but doesn’t state there and then that she is also the mother of their children, he has not ‘omitted’ that fact, he has simply not mentioned it as not relevant to that particular encounter.
The issue at hand in Matthew 19 is the permissibility or otherwise of divorce ‘for any cause’, not childbearing.
The fact that Jesus cites Gen 1.27 in Matt 19.4 and Gen 2.24 in v. 5 shows that Jesus read Gen 1 and 2 as a unity, not as two different and conflicting narratives. Gen 1.28 already contains the command to ‘be fruitful and multiply’.
Chris Seitz made this point in an earlier thread. Reproduction, like work, was not an after-thought caused by the Fall. Instead, work became burdensome, childbirth became painful and the marital relationship became conflictual. All of these need redemption.
He has simply not mentioned it because it is not relevant. Quite. Childbearing is not relevant to the purpose of the marriage.
Adam and Eve’s children all come after the Fall. Before the Fall there’s no mention of them, and not even a mention of an intent for the couple to have children.
Wrong again, AJB. You haven’t understood the very points I made, and those that Chris Seitz made earlier. Childbearing is ENTIRELY relevant to the purpose of marriage.
You seem to think childbirth was an afterthought, a consequence of the Fall.
You haven’t understood Genesis 1.27-28 and how Jesus combines Genesis 1-2.
And you haven’t understood how it is that the woman ‘helps’ the man: not in tilling the garden – but in having children (Genesis 4.1).
Genesis 2 doesn’t even mention sex. Read Clines, ‘What Does Eve Do To Help?’ It’s on the internet for free.
Doubling down on an error doesn’t make it correct.
And what Adam recognises in his fellow human, after being presented with everything from aardvarks to zebras, is sameness, not difference.
The same human nature, not the same sex.
Steve wouldn’t have been much of a ‘helper’ in fulfilling the command to be fruitful and multiply.
It’s true that some people prefer the company of cats or dogs to human beings. They’re certainly a lot less complicated.
Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they don’t understand what you’ve said.
Childbearing is entirely relevant to the purpose of marriage? Even though Jesus didn’t say that when he had the opportunity to, and you are left having to imagine that he wanted to say it or he kinda did but the Gospel writers forgot so we can mentally add it in? And St Paul in his writings on marriage and whether people should get married and whether married couples should be sleeping together or not, doesn’t mention it either? Odd.
As for Clines argument, I find it unconvincing. It rests on believing that women aren’t really good for anything other than having children. To sustain that Clines has to focus in hard on Genesis 3, and shut his eyes to the rest of Scripture. And then it all gets tied up in some strange discussions which obsess over whether helpers are inferior (which seems out of place in a faith built on the servant king…) and at one point pushes back against the suggestion that women as well as men are in the image of God.
making babies wasnt the focus of the question. It was a question about divorce. Hence He didnt mention babies. I know people here often go off at tangents, Jesus didnt.
PC1 – that’s right, I have mentioned that to him a number of times but he keeps deflecting.
Since Jesus didn’t say anything about husbands loving their wives (or at least he isn’t recorded as saying anything), I guess he didn’t care about that either.
If Jesus teaching is strictly limited to what’s necessary to talk about divorce, why is Genesis 1 being quoted at all? The first question is about divorce, but if you carry on reading Matthew 19 the disciples say (once they understand the more restrictive teaching on divorce) that it would be better not to marry, and Jesus has to correct this. But again, in correcting them on this different point, there’s still no hint of an instruction to go and make babies. And of course, it doesn’t stop there, because we don’t just have Jesus’s teaching, we have St Paul’s writings as well. He writes about marriage, its purpose, whether to get married, and how to behave in marriage, and he makes no mention of the instruction to make babies. Why’s that do you think?
Oh, and I’d dispute that Jesus makes no mention of love between spouses. That’s what the “one flesh” is about. St Paul, I think, makes it clear in Ephesians 5: “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.””
James
Which verse of Genesis 2 has the command to be fruitful and multiply?
“Genesis 2 makes no mention of childbearing. … Which verse of Genesis 2 has the command to be fruitful and multiply?”
As James points out, Jesus treated Genesis 1-2 as a unity, despite the frequent charge that they are two independent and conflicting accounts. So the proper place for the command is Genesis 1 (following Gen 1:22).
Jesus was right to treat them as a unity. The key is to recognise that (in David Ball’s words) ‘humanity is both male and female (not just male or female)’. The creation of man the species is only complete with the creation of woman.
Since (per Gen 2:5-7) his creation was before vegetation had sprung up but after the land was formed, Adam the individual must have been formed on day three. He spent the fifth and sixth becoming familiar with the winged animals and animals of the field created on those days. Woman was then created towards the end of the sixth day – the climax of creation! Only then could it be said that (per Gen 1:27) ‘[on day 3] God created the man; in the image of God he created him [not ‘them’, as in the NIV]; [on day 6] male and female he created them’. Gen 1:27 and 2:22 are exactly the same moment. Thus God would have said “Be fruitful and multiply” also at 2:22, albeit that the focus there is on the two as complementary human beings designed for marriage.
The days are of course literal days. It’s not as if the male was created millions of years before the female.
Otherwise Gen 1 and 2 are in conflict. No one should be satisfied with that position.
Hi James,
I would suggest the sin is not in a divorce if it is a valid divorce, the sin is in what led to a valid divorce.
I know, I was speaking eliptically. A blog post isn’t an essay etc.
Colin, but you said above that the adultery ‘was’ the divorce. Adultery is sin (‘Thou shalt not commit adultery”). Your understanding seems rather inconsistent.
Peter
Donald Johnson, @4:59 pm
The historicty of the life of Jesus is not a parable. Nor is it myth, promulgated by the anti supernaturalism, Historical critics, of the likes of Bultmann.
So are you now saying Genesis is, or points to, objective truth?
BTW, it doesn’t read like myth, as per CS Lewis who was something of a specialist.
I may see if his citation relating to this can be dug out though it is unlikely to change minds already made up.
Was Jesus making up Adam, (as per Adam J Bell.?)
Did Jesus not know what he was talking about? It certainly wasn’t in the genre of parable or myth.
The life is Yeshua is not a myth. He was a 2nd temple Jew that practiced Torah and taught Torah. Since he was sinless, he did everything that Torah required of a Jew.
It may not read like myth in English, but translations can obscure some of the indications of myth/parable. First, there are 3 creation/origins stories starting at Gen 1:1, Gen 2:4, and Gen 5:1. The first and the third can be fit together, but not the first and the second without fudging, which is what many translations and/or interpretations do to make it seem like a seamless single story. One can look at the purported order of Creation of various things to see they are different, for example, birds. This means at most one can be chronological and the other must not be, hence a parable. But why cannot both be parables? This bypasses the entire concern with early Genesis and modern science.
It is clear, couldn’t be clearer : Yeshua, Jesus is the I AM God of creation.
The curtain into the Holy of Holies, Presence of God has not only been drawn back, but has been ripped apart from top to bottom at his crucifixion.
Donald, I am not sure what you mean by the first two stories ‘not fitting together’.
There is clearly a change in focus and vocabulary, as well as style. But the stories are complementary rather than contradictory.
I am unclear on what grounds we detach the ‘it is not good for the adam to be alone’ from the command to be fruitful and multiply. God can be fruitful alone; human beings cannot.
Regarding there being more than one creation ‘story’, see my contribution above (September 20 at 8:27 pm). Genesis 1-2 are seamless, Jesus treated them as seamless, and the idea that there are discrepancies which sophisticated modern readers can see but the careless or simple-minded original author/compiler could not is (to be frank) laughable, quite apart from its undermining the fundamental concept of biblical inspiration, which Jesus himself affirmed (Matt 5:17, 19:4, 26:56, Luke 11:49, John 17:12).
We are really not that bright.
There is a great seam where the two narratives are tacked together at Genesis 2.4. The orders of creation are different, even God is different in the two accounts. Anyone who can read can see this even reading in translation. Genesis 1 may be a correction of Genesis 2.
Scripture never claims univocality for itself. That is an extra biblical ideological position.
I agree that there are differences of language, style and vocabulary. But it is (to borrow your phrase) an extra biblical ideological position to claim that one story is a correction of the other. There is a credible academic discipline in the West to take the text as it is in its final form.
But scripture repeatedly claims a theological univocality for itself—as the word of God. This claim is made repeatedly in the Torah, in the prophets (‘the word of the Lord came to…’), and by Jesus, where he treats the Old Testament text, including the creation accounts, as ‘What God said’. See John Wenham Christ and the Bible or John Goldingay Models for Scripture.
Here’s the funny thing though Geoff – Jesus doesn’t mention Adam by name in Matthew 19. He jumps straight to the principle he wants to draw from the Genesis story. By contrast Jesus is very happy to talk about Moses and what Moses did or commanded.
Funny how you totally ignore the point made, Adam.
All scripture is about Him, and we refuse to come to Him for life.
This whole revisionist, deconstruction, to reconstruct to serve a purpose of their own, is inherently barren and in the whole canon sweep of biblical theology, insupportable.
Adherents to extra – biblical process or open theology who seek revision, it is suggested, would not seek to revise the Genesis narratives.
There, I’ve done it again – given enough scope to avoid responding to my main point. Though the burden any response would be reasonably foreseeable from some of the interlocutors in the comments.
You asked if Jesus was making up Adam…
Haven’t you read: Matthew 19:4-6.
You have to be deliberately dull and/or in futherance of you own purposes to not understand who Jesus was referring to, and it was not Moses.
In addition his hearers would understand Moses to refer to the whole Pentateuch.
Your unbelief appears to be writ large.
Do you not believe that Jesus is the I Am God the creator?
Just wasting time on this barren branch of liberal pharisaical revisionism.
Bye.
Geoff, I can understand your frustration. But please avoid bandying about insults with those you don’t agree with.
Adam what do you see as the significance of that?
I think it’s hard to see how you think Jesus is “making up” Adam or told us that there was a literal Adam, when he doesn’t mention Adam.
‘Adam’ meant ‘man’ (e.g. Gen 1:27 and see ESV footnote 8). It was only secondarily his name (not until Gen 2:20), precisely by virtue of his being the progenitor of the human race. As his father, God gave him his name, and the name he chose to mean ‘man’ derived etymologically from adamah, ‘ground’, because the first man was formed from the dust of the earth. After that human beings reproduced in the normal way. Jesus says explicitly that God made man/Adam ‘from the beginning’. What is that if not a reference to ‘a literal Adam’?
Read Matthew 19 again. Jesus does not explicitly say God made Adam. Adam is not actually mentioned.
Lorenzo says above (at 4.30 am – does nobody here sleep?):
“Western theology, Augustine, Aquinas etc. does not draw its doctrine of marriage from Genesis either. None of the Fathers do, as far as I can see.”
Augustine discusses Genesis 2 in De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim 9.5.9 and states that “the woman was … made for a man as a helper in begetting children”, not for society and enjoyment, for which he thinks a male companion would have been better.
Aquinas also states in S.T. Ia, Q. 92, art. 1: ‘It was absolutely necessary to make woman … as a help for the man; not, indeed to help him in any other work, as some have maintained … but to help him in the work of procreation.’
Quite a sanitised take on Augustine. What he actually argued was that women were less intelligent than men, driven more by passions than reason (unlike men apparently), and obviously men didn’t actually enjoy the company of women. In effect men put up with the necessary evil of shackling themselves to a stupid, unreasonable, and annoying women because they need the breeding stock. I’ve never seen a marriage that actually looks like that, and it’s totally at odds with Scripture.
I didn’t say I agreed with everything Augustine said. Obviously I don’t. I was answering Lorenzo’s claim that the Church Fathers didn’t refer to Gen 2 in thinking about the doctrine of marriage.
It’s one passing quote, James, of course Augustine was bound do discuss Gn 2 in a commentary on Genesis. Not a word on the De bono conjugali though. And yes, women are instrumental in making babies. It does not take revelation or theology to know this.
I’m not a patristics student, but it seems to me that most of these men were monks who believed they had chosen a higher calling than marriage. Their Platonism gave them a low view of sexual desire, and women were seen as a temptation and snare. Augustine had a complicated relationship with the women in his life, and so did Jerome. So maybe they found it difficult to think of marriage and sexual desire between man and woman as other than a concession to human weakness (and of course, corrupted by the Fall), instead of God’s creation and primary intention for the human race? Note also the early belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary: married but a virgin mother. The thinking seems to be that sexual desire always carries the risk of concupiscence. And one doesn’t have to look far in some of the Church Fathers to find open misogyny, far beyond the usual jokes that men make about women.
Maybe these factors caused monastic-minded Christendom to overlook the theological significance of the marriage of Adam and Eve?
Lorenzo, are you claiming that Augustine does not depend on Gen 2 for his doctrine of marriage? So when writing about marriage, he just plucks his ideas out of the air? Or what?
“Be fruitful and multiply” is a clear example of Hebrew parallelism (synonymous parallelism) in which the second part of a verse repeats the content of the first in different words and intensifies and specifies its meaning. Parallelism is probably the most central stylistic feature of the Old Testament writings, not just in poetry but in other forms of rhetoric and law.
In each case of the expression, the divine command ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen 1.22, 28; 9.1,7), whether to birds or human beings, basically means ‘produce offspring’. The command to ‘be fruitful’ does not mean ‘have a companionate and intellectually productive friendship’, an undoubted social good that other Scriptures (e.g. Proverbs 27.9) describe and commend, but probably beyond the scope of most birds.
OK, Ian, @ 4:24 pm.
For goodness sake Jesus was quoting from Genesis 2.
What I find truly reprehensible is that such a methodology would not be tolerated and would undermine their own credibility in the workplace, though sadly it seems rife in the CoE.
Thanks for the correction.
So, the answer to the question posed is that Genesis 2 does provide a definition of marriage. Having warned his readers of the consequences of fornication, adultery and homosexuality – the three categories of sexual immorality – Paul says, “Do you not know that he who fornicates with a woman becomes one body with her?” (I Cor 6:16) quoting Gen 2:24. He goes on to teach directly about marriage.
Jesus allowed divorce only on grounds of adultery, because it was the sexual act that consummated marriage, and the sexual act with another that dissolved it. Becoming one flesh with the other sex (which as a matter of anatomy only male and female can do) was central to what marriage was. Not of course as thing in itself, but for what it represented: in marriage one loves the other half as one loves one oneself (Eph 5:28f).
Likewise when one receives the Holy Spirit, one becomes one flesh with the Lord. We are, in the marriage sense, members of his body (Eph 5:30f).
Steven – I think that ‘allows’ is the wrong word and concept here – because I believe that Jesus is speaking eschatologically; he isn’t laying out a set of rules for the here and now. If we take this view, then the various pronouncements by Jesus on adultery make perfect sense if (and only if) a marriage has been dissolved by God whenever one of the parties commits adultery – so that when adultery has taken place the marriage no longer exists.
This would reconcile everything grammatically – there is then no divergence in the teaching of when one is permitted to divorce one’s spouse.