Category Archives: Adam

Just a quick one. How often do you hear people saying that Genesis 2-3 should not be taken historically, but as an allegory of the human condition generally: “Everyman’s Fall”. Adam and Eve, and their fall, should be taken figuratively. These are the same people who remind one that history only really became a genre with the Greeks, that we’re reading an ANE text too literally, and so on. It suddenly occurs to me that nobody ever seems to ask whether there  actually was ever an ANE genre of theological allegory of the kind  on which they insist. I can’t find any trace of one in John H Walton’s review … Continue reading →

If, as I have tried to show over several posts, the Bible teaches that the creation as we see it today is not dysfunctional, either through sin or through evolution, and God is worthy of praise both for it and from it, it may seem odd to be thinking again about theodicy, the justification of God’s actions. But the undeniable truth is that we do not experience the natural world as unreservedly benevolent, and a number of “moral shortcomings” are also often pointed out in its workings over the last 4 billion years or so, before mankind ever came on the scene.

Another set of passages urged in support of the doctrine of a fallen natural world is Isaiah chs 11 and 65. The first is in the context of a Messianic prophecy, in which the Branch of Jesse will defeat Israel’s enemies and unite them, judging the wicked in favour of the righteous. Verse 6 begins: The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant … Continue reading →

Another passage sometimes cited to support the idea of a fallen creation is the preamble to the flood narrative in Genesis 6. As the KJV puts it: The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth.

Several Bible passages are often cited to show that “natural evil”, particularly in the form of meat eating, was never intended in God’s original creation. From the literalist perspective, that means it did not actually happen before the fall. If Genesis is taken metaphorically, maybe it refers to what God would have preferred if … well, if he’d created things different, which is problematic in itself. Certainly, in any old earth understanding, it’s not possible to argue that the world actually was free of animal death or predation when man existed on earth. But today I want to start examining these passages specifically by looking at the apparent vegetarianism in … Continue reading →