Interpreting Eden: A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1-3

by Vern S. Poythress, D. A. Carson (Foreword by)

Overview

Highlighting proper hermeneutical principles for interpreting Genesis 1–3, this book offers a clear direction for approaching these early chapters correctly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433558733
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	03/31/2019
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Vern S. Poythress (PhD, Harvard University; ThD, University of Stellenbosch) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he has taught for four decades. In addition to earning six academic degrees, he is the author of numerous books and articles on biblical interpretation, language, and science.

D. A. Carson (PhD, Cambridge University) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a cofounder and theologian-at-large of the Gospel Coalition and has written and edited nearly two hundred books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

God

Let us begin with some basic interpretive principles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Is God?

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

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

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

Miracles

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

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

God's Rule over All

But miracles are only the beginning of the ways in which we must reckon with God. The Bible indicates that God is intimately involved in the events of the world. He is involved not only in extraordinary, exceptional events, but in the most ordinary events. In his sovereign rule, he controls events both big and small, both natural and human. For a thorough confirmation of the reality of God's control, readers may go to whole books devoted to the subject. Here, we may be content to cite a sampling of verses:

You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth. (Ps. 104:14)

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (Prov. 16:33)

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matt. 6:30)

For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed! (Luke 22:22)

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28)

We also have verses that proclaim the comprehensive character of God's control in general terms:

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?

Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? (Lam. 3:37–38)

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. (Eph. 1:11)

Principles such as these do not appear in only one or two books of the Bible, but in many. They occur in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. They occur on the lips of Jesus as well as others.

This idea of the comprehensive rule of God contrasts with several alternatives that are common today. It contrasts with philosophical materialism, which believes that God does not exist. It contrasts withpantheism, which identifies the world with god ("The world is god."). It contrasts also with deism.

Deism was a popular view in the eighteenth century. In its classical form, it postulated that God created the world but was thereafter uninvolved. This contrasts with the continuous involvement described in the Bible.

Among people who claim to be Christian, something akin to deism still exists in our time. It consists in the idea that, in most cases, created things are sufficient in themselves to develop under their own power. In other words, God is basically uninvolved in detailed development. A view of this kind does not completely deny the occurrence of miraculous intervention at key times — for example, in the resurrection of Christ. And it may affirm that God is continuously involved in sustaining each created thing in being. For example, it is surely correct that God sustains the existence of grass. But that is a minimal affirmation. The Bible says that "you cause the grass to grow for the livestock" (Ps. 104:14). God is causing the grass to grow, not just sustaining its existence. Or consider another illustration. The deistic view affirms that God sustains the existence of the wind and the water. Psalm 147:18 says that "he makes his wind blow and the waters flow." This psalm depicts a far more vigorous and intimate involvement by God with specific events than what deistic views hold.

Science and Modern Deistic Thinking

In our time, deistic views are influenced by the predominance of science and its technological benefits. Science, it is thought, shows us what the world is like. And the world that it shows us is one in which most things undergo causal developments under their own power. That is, our world is either a world completely without God or a deistic world, in which God mostly leaves the world to its own inner working.

But such thinking is a product not of the scientific data, but of analyzing the scientific data in a deistic way. In other words, deism is built into the implicit framework that people assume and use when thinking about science. They interpret the process of causation as self-sufficient, ignoring the presence of God working all things according to his will (Eph. 1:11). They assume self-sufficiency rather than demonstrate it. By contrast, the person who genuinely believes that God is intimately involved in growing grass and making the winds blow sees scientific data as a description of the faithfulness of God. God is so faithful in the ways in which he makes grass grow and the winds blow that we can give detailed descriptions of the regularities. Scientists at their best are merely describing some of the regular ways that God comprehensively rules the world.

We may illustrate with an analogy. Let us suppose that a scientist undertakes to observe the patterns in my life and my wife's. Every morning we get up at about seven thirty. This pattern continues for months. So the scientist formulates a law: these people get up at seven thirty. It seems to be a perfectly sound law, with no exceptions. But then one morning we get up at five thirty. Is this a "miracle"? Our rising at this hour certainly may seem exceptional, strange, and unaccountable. But then the scientist finds out that we got up at that hour because we had an early flight to catch. Our personal purposes, which normally involve regular hours of sleep, can be overridden at any point by other, more specialized personal purposes that deal with a situation that is important to us and for which it makes sense to deviate from our normal behavior. So it is with God. The consistency and "normality" of his rule over all things gives us the basis for our ability to predict the future and to live normal lives in a dependable world around us. The sun rises every day. There are indeed what theologians call "secondary causes," as when one billiard ball knocks another ball and causes it to move, or when wind blows down a house (Job 1:19). God in his plan specifies these causal relations. But because God is personal, with personal purposes, the ties between his purposes and special situations can be the occasion for deviation from what we are accustomed to see. Personal rule is different from impersonal mechanism, though people may not always easily notice the difference.

Yes, people can tell themselves the tale that the regularities found by scientists are part of an impersonal mechanism rather than an expression and display of the faithfulness of God in his rule over all. But the tale is false. And it can be shown to be false, because the regularities themselves are rational and language-like, testifying to the personal nature of the God who specifies them.

We cannot dwell on these matters without a much more expansive explanation, which belongs to another book. For the moment, we can take note of the fact that modern deistic views differ radically from what the Bible depicts about God's involvement. (See Fig. 1.3.)

The Implications of God's Rule

What do we think? What is God like? Is he like the descriptions in the Bible? I believe so. If we do not follow the Bible, we will, in the end, be making up our own view of God.

The teachings in the Bible pose a fundamental challenge not only to individuals but to the whole of Western civilization. Western civilization was once heavily influenced by biblical teaching, but is rapidly losing that influence. Such a situation leads to the question, "Does God in fact exist, and is he the kind of God who rules over everything, as the Bible describes?" Is he a God who "makes his wind blow and the waters flow" (Ps. 147:18)? If he is, then many things in Western civilization have to be rethought and retooled.

Such rethinking would not mean that we would reject everything from the present and the past. God has blessed every culture with much good (Acts 14:17). We call such blessings "common grace." They are "common" because God gives these blessings to people all over the world, in all cultures and in all religions. But if God exists, we have to rethink what is actually good and what is a corruption or distortion of the truth. False beliefs about God and false allegiances to false gods have an effect.

True and False Religion

We may also raise the question of what God himself thinks about people's conceptions about the spiritual realm and the realm of transcendence. The Bible has teaching about that too. It says that God detests false worship, which includes any kind of substitution of a false god or false object of worship for the true God. The Old Testament says clearly that it is detestable to worship other gods, such as Chemosh, the god of Moab, or Molech, the god of the Ammonites:

Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.

And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. (1 Kings 11:7–10)

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. (Ps. 96:5)

This kind of exclusive claim for the God of Israel is in sharp contrast to the modern idea that all religions are basically equal and that they all represent legitimate ways to access the divine. (See Fig. 1.4.)

The alternatives to worshiping the true God include modern substitutes as well as the ancient ones. The god that deism has invented is a false god. The alternatives also include cases in which people see something impersonal asultimate. That impersonal ultimate can be nature, matter, fate, or something they desire, such as money or sex. It can be an impersonal conception of the scientific laws that govern everything. On this level of analysis, the alternatives are not religion and secularism, that is, no religion. Rather, everyone treats something as ultimate. Each postulated ultimate thing functions in place of God. At this level, everyone has a "religion." Even the philosophical materialist has a religion when he postulates that matter is ultimate. Matter is his god. He views matter as self-sufficient and eternal, which are characteristics of God. (See Fig. 1.5.)

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Interpreting Eden"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Vern S. Poythress.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Tables and Illustrations 9

Foreword B. A. Carson 13

Acknowledgment 16

Introduction: The Need 17

Part 1 Basic Interpretive Principles

1 God 25

2 Interpretive Implications of God's Activity 37

3 The Status of the Bible 11

4 Interacting with Scientific Claims 57

5 Three Modern Myths in Interpreting Genesis 1 65

6 The Genre of Genesis 105

7 Summary of Hermeneutical Principles 131

Part 2 Exegetical Concerns

8 Correlations with Providence in Genesis 1 137

9 The Water Above (Gen. 1:6-8) 171

10 Correlations with Providence in Genesis 2-3 187

Part 3 Interpreting Genesis 1-3 as a Larger Whole

11 Time in Genesis 1 213

12 Implications for Modern Views of Genesis 1 247

13 Attitudes and Expectations 259

14 The Days of Genesis 1 265

15 Factuality and Literalism 277

Conclusion 287

Appendix A Genesis 1:1 Is the First Event, Not a Summary 291

Appendix B The Meaning of Accommodation 323

Appendix C A Misunderstanding of Calvin on Genesis 1:6-8 and 1:5 341

Appendix D Multiple Interpretations of Ancient Texts 355

Bibliography 361

Subject Index 373

Scripture Index 383

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is not the usual book on Genesis 1–3. It takes up many of the same problems other books do (such as the length of the creation days), but it expects you to think much harder about them than you were expecting to. Perhaps, for example, you might approach this book looking for arguments defending literal interpretation. Well, Poythress will tell you that the term literal has at least five meanings, so theses about literal versus figurative interpretation generally need more careful formulation than we usually give them. But none of these careful distinctions has the aim of compromising the inerrancy of Scripture as God’s Word. Indeed, you will emerge from this book with a greater sense of how Genesis really is the Word of God. Indeed, you will learn much about how, as Poythress says, we should ‘read the Word of God in the presence of God.’ This is how biblical and linguistic expertise ought to be used in expounding the Bible.”
—John M. Frame, Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy Emeritus, Reformed Theological Seminary

“This new book by Vern Poythress is a remarkably wise and comprehensive analysis of multiple recent approaches to interpreting Genesis 1–3. Drawing on several decades of detailed biblical research, Poythress effectively answers modern views that simplistically attribute ‘scientific error’ to Genesis, and he demonstrates convincingly that Genesis 1–3 must be understood as prose narrative that purports to describe actual events, not as fictional or allegorical literature. But he also wisely cautions against ‘overinterpreting’ Genesis 1–3 by claiming that it contains scientific information that was not the intention of either its human or divine author. Highly recommended!”
—Wayne Grudem, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Theology and Biblical Studies, Phoenix Seminary

“We always owe our thanks to Vern Poythress for his characteristic of careful and thoughtful engagement with the biblical text and with other interpreters; how much more on these texts and topics! Besides attention to linguistic details, Poythress always draws the reader to the bigger issues connected to interpretation and to the Christian worldview. This will be worth your time to read, study, consider, and digest.”
—C. John Collins, Professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary

“Poythress is a genius of our time. Interpreting Eden tackles massively complex issues (some far more complex than I had initially thought) and points a way forward. From this point on, no interpreter of the creation narratives can avoid interacting with this book.”
—Derek W. H. Thomas, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; Teaching Fellow, Ligonier Ministries

“This is a fascinating, helpful, and well-written book. Vern Poythress has managed to engage in a meaningful way with the serious questions raised today about reading Genesis 1–3 carefully, with hermeneutical finesse, and, at the same time, has interacted with related modern scientific theories with discernment. One does not need to agree with all his conclusions to learn from his way of treating questions, discussions, and competing views fairly and with wisdom. This book helps us think more clearly and deeply about some of the issues that concern us the most.”
—Richard E. Averbeck, Director of the PhD in Theological Studies and Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School