BIBL 410 Reflection Paper Assignment | Get Paper Help

Choose 1 chapter from chapters 7–12 of the Chou textbook and write a 4–5-page Reflection Paper. This paper must include a summary of the chapter on how the Fall affects that specific area. Then, discuss 3–5 suggestions on how a proper biblical worldview/understanding of the Fall (and Redemption) can practically transform this particular area. These suggestions must be based on specific passages of Scripture

Reflection Paper Instructions

Choose 1 chapter from chapters 7–12 of the Chou textbook and write a 4–5-page Reflection Paper. This paper must include a summary of the chapter on how the Fall affects that specific area. Then, discuss 3–5 suggestions on how a proper biblical worldview/understanding of the Fall (and Redemption) can practically transform this particular area. These suggestions must be based on specific passages of Scripture.

 

Chapter 7

After the Fall—Three Effects on Human Enterprise

 

1. W. Mackey II

 

Introduction

 

When my colleagues and I began our collaboration on this book, I immediately felt like my contribution would be the easiest. After all, they were tasked with the “heavy lifting”: biblical exegesis, historical analysis, and scientific exploration. All of these pursuits require a great deal of academic preparation coupled with hard work and a keen mind. My chapter, on the other hand, seems to be a statement of the obvious: The introduction of sin into the world (the Fall), as described in Genesis 3, has marred the (business) world. If this proposition is true, an objective look at creation should convince the observer. This chapter explores three effects of the Fall on human enterprise—the efforts made to subdue and harness the environment—effects which remain apparent and lasting.

To say the world is “marred” by sin is not to say that creation is completely bad or totally devoid of any value. God pronounced His creation “good,” and the inherent goodness remains. Sin, however, infected that goodness in a way that adds toil, frustration, misery, pain, weariness, and (eventually) death to what would have otherwise been perfectly good (as pronounced by God) and subsequently life-giving.

This marring caused what Francis Schaeffer called the “abnormal universe.” He explains:

It is interesting that almost all of the results of God’s judgment because of man’s rebellion relate in some way to the external world. They are not just bound up in man’s thought life; they are not merely psychological. Profound changes make the external, objective world abnormal.[1]

I often tell my students that anyone who believes in the inherent goodness of this world never raised a garden or a child. In a “good world” we would expect good things to happen if the environment was left to itself. One step “below” a good world would be a dualistic world (containing a balance between good things and bad things). In a dualistic world, we would expect both good and bad things to happen simultaneously and with equal frequency. Gardens and children, however, do not unfold wonderfully or dualistically. If the garden is left to itself, it becomes worse (i.e., the “bad” plants take over). The child’s first words are not “yes” and “yours” (i.e., “no” and “mine” seem to monopolize the little one’s vocabulary). Both the garden and the child require the relentless application of intelligent effort to overcome the effects of the Fall.

These prosaic observations, introduce the oft-cited question, “What would we expect?” framing the rationale for the remainder of this chapter. In other words, if every part of the world was marred by sin, what would human enterprise look like in that place and among its inhabitants? This a priori approach is akin to the reasoning adopted by C. S. Lewis when he wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[2] As applied to the study at hand, if the biblical account of creation’s Fall into sin is real, then our understanding of the world should be accurate and, therefore, helped by accepting this reality.

Looking for the results of the Fall is not hard because every corner of our lives overflows with these. Offering examples, then, will be an exercise in selective perception. At least three “macro” results of the Fall, as it affected (and affects) human enterprise, are: communicative distortion, economic scarcity, and managerial control.

The First Effect: Communicative Distortion

 

When contextualizing the first effect of the Fall on human enterprise, it is interesting to note that the introduction of sin into God’s creation occurred as mankind was engaged in enterprise. Adam worked in the enterprise given to him by God: keeping the Garden (Gen 2:15). The original temptation (and sin) happened in the work world.

Much of economic theory explains the conditions of human enterprise as a result of cost/benefit analysis. Simply stated, if the benefit of option A outweighs the cost of option A, then option A becomes a viable (attractive) alternative. If the cost exceeds the benefit, the option is undesirable. This basic theorem explains a great deal about human activity. Even the essence of following Jesus is inextricably bound up in the cost of discipleship compared with its reward (Luke 9:57-62).

In the Garden, God established the cost and the benefit derived by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil using clear, direct communication (Gen 2:16-17). Life would be forfeited for a taste. The serpent’s “rationality” eroded the straightforward statement from God. His distortion of God’s command began by discounting the cost—“you will not surely die”—and then proceeded to enhance the benefit: “you will be like God.” By the time the dialogue ended, Eve had been tricked by crafty verbiage, which was followed by Adam deliberately transgressing God’s command (1 Tim 2:14).

Interestingly, since the moment sin entered the world, straightforwardness was lost in communication. Barrier-free communication left creation. Some barriers are intended: The serpent intended to demonstrate guile toward Eve, and Adam showed guile toward his Creator (Gen 3:12, 15). Clear, logical analyses and responses were supplanted by rationalized, crafty statements. One cannot help but think of the stark contrast to Jesus teaching that the agreements made by God’s people should “be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ” (Matt 5:37). Now, a massive legal industry has evolved largely due to semantics. The original loophole introduced by the serpent has resulted in a world full of loopholes. The old saying, “The big print giveth and the small print taketh away,” is a sad commentary on the guile imbedded in semantics (prototyped in the Garden).

Some barriers to clear communication, however, are unintended. Yet, even if people are attempting to communicate without guile, their chances of being understood are only fair. Every person stumbles in her or his communication (Jas 3:2). The sender is not perfect in choosing the right words, the correct channel, or the clearest nonverbal accompaniment. The receiver may have the message distorted through ignorance, bias, background noise, or disability. Both the sender and the receiver are inherently marred and are operatives in a marred environment. Even accomplished speakers and writers struggle with their messages, never believing the things spoken or penned are completely adequate. (This chapter certainly falls into that category.)

Generally, when transgression materialized in the Garden, the nature of enterprise (effort) changed because of God’s curse: toil for the serpent (crawling on his stomach), toil for the woman (pain and danger in childbirth), and toil for the worker (a working environment which now required relentless, strategic, frustrating effort). An environment in which work was entirely a pleasure changed into a mixture of satisfying accomplishment, with newly introduced discomfort and anxiety. As we have seen, one component necessary for successful enterprise—cooperative effort rooted in effective communication—became a struggle. The strategic nature of communication in enterprise is evidenced in a colossal communicative distortion, caused by God, which did not just cause human enterprise (the tower of Babel) to be hampered, but to be stopped in its tracks (Gen 11).

If communicative distortions characterize human enterprise, we would expect a myriad of communication lessons, ranging from successful teamwork helps to cross-cultural enhancements. One book, aimed at helping professionals communicate in the workplace, went so far as to warn its readers to assume that the next message sent by the reader will be misunderstood.[3] This assumption unwittingly flows logically from the Fall and will only find its correction when there is no longer any curse and all communication is faithful and true (Rev 22:1-6).

The Second Effect: Economic Scarcity

 

When did the formalization of the concept of “economic scarcity” begin? Some say the start of modern economic thought originated in a short book penned by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1864), a British clergyman. His work, An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798), predicted human population growth would be approximately three percent annually, which would double the earth’s inhabitants roughly every twenty-five years.[4] Based on these numbers, he believed that the earth’s agricultural resources would be unable to sustain the population growth, eventually resulting in hungry people killing each other for food. The Malthusian scenario was gloomy indeed, causing economics to be dubbed “the dismal science,” a nickname that has persisted.

When examining these issues, Malthus identified the very foundation of economics: scarcity. He knew that food was a scarce commodity, existing in finite amounts. Furthermore, an item becomes significantly scarce when it exists in less-than-desired amounts.

The account of Creation is initially a description of abundance: An ample amount was made available by God for the earth’s human inhabitants. God told Adam and Eve, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food”(Gen 1:29).

This statement occurred after God made the earth inhabitable for plant, animal, and human life through introducing life-sustaining components such as land, water, atmosphere, light, heat, and seasons. These conditions not only sustained human life directly, but also maintained the conditions necessary for the food that humans would need. The result: All that Adam and Eve needed to live was available for the gathering. Abundance may best be seen in the command to eat freely (Gen 2:16).

Not only did abundance characterize initial Creation, but cooperation was present as well. Initially, Adam was created to complement his Creator—to subdue, multiply, and cultivate the created realm. The scriptural commentary on the second human’s (woman’s) creation is: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him’” (Gen 2:18).

Eve’s God-given role was not to compete with Adam, but rather to complement him in the cultivation of the Garden (Gen 2:18). As Adam’s complement, Eve accepted his household leadership and worked to help him accomplish the mandates spoken by God. She was designed for this role by God and assumed this role for a time. This complementary activity was true cooperation, not in an egalitarian context, but in fulfillment of God-ordained roles within creation.[5] Competition was not an issue at this point, for at least two reasons:

Since the earth’s resources were abundant, plenty existed for everyone and there was no reason to compete.

Since Adam’s and Eve’s motives were pure, they cooperated perfectly. Each performed within the roles that God had designed for them and experienced homeostasis (efficiency).

One outcome of sin was the advent of scarcity. God said to Adam, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground”(Gen 3:17-19).

Abundance became scarcity due to the introduction of “thorns and thistles.” Good things became difficult to cultivate while potentially productive things, left alone, deteriorated. Human enterprise, initially focusing on existence, became a struggle with the circumstances that were set in motion by sin. Scarcity partnered with sweat. Getting enough and keeping enough devolved into an anxious endeavor.

Scarcity resulted from and was accompanied by competition. Adam would now compete with the earth’s marred conditions—thorns and thistles. These “curses” did not create equilibrium between crops and weeds, but initiated the domination of harm in the creation without constant, intelligent human effort. Equilibrium left the household as well. Adam would now compete with his wife for domestic leadership, since God had pronounced that her desire would be for her husband (Gen 3:16; 4:7); Eve would attempt to dominate Adam.[6] Later, the competition became more pronounced between people and devolved into abject corruption as recorded in Genesis 6. Those who possessed superior attributes dominated less-endowed people for evil purposes (i.e., a raw “survival of the fittest” scenario). The source of this corruption was genetic imbalances (i.e., the lack of parity or balance in innate abilities), coupled with depravity, producing a deplorable culture—so deplorable that God removed it through a worldwide flood.

The world is still characterized by scarcity and competition. Economists could even offer this thumbnail definition of economics: “studying the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends.” How this allocation should/would occur fueled the theories of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Millions of lives have been lost as nations have imposed their economic viewpoints on populations (e.g., the spread of Communism). Current political debates revolve around this issue. It’s somewhat discouraging to think that progress can be made, but that a fallen world will always suffer from scarcity. Jesus, aware of all truth, stated, “For you always have the poor with you” (Matt 26:11). The news, however, is ultimately heartening: The eternal existence in the new heaven and earth will restore the abundance and the cooperation found only in humanity’s proper relationship to God. Christians would expect this to be so, since the Father is totally sufficient; everlasting life with Him, therefore, will be free from want. It is little wonder that, historically, believers who have undergone great persecution thought often of heaven and saw death as a joyous release. Sometimes, affluent believers focus more on this life and see death as a more dreaded event. God can even use a result of the Fall to craft a good result: scarcity can cause a longing for redemption.

The Third Effect: Managerial Control

 

My wife and I had just arrived home from church on Sunday, August 31, 1986. Almost immediately the telephone rang. Our neighbor, watching for us to get home, asked if we had heard “the news.” An Aeromexico DC-9 jetliner had crashed over the city of Cerritos on its approach to Los Angeles International Airport. Although I was shocked and saddened by the tragedy, I failed to understand why my neighbor had made a point of watching for me and then immediately telephoning me. He then told me that another neighbor’s wife and two young daughters were on the jetliner. I accompanied my neighbor to the airport to find a man grief-stricken beyond any measure I had ever witnessed. As I stayed with that man through those initial hours, the age-old question why? was posed. I told him I didn’t have the answer, but I did tell him what I was thinking:

We live in a marred world. In this marred world, things do not always go as planned; mistakes are made. Some of the mistakes seem to have little or no harmful consequence. Some mistakes, however, have tragic consequences.

My response probably raised more questions than it answered. Nevertheless, the response was valid because it highlighted the tragic way the Fall impacts our lives.

As I thought about that air disaster, logic told me that the crash occurred either because of overt failure (sinful intent) or covert failure (unintended error). As it turned out, an analysis of the crash attributed the disaster to the latter, which was shared by the pilot of the small plane that hit the jetliner and a “busy” air traffic controller.[7] The crash may have been averted if the controller had been controlling.

Managing human enterprise is classically divided into four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Planning is beginning with the end in mind. Objectives are established; an outcome is envisioned. To accomplish the plan, resources are acquired and properly arranged (i.e., organized). Keeping the enterprise focused and motivated is the leadership function. Eventually, the question “Are the goals being achieved?” requires an answer. Seeking that answer is the act of controlling.

More specifically, controlling is an attempt at discovering if accepted standards are being met and then taking some type of action if the discovered outcomes are not ideal. This activity introduces accountability into a situation. Sometimes control is summarized as “whatever is expected must be inspected.” If the world were perfect, the outcomes would be perfect; control would be unnecessary. However, the world is not perfect. Bad things happen due to intentional behaviors (transgressions) or due to unintentional circumstances (falling short of perfection). Controls are intended to recognize these bad outcomes and to keep them from happening again. If our understanding of the Fall is correct, we can minimize bad outcomes, but never eradicate them.

Although every managerial function is affected by the Fall, the control function flows directly from (i.e., finds its beginning in) this sad event. Everything God created was declared “good” by this all-knowing Creator. Every event had gone as intended and would progress as originally intended if God’s commands were obeyed. When sin entered the world, however, the Creator’s original design was replaced by a grossly inferior substitute and the outcomes suddenly changed. Attempting to bring outcomes back into that original state of being “good” introduced the heretofore unnecessary function of control into human enterprise. In a very real sense, the control function becomes a counterbalance to the sinfulness flowing from the Fall. In a sinful world, “protection” from sin must be afforded. Attempts at protection constitute control.

The introduction of the control function occurred as an addition to the process of delegation. Delegation, getting work done through others, is fundamental to organization. It is normally viewed as a three-step process: assigning responsibility, allocating resources, and implementing accountability (control). Before sin entered creation, the first two functions were present. God assigned responsibility when He gave the agricultural mandate (i.e., dominion; Gen 1:28) and then provided the necessary resources (Gen 1:29). No initial mention is made of accountability. However, after Adam and Eve sinned and hid, God asked, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9) This question was not posed by an omniscient God for information’s sake; rather, it was designed to convict Adam and Eve of their failure and, therefore, implies the advent of accountability (control). Sin was exposed, its effects identified, and remedies initiated.

The original sin and its curse had introduced the first curse on the human race: broken fellowship with God with its eternal consequences. People are now spiritually fallen—separated from God (Rom 3:23; 5:12). God identified the problem and, in His mercy and grace, took action to correct the deathly deviation (Gen 3:15, 21; Rom 8:1). The other curses, placed upon the serpent, the woman and the man, were temporal in scope; conditioning earthly existence (Gen 3:14-19). These curses were not remediated by God, but remain part of creation’s environment until the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21, 22). Human enterprise occurs within aproblem-laden context, which necessitates ongoing control.

It is worth noting that human enterprise is not completely thwarted by problems because “image-bearers” live in the fallen world. The Bible says people are created in the “image” and “likeness” of God (Gen 1:26-27). One likeness to God is creative problem-solving; for example, woman was created by God to solve a problem (Gen 2:18-25). As such, people are capable of arranging various components of their environments in creative ways (only God can create something out of nothing) to solve problems. This image-bearing has resulted in some spectacular achievements! My generation has witnessed atomic energy, space travel, medical breakthroughs, telecommunications, digital information storage and transfer, and an amazing array of life-enhancing products and services! Yet the need for quality control remains constant. Things still go wrong. People plow the fields; weeds grow. Will there ever be a dryer that does not eat socks?

Because the world is marred, good managers are sometimes described as people who are looking for something to fix. Formally, this is called “management by exception.” (If Murphy’s Law is axiomatic, the exception may be the rule.) The bad news is, things rarely go as planned this side of heaven. The Apostle Paul states, “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Rom 8:22). The good news: Job security rewards the effective manager—control will always be indispensable!

The effects of the Fall extend beyond enterprise to all of the God-ordained entities (which certainly affect enterprise): individuals, families, churches, and government. Each of these entities should exercise internal controls (to minimize weaknesses) and external controls (to neutralize threats). These entities not only are interrelated within a general environment, but also have some measure of influence in exercising control on each other. Notably, the Bible is not silent on the responsibilities of each entity.

God will eventually create a new heaven and a new earth, which will make perfect that which was marred by the Fall (Rev 21-22). In the meantime, however, He has resourced earth’s current inhabitants to measure up to His expectations.

Summary

 

If the world we inhabit is marred by sin, what would we expect? We would expect to see the effects of the Fall touching every part of human existence, including human enterprise. This chapter identified three effects of the Fall on enterprise.

Offering a somewhat exhaustive list of specific examples of the three effects examined in this chapter would take millions of pages. Those pages would describe everything from business communication literature to economic policies; from laws passed and interpreted to quality control manuals; from military war theories to parenting classes; from background checks to standardized testing; from audits to guardrails…all of these being the tip of the tip of the effects iceberg. Some examples would even include all three effects occurring in tandem: such as a panel of experts attempting to garner and comprehend enough information to determine the next human organ transplant recipient. In fact, fewer examples exist of supposed perfections in these affected areas than of imperfections. All this to say that the goal of this chapter was not to offer an exhaustive list of the triple realities of communicative distortion, economic scarcity, and managerial control, but to show that if the narrative of the Fall in Genesis 3 is historically factual, the expected result would match present realities. Furthermore, if the effects and their attendant conditions are predictable, based upon the assumed cause, a measure of truth has been identified.

In this life, each person will ultimately decide the cause of the effects in a temporal environment with eternal implications in the balance.

Bibliography

 

Boice, James Montgomery. Genesis: Volume I—Creation and Fall. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998.

Deep, Sam, and Lyle Sussman. Smart Moves. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

Lewis, C. S. “Is Theology Poetry?” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1980.

Malthus, Thomas R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. London: J. Johnson, 1798.

Schaeffer, Francis A. Genesis in Space and Time: The Flow of Biblical History. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1972.

Woodhouse, Andrea. “1986 Aeromexico Crash Rained Horror from the Sky.” Los Angeles Daily News, November 14, 2007.

1 Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, 95.

2 Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” 140.

3 Deep and Sussman, Smart Moves, 3.

4 Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

5 Boice, Genesis: Volume I—Creation and Fall, 223.

6 Boice, Genesis: Volume I—Creation and Fall, 223.

7 Woodhouse, “1986 Aeromexico Crash Rained Horror from the Sky.” [The Master’s College (2017). (p. 185). What Happened in the Garden: The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]

 

Chapter 8

Thermodynamics and The Fall—How the Curse Changed Our World

 

Taylor B. Jones

 

Introduction

 

The Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is usually discussed from the standpoint of either the rebellion itself or the effects of that act. The spiritual dimension is largely the focus. Life would be substantially different for us if the impact of the couple’s actions stopped at this point. However, physical death and the spiritual penalty of separation from God were far from the only consequences. There were other physical consequences as well. In our haste to observe the spiritual dimension, we may miss the details of Genesis 3 and what they entail: the physical environment was radically changed, down to the very core of its being.

The impact of the curse on our surroundings is felt by each and every one of us on a daily basis. We are all engaged each day in pushing back the effects of the Fall. We could list the things done in this regard, but we will speak to this in a more scientific way. A useful approach is to observe how energy flows through the universe and how it has changed as a result of the Fall.

The study of the flow of energy through the universe is called “thermodynamics.”[1] A consideration of the individual components of the curse pronounced upon the earth indicates how that flow of energy changed from the pre-Fall to the post-Fall world. The laws of thermodynamics provide a structured approach to consider the change in energy flow as a result of the Fall.

The approach taken in this examination of the effects of the Fall involves an effort to harmonize the biblical record of Genesis 1-3 with thermodynamics. The results of such a study will not have the scientific reliability of a repeatable, reproducible study like physics. Neither will it exhibit the reliability of studies involving multiple trials followed by statistical analysis like medicine. The former involves deductive reasoning;[2] the latter, inductive reasoning.[3]

Analyses of this type fall into the category of abductive reasoning, where one makes the best explanation of all the data together.[4] All of these approaches are scientific in that they lead to further results that must be harmonized with the preceding data. However, abduction cannot and should not be treated as if it were as reliable as approaches involving deductive or inductive reasoning. Nevertheless, the conclusions herein serve as a useful way to understand how the Fall of Adam and Eve forever, irreversibly subjected the world and all mankind to a burden of monumental, unforeseen conditions.

Methodology

 

Before dealing with how thermodynamics and the Fall relate, we need to understand certain realities about science, the Bible, and how science relates to the Bible. For purposes of a meaningful discussion, this groundwork is most vital. The presuppositions that lead to the conclusions come from this analysis. We cannot afford to gloss over these issues. The validity and utility of our conclusions depend on a rigorous, accurate understanding of the nature of our sources.

Science

Before we think through the issues of thermodynamics and Scripture, we need to make some observations on the general nature of science. The underlying basis for all of science is the assumption that the universe is characterized by cause and effect relationships. It is poor grammar, but “Nothing ever happens for no reason” is a succinct, accurate summary of cause and effect. From how rockets are launched to how fetal development occurs, this presuppositional perspective frames how we understand what we observe. No effect occurs without a corresponding cause.

Cause and effect is the foundation of the scientific method. If certain causes did not produce certain effects, then a rational study of the universe would be impossible. The systematic study of cause and effect relationships is carried out by employing the scientific method.[5] In this method, results obtained either by experiments or other data-gathering techniques have to be non-contradictory.

Properly carried out, this approach to science allows arrival at a logically, self-consistent understanding. This means that we can explain a cause and effect relationship by taking into account all the known data. This does not constitute a proof that the cause and effect relationship is true. It is merely a working model or a theory.[6]

The value of theories is that they allow scientists to predict outcomes of situations. Theories, such as the theory of relativity, result from numerous observations.[7] Scientists test these theories continually for necessary refinements or revisions. Any theory must account for all the existing data from studies that employ that theory.

Future data could arise that would demand a change in the theory or a complete jettisoning of theory. For example, proteins were thought to be have been biosynthesized in the sequence DNA → RNA → proteins. The discovery of reverse transcriptase enzymes demonstrated that DNA could be synthesized from RNA.[8] The previously accepted dogma that the above sequence was the only one possible had to be abandoned. Books had to be changed.

Unlike a theory, laws in science are summaries of behavior that have no exceptions. Examples are the law of gravity and laws of electromagnetism. We can be confident that studies in these disciplines will not produce any results that call the validity of the law into question. An additional benefit is such reliability allows one to describe such sciences mathematically. The resultant equations allow prediction of outcomes without the necessity of testing each and every one.

The summaries of virtually all of the observable cause and effect behaviors studied in the context of the scientific method are theories. Theories are logically self-consistent summaries of the existing data. And as noted above we often have to change, revise, and, on occasion, discard theories. We always have to be open to conflicting data and willing to address a flawed theory that does not account for all the cause and effect data. This is particularly true when we deal with science and the Bible.

Science and the Bible

People approach harmonizing theories of science with the biblical record in several ways.[9] The main point of contention is how to treat science. The idea that “all truth is God’s truth,” while well meaning, has brought confusion to the discussion that continues to this day.[10] Attempts to harmonize science and the Bible must be treated carefully, since even widely accepted scientific theories have been later proven false. Certainly, God’s truth is without error. The problem in reconciling any apparent conflict between science and the Bible is rooted in a failure to grasp the difference between the two sources. The nature of the Bible is fundamentally different from the nature of science. This has an enormous impact on how we are to understand each area and relate one area to the other.

Science is part of human epistemology; it is a branch of knowledge.[11] The discovery of information by man has to be understood in the light of its susceptibility to error, misinterpretation, and even abuse. We may have to completely alter our theory in light of new information. Science is necessarily fluid. Scripture, on the other hand, is revelation. This special revelation is without error in the original autographs.[12] The Bible claims verbal, plenary inspiration for itself.[13] The Bible claims to be the Word of God (Heb 1:1-2).[14] The Scripture is inspired; it is God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16-17).[15] And God oversaw the writing of Scripture in which the Holy Spirit superintended the human authors (2 Pet 1:21).[16] The Bible clearly affirms divine authorship for itself.[17]

Consequently, the text of the Bible must conform to the character of its Author. It is true in every sense of the word, and always will be true (John 17:17).[18] This is demanded by the immutability of the divine author (Mal 3:6).[19] Science can make no such lofty claim for itself. Being more reliable and accurate by nature, Scripture must be taken as the standard by which science must be understood at those places where Scripture comments on science.

However, if one assumes that the understanding of the universe we have from science is just as accurate, reliable, and trustworthy as Scripture, then a conflict between the two becomes a clash of informational titans. The unstoppable force meets the immovable object. This is the so-called “two book” approach.[20] This does a disservice to both science and Scripture, because it raises science to the same level of reliability as Scripture. This is to ascribe to man the same qualities as God. The approach inevitably denigrates God and His Word, because conflict tends to be dealt with by forcing the meaning of Scripture to change until it agrees with the current state of scientific knowledge, which, as previously noted, is fluid.

Instead, the correct approach is the so-called “one book” approach.[21] In this approach, at those places where science and the Bible intersect, science has to be understood in light of the biblical account. This is the priority that must be used (and what I will use in this chapter), since the revelation of God is always superior to and more accurate than the knowledge of men.

Basic Thermodynamics

Before we state and discuss the laws of thermodynamics, we should note that treating the laws of thermodynamics quantitatively involves some foreboding mathematics.[22] For our purposes we can treat these concepts qualitatively without having to resort to complex mathematical treatments. Consequently, these concepts can be rather simply stated, even though at the molecular level the processes can be enormously complicated. The basic properties of a system can be discussed and changes understood without requiring the use of mathematical terminology and symbology.

As a starting point, we should note that thermodynamics is ubiquitous. Energy flow and transformation is constantly occurring throughout the universe. The increase in temperature that accompanies sunrise, the winds blowing across the surface of the globe, and the observation of color that is caused by differential absorption of light of different energies are examples of thermodynamics. The reality largely goes unnoticed by the vast majority of earth’s inhabitants as they live each day.

Before beginning a study in thermodynamics one must decide which portion of the universe one wants to study. The portion of the universe being subjected to thermodynamic study is called the “system.” The remainder of the universe is called the “surroundings.” The first law refers to an isolated system, one that is not exchanging energy or mass[23] with the surroundings. The size of the system is chosen for convenience. For example, to discuss plant growth on the earth, one would have to take into account at least the portion of the solar system that includes the portion of the sun’s energy impinging on the earth and the portion of the earth under consideration.

The flow of energy today through the universe, thermodynamics, is summarized in three laws.[24] The first law is relatively straightforward and follows from a consideration of what is going on around us. It says that the total energy of the universe is constant.[25] This law perfectly reflects the Creation account in Genesis 1 and 2. At the end of this period, all the energy that would ever be available for all the requirements of the universe for all time had come into being. No more energy is being made anywhere in the universe.

In other words, the first law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another. The chemical energy of the breakfast you ate this morning was converted to usable energy by your body and made available for your daily activities. The energy required by your brain to read and understand this sentence came from the food you ate earlier. The kinetic energy, the energy of motion, of your car comes from the chemical energy liberated by the combustion of gasoline in the cylinders. The resultant expanding gases produce the force that moves the vehicle. Numerous other examples could be cited.

The other two laws of thermodynamics involve the concept of spontaneity. Spontaneity in a thermodynamic sense means the natural direction in which change occurs. An opened perfume bottle results in a room filled with fragrance. The longer people live, the older they get; nobody ever gets younger with age. Soiled clothing in soapy water leads to cleaner clothes and dirtier water. Again, spontaneity in thermodynamics deals with the way change naturally occurs.

However, a spontaneous process can be reversed, but only with the input of energy. A messy room can be cleaned. A set of randomly handed-in exams can be alphabetized. Clean clothes can be folded and put away. We all understand intuitively how such processes occur and what is required to accomplish them. It is very important to note that random energy cannot accomplish any of these tasks. One cannot buy modestly charged hand grenades for cleaning up a room, à la Mary Poppins. In addition to the energy input, one must also have a plan. It requires directed, controlled energy to reverse a spontaneous process.

Spontaneity, in turn, is related to a concept called “entropy.” It can be discussed several ways, but it is best if we consider it to be disorder or randomness.[26] Randomness is a measure of relative molecular disorder; e.g., there is more entropy or randomness in gaseous water than liquid water.[27] Larger distances between molecules in the gas phase as opposed to a liquid correspond to increased randomness.

In a spontaneous process, there generally is an increase in the randomness of the system.[28] Burning a gallon of gasoline in our cars produces gaseous water and carbon dioxide. The volume of the gaseous products far exceeds the volume of the gasoline. So the products are more “random” than the reactants. Like gasoline, the end products of the metabolism of table sugar are carbon dioxide and water. These products, too, are more random. The fact that everything wears out is another example of the randomness associated with spontaneous processes. Whether it is clothing, appliances, furniture, or even human life, everything eventually is overcome with the effects of entropic increase in the world.

Having defined and described entropy, we can state the second law of thermodynamics. The entropy change of an isolated system (one that cannot exchange energy or mass with its surroundings) can never be negative.[29] And like entropy, the second law can also be expressed in another way: energy cannot be completely converted into work.[30] If the first law states that the best one can do is break even when energy is converted into another form, the second law states that you cannot break even. Any attempt to convert energy into work will always result in an accompanying loss of some of that energy. And that energy will normally be lost as waste heat. Waste heat is thermal energy that is irrecoverably lost.[31]

We are now in a position to consider energy as it appears in the opening chapters of Genesis, and to observe these chapters through the lens of thermodynamics. Entropy will receive the particular focus in Genesis 3.

Biblical Backdrop

 

Creation and Thermodynamics

The principles of thermodynamics that govern energy flow through the universe today are in some ways substantially different from the principles that were operative immediately prior to the events of Genesis 3 or during the Creation week. Since all the energy in the form of matter, including man, had not been created until the end of the Creation week, the first law of thermodynamics did not apply. During the Creation week the total energy of the universe was not constant, because God was still creating.

The opening verse of the Bible describes the first recorded creative act of God. Such an effort necessarily involved God’s power (Ps 68:34; Isa 40:26; Jer 51:15).[32] The energy of God became visibly manifest in the form of the created heavens and the earth.[33] From the very beginning of the history of the universe, energy has been part of the equation. The power put on display during the Creation week will never be equaled in human history until the destruction of the present universe and the creation of the new heavens and the new earth (2 Pet 3:10).

The first creative act of God was to initiate a display of thermodynamics. In Genesis 1:3, God said, “Let there be light.” From this point on visible energy was a part of God’s created order.[34] There is no power in the universe apart from the power of God, since everything that is came into existence through His power. That He would first demonstrate His power in the form of visible, radiant energy is a logical and reasonable starting point for the beginning of Creation.[35]

On the same day, God separated the light from the darkness. This resulted in a partitioning of energy that gave rise to evening and morning.[36] Thus, the movement of energy through the universe had been sectioned off for the first time: there is light and its absence. God has limited where energy can and cannot exist. Boundaries in thermodynamics have been established.

The manifestations of energy in the form of light were set into motion during the Creation week. The energy that sustains our world from the sun was created in its entirety. The sun today is the same sun that existed at end of the third day of Creation. The light of the moon is merely the reflected light of the sun.[37] Light is streaming into creation. The flow of energy in the universe has begun.

For all of the remaining creative acts of Genesis 1 and 2, God called matter into existence. In each case God was creating matter, introducing energy into His universe. The first law of thermodynamics was still being compiled. At the conclusion of all God’s creative activity, the universe would then be subject to this fundamental relationship. The first law of thermodynamics would be forever in place.

Natural law, the consistent, predictable behavior of the world, including thermodynamics, has always been part of creation as we currently know it. The changes in season, the ebb and flow of tides, and the force of gravity are always functioning. The world operates with a functional consistency that allows one to predict the activity of substantial portions of the world. The phase of the moon on Valentine’s Day, the time the sun will set on Christmas, as well as how much the temperature of a given volume of water will rise when a known mass of iron metal at a temperature of 100ºC is added to it—each one of these can be calculated. Man can do nothing to change these laws, whether they are in the realm of astronomy or thermodynamics.

God, however, has no such limitations. Even though God is the Creator of thermodynamics, He is not subject to His system of laws. The Creation of the universe was a supernatural event. The Creation was brought into existence ex nihilo, meaning “out of nothing.”[38] There was no previously existing matter that was transformed into different matter in the universe. The universe was spoken into existence in a series of creative acts.

The creative miracles in the gospel accounts of the feeding of the multitudes provide additional examples of where God brought matter into existence, temporarily suspending the first law of thermodynamics (John 6:1-13; Matt 15:32-38).[39] God as a supernatural Creator is not restricted to natural law, particularly with regard to energy. We may be familiar with the formula E= mc2. Based upon this, we could calculate all the energy to create the universe if we knew of all the mass in the universe. However, God’s creative work is not constrained within this equation. After all, His act of Creation of matter did not lessen His energy or power contrary to what the formula states.[40] But God is not constrained to such relationships, nor would such an investment have diminished the energy of the omnipotent God by any measurable amount.[41]

God’s Assessment of Creation

Seven times in the Creation account it is recorded that God’s assessment of His Creation was that it was good (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). The Hebrew word translated “good” is טוֹב (ṭôb) and has a wide range of meanings.[42] It can mean, among other things, pleasing or beautiful, in order or usable, qualitatively good or efficient, or appropriate for that which something was designed. All of Creation was a reflection of the Creator when the universe came into existence.

At the conclusion of the six days of creation, God “saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). The expression here is טוֹב מְאֹד (ṭôb mʾōd). The point here is that the Creation, taken in its totality, was exceedingly good.[43] Currid rightly observes, “Describing God’s judgment of His own creation with great emphasis, it is perfect in every detail, even down to the very intricacies of its being.”[44]

It was not good merely in the sense of being lovely and functional. It was also usable and efficient with respect to function. Every chemical and physical process that happened in the Garden of Eden and in the world was completely efficient.[45] Nothing was wasted; nothing was designed to be wasteful. The botanical and zoological creation was functioning exactly as it was designed.

One might allege that such observations are speculations that cannot be justified or substantiated. When the individual consequences of the Fall are considered from the standpoint of thermodynamics, the assessment given above is tenable. Additionally, the meaning of טוֹב מְאֹד (ṭôb mʾōd) and the character of the assessor make this characterization of Eden all the more reasonable.

The Fall and Its Implications

 

How are we to understand the effects of the Fall changed from the perspective of thermodynamics? Since this cannot be studied directly, we will have to infer abductively from the biblical text and our understanding of post-Fall thermodynamics. We can consider the specific details of the curse and how they introduce new aspects of energy movement in the world. By making these observations, we will also be in a position to consider the thermodynamics in the pre-Fall Garden of Eden.

Before we relate the effects of the Fall with thermodynamics, we need to make a broader observation. The Fall did change the universe. The perfection that existed in the pre-Fall world was shattered. New characteristics were set into motion that initiated events completely foreign to Adam and Eve. In a real sense, the Fall resulted in a universe whose thermodynamics are best characterized as controlled chaos. Because we live in that chaos daily and have never known anything else, it seems normal.

For example, childbirth was forever changed as a result of the Fall (Gen 3:16). The pronouncement that pain would be multiplied in childbirth has to be understood in light of a hypothetical, pre-Fall birth. Before the Fall, there would have been no pain in childbirth. The characteristics of the new heavens and new earth (Rev 21:4) support this view. The absence of pain, death, and tears speak of a situation that arguably reproduces the characteristics of pre-Fall Eden. Since there is no pain in the new heavens and the new earth, there was no pain before the Fall. To every woman in history who would give birth, especially before the advent of anesthesia, the pain of childbirth is a declaration of the penalty of rebellion in the Garden, even if it is not understood or acknowledged.

Moreover, the change for the inhabitants of the Garden of Eden extended to the edge of creation. In Romans 8:21, it says “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” The expression “bondage to corruption” describes the changes that were part of God’s curse upon the universe. For Adam’s rebellion, there would be perpetual and expansive consequences as a result of this sin. All of this shows the Fall had consequences on the physical universe. Let us now proceed to see how this impacts the laws of thermodynamics.

The first part of the curse was placed on the ground (Gen 3:17). Adam would now be forced to work the ground to support life. There would be no more free lunches in the Garden. Work would not be a casual effort; it would be toil. It would be a painful exercise, and it would never end. Adam’s entire life would have to be devoted to this ongoing, agrarian effort.

But it got worse. There would be complications of incomprehensible magnitude (Gen 3:18). The earth that formerly was an ally took on an adversarial posture. The agrarian exercise would be complicated by thorns and thistles that would pose a continual impediment to growing the food Adam and Eve would need. At the curse, germination and the spread of pesky plants were “turned on.” Landscaping woes became the norm. We now have to invest time and effort to continually fight against the out-of-control growth of thorns and thistles. The randomness of man’s environment would now be continually expanding, and man would either have to curtail that expansion by his own efforts or be left to live with the results of that unchecked expansion.

What did all these outcomes of the curse mean in terms of thermodynamics? What was intrinsically different about the universe now that was not in operation before sin entered the world? This increase in entropy has a destructive component. Seeds from plants would now blow all over the earth, an increase in entropy. Plant growth was more random. This explains how we are always growing weeds in our lawns and grass in our flower beds. It is one of the countless destructive results of Adam’s sin. This increase in randomness associated with the curse can be called “dissipative entropy.” A scientist might put it this way: This is the destructive increase in randomness associated with spontaneous processes that is over and above functionalentropy.[46] In lay terms, the randomness occurring in natural process now has a destructive nature. This did not occur prior to the Fall where “randomness” actually was beneficial or functional to Creation.

The woes associated with the rebellion continued. We can see this destructive randomness as we continue to look at the consequences of Genesis 3. The next consequence of original sin was that work would become even more difficult (Gen 3:19). Exertion would now be accompanied by perspiration. Man would now have his efforts complicated by having to sweat to accomplish his goals. This means that more effort would have to be expended than formerly to accomplish any task. For the first time in human history, man would have to work to the point of sweating to accomplish his goals.

Consequently, the Fall meant the second law of thermodynamics had come into play. Energy could not be completely converted to work. Part of the energy would be lost as waste heat. This explains why a car has to have a radiator to rid the engine of the otherwise destructive waste heat that would destroy the engine. In mechanical devices friction between moving surfaces creates heat, so that all the energy driving the mechanical device cannot be completely converted to useful work. This waste heat is responsible for all mechanical failure. Electrical motor burnout, light bulbs burning out, appliances dying—all these happen because of the second law. Mold on bread, rusting cars, houses needing constant cleaning are additional examples of the randomness that is ongoing and incessant.

After the Fall, every newly encountered difficulty and challenge would likely bring to Adam’s mind his pre-Fall world and would remind him of what he had thrown away through his disobedience. Being unable to exactly envision what a pre-Fall world was like, we cannot know the magnitude of Adam’s guilt, remorse, and regret. Surely it was great. Not only his mind would confront him with his transgression, his body would also.

And too, for the first time, hygiene would become part of man’s daily regime. The mess, odor, and general unpleasantness associated with perspiration entered man’s daily existence. And time and effort would have to be set aside to deal with these consequences. The implications were much broader than water seeping through man’s pores.

“Uncleanness” in general would now be part of daily life. Dissipative entropy would appear in the form of dirt and grime moving through the environment. The water of perspiration would collect the dirt in the air. Adam and Eve would have dirt cling to their bodies, and their hair would become dirty. Food particles would stick to their teeth.

From such a reasoned position, tooth decay, and later crooked teeth—in short, anything that now requires either a dental procedure to correct—ultimately can be traced to the randomness that was introduced at the Fall. Similarly, cancer falls into the category of uncontrolled growth of cells. Hormonal imbalance, graying hair, loss of muscle tone, weight gain, and all the other effects of aging became part of life.

The final and most important result of the Fall is the introduction of death into creation (Gen 3:19b). Prior to the Fall there was no death at any level. No organism or any cell was subject to death before the decision to rebel. God’s warning in Genesis 2:17, “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die,” contained the spiritual death of separation from God on the one hand and incipient physical death on the other. Without this sin, death would have never entered the world and spread to all mankind (Rom 5:12). What is death in terms of thermodynamics? At some point our bodies lose the ability to sustain life. Susceptibility to contagious disease because our immune system becomes impaired, the uncontrolled randomness of a malignant tumor, heart attack—each of these things could cause our death. And they all have one thing in common: the second law of thermodynamics is operative in each case. But how did this occur at the cellular level?

Before the Fall, no cell died. A perfectly functioning cell in a perfectly functioning world would never wear out. No new cells would have to be synthesized. It was only with the Fall that the death of cells and cellular reproduction would have been necessary. At this point dissipative entropy, destructive randomness, is part of the process. How would it manifest itself? It would show up as inexact replication of cells. This destructive randomness that accompanies all processes is the origin of mutation. This explains why we get gray hair, skin spots, arthritis—in short, all the complications of aging. Ultimately, it is this inexact replication of cells that kills everyone, although it can be complicated by external agents, such as disease. Since mutation is a post-Fall phenomenon and is destructive in nature, it could not be the source of new, useful genetic material that could lead to new species. Without mutation as a constructive tool to be the source of new, more complex species, evolution becomes a molecular impossibility. This means evolution cannot account for the origin of new species.

Before the Fall

 

First Law of Thermodynamics

Since no one has ever seen Eden, we are left to construct a picture based on abduction. The starting point for the discussion is the biblical record and what we can infer from that about Edenic conditions. The creative action of God ceased at the end of the six days of the Creation week. All of the matter and energy that would ever be were created during this period. Everything today that is visible or detectable by means of instrumental analysis has been in existence in one form or another since the end of the Creation week.

Since all the energy in the universe had already been created, the first law of thermodynamics can be applied without contradicting the biblical record. Energy transformation was occurring since the chemical energy of the sun and the stars was being converted into light. From the biblical text, the sun was functioning according to its designed processes of nuclear fusion, streaming both light and heat into the solar system and beyond (Ps 19:1-6). The loss of energy by the sun has to be found someplace else in the universe.

Second Law of Thermodynamics

By considering what was lost and introduced at the Fall, we can construct a picture of how Eden likely was with respect to the second law. In a seminal work, Whitcomb and Morris contended the second law was inoperative in the pre-Fall world.[47] We will argue against this view. Recently, how the second law of thermodynamics may have worked the in the pre-Fall world has been reconsidered. [48]

Everything suggested in this section is merely an inference, so we can hardly be dogmatic. Nevertheless, some interesting observations can be made. A consideration of Eden from a thermodynamic perspective also affords insight into the validity of a plain reading of the biblical record of origins. At this point, we can make some observations:

The Nature of Eating in the Garden

As we know, the biblical account describes the pre-Fall world as very good (Gen 1:31). Arguably, a way that it was “very good” was it was fully functional. Eden functioned exactly the way it was designed. The conversion of the chemical energy of food to useful energy for work would have likewise been a functionally complete process. There would not have been any loss of the energy of the food Adam and Eve ate. All of the complex carbohydrates of a piece of fruit would have been completely converted to carbon dioxide and water. It would have been completely converted into energy. This perfectly efficient conversion ratio would have allowed Adam and Eve to eat less, since metabolism would have not led to any energy that could not be utilized.

However, such a process would still have been accompanied by an increase in entropy. The gas volumes of the exhaled gases, occupying a greater volume than the carbohydrate they came from, technically is an increase in entropy. However, this entropy is different from that which we see post-Fall. It did not harm Adam and Eve. This is entropy associated with how the world was supposed to be. We call this “functional entropy.”[49] The second law of thermodynamics was operative before the Fall. However, it operated as part of a perfectly functioning creation.

The Nature of Work in the Garden

It is clear that Adam had pre-Fall responsibilities in the Garden to work and keep the Garden (Gen 2:15). The words “work” and “keep” refer to the investiture of responsibility rather than cultivation per se, although it is possible that cultivation of the Garden in the traditional sense of the word was involved. In Genesis 2:5, the term “work” refers to manipulation of the ground. This was probably some sort of cultivation to facilitate plant growth.

The Nature of Waste in the Garden

The physiological capability of ridding the human body of waste from incomplete, post-Fall metabolism was a necessary, built in capability. The fact that the Fall was ordained was also taken into account, since the ability to deal with all the consequences of the Fall would have to have been necessarily present in Adam and Eve, albeit in abeyance.[50] There would have been no reason for these post-Fall abilities to have been operative at this time, since the conditions that would have necessitated their utilization did not exist in the pre-Fall environment.

Since the Fall was ordained, God designed human physiology with additional capabilities, even though they too would not be needed until after the Fall. Even though there was no cellular death before the Fall, the ability to biosynthesize and replace dying cells of human tissue was likewise built into human physiology.

Again these are just speculative inferences. In any case, we can say that creation was fully functioning prior to the Fall and that after the Fall, things changed. We may not know exactly what they changed from but we do know what they changed to. As discussed above, the destructive nature of entropy we now face was not present prior to the Fall. Now, though, we daily encounter and fight against the increase in entropy as it complicates our environment and, ultimately, our own lives.

Conclusion

 

Being able to observe the Fall using the unique lens of thermodynamics to focus on the effects of Adam’s sin and our participation in it affords insights that are otherwise unavailable. Thermodynamics reveals aspects of the attributes of God that are truly remarkable. To design a universe that will always have all the energy it needs for its lifetime vividly displays God’s omniscience and omnipotence. The rebellion of Adam can be more fully understood in light of the severity and pervasive presence of dissipative entropy. One can only marvel at God’s justice and, yet, His mercy. The pain and agony of the randomness of the second law is surely something that is calling us back to Him—for relief in this age and deliverance in the age to come. And that deliverance is rooted in the comforting thought that the Lord Jesus Christ will come back and restore the creation to its original function to the praise of the glory of God (Rev 22:20).

Bibliography

 

Anderson, Lee. “Thoughts on the Goodness of Creation: In What Sense Was Creation ‘Perfect’?” Answers Research Journal 6 (2013): 391-97.

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

Carlson, Richard F., ed. Science and Christianity: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.

Copi, Irving M. Symbolic Logic. New York: Macmillian Company, 1965.

Currid, John D. A Study Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1. Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2003.

Dill, K. A., and S. Bromberg. Molecular Driving Forces. New York: Garland Science, 2011.

Einstein, Albert. Relativity. New York: Crown Publishers, 1961.

Ewell, Walter A., ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984.

Faulkner, Danny. “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Curse.” Answers Research Journal 6 (2013): 399-407.

Freedman, Roger A., et al. College Physics. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 2014.

Frova, A., and M. Marenzana. Thus Spoke Galileo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Gaebelein, Frank. The Pattern of God’s Truth. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1968.

Gardner, Martin. Relativity Simply Explained. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1997.

Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.

Harris, R. Laird, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 2 Vols. Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1980.

Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology, Vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1979.

Jones, Taylor B. “A Scriptural View of Science.” In Think Biblically! Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003.

Koehler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Vol. 2. New York: E. J. Brill, 1995.

Lipton, Peter. Inference to the Best Explanation. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Lodish, Harvey, et al. Molecular Cell Biology. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2008.

Skryms, Brian. Choice and Chance: An Introduction to Inductive Logic. Belmont, CA: Dickensen Publishing Company, 1966.

Thiessen, Henry C. Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology. GrandRapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1963.

Tro, Nivaldo J. Principles of Chemistry. Boston: Pearson, 2013.

Warfield, B. B. The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948.

Whitcomb, J. C., and H. M. Morris. The Genesis Flood. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1961.

1 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “thermodynamics.” Dynamics means “motion”; thermo means “heat,” the energy associated with molecular motion.

2 Copi, Symbolic Logic, 4-6.

3 Skryms, Choice and Chance: An Introduction to Inductive Logic, 28-51.

4 Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 1.

5 Jones, “A Scriptural View of Science,” 221-38.

6 Jones, “A Scriptural View of Science,” 226.

7 Gardner, Relativity Simply Explained; Einstein, Relativity.

8 Lodish, et al., Molecular Cell Biology, 158-60.

9 Carlson, Science and Christianity: Four Views.

10 Gaebelein, The Pattern of God’s Truth, 20.

11 Jones, “A Scriptural View of Science,” 221.

12 Grudem, Systematic Theology, 90-104.

13 Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:164-65.

14 Grudem, Systematic Theology, 73-77.

15 Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, 132-33.

16 Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology, 107.

17 Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, 299-348.

18 Grudem, Systematic Theology, 90-104.

19 Ewell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 453-54; Grudem, Systematic Theology, 163-68.

20 Jones, “A Scriptural View of Science,” 234.

21 Jones, “A Scriptural View of Science,” 236.

22 A working knowledge of ordinary and partial differential equations and calculus based physics is necessary for a full understanding of a quantitative approach to thermodynamics.

23 Mass is a measure of the amount of matter of a given amount of a substance.

24 Only the portion of thermodynamics necessary for an understanding of the issues raised will be addressed in this chapter. Vocabulary, mathematical variables, etc., not directly pertinent to the discussion at hand have been omitted for the sake of brevity and clarity.

25 The mathematical expression for the first law of thermodynamics is ∆U = Uf – Ui = 0, where U is the internal energy, Uf is the final state of the system, and Ui is the initial state. As energy changes from one state—defined to be a set of chemical and physical conditions—to another state, no change in internal energy occurs. The symbol ∆U is read as “delta U.” Uf and Ui are read as “U sub f” and “U sub i”, respectively.

26 Entropy is given the symbol S; its algebraic meaning is S = qrev/T. T is the Kelvin temperature and qrevis the heat gained or lost under reversible conditions. Reversibility refers to changes in infinitesimally small increments.

27 Tro, Principles of Chemistry, 672-73.

28 More exactly, spontaneous processes are characterized by the loss of Gibbs free energy, ∆G < O. This means that that the total amount of usable energy in the universe is continually decreasing. Delta G can be defined in terms of entropy and another variable, enthalpy. Enthalpy is given the symbol H and means heat content. The complete expression is ∆G = ∆H – T∆S, where T is the Kelvin temperature. When ∆H is negative (< 0), heat is lost to the surroundings; it is exothermic. Conversely, when ∆H is positive (> 0), heat is gained by the system (lost from the surroundings); it is endothermic. It is possible for a spontaneous process to lead to a decrease in entropy, a more ordered system, if it is accompanied by a heat loss to the surroundings that is greater than the product, T∆S.

Entropy can also be expressed in terms of microstates, the number of ways in which the molecules of a system can be arranged. In this approach, S = k ln W, where k is a constant, ln is the natural logarithm, and W is the number of microstates (Dill and Bromberg, Molecular Driving Forces, 81-82, 90).

It is possible for spontaneous processes to produce a decrease in entropy in some part of the system. The growth of a human embryo clearly leads to something more ordered, less random, as development occurs. This means that elsewhere a larger increase in entropy is occurring or that the heat lost is greater than the product, T∆S.

29 A perfectly insulated, closed thermos bottle from which no liquid could escape and in which its liquid contents never changed temperature would be an isolated system.

30 In physics, work is the product of force moving through a distance: W = F x d. The standard unit of work is the Joule (J), a kg x m2/sec2. The unit of forces is a Newton (N), a kg x m/sec2.

31 The third law of thermodynamics will not have an impact on this discussion. For the sake of completeness, the third law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero is zero. A perfect crystal is one with complete regularity and no defects. Absolute zero, 0 K, is -273oC; it is the complete absence of heat and the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.

32 These verses speak of the power (energy) of God in the Creation of the universe.

33 In physics, power is energy per unit time (Freedman, et al., College Physics, 784). In the Bible, energy and power would be synonymous, although the word “energy” is not found in the English Standard Version in the Old Testament.

34 Normally, only radiation in the form of heat, light, etc., is considered to be energy.

35 Matthew 17:2: “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” On the Mount of Transfiguration, the Lord Jesus Christ revealed a physical manifestation of His deity. The only heretofore unseen characteristic was light. Light is the most-fitting first proclamation of the Author of Creation.

36 Since the sun and moon were not created until verse 14 of chapter 1, the night and day could not have arisen from the rotation of the earth with respect to the sun. This does not preclude rotation of the earth prior to creation of the sun; neither does it necessarily demand it.

37 Frova and Marenzana, Thus Spoke Galileo, 183-207.

38 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “ex nihilo.” This term was first used in 1656. In Genesis 1:3, 6, 14 the phrase “let there be” refers to the coming into existence of matter where formerly it did not exist.

39 When the Lord turned the water into wine in John 2:1-11, it is possible that the water molecules were transformed into the molecules that comprise wine apart from its water base. If this is what happened, then strictly speaking, this creative act would not have been an ex nihilo act of creation.

40 Matter and energy are now known to be energy in different forms and are related by E=mc2, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light.

41 Subtracting any finite amount from infinity equals infinity.

42 Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testamtent, 2:370-72; Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 1:345-46; Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 373-75.

43 Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 1:487.

44 Currid, A Study Commentary on Genesis, 1:89.

45 A chemical process is one that occurs when a substance is converted to another substance, e.g., burning wood. A physical process is one in which the material is in a different state, but its chemical composition is unchanged, e.g., ice melting.

46 A more complete statement of post-Fall thermodynamics is that the total available energy in the universe is continually decreasing. For every spontaneous process that occurs, more Gibbs Free Energy is irreversibly lost. Cf. footnote 28. Gibbs free energy is like money; you can only spend it once. And, in general, these losses contain dissipative entropy increases.

47 Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood, 224-25.

48 Anderson, “Thoughts on the Goodness of Creation”; Faulkner, “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Curse.”

49 This term was coined to describe the increase in entropy that occurred prior to the Fall, but was in keeping with God’s design for a correctly functioning thermodynamic system. For example, ripples in water in a stream moving over an uneven streambed would have more entropy than water running over a flat surface, but each would function for the effect desired by the Creator.

50 Both Isaiah 46:10 and Ephesians 1:11 speak to the sovereignty of God over all aspects of His creation. If God were not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, He could not declare the end from the beginning, nor could He work all things according to the counsel of His will. [The Master’s College (2017). (p. 206). What Happened in the Garden: The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]

 

Chapter 9

In Re Adam And Eve: Reflections on the Creation and Fall of Man—A Legal Perspective

 

George A. Crawford

 

Introduction

 

From start to finish, the biblical account of the Fall of man in Genesis 3 has great legal significance. The text describes a scenario familiar to anyone trained or experienced in the law. A law existed—and was violated. Investigation follows. Exercising His proper role as a completely just judge, God extracts a confession and determines the factual record, following the questioning of Adam and Eve. He then applies the law to the facts and reaches a decision. An appropriate and commensurate sentence is pronounced. Thus, the first humans are judged guilty of violating the law and expelled from the Garden, that they may not live eternally by eating of the tree of life. God demonstrates His grace, however, in the midst of man’s just guilt. He provides bodily covering (v. 21) and thereby foreshadows what we know today as the Atonement.

Not fully grasped, by and large, the just punishment imposed by God also has monumental legal significance. If the Fall did not occur, the entire legal profession would probably not exist. Due to the Fall and as illustrated by biblical text and example, we see the development of law, both in general and in specific areas. We also see the development of the state, the judicial process, and the nature of adjudication (i.e., the process of hearing and deciding cases). These are “exhibits” of the shadows of the Fall as well as the tarnishing of man’s special Creation. They thereby provide at least indirect support to the veracity of the biblical account. In addition, they also demonstrate a biblically valid role for believers serving in the areas of law and government. Because of the Fall, law and government continue to be areas of legitimate service for committed Christians.

Exhibit 1: The Nature of Law in General

 

The impact of the Fall, as described in Scripture, was as pervasive as it was cataclysmic. One thing we may overlook due to that pervasiveness is that Scripture indicates that the Fall created the need for codified law, both in general and for specific issues. The continuing realities of the legal challenges and conflicts described in Genesis immediately following the Fall both imply and ultimately depend on the historicity of the Fall.

The Reformation theologian John Calvin is one of the best writers in helping us understand the repercussions of the Fall as described in Genesis 3 and as clarified in other passages of Scripture. And, at least arguably, no other writer has a better grasp of the proper relationship between the Christian, law, and government.

How does the existence and development of law, as we know it today, indirectly argue for the veracity of the biblical account of the Fall? We’ll begin with Scripture: Romans 2:14-16 tells us that the law of God is written on the hearts of men. The text observes that Gentiles, who do not have the law, actually do by nature what the law requires. This shows that a sort of law is written on their hearts and conscience. Thus, they stand guilty before God.

That sense of right and wrong feeds the conscience and has been referred to as “natural law.” Calvin makes the connection clear:

Now, as it is evident that the law of God which we call moral, is nothing else than the testimony of natural law, and of that conscience which God has engraven on the minds of men, the whole of this equity of which we now speak is prescribed in it. Hence it alone ought to be the aim, the rule, and the end of all laws.[1]

However, the Fall also explains another important factor about natural law. While natural law exists empirically, we see that our grasp of its content is fragmented at best.

Thus, man’s cognitive ability of that natural law has been obscured. This too is a reality that was caused by the Fall. Romans 8:7 tells us that the mind of man in the wake of the Fall “does not submit to God’s law” and “indeed, it cannot.” First Corinthians 2:14 also tells us that man, after the Fall, will find God’s law to be both incomprehensible and “folly.” Calvin tells us that, by comparison with man prior to the Fall, our grasp of natural law has been reduced to a “shapeless ruin.” Calvin rightly argues that natural law or the knowledge of good and evil is not totally destroyed in man. Nevertheless, our grasp of it is corrupted by the Fall.[2]

This corruption gives rise to the need for codified laws. Natural law would have provided an adequate regulation of human conduct. However, since our sense of right and wrong (natural law) has been obscured, we need a known and articulated law to govern our conduct. We see this in the Scripture itself. A major portion of the Scripture is that which we know as the law. Much of the books of Exodus and Numbers, as well as the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, provide normative statements of that which God has prohibited and allowed. In turn, God has also allowed for the creation of local government and civil law (Rom 13:1-7).

In modern terminology, we would understand that law to be statutory or codified law, appellate or case law, and regulation. Comparable to the Ten Commandments, statutory or codified law (corresponding roughly to the Hebrew ḥuqqîm) tells us that certain conduct is expressly prohibited or mandated, as evil or good. Since no body of statutory law can anticipate all questions that will develop as to its meaning or application, appellate or case law will develop. This too illustrates man’s darkened understanding of right and wrong after the Fall. This confusion demands that duly authorized tribunals make authoritative and precedential decisions. At least some of those decisions inevitably will also be considered as law (case law corresponding, again roughly, to the Hebrew mišpāṭîm). As the codified law and case law will need to be implemented and enforced, a “living law,” the government, will inevitably develop.[3] That branch of the government will also inevitably issue statements of coercive or binding policy, known in modern law as “regulations” (corresponding, again roughly, to the Hebrew piqqûdîm).[4]

The Fall explains how there can be both an innate sense that certain conduct is inherently right or inherently wrong while concurrently having voluminous law addressing that same matter. For example, we can see this in modern statutes, which use great detail to define concepts innately understood as intrinsically evil, or malum in se; California’s Penal Code, for example, uses nearly eight thousand words and eighteen sections to develop the concept of “murder” and its appropriate punishment.

We should reiterate that if man’s grasp of natural law was not distorted, the legal profession would almost certainly not exist. If all still had the same accurate knowledge of that natural law, there would be no compulsion or need for any individuals to develop an expertise in the written law. However, we learn in Genesis 3 that man learned about good and evil through disobedience. He, now, inherently does not understand right and wrong correctly. The above discussion illustrates that reality. Thus, after the Fall, we differ in our ability to study, comprehend, and apply both the Scripture and civil law. If it comes to a point where questions are raised as to the meaning or applicability of a particular law, we want to consult with someone who knows that law and who knows it very well. The biblical epitome is illustrated by Ezra, who Scripture records had “set his heart” to study, practice, and teach the law of God (Ezra 7:10).[5]

Exhibit 2: The Development Ofboth the State and Specific Areas of Law

 

In addition to creating the need for law, in the broad general sense, a careful review of the text also indicates that the Fall set in motion the need for specific areas of law. We can observe this in Genesis 3 itself as well as in the texts that come immediately after it. The narrative implies that the consequences of the Fall give rise to sins and the need for specific laws that we have even today. This too supports the historical veracity of Genesis 3.

The Law of Succession

Probably the most immediately recognized impact of the Fall was the introduction of death as a reality of human existence. In Genesis 2:16-17, God told Adam:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The woman, then Adam, ate and facilitated death entering the world.

The inevitable result was that there would need to be some standard concerning the proper and improper disposition of belongings. This we know, today, as the law of succession. Demonstrating both the need for a law of succession, and the development of appellate or case law, the daughters of Zelophehad, and the leaders of their tribe, the tribe of Manasseh, obtain what we would know today as “declaratory relief” concerning the relative rights of the descendants and relatives of a decedent and the corresponding responsibilities they would have to the tribe (Num 27:1-11; 36:1-12).

The Law of Property

Of crucial significance, Scripture indicates that the Fall created what we know today as the problem of scarcity. Contrary to life in the paradise of Eden before the Fall, we now only have limited resources and those resources require great effort to access and use. As God told Adam after the Fall, weeds can choke out crops and people would have to work by the sweat of their brow (Gen 3:17-18). Moreover, the physical environment itself was intrinsically cursed. Romans 8:20-21 tells us that the entirety of creation was “subjected to futility” and placed in “bondage to corruption”.

Consequently, and in contrast with the Garden, man had to learn to deal with times of severe shortage. With the problem aggravated by the impact of the Flood, and within ten generations of Noah, man had to learn to cope with periods of severe agricultural shortage, or famine (Gen 12:10).

It should not escape notice that the familiar account of Joseph and the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine also tells of government taking action to provide the necessities of life and doing so by the appointment of a regulatory administrator. Joseph was given the authority to issue regulations necessary to implement policy approved by a monarch (Gen 41; 47:13-26). As acknowledged by Calvin, the purposes of government therefore necessarily include providing for necessities of life, as well as the protection of property.[6]

Family Law

In the wake of the Fall, the institutions of marriage and the family, part of God’s common grace, were subject to a curse. Genesis 3:17 tells us:

To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

As pointed out by Dr. John MacArthur, wives will tend to want to control their husbands, while husbands will tend to oppress their wives.[7] That curse on marriage eventually leads to the need for law to govern family relationships and particularly the dissolution of marriage (Deut 24:1-4; Matt 5:31-32).

Surrogacy Law

In keeping with the subjection of creation to futility at the time of the Fall (cf. Rom 8:20), men and women began to experience a lack of fertility. That leads to the development of a form of surrogacy law in which the child born to a woman, whom we would now consider a surrogate, was considered the child of the woman otherwise unable to conceive. Genesis 16, 17, and 21 describe Sarah’s inability to conceive without the divine intervention leading to the birth of Isaac. In the interim, she provides her maidservant, Hagar, to Abraham with the express understanding that she, Sarah, would obtain children by her (Gen 16:2). Similarly, both Rachel and Leah, the wives of Jacob, understood that the children born to him by their maidservants, Bilhah and Zilpah, were their own (Gen 30:3-13).

Criminal Law

Within the generation immediately following the Fall, the first murder occurs, with the killing of Abel by his brother Cain, after Cain invited him to an isolated location. “And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him” (Gen 4:8). Within five generations, Cain’s descendant, Lamech, boasts of having killed at least one other man (Gen 4:23-24).

Those events illustrate the need for law and government to restrain evil.[8] Acknowledging the horror of the crime of murder, recognizing it as an attack on the “image of God” in created man, Genesis 9:5-6 recognizes the principle of lex talionis, and tells us that God will require comparable punishment for the perpetrator:

And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Scripture contains numerous instances of laws prohibiting specific conduct and prescribed punishments for violating those commands, many of which are comparable to modern criminal law (e.g., Exod 21-23; Num 35).Scripture thus provides necessary guidance as to the implementation of what we know today as criminal law. Scripture recognizes the serious nature of criminal punishment and the imperfection of human reasoning post-Fall. Accordingly, it contains procedural requirements for determining guilt and imposing a sentence, with an admonition that the deterrent impact can be lost if there is undue delay in punishment (Eccl 8:11). We can see the procedural requirements in Deuteronomy 19:15-19, which discusses the need for witnesses to testify and for the trier of fact to diligently inquire into their credibility. We can also see the seriousness of not following this in the execution of Naboth and his sons when these procedures were not followed (1 Kgs 21:1-19; 2 Kgs 9:26).

The Fall, therefore, created the need for government to develop, articulate, and publicize law and to then administer and enforce that law for public protection, to maintain public order, and to promote a certain public and common morality.[9] Doing so, the Fall created the need for law to confront fallen man with his own imperfections, sinfulness, and his need for a Savior (Gen 3:7-19; Gal 3:19-24).[10]

Intellectual Property

Within the sixth generation from the Fall, specialized skills and knowledge develop within the descendants of Adam because of the scarcity discussed above. Jabal is recognized as the “father” of those who “dwell in tents and have livestock” (Gen 4:20). His brother, Jubal, is similarly recognized as “the father” of those who “play the lyre and pipe” (Gen 4:21). Finally, their half-brother, Tubal-cain, is referred to as the “forger” of all instruments of bronze and iron (Gen 4:22). The strategic importance of limiting access to such knowledge was recognized in antiquity and became a crucial factor in the conflict between Israel and the Philistines (1 Sam 13:19-22). The existence of that specialized knowledge and ability, against a backdrop of scarcity, leads directly to the development of what we know today as copyright and patent law.

The Development of the State

Within two generations from the Fall, the stage was set for the development of the first city-state recorded in Scripture. Genesis 4:17 tells us that Cain built a city, which he named Enoch, after his son. The first major city-state recorded in Scripture occurs within thirteen generations of the Fall. Known to history as Babel, its collapse leads to the linguistic dispersion of people groups, and subsequently, the development of a multiplicity of nation-states (Gen 11). Charged with the responsibility of curbing fallen man’s bent to evil, the state is given the responsibility of exercising adjudication, approved coercion, and the punishment of evil (Rom 13:1-7; 1 Pet 2:13-17).

The Development of International Relations

Continuing from the development of a multiplicity of nation-states begun in Genesis 11, the Fall sets the stage for the resulting need for government to protect against the violent aggression of external city/nation-states and for the evaluation of how and when that is properly, or justly, done. Genesis 14 describes the development of two rival coalitions of city-states and the successful attack, by a coalition of four city-states, on Sodom and Gomorrah and three city-states affiliated with them. Lot is captured and taken as a slave until rescued by an armed force led by his uncle, Abraham. The nature of potential conflict between states will inevitably lead to the development of international standards and law concerning both the conduct of warfare (The Geneva Conventions)[11] and internationally recognized protections of human rights (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Overall, we observe that Genesis 3 sets in motion realities that give rise to the laws we have today. The consequences of the Fall are real and arguably confirm that it is historical as well.

Exhibit 3: The Nature of the Judicial Process

 

What we know today as the judicial process broadly and essentially involves the following component parts, all of which point more or less directly to the special Creation of man and the Fall. In general, the process begins with an allegation that there has been a violation or breach of some legally protected interest generating a conflict of some sort. Indicative of the Fall and scarcity, that breach or violation has caused a measurable loss to one or more of the individuals or groups involved. There will be a governing standard (pertinent law), a court (or other authorized body), and a duly scheduled and noticed hearing (cf. John 7:51). During that hearing, there will be the development of an appropriate, or relevant, factual record. The trier of fact, whether judge or jury, will carry out the application of the law pertinent to that record. A synthesis of the applicable law and the pertinent facts will be made to an authoritative statement of decision. Finally, there will be a process by which appeal can be made of error(s) in the development of the factual record, the identification of pertinent law, or the application of law to the factual record.

The judicial process, outlined above, is designed to right wrongs. This presumes a standard of right and wrong, which is what we observed in Genesis 2-3. The judicial process also attempts to balance fairness, accurately determine the facts in a particular matter and provide a process to apply the law. This too supports the details of Genesis 3. We noted that the Fall resulted in man having a deficient knowledge of good and evil, having violated God’s explicit command. Because of this, man struggles to correctly implement what is right. Hence, the judicial process comes into being as a corrective to man’s sinful biases. The existence of the judicial process supports what we see ensue from the Fall.

Exhibit 4: The Nature of Adjudication

 

God’s first reported action after He rested on the Sabbath was this very activity. He confronts the wrongdoer and determines the facts of the case (Gen 3:10-13). He then determines guilt and makes a sentencing (Gen 3:14-17). He does not merely do this in Genesis 3. Other scriptural passages attest to the same activity (cf. Gen 4:10; 1 Sam 13:11-14; 2 Sam 12:7-12). Similarly, and in a matter reflecting the imago Dei, human judges handle matters brought to their attention. They are given the responsibility of determining the relevant facts and law. They are charged with evaluating the perceptual accuracy or bias of witnesses. Finally, they have the responsibility of making an authoritative decision, applying the pertinent law to the factual record. Thus, from a scriptural perspective, adjudication comes from God in Genesis 3.

For this reason, God through Scripture discusses the process of adjudication. He gives guidance and standards as to the implementation of the normative requirements of law. He also calls for the assignment of that task to men—and women—who are uniquely qualified for that role (cf. Exod 18:21-26; Deut 1:9-17; Judg 4:4-5).

However, unlike God, man distorts natural law and can only grope for the right application and implementation of that law. Accordingly, the Scripture provides written direction as to appropriate procedures for adjudication (see, e.g., Deut 19:15-20). Judges are admonished to “hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s” (Deut 1:16-17). Similarly, Jehoshaphat admonished the judges, “Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the Lord. He is with you in giving judgment. Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the Lord our God, or partiality or taking bribes” (2 Chron 19:6-7).

Engaged in an inherently stressful and emotionally draining process,[12] judges are not to indulge in mind-numbing substance abuse or to pervert justice but are to “judge righteously” and are to defend the rights of the poor and the weak (Prov 31:5, 8-9). Judges are to avoid partiality in adjudication (Prov 24:23; 28:21). The admonition literally refers to adjudication based on outward appearance (i.e., “knowing faces”). This effectively prohibits adjudication in which social status and economic wealth (or lack thereof) would be controlling. Put another way, and borrowing a familiar cliché, the justice implemented by the judge is to be “blind.”

Recognizing that some would attempt to subvert the process—again bearing witness to the depravity of man after the Fall—judges are to inquire diligently to determine the credibility of witnesses. They are to impose appropriate punishment upon a perjurer and must determine that the evidence is sufficient before finding guilt or imposing a punishment. Even in imposing a punishment, they are to ensure that the punishment fits the crime (cf. Deut 19:15-21). Echoing this requirement, Nicodemus reminds the chief priests and the Pharisees that their law would not “judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does” (John 7:51).[13]

Thus, appropriate notice and scheduling are required. Facts would be determined using pertinent evidentiary standards. Then they are evaluated in light of appropriate law. Judges have both the responsibility of determining facts and the responsibility of applying the law to the facts. Subsequently, opportunities for appeal would be provided (Exod 18:21-27; Deut 1:9-17).[14] Bearing evidence that man has been created in the image of God, a judge is given the responsibility by God to issue judgment on His behalf; bearing evidence of the impact of the Fall, an appeal process also guards against bias or imperfect or inaccurate determination of fact or law on the part of the judge.

In summary, adjudication is consistent with a literal reading of Genesis 3. It supports that God was the first judge who perfectly adjudicates. It supports the need for adjudication from that point onward due to the entrance of sin. The scriptural articulations of adjudication account for man’s skewed nature as a result of the Fall. Those same texts acknowledge that man is made in God’s image and thus able at the same time to carry out judgments like He has done. That too is consistent with what we observe in Genesis 1:26-28.[15]

Conclusion

 

We see the seedbed or the source of law in Genesis 3. This is not only in demonstration of its general need (in light of a Fall from perfect Creation) but also in that Genesis 3 and the following narrative present the need for very specific types of laws that persist to this day. Even more, the need for and nature of adjudication as well as the judicial process all are consistent with what we observe took place in the Fall. All of this indirectly supports a conclusion that the details of Genesis 3 are true and that the Fall is real. Put another way, the realities of life in the legal world and the legal profession are consistent with what we expect if the Fall was historical.

Having said all of that, it is interesting that in Acts 1:3, Luke tells us that the bodily resurrection of Christ was demonstrated and confirmed by many “infallible” or legally decisive “proofs” (en pollois tekmeriois); at least a portion of that evidence is succinctly stated in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8. Regardless, the Scripture also indicates that unless God transforms the heart, such evidence will be rejected, again ultimately due to the impact of the Fall (John 6:36, 40, 45, 66; 1 Cor 2:11-15).

In the same manner, the evidence of the Fall provided in Scripture will also have no impact but for the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit. That being the case, the appropriate conclusion of this chapter is not an impassioned plea to accept the veracity of the biblical account of the Fall. Rather, those led by the Spirit accept the reality of the Fall and must ask what we should do with our conviction that the Fall is an actual historical event. I would respond that part of a proper response is a conviction that law and government are, and continue to be, legitimate areas for Christian service.

Addressing the relationship of the Christian to the state while writing the Institutes, Calvin had to respond to those who taught absolute and total submission to the government and to those, largely from the Anabaptist community, who taught that the Christian should have no involvement in government. The error of the former was to, ultimately, compromise the lordship of Christ. While we would agree with the Anabaptists on the importance of “believer’s baptism,” the error of the latter view was, ultimately, to ignore the impact of the Fall.[16] Because of the reality of the Fall, law and government are legitimate concerns of the Christian.[17] While we will not create the Kingdom of God on earth or reverse the inevitable turn of evil men from bad to worse (2 Tim 3:13), Calvin reminds us that due to the lasting impact of the Fall, Christians can have a legitimate ministry in law and government both in curbing the evil in men and in helping men to understand their need for the Savior. Confined under the proper administration of justice and the law, men will understand the need for the atonement and, realizing their own helplessness and futility, may turn to Christ (Gal 3:21-24). The reality of Genesis 3 means that involvement in law and government, for the Christian, is not wrong but, rather, is appropriate in dealing with the real impact of a historical event.

Bibliography

 

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1989.

MacArthur, John. MacArthur Study Bible. Nashville: Word Publishing, 1997.

Mathews, Kenneth A. Genesis 1-11:26. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1996.

1 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.2.12, 664.

2 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.2.12, 233-34.

3 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.2.12, 663.

4 The rough nature of the “correspondence” is demonstrated in 1 Samuel 30:24-25 where a pronouncement by David, following a dispute concerning the relative “shares” in plunder of those in the military, is referred to as both a “statute” and a “rule” for Israel.

5 Significantly, the position and role of the judge was recognized no later than the time of Abraham, Lot, and Job (Gen 18:25; 19:9; cf. Job 12:17; 31:11, 28).

6 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.3, 652-53. In Calvin’s own words: “But we shall have a fitter opportunity of speaking of the use of civil government. All we wish to be understood at present is, that it is perfect barbarism to think of exterminating it, its use among men being not less than that of bread and water, light and air, while its dignity is much more excellent. Its object is not merely, like those things, to enable men to breathe, eat, drink, and be warmed (though it certainly includes all these, while it enables them to live together); this, I say, is not its only object, but it is, that no idolatry, no blasphemy against the name of God, no calumnies against his truth, nor other offences to religion, break out and be disseminated among the people; that the public quiet be not disturbed, that every man’s property be kept secure, that men may carry on innocent commerce with each other, that honesty and modesty be cultivated; in short, that a public form of religion may exist among Christians, and humanity among men.”

7 MacArthur, MacArthur Study Bible, note to, Genesis 3:17; Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 251.

8 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.10, 307-8.

9 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.10, 652-53.

10 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.10, 304-7.

11 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.10, 631-32.

12 Parenthetically, the familiar commendation of the “excellent wife” in Proverbs 31 tacitly demonstrates that stress and its impact. As I have experienced in my own life—and for which I am extremely grateful—it is the excellent wife’s diligent service at home that allows her husband to carry out adjudication as he sits “at the gate” (Prov 31:23).

13 Implicitly requiring the giving of adequate notice and expressly requiring a fair hearing for the accused, Nicodemus’ rhetorical question raises the essence of what we know as “due process of law.”

14 It should not escape notice that in applying the law to the facts, judges deal with nuances of fact not dealt with in previous statutory law; thus, judges will inevitably move toward developing new law in appellate levels. This tendency is very biblical and practical (though subject to abuse), because if the facts do not fit the law there are but two options: to do nothing and leave the status quo, or to create new law.

15 Commenting extensively on the role of magistrates or judges and in recognition of the responsibility of the position in a post-Fall world, Calvin states: “Their functions were expressly approved by the Lord. Wherefore no man can doubt that civil authority is, in the sight of God, not only sacred and lawful, but the most sacred, and by far the most honourable, of all stations in mortal life” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20. 4-9, 654).

16 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.1-7, 655-56.

17 In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin writes: “Still the distinction does not go so far as to justify us in supposing that the whole scheme of civil government is matter of pollution, with which Christian men have nothing to do. Fanatics, indeed, delighting in unbridled license, insist and vociferate that, after we are dead by Christ to the elements of this world, and being translated into the kingdom of God sit among the celestials, it is unworthy of us, and far beneath our dignity, to be occupied with those profane and impure cares which relate to matters alien from a Christian man. To what end, they say, are laws without courts and tribunals? But what has a Christian man to do with courts? Nay, if it is unlawful to kill, what have we to do with laws and courts? But as we lately taught that that kind of government is distinct from the spiritual and internal kingdom of Christ, so we ought to know that they are not adverse to each other. The former, in some measure, begins the heavenly kingdom in us, even now upon earth, and in this mortal and evanescent life commences immortal and incorruptible blessedness, while to the latter it is assigned, so long as we live among men, to foster and maintain the external worship of God, to defend sound doctrine and the condition of the Church, to adapt our conduct to human society, to form our manners to civil justice, to conciliate us to each other, to cherish common peace and tranquility. All these I confess to be superfluous, if the kingdom of God, as it now exists within us, extinguishes the present life. But if it is the will of God that while we aspire to true piety we are pilgrims upon the earth, and if such pilgrimage stands in need of such aids, those who take them away from man rob him of his humanity. As to their allegation that there ought to be such perfection in the Church of God that her guidance should suffice for law, they stupidly imagine her to be such as she never can be found in the community of men” (652).

After commenting at length on the role of the magistrate in a fallen world, he goes on to state: “In regard to those who are not debarred by all these passages of Scripture from presuming to inveigh against this sacred ministry, as if it were a thing abhorrent from religion and Christian piety, what else do they than assail God himself, who cannot but be insulted when his servants are disgraced?” (655-56). [The Master’s College (2017). (p. 220). What Happened in the Garden: The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]

 

Chapter 10

The Significance of Sin for the Psychologies

 

Ernie Baker

 

Karen and her husband came to discuss the possibility of marriage mediation after being married only for a little over a year. These were second marriages for both, and now their new relationship was in deep trouble. She believed that she had been lied to about his financial situation and she let him know it. Her tongue got her in trouble regularly as she lashed out and “told him the truth,” whether he liked it or not. Nothing he could do would satisfy her. To top it off, anger and extreme anxiety, leading to health issues and lack of sleep, were a regular part of her life. Karen and, as you can imagine, her husband were both miserable. How do we make sense of her troubles? It is obvious that Karen has problems, but why is she like this?

When someone is ill, obtaining a proper diagnosis is essential. If not diagnosed precisely, a lot of time, energy, emotion, and money go into treating the symptoms inaccurately. This principle is also true of counseling issues. The counseling psychologies deal with the personal problems of humans and endeavor to understand what the problem is in order to then give a treatment plan.[1] If we are going to properly diagnose personal problems we must include a biblical view of what is truly wrong. This view of what is wrong is clearly portrayed in Genesis 3 and these details directly apply to the social sciences. In fact, the implications of both the cause (vv. 1-6) and effects (vv. 7-24) portrayed in this crucial chapter of Scripture lead to a robust model to explain the myriad of human issues.

For example, why are there mass shootings? Every time there is another mass shooting there is an onslaught of analysis over why someone would do something so horrible. Terms like “mental illness” are used and some decry that we are not putting enough into research of the brain to try to understand. Others might say it is the shooter’s environmental pressures that caused him to pull the trigger. Yet others might say it is a combination of both a brain issue and environmental issues.[2] It is frustrating to many that we cannot figure this out. Out of love for people we desperately need the correct diagnosis so the treatment can address the true problem.

In the midst of this confusion and pain, as our cultures desperately try to understand why humans do what they do, I want to pose the same question as Dr. Karl Menninger, “Whatever happened to sin?” As a well-known psychiatrist he wrote, “It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal, or asleep?” He then added, “Is nothing now a sin?”[3] He was concerned about the moral direction of our culture. I have the same questions. Are we now so sophisticated that there is no soul sickness but only mental illness? Have we moved beyond the supposedly primitive idea of sin?

How does the doctrine of sin influence the way we understand the term “mental health”? Let me be the first to acknowledge that talking about sin related to the mental state of others is hard. It sounds calloused. But that is not my demeanor. My desire is to have compassion (Col 3:5) and bear with others in love (Eph 4:2) as I help them truly get to the root of their problems. But a proper treatment plan demands a proper diagnosis. Therefore, my intent is to demonstrate how crucial a literal understanding of sin is to the social sciences. In other words, a biblical view of counseling must include the doctrine of sin and what it has done to humanity. Even if a psychological theory is making accurate observations, and even if there is a strong physical component to the issue, the diagnosis cannot be accurate if it does not include the immaterial part of our being and how it has been infected by sin.[4] Our culture is scrambling for answers and there is not unity on etiology (the source of the problem) partially because we are not operating from a biblical framework.[5]

Counseling Theories Are Diagnostic Frameworks

 

Defining Psychology

Before studying the account of the Fall, let us look at some secular viewpoints on the source of problems and their solutions. To do that we must understand what a psychology is. Most psychology texts define their field in a way similar to the following: “Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes…consequently, the phrase “behavior and mental processes” in the definition of psychology must be understood to mean many things: it encompasses not just people’s actions, but also their thoughts, emotions, perceptions, reasoning processes, memories, and even the biological activities that maintain bodily functioning.”[6]

While most agree on this definition, there are many different theories of why we have the behavior and mental processes we do and a vast array of approaches for helping (various therapies). In other words, you could say that each psychology offers its own view of the problem and solution. Each solution has its own set of methodologies, consisting of types of questions, homework, and tests that are used to carry out the approach to people’s problems.[7]

Viewing this theologically, each psychology has a view of sin. Here they are answering the question, What is the source of the problem? Each then has a view of salvation[8] and sanctification,[9] answering the questions, What is the solution to the problem and the methodology for carrying it out?[10]

Examples of Various Diagnostic Frameworks

Volumes of books have been devoted to explaining all the various approaches to counseling, but here are some of the most common: cognitive behavioral therapy, the biomedical model, and Maslow’s needs theory.[11]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

A leading therapist in the counseling psychologies is Aaron Beck, who developed an innovative approach called cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. “The basic idea behind CBT is that thinking controls or largely affects behavior. If you change thinking, you have a good chance of changing behavior. As Alfred Adler, a psychotherapist who developed a precursor to CBT, stated, ‘I am convinced that a person’s behavior springs from his ideas.’ ”[12] Thus, the main focus would be the belief that if thinking changes, behavior changes as well.

Biomedical

Others are not convinced of CBT but believe that the source is biological, specifically the brain. Brett Deacon puts it very succinctly, “The biomedical model posits that mental disorders are brain diseases and emphasizes pharmacological treatment to target presumed biological abnormalities.”[13] At this moment, at least at the media level, culture accepts this as the explanatory lens to understand human problems.[14]

Many psychologists, though, would not buy into a strictly biological model but instead say we are bio/psycho/social beings and that all three of these elements are interacting to create issues. In other words, our biology, our mental state, and our social relations all interact with one another to create our responses to the world.

Maslow’s Needs Theory

Another common theory is that basic needs are not being met. When Maslow presented this view of the source of human problems he also consciously rejected the idea of a sinful nature. “As far as I know we just don’t have any intrinsic instincts for evil. If you think in terms of basic needs, instincts, at least at the outset, are all ‘good’ or perhaps we should be technical about it and call them ‘pre-moral,’ neither good nor evil.”[15]

His solution was to learn to be a “self-actualized” person like Thomas Edison or others who reached their full potential. They had all of their basic needs met and therefore happiness could be achieved. While Freud studied negative motivations, Maslow studied positive incentives for humans to reach full potential.

Many today have essentially the same view of what the illness is and its solution. For example,

One of the deepest concerns of psychologists and some other social scientists has been the identification of the spring of human action. What moves us to action and/or determines the direction of our strivings? Our motives, described by concepts like needs, desires, aims, goals, and aspirations, not only shape our actions, but their fulfillment or frustration also deeply affect our inner life, our experience of ourselves and the world. Basic needs are conceptualized here as the most fundamental motives. Their satisfaction is essential for growth, development and well-being of human beings…. Basic needs have an imperative quality: they press for satisfaction.[16]

Biblical Eyeglasses

While all of these approaches provide interesting and helpful insights into humanity, I do not believe they get at the root of the problem that is influencing everything else. As Christians, we want to know what the all-knowing Creator said about humanity. In light of this, problems arise when we take a discerning look at these theories.

Think with me about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Of course we are rational beings according to Scripture, but it is also true that strong desires often override the rational part of our being. Practitioners might say in response that we must reorient thinking about desires. But change is more complex than reprogramming our mental processing of desires. Titus 3:3 says that humans are “slaves to various passions and pleasures.” Many people intellectually know the right thing to do but their desires override thinking. According to Scripture we are worshiping beings (Matt 12:34-35), desiring beings (Rom 13:14), and much more.[17] Something deeper is going on than just thinking.

It is also true that we are bio/psycho/social beings, but consider what secular culture means by these terms. Your biology is evolved and has not been impacted by a sinful nature.[18] Your “psyche” is your mental state, with no emphasis on an immaterial part of your being. Yes, we are social beings but the ultimate relationship is missing in that you were created to be in relationship with God.

Thus, from a biblical standpoint, we can already begin to see that these theories are inadequate. You see, Karen’s problems did not begin when she said, “I do.” They began thousands of years ago in the Garden.

Genesis 1-3 Provide a Biblical Diagnostic Framework

 

Genesis 1 Defines Normal

Before we get to the diagnosis of the problem, we must understand what God intended normal existence to be pre-Fall. For things to be abnormal or disordered implies there is a norm and order. But, who determines “normal”? God made the answer clear right from the beginning.

Genesis 1:26-28 portrays humans made to be in relationship with their Creator. This was normal and healthy. The relationship was to be so close that we reflect His image. Much has been written on this, and a crucial aspect of being made in God’s image is that we were made to live for His glory (Isa 6:3; Ezek 43:1-2; Hab 2:14; Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 10:31). His glory is all that He is in the sum total of His attributes and we were made to reflect those on the planet. We were made to live “godly” (God-like) lives. Imagine the whole world being filled with worshipers like this. That is exactly what His original intention was (Gen 1:28).

Since Scripture says this is true, ask yourself if true mental health is possible outside this fundamental relationship. Could anyone be “self-actualized” outside of relationship with their Creator? It should also be clear that humanity has a big problem since most live alienated from Him. What led to this alienation and what is the solution? Genesis 3 gives the answer.

The Cause of Problems Is a Worship Disorder

Chapter 3 is incredibly ugly against the “very good” backdrop of chapter 1 (1:31). God told Adam and Eve that they had a high purpose for being on the planet. Now comes the test of obedience and fidelity to their Sovereign. Will they be godly or not? Will they live for His glory or their own?

To answer these questions we need to take a deeper look at a paradigm shifting verse of the Bible (Gen 3:6). Where did this act of rebellion originate? We are told that they ate because “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.” Their whole being was involved in this decision to go against what the Lord had commanded. The inner person was actively engaged in how each responded to the external pressure of the temptation. The serpent puts pressure on Eve, she influences Adam, and even though he knew better, he rebels.

They were not victims of circumstances unwittingly shaped by their environment. Instead, they were active agents who made a decision based upon being both rational and emotional. They were thinking about “being wise” and wanted (i.e. desired) to be like God “knowing good and evil” (v. 5). The emotions were stimulated by the fruit being a “delight.” Their loyalty and devotion were tested, the inner person stirred, and the couple failed. According to Scripture, the term that is used for our inner being—consisting of “minds, will, and emotions”—is the heart.[19] It “became the richest biblical term for the totality of man’s inner or immaterial nature.”[20]

Adam and Eve could have said no, but chose not to. Ever since, the heart has been tainted. You are dealing with a Genesis 3 hangover, and so am I![21] They rebelled against God’s commands, and a multitude of human problems have been unleashed as a result.

1. K. Beale, in his book We Become What We Worship, makes an important observation about what happened in the Garden. The chapter on the origin of idolatry explains, “When Adam stopped being committed to God and reflecting his image, he revered something else in place of God and resembled his new object of worship. Thus at the heart of Adam’s sin was turning from God and replacing reverence for God with a new object of reverence to which Adam became conformed.”[22]

Genesis 3 then in part reveals what Adam and Eve would put their hope in and choose to be devoted to. Would they believe the Lord, trust Him, and let Him be God and them the creation? Or would they believe the serpent, trust it and desire to be like God and rule their own lives? We all know the answer and are feeling the results. Like Adam and Eve, every morning we awake and make the same decisions. What will I love? What will I hope in? What will I serve? But now, because of Adam and Eve, I am bent the wrong way. I have a tendency to worship (i.e., trust in, hope in, rejoice in, and love)[23] the wrong things. I am guilty of idolatry.

The Rest of Scripture and False Worship/Wrong Desire in the Heart

We see Adam’s heart idolatry in the Garden paralleled in how Scripture describes sin. Scripture clearly states that life is lived out of the heart. We must guard it with all vigilance, since it is the springhead of life (Prov 4:23).[24] Our Lord reinforces this by telling us that from the heart the mouth speaks (Matt 12:34). He then adds a crucial piece to help us understand the puzzle of our hearts. He replaces the word “heart” with “treasure” in verse 35. In other words, our hearts are our treasures, revealing what we value. How can you tell a person’s value system? What they love, hope for, trust, rejoice in, and fear, reveals “treasures.”

The Bible directs us where to place our love, hope, and faith, and warns us about false loves and hoping in empty things (Ps 33:13-22; Matt 22:37-40; 1 Tim 6:17; 2 Tim 3:1-4). It is guaranteed that thought, decision-making, and emotions are wrapped around these things. But, according to Jeremiah 17:9, all of this has been tainted by the deceitful and desperately sick nature of the heart.[25]

Do you see that the problem is deeper than chemical imbalances? Brace yourself, we have another key component to add: In the heart dwell desires and passions.[26] We are desire-filled beings, and these appetites and passions are permeated with sin (Matt 5:28; Rom 1:24; Jas 3:14).

John’s classic passage warns about loving the world and in particular not to love the “desires of the flesh,” the “desires of the eyes,” and the “pride in possessions” (1 John 2:15-17). There is a clear connection to the Garden. But here John adds that this is about the futility of false loves. Ruling desires reveal “heart themes” that are directly connected to counseling issues. Here are a few examples.

Desires of the flesh (in Genesis 3, “good for food”): sexual pleasure, food, comfort-loving, enslavement to alcohol or other enslavements.

Desires of the eyes (in Genesis 3, “delight to the eyes”): appearances, pornography.

Pride in possessions (in Genesis 3, “desired”): materialism, cars, technology, degrees.

To really help people grow and change, we must help them get to the deepest disorders. Humans do not just have personality disorders, they have worship disorders. The testimony of Scripture is that the desires resulting from Genesis 3 become strong, entrenched, ruling desires (see Titus 3:3). Genesis 4 makes clear that “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you” (v. 7). It is pictured as having a life of its own (cf. Heb 4:12 where the heart is described as being active with “thoughts and intentions”). David Powlison makes it clear why we must understand this as an interpretation of human nature: “If we would help people have eyes and ears for God we must know well which alternative gods clamor for their attention. These forces and shaping influences neither determine nor excuse our sins. But they do nurture, channel, and exacerbate our sinfulness in particular directions.”[27]

The Result of Misplaced Worship Is Counseling Issues

I agree with Berkouwer who wrote, “In Genesis we observe a sin whose essential traits return in every [emphasis his] sin. Thus in the history of Israel[,] the fall was apostasy from the fellowship of God and the assumption of man’s own way.”[28] In other words, the seed of every distortion and disorder is in this seminal section of Scripture. The basis of what we view as the problem with humanity starts here.[29]

Humans Have Desire Problems

We have already noted the central place of desires within the heart but let us make clear where it started. The tree was “desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). Adam and Eve ate, and consequently we all have a bad case of the “I wants.”[30] Their desires, not stopped by the dam of relationship with the Creator, overflowed into ruling desires. Lust takes on a life of its own. This topic is discussed frequently in Scripture showing how common the problem is (e.g., Rom 7:15-25; 13:14; 1 Pet 1:14; Eph 4:22). In counseling you can almost always ask, “What do you want that you are not getting?” And, “what are you getting that you do not want?” Unruly appetites and passions have launched thousands of counseling issues like the vast array of “addictions” humanity experiences. Sinful desires permeate the rest of the list and lead to sins not delineated.

Humans Experience Pain/Suffering

The earth is now going to produce “thorns” (Gen 3:18) and cause Adam pain in his labor (Gen 3:17). Romans 8:21-22 reinforces this, saying that all creation groans and is subject to decay.

Other things change as well. Death was warned about (Gen 2:17) and death, with its suffering and diseases, was delivered. It should not surprise us if there are mental diseases, since the brain, like the rest of the body, has been impacted by the Fall.

We also see humans hurting each other. The first thing that Adam does when confronted with his sin is blame Eve. This is the man who seems to have been delighted when God presented his wife to him. He said, “This at last [my emphasis] is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). What a change! I sin and I am sinned against. Much that is dealt with in counseling relates to hurt caused by others.

Humans Struggle With Food Issues

The object of desire was food, and as we saw, all desires went awry (Gen 3:6). We all have eating issues as a result. When the pressure is on, some overeat and some undereat. You should not be surprised. It is intrinsic to the Fall.

Humans Struggle With Giving Into Social Pressure

Psychology has long noted the shaping influence of others in our lives. We see it in the Garden. Eve gave the fruit to Adam, he listened to the voice of his wife, and we suffer (Gen 3:6, 17). Could this be the common human malady called “fear of man” (Prov 29:25)? Have you suffered because you listened to the voice of others?

Humans Struggle With Relationship Issues

As mentioned before, in Genesis 4 we see the word “sin” mentioned for the first time and what is the context? It is interpersonal conflict of the worst type—murder. How bad was the Fall? It was so bad that just twenty-six verses after the dreadful decision, brother murders brother. Also, instead of taking personal responsibility, Adam shifts the blame to his wife (Gen 3:12). “It was not me” has been the default of humans ever since, and it causes much pain in relationships.

Humans Struggle With Hiding and Deception

The first thing Adam and Eve did was cover and hide because of their shame and fear (Gen 3:7-10). Not only that, but the satanic character of deception (Gen 3:13) now influences humanity (John 8:44). Humans hide and deceive in many ways, like not allowing others to see the real self. Other ways deception has influenced us are too numerous to mention.

Humans Struggle With Sexual Temptation

Why were Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness? I understand that the primary message here is the shame from sin and what their newly informed conscience was doing to their souls. But they are the only two on the planet! Could there also be implications of sexual deviance? Are they looking at each other in a different way now? The end of chapter two tells us, “The man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed.” At that point they were one flesh and happily united. But now, what was supposed to be a blessing is impacted by sin and they cover themselves.

Humans Struggle With Ungodly Communication

One of the first things that happened is Adam sinned against his wife with words. Imagine what she was thinking when she heard, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree” (Gen 3:12).

Humans Struggle With Materialism

Think about it. Is not materialism the desire for more? It is the attitude that stuff will bring us security and happiness. Adam and Eve were not content with what God gave them. They wanted more, and human nature became like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, frantically grasping for “rings” that then grip the heart. David Powlison states, “The tenth commandment is also a command that internalizes the problem of sin, making sin ‘psychodynamic.’[31] It lays bare the grasping and demanding nature of the human heart, as Paul powerfully describes in Romans 7.”[32]

Humans Struggle With Disordered Emotions

For the first time we see fear and shame in human history (Gen 3:8-10). It is easy to imagine the disordered emotions that grew out of this. For example, there was probably anxiety as Adam and Eve heard God approaching (v. 10). I find it interesting that every picture I have seen depicting them being driven from the Garden shows them downcast, depressed, and ashamed. How have you felt these emotions?

Humans Struggle With Self-Centeredness

This is the culminating fact that launched it all. Their sin was about wanting to be like God. Their focus turned to what they thought was best instead of what God said was best. They thought they deserved more. Pride is written all over the decision to operate independently of God.

What happens if we keep living for false hopes, shallow loves, and distorted desires? I will tell you—counseling issues. These become disordered relationships, emotions, and behavior.[33] When you begin to see people’s problems this way you say to yourself, “It would take a miracle for people to change.” And you would be right.

The Solution to the Problem

 

The Gospel Radically Reorients Life

Miracles happen as the cross sets us free from enslaving lusts and desires (Titus 3:3; Rom 6) and reorders the worship (love, trust, and hope) of our heart. The cross is not just a message to believe to get us to heaven someday. It is a message of hope and deliverance from the tyrant of sin and the lordship of engrained lusts and desires. This amazing grace is even promised for the first time right after Adam and Eve’s rebellion (Gen 3:15). Christ came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). As we repent, our Sovereign continues to, liberate us from Satan’s and sin’s tyrannical rule (Col 1:13). Worship is being restored to the King.

Such a salvation can happen because the most God-glorifying person who ever lived was our Savior. He was a perfect worshiper and through the power of the gospel we can become like Him. The New Testament is clear that this is the goal of our progressive sanctification (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18). We are being made into the image of our Savior and restored to a place of obeying out of love. The purpose of the cross is to “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col 3:10). We are enabled and motivated by the Holy Spirit to trust His character, putting our hope in Him (Rom 15: 4-5, 13). We are called to rejoice in and sing the praises of the Creator of the universe, instead of the empty things this planet tells us are worthy of devotion. The image of God in man is being restored— which means that the mind, will, and emotions can change because of the power of the gospel.

It seems like this is what the Lord was after with the woman of Samaria in John 4. This story is a wonderful example of the Lord going after themes of the heart.[34] Have you ever wondered why the Lord abruptly changes the subject and asks her to call her husband? He had already offered to be living water if she would believe (John 4:10). Could it be that he goes right for her heart? His request clearly demonstrated her loves and hopes. Can you imagine the counseling issues of her lifestyle? Instead of putting her hope in relationships, she needed to repent and put her trust in the Lord for her salvation. Doing so would begin to reorder the disorder of her soul (John 4:14). Significantly, the Lord then tells her that God is seeking worshipers (John 4:23). He was calling her to be one of them—and the gospel reorders another life.

The problem that was launched in the Garden is clear, and so is the solution. We have a wonderful message of hope not only for eternity but also for daily struggles. Think of your own testimony. How has the gospel changed what you serve? What you are devoted to? What you love? What you are willing to sacrifice for? What you put hope in? These questions have many practical applications.

How Does This Work Out Practically?

I tell my classes, if false worship is the problem, then true worship is the solution. Worship reorders the heart. My growth is dependent on living as a worshiper, which is made possible by the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18). The disorder of life is being reordered as my inner person is influenced by the power of the gospel and the living Word of God (Heb 4:12). I obey out of love for and trust in my Creator and Savior (John 15:10).

Practically, this means we have to help counselees understand what is being served in the inner person. Meaning, we ask heart questions. These questions are worded to faithfully represent what Scripture says about the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Gen 6:5; Heb 4:12). For example, what do you find your mind dwelling on? What situations do you seek to avoid (decision-making)? When do you tend to experience fear, worry, and anxiety? As mentioned earlier, these questions usually reveal values like living for the approval of other people, materialism, comfort, pleasure, or strong desires to control life.

The natural question then is, what do you do with the answers? Biblical counselors disciple individuals to see the biblical alternative to these false themes of the soul and give practical homework so they can carry out the alternatives in real life (Matt 7:24). This would involve their thinking, emotions, and decision-making. We also show the behavior changes that should result from being a follower of Christ (Matt 28:20).

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection[35]

Let us take one worship word and demonstrate how this reorients false worship to true worship. “Love one another” is the most often repeated command of the New Testament, so love seems like a great example (e.g., John 13:34; Rom 13:8-10). Is this just because God is love and wants us to be nice to each other? No, there is a strategy to His commands. Love leads to holiness (Rom 13:8). Why? Because superior loves push out inferior loves. We pursue the objects of our desire, so grow in love for God and others. It makes perfect sense why the two great commandments are the two great commandments (Matt 22:34-40). We grow in holiness when we love God, because we will pursue Him. Thus, part of our job in counseling is to disciple others how to grow in love for God and each other. This actually reorients the desires of the inner person.

The medicine, then, for a sick heart is to submit to the King, and then continue to grow practically in love for God and others. I agree with John Piper, that once you understand our original purpose on the planet but then do not point people to the ultimate solution, it is “like treating fever with cold packs when you have penicillin.”[36]

Because of the gospel, we will grow to be like our Lord, the godliest person who ever lived, and thus we will reflect more and more glory back to the Creator instead of worshipping idols (1 Thess 1:9). This then helps people deal with their worries, fears, and depression. The impact of the Fall is being reversed in people like Karen. That is a great reason to rejoice instead of being worried, fearful, or depressed (Rom 15:13).

How to Think Biblically About the Term “Mental Illness”

 

Now that we have seen how the doctrines of sin and salvation impact the psychologies, and have viewed how to deal with counseling issues biblically, we are in a better position to think theologically about the term “mental illness.” As we do, keep in mind that the various psychologies do not agree on the source of problems. They just know there are problems.

Before diving into this controversial subject, allow me to make a clarification lest I am accused of being anti-scientific. I enjoy studying neuropsychology and have friends who are neuropsychologists. Studying the brain is crucial and I am thankful for those gifted to do so. There are many mysteries yet to be discovered. But my assumption is that something deeper is going on in humans that must be kept in mind when doing research. I am not naïve enough to believe that the secular psychologies would operate from the presupposition that something did happen in the Garden.[37] My concern here is for the church to not be gullible and buy into the talk of mental illness without taking into consideration Genesis 3.

I began to think seriously about this topic at the church where I was pastor in Virginia. We purposefully tried to reach struggling families for the sake of ministry in general and the gospel in particular. Part of our strategy was an active children’s ministry to our community. We loved the children and it was a great outreach to underprivileged children. This brought an interesting dynamic to our church, most of it positive. One of the negative things though was the highly undisciplined nature of the children. It was not uncommon for a child to say to us when we were trying to address his or her behavior, “I cannot help myself. I did not have my medicine.” I desire to be teachable on this, and maybe there really is a brain disease that has yet to be discovered, but even many in the secular world would not call the cluster of symptoms of these children a disease or even a disorder.[38] Do you find it sad that children at such a young age seem to think they have an illness that must be controlled by medicine?

On the other hand, I have a friend who is a neuropsychologist who studies frontal lobe injury and its impact on emotion. I am very thankful for people like him who are studying the brain and doing cutting-edge research. There are people whose physiology is definitely impacting their behavior.

Because of what I believe about the Fall and how it has impacted our bodies, and because brain research is a relatively new and developing field of science, I am confident there are yet to be discovered diseases that are influencing behavior and the inner person. To say that they are influencing is not to say they are causing behavior, though. As we have seen, humans are more complex than just a body. Among other things, we are social, emotional, rational, self-aware, worshipping/false-worshiping beings as well. We must keep in mind that a secular worldview often misses these factors or puts a different emphasis on them. As believers, we respect science but do not bow down to science. Bowing down is “scientism.”[39]

William Schweitzer states this well: “Our gratitude for technological achievement does not entail a servile deference to whatever the scientific authorities tell us especially when a theory extends beyond any contemporary ability to test conclusively.”[40] This does not mean, though, that we ignore the valid observations of science that do not contradict our worldview.[41]

My colleague in the Biblical Counseling Coalition, Dr. Jeremy Pierre, has written an article to give the church guidance:

We should be skeptical because the paradigm of mental illness is built without the basic building materials of a biblical view of people. Absent is any consideration of moral agency as Scripture defines it: an active heart responding dynamically to God and His creation with every thought, feeling, and choice. Such an absence of the spiritual aspect of the person results in a critical misunderstanding of the person as a whole. And the care offered is inadequate for the ultimate troubles of the soul.

But we should also appreciate that these diagnoses at times accurately describe physical symptom clusters [“syndromes” as defined earlier in the chapter, my addition] and could lead to medical interventions that offer some level of helpful influence over them. In other words, because we recognize humans as corrupted in body as well as in soul, we can appreciate medical ingenuity that helpfully addresses the potential neurobiological aspects of people’s trouble. . . .

Extreme mental, emotional, or behavioral problems are not either spiritual or physical. They are both, though we recognize a sliding scale of influence. Some troubles may be more neurologically engrained, thus requiring closer medical attention. Others may be less so. But, whether it’s more or less, a spiritual heart is always actively in need of the grace of the Lord Jesus.[42]

A Story Demonstrating a Biblical-Counseling Approach to Problems

 

To help us think through what we have just seen, let us go back to the story of Karen.[43] If this heartbreaking story does not demonstrate the reality of the Garden, then I am not sure what will. Just as in the Garden, it is full of shame, fear, blame-shifting, sins of the tongue, and false worship. But change happened, not only as thinking changed but also as desires and worship changed.

As the mediation unfolded, a story kept bleeding out into the process. From the time Karen was a young girl, her brothers sexually molested her, and unfortunately it lasted until her late teens. To try to shame her into silence, they regularly told her that no one would love her when they found out who she really was and what she had done. After many years of silence she finally told her mother, who did nothing. Can you imagine the pain, anger, and bitterness? Can you imagine the distorted thinking this would cause about romantic relationships? Can you imagine the fear of being hurt by others? It became obvious that she had a lot of unresolved issues related to her abuse from decades earlier. This woman was full of hurt and self-protection.

During the mediation, both Karen and her husband humbly submitted to the process and, more importantly, to the Lord. They were convicted of their wrong responses, and asked forgiveness for how they had sinned against each other. A plan was developed to address the concerns of each. But more importantly, Karen recognized the need for help with truly dealing with the issue of abuse and the controlling tendencies she had developed as a way to protect herself. It became painfully clear to her that her mouth was directly related to her heart, as the Lord so poignantly states in Matthew 12:34-35. So, even though the marriage was now more stable, there was a lot of personal growth that needed to take place.

I arranged for a godly woman of her church to be Karen’s discipler, and they developed a loving and trusting relationship. Here is how the issues were patiently approached.

The first thing that we focused on was learning that God is sovereign and to trust Him. We went chapter by chapter each week through Trusting God by Jerry Bridges. Weekly she would share when she was angry, frustrated, fearful, or anxious and we would talk about it. I explained to her how these feelings and attitudes pointed to what we are serving in our hearts (idolatry). We discussed that we are called to worship Christ above all else. That he should be on the throne of our heart. It is He we serve and not ourselves and idols. No excuses. As we did this, week by week she was able to recognize her sinfulness in the situations and recognize that she was not trusting God and wanted to control people and situations. Little by little she improved greatly in this area by trusting God more and seeing her sin sooner and more easily. . . .

We talked a lot about loving and respecting her husband and how to do that practically. Their relationship and her attitude and behavior toward him was the most consistent pressure that revealed her sinful desires and in turn an area we have seen tremendous growth. She is constantly thinking and would sometimes refer to it as “stinking thinking.” We talked about Phil 4:8-9 and how it related to her thinking. She worked on putting off bad behavior/thinking and putting on righteous behavior/thinking. We discussed anger a lot and how to control it by recognizing her desires, pleasing and worshipping God above all else, and trusting in God’s sovereign grace and love. I gave her questions to ask herself when she felt anger, irritated, anxious, frustrated, fearful, etc. to help her identify what she was demanding instead of trusting God in the situation.

Also, to work on a proper self-image, we talked a lot about who she is in Christ now (Col 2:10). We talked about working on the areas where she needed to change and grow and accepting who God had made her in the areas that she couldn’t change.

She was very fearful of being physically harmed. Again, it was believing and trusting in the sovereignty of God that has really helped her not to be as fearful (1 John 4:18-19; 2 Tim 1:7). We also talked about healthy fear and sinful fear.

We went through Rid of My Disgrace.[44] It addressed denial, distorted self-image, shame, guilt, and anger. The truths from God’s Word taught in this book of how Christ’s life, death and resurrection transform us were a life changer for her. She learned and accepted that Christ not only died for her sins, but for the guilt of sin, and shame. We saw how Christ took her shame and clothed her in righteousness. He rose from the dead to bring her healing and hope. God allowed the abuse to happen and He loves her and it can be used for her good and His glory. She has learned to practice the truth that we forgive others out of the amazing forgiveness we have received in Christ. She knows that it is only Christ that can help her deal with her pain.[45]

I have heard Karen talk publicly about how much she has grown in Christ. She is not as controlling [her dominant heart worship theme] or angry, and reports that she is much more relaxed and is processing life much differently than just a couple of years ago. Her relationship with her husband is stable and loving and she is sleeping better. She regularly reminds herself that Christ took her shame and guilt, and she does not struggle with the same degree of fear. She is much more content (Phil 4:11-13). This chapter has been about worship, so it seems very appropriate to add concerning Karen, “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!” The effects of the Fall are being reversed in her life. The image of God is being restored as she grows to be more like her Savior. If she had gone to secular counseling, these certainly would not have been the diagnoses and prescriptions for change.

Conclusion

 

From a biblical perspective we live in a naïve age concerning human nature. In spite of all our advances in understanding how the brain functions, we are missing a key lens for interpreting the data we see—the doctrine of sin. Humans will never be able to be understood properly, no matter how advanced our neuroscience or psychologies become, if Genesis 3 is not understood as a defining moment in human history. It impacts every second of existence and makes the best sense of what we observe. I share the same concern as Dr. Menninger: there are serious consequences to a culture that denies the reality of sin. He said, “Notions of guilt and sin which formerly served as some restraint on aggression have become eroded by the presumption that the individual has less to do with his actions than we had assumed, and hence any sense of personal responsibility (or guilt) is inappropriate.”[46]

I marvel at the profundity of Genesis 3 in regard to its relevance for anthropology in general and the counseling psychologies in particular. While it is compassionate to try to help people with their problems, I also fear that we are not accurately diagnosing the deepest issues of the soul. Therefore, our treatment plans are not getting to the root issues. As I hope you have seen, it is crucial that we keep a literal understanding of what happened at the beginning. A worship model has the best explanatory power to bring into focus the multitude of counseling issues humans face. May our gracious Lord help the church see the significance of what happened in the Garden as we endeavor to help others with personal problems.

Bibliography

 

Baker, Ernie. “Caution: Counseling Systems Are Belief Systems.” In Scripture and Counseling: God’s Word for Life in a Broken World, edited by Bob Kellermen and Jeffrey Forrey. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015.

Barber, Charles. Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation. New York: Vintage Random House, 2008.

Beale, G. K. We Become What We Worship. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008.

Behm, Johannes, “Heart.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel, translated by Geoffrey Bromiley, 3:611-614. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1964-1976.

Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1996.

Berkouwer G. C. Sin: Studies in Dogmatics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1977.

Bowling, Andrew. “בל.” In Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, edited by R. Laird Harris, J. Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke, 1:466. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980.

Campbell, Ian. Engaging with Keller: Thinking through the Theology of an Influential Evangelical. Darlington, England: EP Books, 2013. Kindle version

Charnock, Stephen. The Existence and Attributes of God. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

Enns, Peter. The Evolution of Adam. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012.

Feldman, Robert S. Understanding Psychology, 8th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.

Frame, John. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2010.

Holcomb, Justin and Lindsey A. Holcomb. Rid of My Disgrace. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011.

Koehler, Ludwig and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament Vol. 1. Boston: Brill, 2001.

Lilienfeld, Scott O., Sarah Francis Smith, and Ashley L. Watts. “Issues in Diagnosis: Conceptual Issues and Controversies.” In Psychopathology: History, Diagnosis, and Empirical Foundations. 2nd ed., edited by W. Edward Craighead, David Jay Miklowitz, and Linda W. Craighead, 1-35. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

MacArthur, John. The Vanishing Conscience. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994.

Machen, J. Gresham. Christianity & Liberalism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2009.

Maslow, Abraham H. Toward a Psychology of Being. 2nd ed. New York: Van Nostrand, 1968.

Menninger, Karl. Whatever Became of Sin? New York: Hawthorne Books, 1973.

Pierre, Jeremy, “Mental Illness and the Church,” http://biblicalcounseling-coalition.org/blogs/2013/04/19/mental-illness-and-the-church (accessed January 31, 2014).

Piper, John. A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004.

Piper, John. God’s Passion for His Glory. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998.

Powlison, David. “Revisiting Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair.” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 27 (2013): 37-68.

Schweitzer, William. Engaging with Keller: Thinking through the Theology of an Influential Evangelical. Edited by Iain Campbell. Grand Rapids: EP Books, 2013.

Staub, Ervin. The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Welch, Edward. Blame It on the Brain? Distinguishing Chemical Imbalances, Brain Disorders and Disobedience. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998.

____. “Who Are We: Needs, Longings, and the Image of God in Man.” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. 13, Number 1 (Fall 1994).

1 I am using the term “psychologies” instead of psychology since there are many proposed paradigms to explain what is wrong with humans and how to help them deal with their problems.

2 Typical thinking is described in this definition. “A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbances in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities.” American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 20.

3 Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin?, 13-14. In quoting Dr. Menninger, it is not to be assumed that he believes in the biblical doctrine of total depravity. He is just trying to make the point that there is right and wrong and people are responsible for their behavior. He is also decrying that American culture had gotten to the point, even at the time of his writing, of not believing in right and wrong.

4 This immaterial part of our being is called “soul,” “spirit,” “mind,” and “heart” throughout Scripture. I will seek to demonstrate that the term “heart” is the leading word, and is directly impacted by what happened in the Garden.

5 “1: cause, origin specifically: the cause of a disease or abnormal condition, 2: a branch of knowledge concerned with causes specifically: a branch of medical science concerned with the causes and origins of diseases.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, s.v. “etiology.”

6 Feldman, Understanding Psychology, 5.

7 To test my understanding of this, we did a simple experiment. My assistant called five different counseling offices and asked the director or head therapist what they believe is the source of anger. In other words, why do people struggle with anger, and then how do we help them deal with it? Guess what? We got five different answers as to the source and solution to the problem! The answers were the typical range of brain chemistry, unmet needs, and family upbringing (environment). The treatment plans then matched what the therapists perceived the problem to be.

8 Even some secular psychologies use this terminology. Psychologist Paul Vitz quotes Jungian practitioner Jolande Jacobi as describing Carl Jung’s psychology as “a way of salvation.” Vitz, Psychology as Religion, 3.

9 “That gracious and continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which He delivers the justified sinner from the pollution of sin, renews his whole nature in the image of God, and enables him to perform good works.” Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 532. I will explain in more detail how this fits into a biblical counseling methodology toward the end of the chapter.

10 You can actually breakdown the psychologies as individual belief systems by using more S’s. Every psychology has a “source of authority” (epistemology). Each has a view of the problem to be solved, that is, “sin” (etiology). They then propose a “salvation” (the solution to the problem) and a methodology or “sanctification.” The psychologies also have “support systems” like mental hospitals and universities to teach their viewpoint. Finally, each psychology does apologetics or “sparring” to defend their understanding of people’s problems. This sparring takes place in various journals and research studies as articles are written to demonstrate why this approach to counseling is superior to others. I am thankful for Dr. David Powlison introducing me to this type of thinking; he is the director of The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF). He is also the editor of The Journal of Biblical Counseling. If you are interested in gaining more insight into how Biblical Counseling views people and problems, this journal and David’s writings in particular would be a great resource.

11 There are many therapies, e.g., Family Systems Therapy, and other psychodynamic approaches.

12 Barber, Comfortably Numb, 141.

13 Deacon, “The Biomedical Model of Mental Disorder,” 846-61.

14 Karl Menninger shows the logical outcome of this thinking as it applies to responsibility and criminal behavior. “If one can be treated effectively by medical science for a propensity toward certain behavior, it would be absurd to punish him for this same manifestation…. Diseases are not crimes. Hence, no matter how reprehensible or offensive a piece of behavior may be, it cannot be called a crime if it is a symptom of a disease. A man may murder his best friend or his worst enemy during a delirium and yet commit no crime…. The demonstrated presence in the offender at the time of his criminal act of a condition called ‘mental disease’ which impairs discretion and control cancels the legal guiltiness of the offender.” Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin?, 74-75.

15 Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 3.

16 Staub, The Psychology of Good and Evil, 52. It is not the purpose of this chapter to fully analyze secular views. I am only trying to demonstrate how essential a biblical view of humanity is for the social sciences. If the reader would like another perspective on “needs” theory read Ed Welch’s article, “Who Are We: Needs, Longings, and the Image of God in Man.” In this article he is answering the following questions: Where are needs in the Bible? How should we think biblically about needs? If we are image-bearers and have needs, are we saying that God too has needs?

17 There are many worship words that describe what is going on inside of humans. For example, we are devoted, hope in, serve, bow down to, love, fear, and treasure many things above the Lord.

18 In fact, the secular psychologies would not agree on a common human nature. As we have seen from just three examples, there are multiple views of what is wrong with humans and why evil exists. A biblical anthropology would tell us there is a common human nature. Consider Jonathan Edwards’ argument: “If it be observed, that those trees, and all other trees of the kind, wherever planted, and in all soils, countries, climates and seasons, and however cultivated and managed, still bear ill fruit, from year to year, and in all ages, it is good evidence of the evil nature of the tree…. And if we argue in like manner from what appears among men, ’tis easy to determine, whether the universal sinfulness of mankind, and their all sinning immediately, as soon as capable of it, and all sinning continually…, in all ages, and all places, and under all possible circumstances, against means and motives inexpressibly manifold and great, and in the utmost conceivable variety, be from a permanent internal great cause.” Piper, A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, 180-81.

19 Heart is defined as “one’s inner self, seat of feeling and emotions; inclination, disposition, will, reason, mind in general.” Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1:514-15.

20 Bowling, “לב,” vol. 1:466.

21 I first heard the term “Genesis 3 hangover” from Dr. George Zemek teaching on apologetics at The Master’s Seminary.

22 In another place Beale writes, “There is no explicit vocabulary describing Adam’s sin as idol worship, but the idea appears inextricably bound up with his transgression. But how is this discernible? Recall that idol worship is revering anything other than God. At the least Adam’s allegiance shifted from God to himself and probably also to Satan, since he comes to resemble the serpent’s character in some ways” (133). It is intriguing to think about the implications of resembling the serpent. Was it part of Satan’s strategy to make Adam and Eve his own “image-bearers,” instead of fulfilling their original design of being image-bearers of the true and living God? Beale, We Become What We Worship, 127, 133.

23 A long list could be compiled of phrases from Scripture that tell us what we are to do in relationship with God. Each one of these has counseling implications. For example, what do you devote yourself to? what do you “sing the praises of?” where do you bow?

24 There are hundreds of other references to the heart (e.g., Gen 6:5; Isa 29:13; Mark 7:21-23; Heb 4:12).

25 For one understanding of how this verse precisely relates to the believer, see my article “Jeremiah 17:9—Is It True of the Believer?” at http://biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/blogs/2013/07/11/jeremiah-179-is-it-true-of-the-believer.

26 Behm, “Heart,” 3:612.

27 Powlison, “Revisiting Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair,” 57. This seminal article has shaped the thinking of much of the biblical counseling world.

28 Berkhouwer, Sin: Studies in Dogmatics, 274.

29 We are about to see a literal list of the consequences of sin. If the consequences are literal, why would the cause be metaphorical? In other words, if the effects of sin are literal (which is self-evident from daily experience) it makes sense that a literal Adam and Eve were the cause.

30 Please note that the word in Hebrew for “desire” (Gen 3:6) is translated “covet” in the tenth commandment (Exod 20:17). Can we conclude that Moses (the author of both) saw the connection?

31 “Psychodynamic” would refer to processes going on internally that are impacting the external.

32 Powlison, “Revisiting Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair,” 44.

33 The term “disorder” is the current terminology of the DSM-5. I like this terminology, since the Lord can bring order out of disorder.

34 The rich young ruler is another example of the Lord going after a heart theme—wealth and materialism (Luke 18:18-25).

35 This is the title of an insightful sermon by a Scottish pastor named Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). I would also remind the reader that you can take any worship word (e.g., “faith,” “hope,” “obey”) and think how it can be useful for reorienting the heart and thus deal with counseling issues.

36 The full quote is in a context discussing the theology of Jonathan Edwards: “In other words, if God’s glory is the only all-satisfying reality in the universe, then to try to do good for people, without aiming to show them the glory of God and ignite in them a delight in God, would be ‘like treating fever with cold packs when you have penicillin.’ ” Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory, 36.

37 I find it interesting to read the speculations of secular researchers on the source of evil. They do not believe in a sinful nature but still have to explain the obvious—evil behavior. An example is, “Perhaps our dark side [evil] comes from our evolutionary heritage, in which aggression ensured our survival. Maybe it is the result of faulty wiring in our brains. The depletion of certain brain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, has been found to parallel aggressive behavior.” Simon, Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream, 3.

38 A syndrome is defined by Lilienfeld, Smith, and Watts as “typically constellations of signs and symptoms that co-occur across individuals. In syndromes neither pathology nor etiology is well understood…. A disorder is the next rung on the ladder and is understood as …[s]yndromes that cannot be readily explained by other conditions [a specific cause cannot be determined].” Compare these to how a disease is defined. Diseases are “disorders in which pathology and etiology are reasonably well understood.” Then the authors make this startling statement: “With the possible exception of Alzheimer’s disease and a handful of other organic conditions the diagnoses in the present system of psychiatric classifications are almost exclusively syndromes or, in rare cases disorders…. This fact is a sobering reminder that the pathology in most cases of psychopathology is largely unknown, and their etiology is poorly understood.” Lilienfeld, Smith, and Watts, “Issues in Diagnosis,” 2-3.

39 Scientism is a term being used to describe the tendency to give science an inappropriate amount of authority. It is defined as “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities).” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientism (accessed January 31, 2014).

40 Schweitzer, Engaging with Keller, 200-201.

41 I have tried to nuance my understanding of this in my book “Caution: Counseling Systems Are Belief Systems,” 159-76.

42 Pierre, “Mental Illness and the Church,” I am including an extended portion here to demonstrate the theological nuance that is needed:

“Various folks have been pointing out the need for the church to pull its head out of the sand on the issue of mental health care. By this, we can be saying something very good or something not-so-good. Let’s start with the not-so-good. We should not mean that the church should just accept that extreme emotional, mental, or behavioral troubles are merely physical problems with physical solutions. Of all people, Christians must insist that we were created spiritual beings with the dignity of moral agency. Our thoughts and actions are not merely the product of our biology. We have freedom to act out of our nature as the image of God. And so, wisdom for living from the Word of God is always necessary in the ongoing care of a person, which includes addressing mental, emotional, and behavioral troubles.

“Now let’s get to the good. What we should mean by the church pulling its head out of the sand is that Christians should acknowledge that the corruption of the fall warps not just our souls, but our bodies as well. The influence of bodily corruption on the soul is powerful, and the church needs to recognize those suffering under it in a way that points them to help—both body and soul.

“Extreme mental, emotional, or behavioral problems are not either spiritual or physical. They are both, though we recognize a sliding scale of influence. Some troubles may be more neurologically engrained, thus requiring closer medical attention. Others may be less so. But, whether it’s more or less, a spiritual heart is always actively in need of the grace of the Lord Jesus….

“On one hand, medical intervention, including psychotropic medication, does not heal the ultimate problem of a person’s disordered desires, beliefs, or choices. Medical intervention does not reverse the results of sin and corruption. Only the power of the gospel of Jesus does this. Visiting a doctor apart from considering how your spiritual responses are involved in your condition will not lead to an ultimate solution.

“On the other hand, medical intervention often allays the effects of sin’s corruption of the body, including the brain. And so we should affirm the value of medical treatment and should encourage our people to seek medical attention when necessary. The need for medical intervention is not in itself anti-spiritual. Visiting a doctor does not necessarily mean you are failing to trust the Lord.”

43 This story is used with the permission of the counselee. If there is any similarity between this story and others, it is coincidental. It should not surprise us, though, that it sounds familiar, because of common sins and common responses to being sinned against by others. We are all cut from the same cloth.

44 Rid of My Disgrace, by Justin S. Holcomb and Lindsey A. Holcomb, has been used in the lives of many who have been sexually abused.

45 Brief summary sent to me via e-mail.

46 Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin?, 177. [The Master’s College (2017). (p. 246). What Happened in the Garden: The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]

 

Chapter 11

“He Made Them Male And Female”—The Image of God, Essentialism, and the Evangelical Gender Debate

 

Jo Suzuki

 

“that you may learn…not to go beyond what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6).

Some time ago, a grader for the college entrance exam told me that he encountered a curious essay. The prompt for the essay was, “Discuss the Women’s Movement in the United States.” He had been reading papers that began by explaining the civil rights movement of the 1960s or the issue of inequality in pay between equally qualified men and women, but this paper’s opening sentence was this: “American women tend to swing their hips when they walk.”

The issue of gender has been a hot topic for quite some time. What is the nature of masculinity and femininity? What are the masculine and the feminine roles at home or in the society? Do the male brain and the female brain operate differently? Does academic writing privilege males and exclude the distinctly female style of writing? The gender-related issues seem endless. In evangelical Christianity, the situation is the same.

As evangelicals, we distinguish ourselves by our belief in the inerrancy and the authority of the Scriptures. One thing the contemporary evangelical debate on the gender issue has taught us is that this belief itself does not guarantee that we can agree on how we read the Bible. It must first be interpreted. Unfortunately, this act of interpretation involves us, the interpreters, who necessarily bring in our own personal, cultural, and historical biases into the reading of the passages. The conflict in interpretation unwittingly touches these sensitive nerves and elicits strong emotional reactions.

It is, therefore, no surprise that the gender issue is one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in contemporary evangelical Christianity. For the last two decades, the two major camps, complementarians and egalitarians,[1] have engaged in heated exchanges, arguing for or against their respective positions in a civil and not so civil way. All the passages that pertain to this issue in the Bible have been exegeted and re-exegeted ad nauseam. Organizations and counter-organizations have been formed to promote the respective positions. So why does yet another article need to be written about it, particularly, in a book that deals with the historicity of Adam and Eve and their Fall? It is because the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 (1:27 in particular) is the key to the gender debate: only by taking the Genesis account of the Creation and the Fall of Adam and Eve in the most simple, literal, and historical way,[2] I contend, can we have the view of gender that God desires New Testament believers to have.

Cultural Beliefs and the Genesis Narrative

 

It is not difficult to realize that the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is central to the biblical discussion of gender. Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. thus writes, “One way or the other, all the additional Biblical texts on manhood and womanhood must be interpreted consistently with these chapters. They lay the very foundation of Biblical manhood and womanhood.”[3] The problem is that the interpretation of these passages (or any other passages of the Scriptures) does not happen in a vacuum: we all have the tendency to read the Scriptures from the prevailing ideologies of the day and reread our meta-narratives into the simple biblical narratives to make them say what we want them to say. Kevin Giles, in his forward to a collection of essays written mostly from the egalitarian perspective, thus writes, “Profound changes in how people see the world always force believers to rethink their theology. When a cultural worldview changes Christians have to distinguish between what they believe as those seeking to be guided by the Bible and what they tacitly believe as those living in a given culture.”[4]

Giles goes on to give three examples that illustrate how our tacit beliefs have influenced our reading of the Bible. The first is the belief in the flat earth: “When everyone thought the world was flat, theologians read the Bible to teach this”; the second, the geocentric cosmology: “When everyone thought sun revolved around the earth, the Bible was read to teach this.” The third and the last example he gives, however, is a problematic one: “When everyone thought the world was created in seven literal days about 6000 years ago, Christians read the Bible to teach this.”[5]

Let us look closely at these three examples. The first two illustrate how the prevailing scientific beliefs of the day were read into the simple, phenomenal language of the Biblical narratives to make them conform to their worldview. The last one is the reverse: The “literal” reading came first. Then the evolutionary hypothesis became the prevailing belief system. Now the literal reading of the Scriptures appears ridiculous to people today, because the “cultural worldview” that we tacitly embrace has conditioned us to think that the world is billions of years old.[6] Giles ironically reveals his own tacit belief, which he effectively reads into the biblical text.

It is interesting to note here that the background of the above example is the conflict between the literal reading of the Genesis Creation narrative and the cultural (or scientific) belief regarding the age of the earth. The issue discussed in this chapter also revolves around the reading of Genesis and cultural beliefs. When it comes to the view on gender relationship, no detailed argument is necessary to show that the dominant cultural belief of our time is that of egalitarianism. The question then is this: how has this belief affected our reading of the Bible? Did it have a positive effect in helping us break away from the problematic views on gender that the past generations held (as Giles suggests), or did it have a negative effect in causing us to twist the Bible to reflect it? My answer is “yes.” This chapter argues that both the current egalitarian belief and the traditional patriarchal one have caused us to misread the gender relationship depicted in the Bible, because they both share the same underlying philosophical position known as “essentialism.” Once we accept the essentialized notion of gender, we project it to the biblical text and override the simple narrative account with its meta-narrative. Only by reading the Genesis Creation narrative literally and historically can we escape cultural and philosophical biases to see what the Bible truly teaches about gender relationship.

In the discussion below, I will first examine the conflict between essentialism and its polar opposite position, constructionism, in the general academic (i.e., nontheological) gender debate and discuss its implications for the gender debate among the evangelicals. I will then list and discuss the general reasons I believe that the Bible does teach the role of male headship within marriage and church, but not on the basis of the essentialized notion of gender. Finally, I will closely examine the “image of God” statement in Genesis 1:27 to argue that its literal reading reveals this relationship to be a reflection of the voluntary roles that the Persons within the triune Godhead assumed and not based on the intrinsic nature of the sexes.

Essentialism Versus Constructionism in the Academic Gender Debate

 

Gender Versus Sex

It is often said that when it comes to discussing the general cultural hot-topics, evangelicals are always about ten to twenty years behind. Such is the case with the gender debate. Although the term “gender” has long existed in the English language, its use as a construct distinct from biological “sex” is a relatively recent development.[7] According to the gender theorist Stevi Jackson, “[t]he term gender has been used since the early 1970s to denote culturally constructed femininity and masculinity as opposed to biological sex differences.”[8] Jackson traces the origin of this distinction in the works of the psychologist Robert Stoller, which the sociologist Ann Oakley borrowed and popularized in her 1972 work Sex, Gender and Society. Jackson writes:

Oakley suggested that gender is not a direct product of biological sex. She defined sex as the anatomical and physiological characteristics which signify biological maleness and femaleness and gender as socially constructed masculinity and femininity. Masculinity and femininity are defined not by biology but by social, cultural and psychological attributes which are acquired through becoming a man or a woman in a particular society at a particular time.[9]

Here, Jackson is echoing Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement originally made in French in 1949: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”[10]

Why then does this distinction need to be made? If masculinity and femininity are biological, then they are universal and cannot be altered. If they are cultural, then we can alter them by changing our culture. Seeing the problems of inequalities between men and women, De Beauvoir, Oakley, and other academic and social activists made us aware that this problem is not natural but cultural. Thus, it can and should be remedied.

Essentialism Versus Constructionism

A positive development of becoming aware of the sex/gender distinction is that we are now able to break away from the deterministic view of masculinity and femininity known as “essentialism.” Diana Fuss defines it as follows: “Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the ‘whatness’ of a given entity.”[11] When it comes to the gender issue, essentialists do not really see the distinction between sex and gender. For them, masculinity and femininity (i.e., how men and women think and behave) are not cultural but the universal and invariable property of men and women. Their essential nature determines the way they act and think. One of the most notable (or infamous) examples of the essentialist view of gender in recent years is Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae. In the preface, Paglia affirms her biologically deterministic view of sex difference: “My stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences is sure to cause controversy.”[12] She thus attributes the history of male dominance in the Western world on male physiology:

My explanation for the male domination of art, science, and politics, an indisputable fact of history, is based on an analogy between sexual physiology and aesthetics. I will argue that all cultural achievement is a projection, a swerve into Apollonian transcendence, and that men are anatomically destined to be projectors.[13]

If this is indeed the case, then there is no possibility of gender equality.

There is, however, a position to the polar opposite of essentialism called “constructionism.” Fuss writes:

Constructionism, articulated in opposition to essentialism and concerned with its philosophical refutation, insists that essence is itself a historical construction. Constructionists take the refusal of essence as the inaugural moment of their own projects and proceed to demonstrate the way previously assumed self-evident kinds (like “man” or “woman”) are in fact the effects of complicated discursive practices.[14]

Naturally, most feminists take this position. One of the most extreme constructionist positions is Donna Haraway’s “cyborg feminism.” In her highly influential “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway sees that, because of technological advances, we are no longer bound by the natural category of sexes but are able to modify and augment our bodies to seek new possible ways of existence.[15] She thus concludes her manifesto: “[I] would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”[16]

To those that have studied the intellectual history of the West, this opposition between essentialism and constructionism in the gender theory should look familiar. It is just another form of the ancient Sophistic discussion of physis (nature) and nomos (culture/convention), which has developed into the long-standing conflict between philosophy and rhetoric.[17] William Barrett presents another name for the same conflict, this time, the opposition between essentialism and existentialism. Barrett notes that the essentialism is deeply rooted in Western science and philosophy. In fact, it originates from the thinking of ancient Greeks that culminated in the works of Plato. Moreover, he states that in this conflict essentialism usually is the victor:

The history of Western philosophy has been one long conflict, sometimes explicit but more often hidden and veiled, between essentialism and existentialism. And it would seem also to be the case that, to the degree to which this history takes its beginnings from Plato, essentialism has always come out on top.[18]

Why does Barrett say that the essentialism “has always come out on top”? At least, when we examine the field of contemporary feminist theory, is it not apparent that most theorists are anti-essentialists/social-constructionists? Fuss, however, makes an interesting statement: “My point here, and throughout this book, is that social constructionisms do not definitively escape the pull of essentialism, that indeed essentialism subtends the very idea of constructionism.”[19] In other words, even though the contemporary feminist theorists appear on the surface as constructionists, when we examine their theories closely, we will discover that there are hidden essentialisms in them. Therefore, Barrett is correct in that essentialism eventually wins out.

What then exactly is this “pull” Fuss refers to, and what makes it so difficult for us to escape from it? There are at least three possible answers:(1) our innate tendency, (2) our desire for political power, and (3) the nature of constructionism itself.

The “Pull” of Essentialism

Our innate human tendency favors essentialism. According to the cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom, our basic understanding of the world itself comes from the essentialist perspective. In fact, Bloom suspects that essentialism could be built into us: “We are natural-born essentialists.”[20] Children in general have a strong tendency for essentialization, ascribing common hidden properties to similar objects. For example, Bloom writes, “If nine-month-olds find that a box makes a sound when you touch it, they expect other boxes that look the same to make the same sound.”[21] We thus continue to maintain this childhood essentialist tendency into our quest for knowledge.

Our desire for political power also favors essentialism. Essentialism often serves those who are in the dominant political position to enforce and maintain the power structure. It is, therefore, too tempting even for social constructionists not to embrace an essentialist position. Bloom writes, “In the domains of race and sex and caste, essentialism is a myth invented by the powerful to convince people that these social categories are natural and immutable.”[22] One example of this is the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century complementarians.

The term “complementarian” is now best known for Wayne Grudem and John Piper’s use in the contemporary evangelical gender debate. However, the same term appears long before this in the gender debate among French Enlightenment thinkers around the time of the French Revolution. Londa Schiebinger notes that the debate first began when they faced the question of the women’s position in society. Schiebinger quotes the Huguenot physician Louis de Jaucourt: “[I]t appears at first difficult to demonstrate that the authority of the husband comes from nature because that authority is contrary to the natural equality of all people.”[23] Jaucourt eventually resorts to the argument denying the “natural equality.”

Subsequent thinkers, however, could not ignore the inconsistency between their egalitarian belief and the women’s limited place in society. Ideologically, they should have affirmed the equality of the sexes and allowed the women to participate in democracy. Their desire to preserve the social hierarchy, however, won out; and they sought to resolve the dilemma in the form of the theory of sexual complementarity. According to this theory, “man and woman are not physical and moral equals but complementary opposites…. Henceforth, women were not to be viewed merely as inferior to men but as fundamentally different from and thus incomparable to, men.”[24] They explained the complementary nature of the sexes by essentializing their nature: Men are rational and belong to the public sphere, whereas women are nurturers and belong to the private sphere of home. This is how essentialism is used to legitimate the traditional division of labor and preserve the social hierarchy.

Finally, the nature of constructionism itself forces it to revert back into essentialism. The point that Fuss makes throughout her book is that, no matter what kind of constructionist position one employs, there always is a hidden essentialism in it.[25] When constructionists attempt to show how gender is constructed, for example, by its cultural environment, they must essentialize the cultural environment itself in order to describe how it is done. Thus they slip right back into essentialism from which they attempt to escape. Stanley Fish puts this as follows: “Indeed, any claim in which the notion of situatedness is said to be a lever that allows us to get a purchase on situations is finally a claim to have escaped situatedness, and is therefore nothing more or less than a reinvention of foundationalism [i.e., essentialism] by the very form of thought that has supposedly reduced it to ruins.”[26]

Essentialism in the Evangelical Gender Debate

When we look at the contemporary evangelical gender debate, we can easily recognize the influence of essentialism. Grudem and Piper’s complementarian position restricts the male headship strictly within marriage and church. However, not everyone who affirms the male headship places this restriction but extends it beyond these two spheres. Willard Swartley thus describes one of the tenets of what he calls the hierarchical position as follows: “Women are expected to be subordinate to men—in the home, church, and society” [my emphasis].[27] By extending the male headship role and the female subordination role to society in general, this position universalizes the masculine and the feminine role. Thus it takes the essentialist position regarding gender.

What about the evangelical egalitarians? In her statement about the goal of the organization Christians for Biblical Equality, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis writes,

The goal of evangelical feminism is that men and women be allowed to serve God as individuals, according to their own unique gifts rather than according to a culturally predetermined personality slot called “Christian manhood” or “Christian womanhood.”[28]

On the first glance, Groothuis’s statement looks like a constructionist statement, since she characterizes Christian manhood/womanhood as “culturally predetermined.” However, in denying the male headship anywhere, she essentializes the egalitarian nature of the sexes and makes it the universal standard for every Christian. Her case is a classic example of what Fuss and Fish describe as the anti-essentialists falling back into essentialism.

In sum, we first looked at how the concept of “gender” came to be understood apart from the biological “sex.” Then we examined the two philosophical positions regarding the nature of gender: essentialism, which views masculinity/femininity as a universal and invariant characteristic of every male/female, and constructionism, which views masculinity/femininity as a local and cultural construct. We then saw that in the essentialist-constructionist conflict, essentialism usually comes out on top. Finally, we saw the influence of essentialism in the evangelical gender debate, especially how the “hierarchal” position essentializes the male headship and the egalitarian position essentializes the notion of equality.

We must now turn to the Bible and examine what it says about the nature of gender and the gender role in the light of the above discussions. Specifically, let us deal with the question: Does the scriptural evidence call for the essentialized view of gender?

The Biblical View of Gender and Essentialism

 

Regarding gender roles, I believe that the Bible clearly teaches male headship, but not from the essentialist position. In the discussion below , I will discuss four reasons in support of this position.

First, the biblical command for the male headship is not universal, but local and specific. In 1 Timothy 2:12-13, the Apostle Paul writes, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” The context of this passage makes it clear that this command is restricted to the context of the New Testament local church and not society in general. Also, in Ephesians 5:22-24, Paul commands, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” Thus he limits the scope of the wife’s submission only to her own husband, not men in general. Male headship only applies within church and within marriage.

Second, the biblical command for male headship is not permanent. This is easy to see in the marital relationship, because death annuls marriage. In Romans 7:2, Paul uses this principle to illustrate our death to the Law: “For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.” Does the marital relationship continue after the resurrection? Our Lord clearly answers this question in his reply to the Sadducees in Matthew 22:23-33. In this passage, the Sadducees attempt to entrap Him by pointing out the possible complications in the levirate marriage custom after the resurrection: When seven brothers had the same woman for a wife consecutively, whose wife would she be? “But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven’” (Matt 22:29-30). So then, the wife’s submission to her husband ends at the death of either one and will not continue after this. The question regarding the male headship within church, however, is less clear. The phrase “neither marry nor are given in marriage” in the above passage indicates that the reproductive function of our physical body is no longer needed in the glorified, resurrected state: we will no longer be differentiated on the basis of the (biological) sex differences.[29] Therefore, it is most natural to assume that the male headship within the local church should no longer exist after the resurrection. Further, if the headship within marriage is not permanent, there is no reason to assume that the one within church is permanent either.

Third, the biblical command for the male headship is not based on the nature of sex differences. What does the Bible teach us about the (biological) sex and (cultural) gender distinction? Genesis 1:27 clearly tells us that God created two separate sexes: male and female. What about the gender? If the gender is socially constructed, it was still being formed in the Garden. (Tragically, however, the Fall took place to mar the formation of what could have been the perfect and harmonious gender relationship.) Nevertheless, the Bible does specify one aspect of the gender relationship at the time when man and woman were created: male headship. As was discussed above, 1 Timothy 2:13 states that the command for the male headship in church is based on the order of creation: that man was created first, and not on how they were created. In other words, the Bible does not ground the male headship on the essentialized nature of masculinity and femininity. It is therefore wrong to assume that men are biologically programmed to be leaders and women, followers.

Unfortunately, many commentators of old have succumbed to the essentialist trap. John Calvin, for instance, makes the following statement in his commentary on 1 Timothy 2:12:

[W]oman by nature (that is, by the ordinary law of God) is formed to obey; for gunaikokratia (the government of women) has always been regarded by all wise persons as a monstrous thing; and, therefore, so to speak, it will be a mingling of heaven and earth, if women usurp the right to teach [my emphasis].[30]

Again, he comments on 2:13:

Now Moses shews that the woman was created afterwards, in order that she might be a kind of appendage to the man; and that she was joined to the man on the express condition that she should be at hand to render obedience to him. (Gen. ii. 21.) Since, therefore, God did not create two chiefs of equal power, but added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of that order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed [my emphasis].[31]

Calvin’s comments are a great reminder for all of us that, no matter how great a theologian one is, we are still very much a victim to the cultural values of our day and cannot escape from our tendency to read them into the interpretations of the Scriptures.

Another approach that can fall into the essentialist trap is a biological approach, which takes the scientific findings about the nature of sex differences and reads them into the Scriptures. Having examined physiological and neural differences between the sexes, Gregg Johnson gives the following conclusion:

We should not conclude automatically that because men and women may have different gifts, traditional roles are the only way they may be expressed. Yet it seems very significant that these different gifts correspond very well to the different roles given to men and women in Scripture…. These unique abilities, coupled with the traditional roles, have served mankind well and enabled us to fulfill the commission to multiply and fill the earth very efficiently.[32]

Johnson, however, is careful in presenting his view. At the beginning of his study, he offers two cautions. First, many of the findings are based on animal studies and cannot be conclusively applied to humans. Second, the findings are “averages and patterns that cannot be completely universalized.”[33] Here, it is important to make the distinction between sex and gender. It is one thing to present the evidences about sex differences, but translating them directly into gender role distinctions is highly problematic. The gender theorist Judith Butler explains the mind-boggling complexity involved in the gender formation as follows:

Gender is not exactly what one “is” nor is it precisely what one “has.” Gender is the apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes. To assume that gender always and exclusively means the matrix of the “masculine” and “feminine” is precisely to miss the critical point that the production of that coherent binary is contingent, that it comes at a cost, and that those permutations of gender which do not fit the binary are as much a part of gender as its most normative instance.[34]

To reiterate, the male headship in family and in church is a specific biblical command and not a universal biological necessity or inclination.

Lastly, the biblical command for the male headship reflects the inter-Trinitarian (in particular, the Father and the Son) relationship. If indeed the male headship mirrors the role relationship within the Godhead, then it certainly is not based on the essence of the Persons within Trinity, because, as one being, the three persons’ essence is the same. (Regarding the nature of the Second Person of the Godhead, the Nicene Creed states that He is one substance [homoousion] with the Father.)[35] To elaborate this point, I must now turn to the key text that explains the biblical gender relationship: “So God created man in his own image … male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).

Interpretive History of Genesis 1:27

 

The key passage in understanding the Biblical view of sex/gender is Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” [my emphasis]. Why did God specifically state here that His image involved both male and female? If we understand what the “image of God” is, then we can also have a much better idea about the biblical view of the nature of masculinity and femininity.

Not surprisingly, the history of the interpretation of the “image of God” shows that it too was affected by the essentialisms of the day. When we examine the history of the interpretation of Genesis 1:27, we can see that what was considered to be the essence of the human is often read backwards into the understanding of the image of God. In his article “Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God,” Bruce Ware divides the historical understandings of the phrase “the image of God” into three groups:[36]

The structural views, which include:

Irenaeus’s view that it is our reason and volition (as opposed to our holiness and spirituality)

Augustine’s view that it is our memory, intellect, and will, mirroring the triune nature of God

Aquinas’ view that it is our rationality

Calvin’s view that it is our soul with its capacities (however diminished after the Fall) of reason and will.

The relational views, which include:

Karl Barth’s view that it is the social/relational nature of human life

Emil Brunner’s view that it is both our “formal” capacity to know and to love God and their “material” manifestation in our actual knowing and loving God

The functional views, which include Leonard Verduin’s and D. J. A. Clines’ view that the image of God refers to our function as rulers over the creation.

Ware goes on to point out the problems of these approaches:

One of the main problems with much of the traditional understandings (particularly with the variations of the structural view) is that these proposals were led more by speculation regarding how men are like God and unlike animals than by careful attention to indications in the text of Scripture itself as to what may constitute this likeness.[37]

It is interesting to note that all the structural views involve some reference to human rationality, as I have emphasized in the above. In addition, they all do not deal with the fact that God’s image in Genesis 1:27 includes both male and female. Also, the structural views have a significantly older history: Iranaeus is the oldest, dating to the second century AD, and Calvin, the youngest, dating to the sixteenth century. We can very well suspect here that they were all under the obvious influence of the essentialist thinking inherited from the ancient Greeks, which equated masculinity with human rationality.

Not being satisfied with any of the “traditional understandings,” Ware himself, following Anthony Hoekema and Clines, takes the view he calls “functional holism,” which attempts to combine all three views: “[A]ll three are needed, the structural serves the purpose of the functional being carried out in relationship” [his emphasis].[38] Yet the long definition he gives is rather ambiguous:

The image of God in man as functional holism means that God made human beings, both male and female, to be created and finite representations (images of God) of God’s own nature, that in relationship with Him and each other they might be His representatives (imaging God) in carrying out the responsibilities He has given to them. In this sense, we are images of God in order to image God and His purposes in the ordering of our lives and the carrying out of our God-given responsibilities. [his emphases][39]

If we are to come up with the all-inclusive definition of the image of God, we may have to tolerate this definition. But if we want to understand Genesis 1:27, then we must answer two questions: first, what specifically is “God’s own nature”? Second, what exactly are the “responsibilities” we are to carry out? The answer to the latter question is easy: as Ware himself points out in his discussion of Clines’s position, it is to rule the creation.[40] God repeats His command to rule the creation twice in the immediate context: the first time in 1:26b, “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”; and the second time in 1:28b, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The first question about the nature of God, however, brings us back to the same problem that confronted the structural views—that is, we are tempted again to essentialize human nature and read it back to the nature of God. Is there any way to understand the nature of the image of God without falling into the essentialist trap and reading non-biblical understandings of human nature into Genesis 1:27? I believe there is, and to do this we must revisit the relational view.

Non-Essentialist Reading of Genesis 1:27

 

There is a lot to like about the relational view. First and foremost, it seeks to understand the phrase “image of God” strictly from the context of the passage. Ware writes, “Clearly we should affirm with Karl Barth that our understanding of the image of God should be directed as fully as possible by the text of Scripture.”[41] Both Ware and Frame nevertheless object to the relational view because other references to the image of God (such as in Genesis 9:6) only refer to one man and not to male and female as a unit.[42] If indeed the image of God refers to the social and relational nature of the humans as represented in the phrase “male and female,” we see it only in Genesis 1:27 and nowhere else.

I believe, however, that this is not a sufficient enough reason to dismiss the relational view. The image of God reference in Genesis 1:27 is uniquely different from other references. Here, it refers to the pre-Fall humanity. The image of God in Genesis 9:6, in contrast, refers to the post-Fall (post-Flood) humanity. It is exegetically conceivable that the reason the “male and female” aspect of the image of God does not appear after 1:27 is related to this change in the human condition (as we will see below). As Clines points out (as does Ware), the aspect of “rulership” is at the core of the notion of the image of God.[43] Yet how the “rulership” manifested before sin tainted humanity must have been different from after the Fall. The notion of the image of God is broad enough to emphasize different aspects of God’s character within the common core reference about His “rulership.” In the following section, I will examine the context of Genesis 1:27 to modify the relational view and argue that in this narrative Moses emphasizes one aspect of the image of God by using the phrase “male and female”: the unity and role differences within the Godhead as reflected in the male-female relationship.

So what does the immediate context of Genesis 1:27 say? Genesis 1:26 begins with this: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ ” [my emphasis]. The New Testament believers can readily identify these repeated plural references that God uses about himself as a reference to His triune nature. Moreover, there is one other passage in Genesis where we encounter God yet again using “us” to refer to Himself. Genesis 11:6-7 reads, “And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech’ ” [my emphasis].

What do these two passages have in common? They both have something to do with the unity within the interpersonal relationships. Genesis 1 deals with male and female reflecting the triune nature of the godhead, and Genesis 11 deals with the people uniting themselves under one language to build the tower, obviously against God’s will. If these textual implications are indeed correct, the image of God is more than just the social nature of humans as Barth suggests.[44] It refers to the unity of the interpersonal relationship that a husband and a wife ought to have had in marriage before the Fall.

The emphasis on the marital unity is abundant in the immediate context. The entire creation of Adam and Eve account emphasizes the unity of the first couple. Genesis 1:27 sets the stage: humans are created as a male/female pair. Then the more detailed account that follows in Genesis 2 specifically emphasizes the close union of the husband and the wife, first, by the manner in which Eve was created, second, by Adam’s exclamation upon seeing Eve, and finally, by the institution of marriage. In 2:21, God takes a part of Adam to form Eve, rather than using more dust and breathing into it like He did with Adam, emphasizing the unified nature of the two. Adam’s response to seeing Eve also emphasizes the unity between them: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23b). And the institution of marriage indicates that the married couple forms a closer unit than the parent-child relationship: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

Not only the Creation account, but also the account of the Fall in Genesis 3 (in particular, the curse proclaimed against the wife in 3:16b) emphasizes the unity of the married couple, albeit in a negative way. In her classic study of the “woman’s desire” in 3:16b, Susan T. Foh concludes:

God’s words in Genesis 3:16b destroy the harmony of marriage, for the rule of the husband, part of God’s original intent for marriage, is not made more tolerable by the wife’s desire for husband, but less tolerable, because she rebels against his leadership and tries to usurp it.[45]

This explains why the image of God in the sense of the unity between husband and wife is not repeated again after Genesis 1:27 in the Scriptures: it is forever broken because of the Fall.

If the image of God in Genesis 1:27 refers to inter-Trinitarian unity and the pre-Fall marriage relationship, this carries enormous implications for the issue of biblical gender. As we saw above, the command for the male headship predates the Fall and is based on the order of Creation (1 Tim 2:13). If the marriage relationship mirrors the inter-Trinitarian relationship, then the difference of roles in the marriage relationship also mirrors the roles within the Godhead. Wayne Grudem thus writes:

In fact, the idea of headship and submission did not even begin with the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2.…It began in the relationship between the Father and Son in the Trinity. … It has always existed in the eternal nature of God Himself. And in this most basic of all authority relationships, authority is not based on gifts or ability (for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal in attributes and perfections). It is just there. [Grudem’s emphasis][46]

Both the gender-role difference, just like the role difference within the Trinity, is not based on the essence: every male is not born to lead and female to follow. We know very well, both from history and from personal experience, that some women are much more gifted in leadership than some men. Yet the Scriptures explicitly command these gifted women voluntarily to restrict their gifts and assume the submissive role within marriage and within church. Why does God give us such a seemingly unfair command? Is not our God the god of justice and equity? We see the answer in how the Son of God dealt with His role. Philippians 2:6-8 says:

[The Son], though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a [servant], being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus Christ was equal in essence with God the Father, but He voluntarily restricted His equality and voluntarily took on the lowly form of a servant to accomplish our redemption by dying on the cross! When Christian women (no matter how gifted they are) voluntarily restrict their freedom and assume the submissive role in marriage and in church, they reflect the humility of our Lord. This act is far more precious in God’s eyes than any exercise of their leadership gifts.

Yet there still remains the issue of fairness and equity. Regarding the women’s role, Grudem writes, “[S]ubmission to a rightful authority is a noble virtue. It is a privilege.”[47] Regarding the nature of men’s roles, Ortlund makes a useful distinction between male headship and male domination. He describes the former, “In the partnership of two spiritually equal human beings, man and woman, the man bears the primary responsibility to lead the partnership in a God-glorifying direction,” and the latter, “[T]he assertion of the man’s will over the woman’s will, heedless of her spiritual equality, her rights, and her value.”[48] These statements do mitigate the implications of unfairness in the biblical gender roles, but do not eliminate them. Still then we must ask: Is not our God the god of impartiality?

The answer, again, is found in the role that Jesus assumed in the Trinity. The role of Sonship involved not only His voluntary submission and humiliation but also a reward. The Philippians passage quoted above continues:

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (2:9-11).

His exaltation is the reward for His voluntary submission to fulfill His role. What about the Christian women who voluntarily submit to their roles in marriage and in church? There is no question that their act of obedience will be richly rewarded, if not in this life, it will surely be in the kingdom to come. In Colossians 3:23-25, after giving instructions to wives, husbands, children, and fathers regarding their role, the Apostle Paul gives the following instruction to the bondservants:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

Here, the bondservants receive a promise of future inheritance for their faithful service to their earthly masters, because they are really serving their heavenly Master in doing this. This promise is the evidence that God shows no partiality: the faithful acts of service, be it by the bondservants to their masters or by women under the headship of men in marriage and in church, will receive compensation, if not in this life, then in the life to come.

Once we realize that the male-female role relationship reflects the relationship among the Godhead (especially, between the Father and the Son), we can also realize that, just as the subordinate role of the Son in the Trinity came with great reward, the subordinate role of women in marriage and in church also will involve a future exaltation. God is indeed a god of impartiality.

Conclusion: Biblical Suspension of the Ethical

 

We began this study with the discussion of how we have the tendency to read the prevailing ideology of the day into our interpretation of the Scriptures. In the study of gender, this tendency appears in the form of essentializing masculinity/femininity: when the prevailing ideology was patriarchy, as in the days of Calvin (and even in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France), the concept of male superiority was essentialized and then read into the Bible. Today, we do the same thing with egalitarianism: we essentialize the notion of gender equality, make it into a universal principle, and then read it into our interpretations of the Bible. The simple, literal, and historical reading of the Genesis account, however, gives us a different view of gender: masculinity and femininity in the Bible are never essentialized, that is, they are never made into a universal and invariant principle that applies to every male and female. The Bible does command the male headship not as a universal principle but as a local, specific instruction limited to only within the sphere of marriage and church. If this command sounds unethical to our ears, it is because we have essentialized the notion of gender equality and accepted it as our universal ethical principle. So, then, the evangelical gender debate really is a conflict between the simple reading of the Scriptures and our universalized ethical sense derived from the essentialization of gender equality.

The conflict between what God says in His Word and what our ethical sense informs us is not unique to this debate. Soren Kierkegaard’s exposition of Abraham sacrificing Isaac (Gen 22) in his Fear and Trembling is one of the best known expressions of this conflict. What God commanded Abraham to do can be considered “unethical” in more than one way: it was an act of murder, not only of an innocent, but also of his own child, of his only child, of his only child of old age, and of his only child of promise that God specifically gave Abraham. Yet Abraham suspended his “ethical” sense in favor of obedience to God’s specific command. Kierkegaard calls this act the “teleological suspension of the ethical.”[49]

Of course, what Abraham had to do was extraordinary and incomparable. Yet the principle stays the same. In his commentary on Kierkegaard, the philosopher Calvin O. Schrag points out that the “ethical” here stands for “a universal moral requirement.”[50] When this universalized ethical code contradicts with what the Bible says, we must make a choice. We must biblically suspend the ethical in order to obey the Word of God.

As we see in Genesis 3, the gender problem is one of the oldest problems that has confronted humankind. And it still continues on to this day. Throughout history, the essentialized notion of male superiority has been used to dominate women; and now the essentialized notion of gender equality is making it difficult for Christian women to accept their role in marriage and in church. As long as the curse is in effect, there is no end to the conflict between the sexes. The only remedy we have is in the hands of the redeemed with the help from the Holy Spirit to obey the Word of God in love, humility, and simplicity of faith. Thus we will truly become the image of God by reflecting the unity and unbroken fellowship of the Trinity. Our Lord prays this on our behalf: “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11b [my emphasis]).

Bibliography

 

Barrett, Matthew, and Ardel B. Caneday, eds. Four Views on The Historical Adam. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013.

Barrett, William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books, 1958.

Barrick, William D. “A Historical Adam: Young-Earth Creation View.” In Four Views on The Historical Adam. 197-227.

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. 4 vols. Trans. J. W. Edwards, et al. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1958.

Bloom, Paul. How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010.

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender, New York: Routledge, 2004.

Calvin, John. Commentaries on the First Epistle to Timothy, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Clines, D. J. A. “The Image of God in Man.” Tyndale Bulletin (1968): 92-99.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Felix, Paul. “The Hermeneutics of Evangelical Feminism,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 5/2 (Fall 1994): 159-84.

Foh, Susan T. “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” The Westminster Theological Journal 37 (1974/75): 376-83.

Frame, John. “Men and Women in the Image of God.” In Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. 228-36.

Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference, New York: Routledge, 1989.

Groothuis, Rebecca Merrill. Women Caught in the Conflict. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.

Grudem, Wayne. Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than One Hundred Disputed Questions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.

Guthrie, W. K. G. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Habets, Myk and Beulah Wood. Reconsidering Gender: Evangelical Perspectives. Foreword by Kevin Giles. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Heimbach, Daniel R. “The Unchangeable Difference.” In Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood. 281-287. Ed. Wayne Grudem. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002.

Ijsseling, Samuel. Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict. Trans. Paul Dunphy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.

Jackson, Stevi and Jackie Jones, eds. Contemporary Feminist Theories. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1998.

Jackson, Stevi. “Theorising Gender and Sexuality.” In Contemporary Feminist Theories. 131-46.

Johnson, Gregg. “Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior.” In Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, 285-98. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.

Kerferd, G. B. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Oakley, Ann. Sex, Gender and Society. London: Temple Smith, 1972.

Ortlund, Raymond C., Jr., “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1-3.” In Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, 228-36. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Piper, John and Wayne Grudem, eds. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Redesign): A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.

Schiebinger, Londa. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Schrag, Calvin O. “Note on Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of the Ethical,” Ethics 70.1 (October, 1959): 66-68.

Swartley, Willard. Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1983.

Ware, Bruce. “Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God.” In Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, 228-36. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.

1 Wayne Grudem describes the complementarian position as follows: “men and women are equal and different—equal in value and personhood, but different in roles in marriage and the church.” See Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth, 17, n. 1. In contrast, the evangelical egalitarian position stresses the equality and denies the role distinctions.

2 I am well aware that each of the three adjectives used in this sentence can be highly contested. It is far beyond the scope of this short article to cover the critical, hermeneutic, and linguistic issues involved in the reading of the Biblical narratives. For the hermeneutic issues involved in the evangelical gender debate, see Paul Felix, “The Hermeneutics of Evangelical Feminism,” 159-84. It suffices here to say that Jesus’ use of a simple reading of Genesis 2:4 to correct the rabbinical teachings on divorce in Matthew 19:1-12 serves as the model of my reading of Genesis 1-3.

3 Ortlund, “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship,” 95.

4 Giles, “Foreward,” Reconsidering Gender, x.

5 Giles, “Foreward,” Reconsidering Gender, x.

6 As the inclusion of this chapter in this collection indicates, I am writing from the young-earth-creationist perspective. For this position, see Barrick, “A Historical Adam: Young-Earth Creation View,” 197-227.

7 Oxford English Dictionary lists 1474 as the date of the first occurrence of this term used in the sense of “males or females viewed as a group.” However, it lists 1945 as the first occurrence of this term designating the sociocultural (not biological) male/female distinction.

8 Jackson, “Theorising Gender and Sexuality,” 131.

9 Jackson, “Theorising Gender and Sexuality,” 133.

10 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 301.

11 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, xi. It is tempting here to diverge into philosophical discussions of essentialisms. See Fuss, 1-21, for John Locke’s differentiation between the “real” and the “nominal” essence, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological essentialism, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic essentialism, etc.

12 Paglia, Sexual Personae, xiii.

13 Paglia, Sexual Personae, 17.

14 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 2.

15 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 149-81.

16 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 181.

17 See Guthrie, The Sophists, 55-134 and Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, 111-30 for the physis-nomos controversy. See also Ijsseling, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict for comprehensive discussions of the conflict between philosophy and rhetoric.

18 Barrett, Irrational Man, 104.

19 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 5.

20 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, xii.

21 Bloom, How Pleasure Works, 15. See 14-18 for more examples on children’s essentialism.

22 Bloom, How Pleasure Works, 15.

23 Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, 215.

24 Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, 217.

25 In particular, Fuss examines Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridian deconstruction. She sees the “vestige of essentialism” in Lacan’s notion of “The Woman” and Derrida’s use of the phrase “always already.” See Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 6-18.

26 Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 348-49.

27 Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women, 151.

28 Groothuis, Women Caught in the Conflict, 110.

29 John Frame, although weakly (by his own admission), argues that we still maintain our sexual differences after the resurrection. His reasoning is largely based on the physical appearance of post-resurrection Jesus and of the angels, which, in my mind, does not prove it one way or the other. See his “Men and Women in the Image of God,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 232. Daniel Heimbach also argues that sexual identity is eternal. His argument, however, consists almost completely of references from Augustine. I see little exegetical argument in it. Regarding Matthew 22:30, he believes that Jesus does not deny the possibility but the practice of marriage. See Heimbach, “The Unchangeable Difference,” 281-87. It is inconceivable for me that we continue to retain the biological function no longer needed throughout eternity. Nevertheless, since the Bible is not specific about this, it is best to restrain from making any dogmatic conclusions.

30 Calvin, Commentaries on the First Epistle to Timothy, 68.

31 Calvin, Commentaries on the First Epistle to Timothy, 69.

32 Johnson, “Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior,” 293.

33 Johnson, “Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior,” 285.

34 Butler, Undoing Gender, 42.

35 http://www.creeds.net/ancient/niceneg.htm.

36 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 73-75.

37 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 75.

38 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 79.

39 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 79.

40 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 75. Clines convincingly argues that the image of God in the Old Testament is an image of the king as a ruler. See Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” 92-99.

41 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 77.

42 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 76. Also, Frame, 228.

43 Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” 92-99.

44 Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1.185.

45 Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?,” 383.

46 Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth, 47.

47 Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth, 47.

48 Ortlund, “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship,” 3.

49 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 54-67.

50 Schrag, “Note on Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of the Ethical,” 66. [The Master’s College (2017). (p. 272). What Happened in the Garden: The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]

 

Chapter 12

The Historical Adam In Education—Why Keeping Him Real in Our Curriculum Matters

 

Alexander Granados

 

In the flaring parks, in the taverns, in the hushed academies,

your murmur will applaud the wisdom of a thousand quacks.

For theirs is the kingdom.[1]

Education and The Lie of the Garden

 

We may wonder about the value of Christian higher education. After all, it appears that research universities, comprehensive universities, four-year colleges, community colleges, and for-profit institutions can give Christian students the skills and information for vocation. However, according to the Bible, knowledge apart from God actually produces a fallen understanding of the world and perpetuates the disaster of Genesis 3. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7). Hence, while educational institutions can provide certain pieces of information, from a biblical worldview, they will ultimately fail in that they cannot produce wisdom. The nature of education in today’s society has in essence adopted the lie of the Garden. The serpent tempted the woman by undermining what God really said for an unsanctioned way to obtaining knowledge (Gen 3:1-7). However, true wisdom is not ultimately based upon reason but divine revelation, which alone counteracts our fallen condition. As such, our job in education is to exalt divine revelation above our reason. The issue of the historical Adam thus is pivotal in the matter of education, for the reality of the lie in the Garden continues to this day in education, and our stance on Adam impacts how we deal with revelation and reason.

My erudite colleagues have written from different disciplines, addressing why they believe that the issues of a historical Adam and Fall are too great to compromise on. They have labored exegetically, historically, scientifically, and hermeneutically to remove objections surrounding the historicity of Genesis 1-3. They have explained the implications of Genesis 1-3 as it relates to systematic and biblical theology, pastoral ministry, the nature of the Christian life, science, sexuality, politics, and business. Because they have comprehensively addressed the issues, my contribution will be concise. Why does it matter that we keep Adam real in our Christian higher education curriculum? I propose that accepting an ahistorical Adam may have ramifications that would reshape our entire Christian higher education curriculum. There is good reason for this. As we will see, the Christian higher education curriculum was historically reshaped by the shift in higher education in the late nineteenth century, and the modern struggle in Christian higher education threatens to reshape it once more. My goal is to succinctly discuss these historical issues and ultimately provide a vision for a true Christian higher education.

The Shift in Higher Education

 

The words of the Preacher, “the writing of many books is endless” (Eccl 12:12, NASB), are affirmed by the copious books written on the topic of higher education. In 1994, George M. Marsden published The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. The book provides a historical narrative on the influence of Protestantism in shaping higher education in America during the late nineteenth century. In the same year, Douglas Sloan, published Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education. Sloan addresses the central role Protestantism played in the founding, administering, and teaching tasks of colonial American higher education. I will not attempt to regurgitate all the issues presented in these books and numerous other books that chronicle the history of higher education in America. For centuries, Christian colleges and universities played a major role in both Western intellectual history and the history of the church. Christian colleges and universities affirmed the usefulness of a liberal arts curriculum as preparation for service to both church and society. Christian scholars emphasized an empirical approach both to science and to the study of language and literature. The basis for higher education in America was the belief that in the academy, moral and spiritual formation, and the usefulness of liberal learning, are joined to the unity of truth in an all-encompassing doxology to the God of Creation. Christian colleges and universities prepared students with a liberal arts education focusing on theology or law, and for the active life of pastors and administrators in church or civil society.

But, arguably, the purpose of higher education shifted in the last half of the nineteenth century. The singular aim of higher education—to discipline the mind and build the character of wealthy elite students with a rigorous liberal arts curriculum and strict adherence to religious dogma—came under scrutiny. The appetite for freedom and autonomous spirit of the Enlightenment gave rise to those who labored to transform higher education. Their desire to create a religiously neutral civilization took aim at dismantling what they perceived to be the intellectual stronghold of narrow-minded and elitist Christians in the church, academy, and civil society. James Axtell describes how, “under the weight of the western land-grant universities (representing Utility), German scholarship and higher criticism (representing Research), and Darwinism (representing Science),”[2] the prolonged death of the liberal arts college came. I will briefly examine this triad of issues that radically transformed the landscape of higher education in the late nineteenth century.

Utility

The development of land-grant colleges and universities began when Congress passed the Morrill Act of 1862; higher education was intended to be democratized by opening access to the industrial classes. The land grants given by Congress or state legislatures were to be used for the endowment and maintenance of colleges and universities teaching agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanical arts as well as classical studies, so members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education. These colleges and universities revised the higher education curriculum to fulfill their democratic mandate for accessibility, openness, and service to the toiling peoples. Today, there is one land-grant institution in every state and territory of the United States. Several land-grant institutions are among the nation’s most prestigious public research universities.[3]

This was a significant shift in higher education because land-grant colleges and universities were no longer tied to a religious denomination or charter. Land-grant colleges and universities ultimately became secular state institutions for the humanistic education of the masses. Every year, millions of Christian students enroll at public and land-grant institutions because of their academic reputation, affordability, and promise of a good job. But the education they receive teaches evolution as fact and biblical creation as myth. The average Christian sitting on the pew at church has, for years, been indoctrinated in the secular K-12 and university classroom to not interpret the Bible literally.

Sadly, this is why most Christians easily accept an ahistorical Adam. In addition, faculty at Christian colleges and universities who have been educated at secular institutions can often struggle to integrate faith and learning. They readily find in theistic evolution a reconciliation of their faith and secular learning. This of course begins to be what is taught in the classroom at our Christian colleges and universities. Students graduate not believing in biblical Creation, and our churches are filled with more congregants who do not interpret the Bible literally. It is a vicious circle.

Research

German biblical scholarship in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave rise to the speculative principles of higher criticism that are based on reason rather than revelation. Higher critics like Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) and David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) popularized the application of literary historical-critical methods in analyzing and studying the Bible and its textual content. Originally, higher criticism was simply a scholarly approach to studying, evaluating, and critically assessing the Bible as literature in order to understand it better. Regrettably, the critical methods employed to evaluate the Bible and its text soon began to denigrate the Bible into fable and myth. Rationalism, naturalism, higher criticism, and contemporary philosophical trends launched an assault to de-historicize Scripture.

American universities imported the German higher criticism model in the 1870s and 1880s. Christian colleges and universities began to question and deny the inspiration (1 Cor 2:7-14; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:20-21), authority (1 Cor 2:13; 1 Thess 2:13), inerrancy, and infallibility (Matt 5:18; 24:35; John 10:35; 16:12-13; 17:17; 1 Cor 2:13; 2 Tim 3:15-17; Heb 4:12; 2 Pet 1:20-21) of Scripture. The belief that Jesus Christ represents humanity and deity in indivisible oneness (Mic 5:2; John 5:23; 14:9-10; Col 2:9) was disavowed. The teaching that our Lord Jesus Christ was virgin-born (Isa 7:14; Matt 1:23, 25; Luke 1:26-35) and that He was God incarnate (John 1:1, 14) was rejected. Naturally, the literal-grammatical-historical interpretation of Genesis 1-3 was jettisoned. The embracing of the new critical views of Scripture by Christian colleges and universities had a disastrous impact on the Christian higher-education curriculum. Higher education in America was tragically transformed.

Science

Higher education experienced another radical transformation when universities explicitly began promoting research and the pursuit of scientific inquiry. The scientific community engaged in a fierce epistemological battle between scientists who promoted natural theology and the glory of the Creator and scientists who philosophically or methodologically excluded God completely. Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 forever changed the relationship between science and Christianity. Science and its evolutionary theory challenged the literalness of Genesis 1-2 and God’s personal and purposeful involvement in the original creative act.[4]

The incessant external pressure to conform to this world’s philosophies and ideologies and relentless internal attacks against divine revelation in colleges and universities, left many in shambles. The educational curriculum was relegated to an assortment of secular and religious courses. Theology, which previously was considered the “queen of the sciences,” and the Bible, if offered, became courses like any other. Higher education increasingly became hostile toward its religious roots and divine revelation was no longer the foundation of a comprehensive educational curriculum. A Christian worldview was segregated from all academic disciplines. Without divine revelation as an anchor, colleges and universities promoted scientific research, elevating man’s intellect and reason. Research devoid of God’s glory as its goal became nothing more than the worldly creation, dissemination, preservation, and application of human knowledge for the betterment of a global society. Higher education’s ultimate purpose became career training for self-promotion.

Thus a shift in higher education took place and changed how Americans look at education. Instead of seeing education as being about the mind and character, it became about a job. An intellectual examination of the Bible was supposed to deny the Bible rather than understand it. Even more, the Bible was completely sectioned off from the whole of education. As a result, we as Americans often struggle to see how education, the Bible, and our intellectual pursuits really come together, for our culture essentially teaches that they do not.

The Modern Struggle in Christian Education

 

When institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton succumbed to the shifting pressures on higher education, divine revelation lost its place of prominence in their curriculum. The fortresses of a once-stalwart Christian education became hostile to God and His Word. The classical Christian liberal arts approach to unify all truth for the glory of God was discarded. Many historic colleges and universities surrendered to a vocational, research, and scientific method of education. The curriculum became specialized, fragmented, and focused on practical education for a materialistic career devoid of God.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new Christian colleges and universities were founded in response to the secularization of higher education. In 1910 and 1915, The Fundamentals, a multi-volume work, was originally published to raise a defense and standard for biblical Christianity.[5] It is in an analogous spirit that we endeavor, one hundred years later, to voice our concern. In the twenty-first century, the secularization or death of many Christian colleges and universities is prophesied. History is repeating itself. The triad of issues that transformed higher education in the nineteenth century continues to make inroads in our churches, seminaries, colleges, and universities. Our institutions are yielding under the weight of financial burdens,[6] research, and science that continue to pressure them to compromise their biblical convictions, and they are losing their identity. This accentuates all the more why the issue of a historical Adam is important. It is the tip of the iceberg for Christian colleges and universities to go the way of the institutions of the past.

After all, the discussion regarding the role of research and science in Christian higher education is not new. Christian scholars have for centuries attempted to establish a harmony between faith, revelation, reason, and science. Such efforts have produced rigorous debate and various views. The historicity of Adam is one of the issues in this ongoing debate. It has been thrust into prominence and public discourse as the publication of Four Views on the Historical Adam[7] demonstrates. The evolutionary creation view (no historical Adam) and the different views of a historical Adam (archetypal, old-earth, and young-earth) reveal the diversity of the authors’ interpretive traditions and why the divergent perspectives exist. I believe that the key issue has and always will be an epistemological one: what is our theory of knowledge and how do we gain knowledge? Our interpretive traditions are bound and guided by our epistemology. Do we believe divine revelation to be the source of all truth, and reason the instrument to study, recognize, and apply it? Or do we fall prey to the lie in the Garden and, armed with a proud and rebellious reason, stand in judgment of and question the veracity of divine revelation?

As we observed, these types of issues are not new—Christian higher education has been in crisis for over two centuries. If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. This is why keeping Adam real in our Christian higher education curriculum does matter. We lament how Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other institutions that were once the citadels of Christian higher education are no longer the lighthouses of our faith. When the history of Christian higher education in the twenty-first century is written by future generations, which additional colleges and universities will we grieve for and remember as former bastions of truth?

Having a Vision for True Christian Higher Education

 

We discussed above that the shift in higher education brought a change in how we think about how education should work. There is confusion about how the Bible, education, and our intellectual pursuits all fit together. What we need is a clearer vision of Christian higher education. Based upon this, we can further see why keeping Adam real is so necessary.

Every year undergraduate students throughout the United States and around the world apply, are accepted, and attend Christian colleges and universities in America. These students are seeking an education that will instill in them the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for their chosen professions, cultivate their spiritual growth, strengthen their moral character, and develop their abilities as global citizens and leaders (Phil 1:27). Christian students desire more than just training for a career and a life of self-promotion. They seek an education that will impart invaluable transformative qualities of character and mind suitable for their Christian calling along with useful technical skills and knowledge. They want to be equipped for a life of enduring commitment to Christ and instructed to think like Christ, value like Christ, and serve as Christ has called them to serve in the home, church, academy, community, and marketplace.[8]

Creator, Creation, and Learning

The distinctiveness of Christian higher education begins with an understanding that there is an infinite, personal God. God has created all things “both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col 1:16, NASB) for His glory. Our Christian worldview affirms God’s existence and His activity in the world. Christian scholarship begins with the recognition of God’s existence and His sovereignty over creation, including man and his intellectual pursuits (Ps 24:1). The knowledge of God is the beginning of all learning (Prov 9:10). A Christian, more than any other person, can appreciate the process and the product of learning. Because of spiritual growth and biblical knowledge, we can appreciate such inexplicable issues as man’s finiteness and God’s omniscience. The Lord has revealed to us His nature in Scripture and in the general revelation of creation. In light of that, every classroom experience can be a worship experience. A lesson in science or history, math or literature, is a window to the Creator. This stands in stark contrast to the world’s contention that absolutely no truth is absolute truth, that reality is relative, and that life is self-sustained. In essence, man becomes God. This is the lie in the Garden (Gen 3:1-7).

Learning Under Christ’s Lordship

Christian higher education is Christ-centered education. It recognizes the lordship of Christ over all of life, including every academic discipline. It affirms that all Christian scholars must bow the knee to Him and that every thought must be brought captive to Christ (2 Cor 10:5; Col 2:8). The lordship of Christ affirms that all scholars will one day give an account for their activities, including those of an intellectual nature (Phil 1:9-11; Jas 3:1). Recognizing that all scholarship begins from a theoretical base, namely the scholars’ worldview, Christian higher education affirms the metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological distinctives of a uniquely Christian worldview perspective. This perspective must permeate teaching and scholarship.[9]

The lordship of Christ demands that the foundation of Christian knowledge be grounded in the Scriptures. Few people today will boldly claim God’s Word as sufficient, inerrant, and authoritative, providing the basis from which to craft a truth-based worldview. Carl F. H. Henry correctly states, “The revelation of God in his Word is for Christianity the primary epistemological principle from which all its other truths are deduced.”[10] The Bible is truth (John 17:17) and as such provides the Christian scholar with confidence that truth is knowable. The pursuit of truth has particular meaning for the Christian scholar who has the authority of the Word of God as a foundation and basis for knowledge.

The Christian scholar understands that there are two basic classifications of revelation. General revelation is the disclosure of God’s eternal power and glory through nature and history. Special revelation is the disclosure of God’s redemptive purpose and work through Jesus Christ and the Scriptures. Henry’s additional observation regarding revelation is insightful: “Scriptural revelation takes epistemological priority over general revelation, not because general revelation is obscure or because man as sinner cannot know it, but because Scripture as an inspired literary document republishes the content of general revelation objectively, over against sinful man’s reductive dilutions and misconstructions of it.”[11] Scripture is the ultimate authority in the universe. The Scriptures alone provide epistemological certainty against the relativistic flux, nonrationality, and theoretical changes within the frameworks of our academic disciplines.

Purposes of Christian Higher Education

People often think that education is the solution to the world’s problems. But we know better, and that is why Genesis 3 is important because the idea of “education as solution” is based upon the lie in the Garden. On one hand, Christian higher education affirms the dignity and greatness of humanity as created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:27) and that creativity and rationality, which are essential to higher education pursuits, are both bound to the imago dei. However, mankind has fallen in revolt against God. The story of Adam in Genesis 3:1-7 reveals that the basic problem of man is his desire to be like God. Man’s desire to be like God was manifested by his wish to possess a knowledge that is both infinite and wholly autonomous. Man not only wanted to have knowledge like God’s, but also wanted to be like God and not die. This desire to be as God is what led man to sin. The notion of education as salvation repeats exactly what happened in the garden.

Instead, Christian higher education understands that the Fall has affected the totality of humanity and all aspects of personhood, including the intellect. As a result of man’s transgression, his relation to God, his nature, his body, and his environment changed. Thus humanity, both corporately and individually, is in need of regeneration, restoration, and reconciliation with God. Christian higher education affirms that redemption occurs through the finished work of Christ alone, not educational betterment. Keeping Adam real aids in making sure Christian higher education points to the true solution of mankind’s problems.

In addition, the Christian scholastic community bears a special responsibility to model excellence in our teaching, research, and service to the broader academic community as ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor 5:20). If our motivation for scholarship and teaching is doxological, then excellence must follow. Christian scholars bear the responsibility to demonstrate this excellence in their academic vocation (Matt 5:16). Our scholastic activities must bring glory to God through both the pedagogical articulation of our Christian worldview and by demonstration of professional quality and excellence in our work. The Apostle Paul’s engagement in Athens at Mars Hill is especially illustrative of this principle (Acts 17:16-34).

The foundational trilogy of American higher education—teaching, research, and service—has special bearing on Christian higher education. The pursuit of truth and quest for knowledge (research), the dissemination and acquisition of scholarship and research by the individual, both theoretical and practical (teaching and learning), and compassionate application of truth (service and ministry), all have special meaning to the Christian scholar. The Christian academic community shares particular responsibility in light of these realities.

Concluding Thoughts

 

We can often be confused about Christian higher education. Society has accepted that we can split intellectual pursuits and education from the Scripture. We have seen that if we are to be consistent with what the Bible teaches, we should pursue learning. Christians should desire to be educated because of what they believe about their Creator. There is no sacred or secular (1 Cor 10:31; Rom 11:36). We treat the pursuit of education as an act of worship that honors and glorifies God (Rom 12:1-2). Christian higher education affirms the education of the total person: the intellectual, physical, affective, social, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual.

At the same time, true Christian higher education is grounded upon Scripture first. It is the ultimate source of knowledge, which pervades every area of life. That is why keeping Adam real is important in our curriculum. This is not only because it affirms Scripture’s authority. It is also because mythologizing those “lies in the Garden” is exactly what secular education wants us to do. Secular education argues that man can obtain knowledge apart from divine revelation. Man can replace God. This thereby repeats the serpent’s lie. As a result, society believes that education can solve all the problems to its own demise. Affirming the historicity of Adam becomes important for shaping the way we understand education and its purposes. It provides the true solution to the world’s problems in the gospel. It is what makes our education distinctively Christian.

Therefore, true Christian higher education can never segregate the authority of Scripture and wisdom from the rest of education and intellectual pursuits. Its role will never be limited simply to offering Bible courses. Christian higher education seeks to provide for students a Christ-centered educational experience. The primary and overarching purpose of Christian higher education is to expand students’ awareness of the glory of God. This goal gives Christian educators a different starting point and framework for their teaching, namely, a Christian worldview. An idea that follows from this worldview is the extreme importance of providing for students an educational environment that will build up their faith and their ability to engage serious scholarship. Christian higher education imparts specialized training and education for promoting the Christian message and nurturing Christian communities. It provides the tools to think and act as Christian disciples and servants in our increasingly complex world.[12]

Bibliography

 

Axtell, James. “The Death of the Liberal Arts College.” History of Education Quarterly 11, no. 4 (Winter, 1971): 339-52.

Barrett, Matthew, and Ardel B. Caneday, eds. Four Views on The Historical Adam. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013.

Behle, J. Gregory. “Educating the Toiling Peoples: Students at the Illinois Industrial University, Spring 1868.” In The Land-Grant Colleges and the Reshaping of American Higher Education, edited by Roger L. Geiger and Nathan M. Sorber, 73-94. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2013.

Cairns, Earle Edwin. “A Blueprint for Christian Higher Education.” Faculty Bulletin of Wheaton College 16, no. 3 (1953): 1-107.

Carson, D. A. “Can There Be a Christian University?” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 1, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 20-38.

Fearing, Kenneth. “Conclusion.” In Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy, ed. Thomas Sowell. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

Henry, Carl F. H. God, Revelation, and Authority. 6 vols. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999.

Hutchison, John C. “Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory and 19th-Century Natural Theology.” In Vital Apologetic Issues: Examining Reason and Revelation in Biblical Perspective, ed. R. B. Zuck, 61-81. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1995.

Marsden, George M. The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Schwehn, Mark R. “A Christian University: Defining the Difference.” First Things 93 (May 1999): 25-31.

Sloan, Douglas. Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994.

Torrey, R.A., Charles Lee Feinberg, and Warren W. Wiersbe. The Fundamentals: The Famous Sourcebook of Foundational Biblical Truths. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1990.

1 Fearing, “Conclusion,” v.

2 Axtell, “The Death of the Liberal Arts College,” 340.

3 Behle, “Educating the Toiling Peoples,” 73-75.

4 Hutchison, “Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory,” 61.

5 Torrey, Feinberg, and Wiersbe, The Fundamentals.

6 The challenges of affordability and sustainability have made attractive, incentives that promote efficiency at the expense of historic biblical affirmations. Changes effected to secure faculty, staff, students, and funding over time are effectively altering the identity of Christian higher education. Openly hiring faculty and staff and admitting students who deny the biblical values and convictions of the institution have proven to be devastating compromises. Students’ and parents’ inability to afford a Christian college or university education has forced many into secular institutions or settling for a hybrid education that is primarily secular and at best partially biblical. Boards of trustees, presidents and administrators, faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, and churches are all the stewards of Christian colleges and universities. We must labor to address the pressing issues of affordability, sustainability, and decreasing enrollment, and hold firm to our biblical convictions.

7 Barrett and Caneday, Four Views on the Historical Adam.

8 Schwehn, “A Christian University,” 30.

9 Carson, “Can There Be a Christian University?,” 26-27.

10 Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 1:219.

11 Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 1:223.

12 Cairns, “A Blueprint for Christian Higher Education,” 41-63. [The Master’s College (2017). (p. 285). What Happened in the Garden: The Reality and Ramifications of the Creation and Fall of Man. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]