Highpoints of the Bible: Introduction and Creation

* Part of a series of Bible studies on the significant pieces of the biblical storyline.

Highpoints of the Bible: Introduction and Creation

 

Introduction

 

1.    Understanding the Big Story of the Bible: Metanarrative

 

a.    Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration—CFRR 

 

b.    Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus, Church, Restoration

 

2.    The CFRR lens can be used to analyze other worldviews—example: Marxism.[1]

 

3.    The true story of the world in comparison and contrast to other false narratives

 

Creation

 

1.    Three issues

 

a.    What it tells us about God

 

b.    What it tells us about humanity

 

c.     How this theme is picked up in the New Testament

 

2.    What it tells us about God

 

a.    God is the Creator of all things—Genesis 1-2

 

·     Note: There are lots of detailed debates about how to interpret the timing of the “days” of Genesis one and how to understand how modern scientific understandings integrate with the portrait in Genesis 1-2.  For some resources on this see Vern Poythress’ article: “Evangelical Interpretations of Genesis 1-2.”[2]

 

b.    Some key ideas

 

·     Creator/creature distinction

·     Creation is not God (pantheism) or co-equal with God (Panentheism)

·     Solitary Creator (monotheism)

·     Transcendent and immanent (not Deism)

·     Material world is “good”

·     God creates an environment and setting of shalom

 

“Shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights.  Shalom, in other words, is the ways things ought to be.”[3]

 

c.     Displays God’s wisdom and power: Psalms 33; 104 (see esp. v. 24); 2 Kings 19.15-19; Jeremiah 10.10-12; 32.17; Romans 1.20

 

d.    Displays God’s “God-ness”—only he is the Creator: Isaiah 44.24

 

3.    What it tells us about humanity[4]: Genesis 1-2; Psalm 8

 

a.    “Image of God”: Genesis 1.26-28

 

·     “It will probably amaze us to realize that when the Creator of the universe wanted to create something “in his image,” something more like himself than all the rest of creation, he made us…We are the culmination of God’s infinitely wise and skillful work of creation.”[5]

 

b.    Image of God àcrucial concept!

 

                                               i.     Actual phrase “image of God” used infrequently: Genesis 1.26-27; 9.6; 1 Corinthians 11.7; James 3.9 (see Genesis 5.1 for “likeness” language)

 

                                              ii.     What is the “image of God?”  Was it lost in the Fall?  Do all people share in the “image of God” now—believers and unbelievers?

 

                                            iii.     Some have denied that post-Fall people are in the image of God àthe image has been lost and is only renewed in coming to Christ Jesus

 

·     But see: Genesis 9.6 and James 3.9 àpost-Fall situations that do not restrict image to believers

 

                                            iv.     Structural and Functional (or, broader and narrower) aspects of image

 

1.    Structural: “In sum, then, we may say that by the image of God in the broader or structural sense we mean the entire endowment of gifts and capacities that enable man to function as he should in his various relationships and callings.”[6]

 

a.    Intellectual powers

b.    Moral sensitivity

c.     Capacity for religious worship 

d.    Responsibility

e.    Volitional power

f.     Aesthetic sense

g.    Gifts of speech and song

h.    Ability to feel; have emotions

 

2.    Functional: “Thus the image of God in the narrower sense means man’s proper functioning in harmony with God’s will for him.”[7]

 

                                              v.     Consider two sets of passages

 

1.    Genesis 9.6; James 3.9

2.    Colossians 3.10; Ephesians 4.24

 

If we put these two types of passages together, we conclude that there must be a sense in which fallen man still bears the image of God, but that there must also be a sense in which he no longer bears that image.  Hence the distinction between the broader and narrower aspects of the image is necessary.[8]

 

                                            vi.     C. John Collins outlines views on the image of God

 

1.    Resemblance: human beings like God in some aspect(s) such as intellect, moral sense, will, rationality, etc.

 

2.    Representative: humans commanded by God to rule creation on God’s behalf

 

3.    Relational: humans as male/female and in community as they manifest the “image of God”

 

·      Scholars commonly speak as if these categories are mutually exclusive.  My view is that the linguistic and exegetical details favor the idea that “in our image, after our likeness” implies that humans were made with some kind of resemblance to God, which was to enable them to represent God as benevolent rulers, and to find their fulfillment in their relationships with each other and with God.  That is, I have combined all three views,…[9]

 

c.     Relational aspect: Marriage

 

·      God creates marriage: Genesis 2.21-25

 

1.    Elements of marriage: monogamy, exclusivity, permanence

 

2.    Attack on all aspects of God’s creative design for marriage

 

a.    Male and female union: Homosexuality

 

b.    Maleness and femaleness: Transgenderism

 

c.     “Joined” (cleaving): Divorce

 

d.    “One flesh”: Adultery; Spousal abuse

 

e.    Fruit of marriage (children): Abortion

 

d.    Relational aspect: Four-fold relationships

 

 

e.    Representative aspect: We represent God as vice-regents to steward God’s creation

 

·      “In the ancient East the setting up of the king’s statue was the equivalent to the proclamation of his dominion over the sphere in which the statue was erected (cf. Dan. 3.1, 5f.).  When in the thirteenth century BC the Pharaoh Ramesses II had his image hewn out of rock at the mouth of the nahr el-kelb, on the Mediterranean north of Beirut, the image meant that he was the ruler of this area.  Accordingly, man is set in the midst of creation as God’s statue. He is evidence that God is Lord of creation; but as God’s steward he also exerts his rule, fulfilling his task not in arbitrary despotism but as a responsible agent.  His rule and his duty to rule are not autonomous; they are copies.”[10]

 

·      Cultural Mandate (or Dominion Mandate)

 

1.    “Man is called to “work” the earth in order to uncover the rich potentialities “hidden,” as it were, beneath the earth’s surface.  On the most basic, agriculturallevel, man cuts into the earth and sows seed, which grows up into plants, which when carefully tended yield fruit in their appointed seasons. Dig deeper and the earth will yield still more riches: precious stones and gold (Gen. 2:11-12; Job 28); ore which can be smelted to make metals; and basic chemical raw materials which can be synthesized into pigments and dyes for art works, fertilizers to increase crop yields, or rocket fuel to explore God’s vast universe.  Other parts of the creation can be transformed as well: wood can be fashioned into flutes for the praise of God or timbers for building; stones can be dressed and fitted into walls, etc.”[11]

 

·      Environmental stewardship

 

1.    Stewards of creation; not destroyers

 

2.    See my short article: “Habakkuk and God’s Concern for the Environment”[12]

 

4.    How is this theme of creation picked up in the New Testament?

 

a.    Jesus Christ is acknowledged as Creator: John 1.1-3; Colossians 1.15-17; 1 Corinthians 8.6

 

b.    Jesus Christ is the full image of God: Colossians 1.15; 2 Corinthians 4.4

 

c.     Image of God restored in Christ Jesus: Ephesians 4.24; Colossians 3.10

 

d.    Marriage: Matthew 19.3-9; Ephesians 5.22-33

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     [1]See my blog post “Karl Marx and Marxism—Some Notes” White Rose Review(April 7, 2020). Online: https://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2020/04/karl-marx-and-marxism-some-notes.html.

     [2]https://frame-poythress.org/evangelical-interpretations-of-genesis-1-2/.

     [3]Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 10.

     [4]For another study on the doctrine of humanity see my blog post “Doctrine of Humanity” White Rose Review (January 10, 2016). Online: https://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2016/01/doctrine-of-humanity.html.

     [5]Wayne Grudem, Sytematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 449.

     [6]Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), 70-71.

     [7]Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 72.

     [8]Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 64.

     [9]C. John Collins. Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?  Who They Were and Why You Should Care (Crossway, 2011), p. 94. See also Herman Hoekema’s discussion of “structural” and “functional” aspects of the image of God in Created in God’s Image (Eerdmans/Paternoster, 1986), pp. 68-73.

     [10]Hans Walter Wolff as quoted in Peter J. Gentry and Stephen Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2012), 200.

     [11]David Bruce Hegeman, Plowing in Hope: Toward a Biblical Theology of Culture (Moscow: Canon Press, 1999), 45.

     [12]Online: http://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2011/11/habakkuk-and-gods-concern-for.html.

Perspectivalism and Postmodern Views of the Human Person

In reading Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, they make the following statements regarding postmodern understandings of the human person:

 

“Consequently, to postmodern Theorists, the notion of the autonomous individual is largely a myth.  The individual, like everything else, is a product of powerful discourses and culturally constructed knowledge.  Equally, the concept of the universal—whether a biological universal about human nature; or an ethical universal, such as equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for all individuals regardless of class, race, gender, or sexuality—is, at best, naïve.  At worst, it is merely another exercise in power-knowledge, an attempt to enforce dominant discourses on everybody.  The postmodern view largely rejects both the smallest unit of society—the individual—and the largest—humanity—and instead focuses on small, local groups as the producers of knowledge, values, and discourses.  Therefore, postmodernism focuses on sets of people who are understood to be positioned in the same way—by race, sex, or class, for example—and have the same experiences and perceptions due to this positioning.”[1]

 

“The intense focus on identity categories and identity politics means that the individual and the universal are largely devalued.  While mainstream liberalism focuses on achieving universal human rights and access to opportunities, to allow each individual to fulfill her potential, applied postmodern scholarship and activism is deeply skeptical of these values and even openly hostile to them.  Applied postmodern Theory tends to regard mainstream liberalism as complacent, naïve, or indifferent about the deeply ingrained prejudices, assumptions, and biases that limit and constrain people with marginalized identities.  The ‘individual’ in applied postmodernism is something like the sum total of the identity groups to which the person in question simultaneously belongs.”[2]

 

The specification of three aspects—the universal, the individual, and the group—reminded me of John Frame’s perspectivialism.  The following would illustrate a Framean perspective:

 

 

Universal (Humanity)

                                     Class/group                                Individual

 

 

These three perspectives correlate with Frame’s categories:

 

            Normative: Universal humanity

 

            Situational: Class/group

 

            Existential: Individual

 

Within a biblical worldview all three perspectives are important for full understanding of the truth.  To isolate one perspective, to the exclusion of the others, will be to fail to fully understand the nature of the subject at hand.  As Vern Poythress notes, “Monoperspectival reductions of the truth frequently make some one perspective into a god-like origin for everything else.”[3]

 

Under the sovereignty of God, every individual is created in the image of God (universal) and is situated in a number of particular overlapping groups.  Postmodern views, as noted by Pluckrose and Lindsay, are thus reductionist choosing to privilege the group to the exclusion of other perspectives.

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     [1]Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody(Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 42—bold-face added.

     [2]Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody(Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 60-61—bold-face added.

     [3]Vern Poythress, “Multiperspectivalism and the Reformed Faith” in Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame(Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009), 195.