Category Archives: Current issues

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Verses out-of-context, part 1

This 8-minute video includes some samples of verses often taken out of context, and what they really mean. These include examples from the Old Testament, including Psalms, Song of Solomon, Joel, etc.–texts such as “the cattle on a thousand hills”; “this is the day that the Lord has made”; “great as the army that carries out his word”; “let the weak say I am strong”; etc.

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Democracy does not equal human rights

By itself, democracy does not automatically guarantee human rights. Nor—although this is not the point of this article—is democracy specifically endorsed in Scripture. Democracy doesn’t appear in ancient Israel, although we may have some examples of groups choosing leaders, possibly by voting, in the Book of Acts, following the widespread Greek example. (Even then, though, Greek “democracy” meant the majority vote of free adult male citizens, always a minority of the population.) This does not mean that Scripture opposes democracy; my point is simply that it does not mandate it.

Democracy as majority rule

Although I may be quoted out of context, I do appreciate and value democracy. Accepting the decision of a majority is a peaceful way to resolve problems. If we are speaking of human rights, self-governance may be among them, as a form of “liberty.” Moreover, a truly democratic system motivates greater public ownership of and therefore commitment to making the political system work.

But our U.S. tradition sometimes speaks of democracy as an end in itself (e.g., “making the world safe for democracy”), when in fact spreading democracy cannot be the highest ideal of justice, trumping all others rights, even from a purely humanist standpoint.

Democracy as normally practiced is not simply self-rule (since autonomy taken to an extreme can deconstruct into anarchy), but majority rule. And majorities can become as tyrannical as individuals (such as kings) or minorities (such as oligarchs). One need look no further than the history of the United States itself for Jim Crow-era suppression of African-American rights in states controlled by whites who abused their (usually) majority status to keep complete control of the local political system. A majority of nations in the world today have significant ethnic minorities, and in a majority of cases those minorities face some prejudices.

“When a foreigner stays with you in your land, you must not mistreat them. The foreigner who stays with you must be for you just like someone from your country, and you must love them the same way you love yourself …” (Lev 19:33-34)

“Woe to those who write unjust laws …
So as to turn aside the justice due the needy
And rob the poor among my people of the justice due them …” (Isa 10:1-2)

Majority rule versus minority rights

The rule of law is necessary to limit majority choices in cases where majority rule curtails individual or group human rights. That is, while self-determination may be to some extent a human right, it must also be balanced against other human rights (including others’ rights to self-determination), especially rights to life and freedom more generally. If a majority curtails others’ religious freedom or other freedom of conscience, this is a more fundamental violation of human rights than is the failure to embrace a majority decision that curtails others’ human rights. (By curtailing minority rights, I am not thinking here of exposing minorities to majority culture or views, but of limiting their own views or expression thereof.)

How to balance such concerns and where to draw the line is obviously a matter of debate. If one expresses one’s personal beliefs by blowing up an airplane, one has certainly infringed on others’ rights and harmed the public interest. The same is true of falsely yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater in the interests of demonstrating free speech or practicing female genital mutilation in the interests of honoring one’s traditional culture. Incendiary rhetoric that directly incites others to blow up airplanes likewise harms public interest.

In general, beyond cases of infringing on others’ rights many of us would prefer to err on the side of allowing freedoms rather than risking their curtailment. I believe that my freedom to share my faith, for example, does not infringe on others’ right to reject it. Because there is a range of speech practice between kindly sharing one’s faith and yelling fire in a crowded theater, however, consensus on precisely where to draw lines remains elusive. A Democrat may believe that a Republican’s views harm public interest and vice-versa, but ordinarily we do not legally curtail either one. (Ideally we might even hope for respectful dialogue to resolve issues, if that were possible in today’s polarized environment.)

Political Corruption

“Your rulers …each love bribes and pursues rewards.
They do not render justice for the orphan
Nor is the complaint of the widow allowed before them” (Isa 1:23)

“Woe to those who pronounce innocent the guilty for the sake of a bribe,
And turn aside justice for the innocent!” (Isa 5:23)

“Her leaders judge for a bribe,
Her priests teach for a price,
And her prohets tell fortunes for money …” (Mic 3:11, NIV)

What happens to the value of majority rule when shrewd academicians, politicians or media magnates learn that people can be manipulated by marketing information only very selectively? Do we speak then of a rule of the majority, or a rule by shrewd marketers? (Informed and cynical people in most mature democracies do not prove as malleable in practice as this summary sounds in principle, but propaganda is pervasive.) We all speak from given perspectives, hopefully from perspectives we believe are right; some selectivity is inevitable. But when does legitimate persuasion slide into covert manipulation and unfair caricaturization?

What happens when statespersons themselves no longer feel free considered choices based on detailed policy analyses because they are first beholden to opinion polls in turn shaped by what is marketed? They might remain in office in order to do good, while their ability to do good is curtailed by their concern to remain in office. If false propaganda is widespread, the system itself requires political appeals to what is essentially an often poorly-informed consumer market.

What is the difference between a political system run by such interests driven by shrewd marketing and one run by plutocrats whose wealth allows for bigger bribes? Is corruption of justice wrong only when the favor is monetary?

The social necessity of virtue

The system can function the way it was meant to only if a measure of trust can be established, and such trust requires some public consensus about virtue. Ancient philosophers often complained about rhetorical skills used to argue either side of a case equally; rhetoric, communication and marketing are amoral, capable of being employed in the service of truth or untruth, virtue or vice. When a society becomes cynical about authentic truth or virtue, its political system can easily become corrupted.

Working for human rights means more than working for majority rule. Majority rule can be perverted, like any other system, if it does not begin with a more fundamental recognition of human rights—which in turn rest on human worth and dignity. Humans are conspicuously finite and mortal, but Scripture confers on us a special dignity, that of being formed in God’s own image.

The language of “human rights” does reflect some of the Western individualist Enlightenment tradition. Nevertheless, Anabaptists’ emphasis on freedom of conscience preceded and probably informed this tradition. Moreover, if one defends the rights of minorities, one may speak of corporate as well as individual rights. One need not use the specific language of the Western philosophic tradition to support what promotes human flourishing; whatever language one uses, people are precious and matter. Certainly in Scripture, humans are the pinnacle of God’s creation and God invites us to love our neighbor as ourself.

In the Bible, all systems of government failed—from the anarchy of much of the judges period to the monarchy that followed it—due to human corruption. The Bible points toward true and ultimate justice in God’s kingdom. Both the Bible and subsequent history show that even purported theocracies in the meantime have also failed due to the corruption of the human purported agents of God. Insofar as we genuinely work for God’s kingdom, though, we must work for the welfare of what God values most—people formed in his image.

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She identifies as black: identifying with is not the same as identifying as

Insofar as we can tell from news reports so far, Rachel Dolezal got herself mired in a deep web of deception. She “identifies as black,” but has misrepresented a range of matters, including but not limited to her genetic ancestry. Further, she reportedly identified herself as white in a lawsuit against Howard University (perhaps that was just “for legal purposes”). Given that some African-Americans in the past tried to pass as white to evade racism, a white person trying to pass as black might, though expressed in the wrong way, suggest an experience of or desire for belonging in the African-American community. Conversely, especially where one’s employment is involved, it might be seen as exploiting them for personal gain or notoriety. At least at the moment, this seems to be the dominant public interpretation of her behavior.

In any case, her self-identification, whether intended disingenuously or not, raises an issue noteworthy apart from her (and most of what follows really is “apart from her”; articles do sometimes use sneaky lead-ins to get you to read them). There are genuine reasons why some people feel at home in some other cultural communities, especially when they have experienced grace, belonging and healing there.

Identifying “with” versus identity “as”

It’s not true that one can change one’s genetics or one’s past upbringing; it’s also not true that some experience of another community makes you as versatile with it as someone who lived their whole life there, or whose skin color subjects them to special scrutiny anywhere they go.

It is true, however, that we can identify socially with a racial, ethnic, national or other sort of community other than one determined by our complexion, our genes or our birth location. (And obviously if we do so, we should do it without misrepresentation or fabrication, in contrast to the behavior reported about Ms. Dolezal.)

In fact, many people today, whether because they are biracial, are second-generation children of immigrants, or because of where we’ve experienced a sense of belonging, experience multiple community identifications and loyalties. Some of these identifications we’re born with or inherit, such as those we wear on our skin. Some people who see our outward features, whether racial identifiers, body mass or other features, will always evaluate us through them. (Who can see me, for example, and not think, “Look, Mom, there’s a bald guy!”? Seriously, most kids these days are more polite than that; they’d probably instead remark first, “There goes an old guy!”)

Other characteristics, especially loyalties—whether religious, cultural, or otherwise—are often matters of personal decisions. Like many others, I identify with different communities on different levels—like most seminary professors, for example, I am part of both church and academy, which are sometimes very separate worlds. I likewise feel at home with my post-conversion Pentecostal background, my African-American Baptist ordination and church experience, my teaching at Asbury in a predominantly Methodist setting, and so forth. Multiple communities are natural to many of us with multiple experiences, even when some communities are also mutually exclusive. For example, in one location where I lived I enjoyed spending time with some friends for, most importantly, spiritual fellowship, and with other friends for intellectual stimulation. (Unfortunately, the circles at that time did not overlap very much.)

My experience of the African-American community’s hospitality

Closer to the question at hand, some Christians have found welcome and often a spiritual refuge in Christian communities where we differ from the dominant ethnicity. I know some Christians of Asian Indian descent whose friends are mostly white, white/Anglo Christians who feel a special bond in Latino/a or Korean circles, Latino/a Christians who feel at home in largely African-American churches, and so on.

I’m white, and there’s no getting around it. Sometimes when my wife or daughter braid another African woman’s hair, I ask them to do something attractive with mine; but, as they’ve pointed out, it’s pretty hard to make it work for a bald white guy. Nevertheless, the Black Church brought me healing during my time of deepest brokenness, and the love and welcome I found in the African-American community made it feel like forever home to me. Had there been a rite of passage like circumcision (as there is for entering the Jewish community), I would have undergone it!

People can’t infer that background about me from looking at me, but it’s an important part of my personal story. Yet I’ve learned over time that I ought to make use of my whiteness where it’s most valuable; my color offers me a distinctive vantage point for addressing racism in the white community. When I address racism, usually detractors won’t complain, “He just says that because he’s black!” (One reviewer of one of my early books did complain, however, that my “wrong” view on a racially-involved matter was understandable, given that I’m black. That makes at least two points where I suspect that the reviewer was mistaken.)

White though I am, it’s a special joy to be among African-American friends with a shared appreciation for African-American culture, and I have always cherished it when, usually toward the beginning of our relationship, some friends have apologized, “Oh, Craig, I forgot that you’re white!” (I won’t elaborate the context.) I was ordained in an African-American church a quarter of a century ago, for more than fifteen years served in several African-American churches as an associate minister, lived for a few years completely in African-American communities, and am the only white member in my immediate family. (Admittedly, the last datum is cheating, since my wife is Congolese, though she wrote a nice doctoral dissertation regarding African-American history.)

Nevertheless, I unfortunately still need to wear a hat outside to keep from getting skin cancer.

The pain in crossing barriers

We can connect with people from various backgrounds on various levels, though I always feel a very special connection in an African-American setting. I seem to be secure enough in my own identity to feel comfortable in multiple environments today (aside from being uncomfortable almost everywhere because I’m an introvert). We don’t need to worry too much about how others define us: the people who know us well know who we are, and we don’t need to worry about the opinions of people who don’t know us (unless they are heavily armed or want to offer us a nice research position).

Yet in the early days, I felt a yearning to prove myself every time I went into a new African-American setting where people didn’t know me. That was after I learned how real racism was and decided to join the black side of the racial divide in the community where I lived. Eventually the barriers (when they existed) came down with every individual, without exception. Sometimes the beginnings of the process, however, were painful.

Nevertheless, one young African-American man helpfully articulated the lesson that experience provided for me: “Now you know how we feel in white settings.” Some of the other African-Americans present at the time scolded him for being hard on me, but he was absolutely right. At least in the community where we lived, each of us would always be viewed by strangers primarily in terms of our race. Color is of course one of the first things strangers see; that’s not only natural, it’s unavoidable. In this community, however, that color perception often came, at least from whites, with a set of negative assumptions as well.

A live issue

Maybe not equally in every location and every way, but race remains a live issue in America today. Ethnic prejudice is not an issue just of complexion—it takes very different forms in many parts of the world, including in most of Africa, as my wife, who lived the majority of her life there, readily points out. Ethnicity is also a cultural construct and not just (or in many cases around the world, not primarily) a biological one. But because of the distinctive social history of this country, race remains a real issue here. To my pleasant surprise, my kids, who are black, haven’t yet reported conspicuous experiences of racism, I think partly because of where they’re growing up. (It has not been for lack of warnings about the reality of racism.)

But things were different in communities where I learned about racism, where, for example, one of my seminary professor colleagues (we taught in a rural southern town) told me that he had a cross burned on his lawn. Indeed, even in a pleasant suburb of Philadelphia, neighbors gathered in protest when our seminary president’s administrative assistant, who was African-American, was going to rent a home for one summer in their neighborhood. She was one of the kindest people we knew, but the neighbors protested her presence because it would “lower property values.” (I don’t know if they would care that, in Genesis 13:10-13, Lot chose to live near Sodom because property values were more important to him than the moral integrity of his neighbors. One gets the impression from Genesis 19:26-34 that this was not the healthiest moral choice for his family’s future.) For some different, further details, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/learning-the-reality-of-racism_b_1510468.html.

Because of this country’s distinctive racial history, the Black Church here has centuries of experience dealing with pain in a special way, and that’s one reason I found healing there at a time of my great need. For that reason, I owe a special and lifelong debt to the Black Church, and to my African-American friends who treated me, not like a generic white person, but as a brother in Christ and a member of their family. Wherever I am, I can never be the same because of that.

It’s very sad that Ms. Dolezal felt a need to misrepresent her ethnicity. But the news about her affords the opportunity to discuss why some other people find homes in cultural communities that differ from their own. I wish more white Christians in my country could experience the wonderful fellowship, love and hospitality I have experienced in the Black Church (or at least the parts of the Black Church where I have known it). Indeed, those who have not experienced living in and serving and receiving welcome from other ethnic and cultural communities don’t know what they’re missing. The bonds that we form can give us friendships that last and shape us for a lifetime.

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A traditional biblical scholar meets Jack and Jill (warning: satire)

A traditional biblical scholar now approaches the account of Jack and Jill falling down the hill, hoping to uncover the historical core. What is the historical probability of Jack and Jill falling down the hill? Conservative scholars point out that “Falling down a hill is historically plausible; uniform and repeated human experience demonstrates that people fall toward a center of gravitation, rather than, as some liberal skeptics would seem to assume, falling up hills” (Lindsell 1970: 3). More avante-garde, textually-informed scholars, however, point out that gravitation here is merely a metaphor for sexual repression (see esp. Madonna 2006: 14-79).

Conservatives tend to argue that the names “Jack” and “Jill” are attested for the early seventeenth century, when the nucleus of the story is thought to have originated. Some scholars even suppose that this is the same “Jack” who is “a dull boy,” although this proverb (“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”) is attested as early as 1659, and the Jack mentioned here is hardly dull. (Conservatives respond that only a dull boy would seek water on a hilltop.) Further, nomographers attest that “Jack” was already a widely used name in this period (pace scholars who admit no evidence for “Jack” before the eighteenth century, when the name became most prominent as a heroic archetype). It was also commonly used in nursery rhymes. “Jill” and “Gill” were popular names already in the Middle Ages.

Against the historical plausibility of the story, consider that Jill’s tumble appears causally connected with that of Jack, and yet if Jack fell first and fell into Jill, she could well have tumbled down in front of him instead of “after” (I. Newton, 1683). The majority of genuinely critical scholars, therefore, recognize that the story as it stands must reflect considerable legendary development and cannot be original in this form.

Most scholars today thus postulate several layers of redaction. In the earliest layer, “Gill” was boy like Jack, as attested in an interpretation from the 1700s, though some fundamentalists, barely worth mentioning, appeal to the pairing of male and female as “Jack” and “Jill” already in the 1600s. In this earliest version, the two surely went to the top of the hill merely to see what was on the other side (much like the chicken who, in the same period, crossed the road but was run over by a horse-drawn carriage). Despite the protests of fundamentalists, who doubt that such a bare story would have warranted preservation, the original nucleus is clear because water prevails in valleys, not on hilltops. Being cautious and not wishing to engage in skepticism, scholarly consensus dates this first layer of the story, the ascent of Jack and Gill, to the spring of 1703, when a shortage of water is known in the village of Kilmersdon.

The second layer dates from the mid-1700s, when a redactor educated in Shakespearean drama noticed the pairing of male and female as “Jack and Jill” in Shakespeare (or, for more mature critics today, a pseudo-Shakespearean redactor). This scholar rightly interpreted their ascent as a fertility ritual, a form of cultic prostitution. The tumbling down of both, by contrast, was added in the Victorian era, to provide a moral by depicting a dismal end for these wretched transgressors of moral law (cf. here Shaftesbury 1883: 11). Granted, some texts of the rhyme do attest the falling down already by the beginning of the 1700s, but this interpretation could have become the dominant one only in the Victorian era and not before.

Some interpret the rhyme as an allegory of Norse mythology, a Protestant attack on Cardinal Wolsey, or the loss of crown of Louis XVI (although this event is dated to 1753, the French king’s execution could have been modeled on the earlier rhyme). Most biblical scholars prefer instead the profound explanation of Rudolf Bultmann, namely, that Jack and Jill represent the male and female aspects (respectively) of the gnostic redeemer figure (Bultmann 1954: 324). In the original version, the figure descended and then ascended. Later this was reversed to ascending the hill and then falling when gnostics became a marginalized sect. It is in fact this hypothesis that best accounts for all our evidence and must be considered now a proven fact.

One final point. Hermeneutics allows us to draw theological implications for today: the ultimate meaning of this, which transcends mere historical analysis, is obviously existential encounter with Being. Coincidentally, this is the hidden meaning that our hermeneutic allows us to uncover in every text.

Oh, we have some newly published, cutting-edge information coming in. Genre, you say? This is not written in the historiographic genre? Why didn’t you tell us that to begin with, you scoundrel! {Speaking of genre, if you endured to the end of this and haven’t figured it out yet, the genre of this post today is satire … of my profession, no less! ☹ }

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Why would God send judgment?—Genesis 6—9

(This post continues others about Genesis: God’s love shown in creation, God’s goodness messed up)

People write about the biblical account of the Flood from different angles (even the recent Noah movie, which, despite its departures from the biblical text, did helpfully emphasize the narrative’s theological balance of judgment and mercy). My interest here is in the text’s narrative theology.

A messed up world

It’s important to start a few chapters before the flood narrative, to catch the context of why God’s world had gotten so messed up. God intended for people to have direct access to him (cf. Gen 2:16-22; 3:8), but sin progressively alienated us from his presence (4:14, 16). Without his presence, we end up depending on either ourselves or our fellow humans to try to find the way, and that way can end up pretty messed up—kind of like the world we still often see around us.

Most other ancient Near Eastern cultures also had flood narratives, though the one in Genesis is shorter and simpler ways than most tales of their contemporaries. Some cultures attributed the flood to overpopulation; perhaps people were being too noisy, disturbing the gods’ rest. Genesis, however, uniquely attributes it to the one God’s dismay over the violence on the earth (6:12-13). Modern readers as opposed to ancient ones might be tempted to think God too harsh to send this flood, but God was only taking back what he had given to begin with. Only his mercy had held the destructive forces of nature at bay so long anyway.

Although God had warned that disobeying him would bring death (2:17), he initially showed much mercy to those who had done evil. When Cain killed Abel in Genesis 4, God punished Cain by alienating him from the soil, which had received his brother Abel’s blood (4:10-11). This judgment extended the curse on the soil already declared in 3:17-19. Humans were taken from soil and so were close to it (2:7; 3:19); they would return to soil in their death (3:19). Cain loved the soil (4:2), but his farming career was now terminated (4:12); driven from the land as his parents were driven from Eden, he would wander (4:12, 14). (The implicit warning to Genesis’s ancient Israelite hearers was that sin could expel them from the holy land in the same way; cf. e.g., Lev 18:28; Deut 28:64).

Cain pleaded that his punishment was too great, and that someone who found him would kill him (4:13-14). (The narrative does appear to assume that there were other people, and I have my guesses about them, but these are ultimately irrelevant. Where the killer would come from, or Cain’s later wife, or people for his city, are not important enough to the narrative’s point for the narrator to elaborate.) What is remarkable here is that God show mercy to Cain and provides him protection (4:15). Unfortunately, others exploited God’s mercy on Cain to expect that God would protect them when they killed others also (4:23-24).

More immediate causes

This sets the stage for the violence noted in Genesis 6. Because God has been so benevolent, people by this point are ignoring altogether his warnings of judgment. God ultimately makes matters stricter: those who kill others who are made in God’s image must die (9:6). That’s not because God really wants anyone to die (Ezek 18:23, 32), but because without this rule there would be more bloodshed. God’s ideal from the beginning was not so strict, as we see with Cain, but he wouldn’t let people continue to take his mercy for granted. God summons us to recognize each other human being as no less formed in God’s image than ourselves.

Another reason for the flood was the sexual immorality noted in Gen 6:1-4. Scholars explain the sons of God mating with human women in various ways. One view is that the godly line of Seth mated with Cain’s descendants; this view seems unlikely, though, since the “sons of God” here hardly sound godly. The most common ancient Jewish interpretation was that these were fallen angels mating with women, a view to which many scholars find allusions in 1 Pet 3:19-20; 2 Pet 2:4-5, Jude 6-7, and (much less likely) 1 Cor 11:10. “Sons of God” sometimes does refer to angels (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7), and both Greeks and most ancient Near Eastern peoples had stories about gods (whom Israelites would understand as demons) raping and seducing women. (Whatever the case, this account may also serve as a warning to Israel about their own conjugal practices, warning against intermarrying with worshipers of false gods, who would turn their hearts away; Deut 7:3-4.)

The need for judgment

Humanity’s practice of evil spread, so that all they ever thought about was evil (Gen 6:5). Humanity became so corrupt, with the spread of malignant evil so impossible to turn back, that God regretted having made people (6:6). The Hebrew text says that he grieved or felt pain in his heart. God had made people to be like his children (cf. the significance of being in one’s image in 5:1-3), but now things had turned out so badly that God was anguished and bitterly disappointed. His children had grown up to be murderers, apparently far beyond the level of Cain. (On the premise that God knows the future, some argue that God condescends to deal with people in their real time. Clearly God is able to know more than he sometimes lets on, as in 4:9-10. But again, such questions, valuable as they might be, digress from the point of the current story.)

The world does not belong to us. Even our very lives are a gift from God. When we abuse the gift of life to harm others or the world that God has made, instead of investing in serving others, we squander his gift and break his heart. We forget that we are mortal, and we must return the gift of life God has given us, and answer for how we have used it.

In this case, God took back the gift of order in creation. The refrain of Gen 1 is that God made everything “good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31); humanity, however, had made itself progressively more “bad” or “evil” (6:5). God had graciously taken a primeval chaos (Gen 1:2) and made it habitable. When he started making the world liveable, darkness was over the “deep,” and his Spirit hovered over the waters (1:2). But now, in judgment, the fountains of the “deep” erupted, inundating the earth with water (7:11). (The Hebrew term translated “deep” is significant here, since Genesis uses it only four times.) God was the one who had given the breath of life (2:7); now he took it back (6:17; 7:22).

The Israelites would understand such judgments, because they had seen something like this in their own experience as a people. They watched God unravel Egypt’s ecosystem with plagues, plagues that simply took back the blessings God had provided to begin with. They watched as God drowned their oppressors in the “deep” (Exod 15:5, the same Hebrew term). They celebrated how God’s “wind” (the same Hebrew word as above) raised up the waters and cast them down, sparing God’s people while punishing those seeking their deaths (Exod 15:8, 10). The Pentateuch uses a particular Hebrew term for “dry land” only for the flood (Gen 7:22) and Israel’s crossing of the sea (Exod 14:21).

New beginnings

But God planned a new start. One person served God and found favor in his sight, so God was going to restart humanity through him (6:8-9). Noah’s father had named him Noah, “rest,” in the hope that God would use him to reverse the curse against the soil (5:29). (The Hebrew letters for Noah—nch—are related to the Hebrew verb for rest. Noah’s father hoped he would bring “comfort”—nchm; but that term, which also means “relent,” appears again when God is sorry he made people in 6:6-7. Noah’s ark, however, also “rested” in a good way after the flood; 8:4.) Eventually God did receive Noah’s offering and promise not to curse the soil any further (8:21).

The new start came. Just as God’s Spirit hovered over the waters in the beginning, so in Gen 8:1 God sent a “wind” (the same Hebrew word as “Spirit”) over the earth to lower the waters of the flood. God closed the fountains of the “deep” (8:2). God had protected those with the breath of life who were with Noah (7:11).

Moreover, the narrative describes Noah as receiving a new commission, just like Adam; unfortunately, sin appears again soon afterward (9:21-25). God later chooses Abram for a new start, with a new commission, because he knows that Abram will raise his promised line rightly (18:19). God’s plan was always meant to lead back to Eden, to restore us to the purpose for which he made us. (I have taken the following chart from my Acts commentary, vol. 2, p. 1361.)

Adam narratives Noah narrative Abraham narrative
Blessed (1:28a; 5:2) Blessed (9:1) Blessed (12:2-3)
After creation Recreation after the flood After Babel
“Be fruitful and multiply” (1:28) “Be fruitful and multiply” (9:1, 7) Promise of seed (12:2; 15:4-5)
Fill the earth (1:28) Fill the earth (9:1) Promise of the land (12:1)
Curse: serpent (and its seed; 3:14-15) Curse: Canaan (9:25) Curse: those who curse you (12:3)
Followed by a genealogy with about ten generations ending in three sons (5:3-32) Preceded and followed by a genealogy with about ten generations ending in three sons (5:3-32) Preceded by a genealogy with about ten generations ending in three sons (11:12-27)

Making Abraham’s name great (12:2) contrasts with the people at Babel seeking to make their own name great (11:4); they were scattered after seeking not to be scattered (11:4, 8-9), whereas Abraham went in obedience to God (Gen 12:1, 4).

Even this did not restore Eden, but it was a step forward. When Israel disobeyed God, he threatened to start over with Moses’s descendants (Exod 32:10). Although God again showed mercy (see http://www.craigkeener.org/gods-forgiveness-exodus-327-14/), it was a promised seed to come through whom God himself would make all things right. Ultimately, one descendant of Abraham would be a new Adam to lead us back to Eden. Conformed to his image, we become the sons and daughters of God he meant us to be.

Other posts in this series include: God’s love in creation, God’s goodness messed up, Peleg, Babel, God’s call, and God’s promise

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Living simply to serve the poor–Luke 12:33

Christianity Today published Craig’s article, “When Jesus Wanted All my Money,” at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/may/when-jesus-wanted-all-my-money.html. It was supposed to be about a verse that impacted him, so he chose Luke 12:33 and developed it in light of a theme that runs throughout Luke’s Gospel, sharing also how it impacted him.

Later note: this article is now locked for nonsubscribers to CT, so that only the opening paragraphs are visible. For nonsubscribers, a full copy of a related article will be posted here, probably in August 2015.