THEN THE MAN and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Original Meaning
THERE ARE DIFFERENCES between how we think about the Fall theologically and how the Israelites would have thought about it. As New Testament believers, we think most easily in Pauline categories, and with good reason. But before we analyze this section theologically, we need to get a firm grasp on how the Israelites would have read this text.
God in Garden (3:8–13)
ONE OF THE favorite old hymns of the faith, “In the Garden,”1 is based on certain inferences drawn from verse 8 and has in turn served to entrench the resulting interpretation in our theology. That hymn implies by analogy that Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall relationship with God was characterized by beautiful fellowship as they walked together every evening in the garden. Does careful exegesis substantiate this picture?
First, we can confirm that the Lord is here walking about in the garden. We are not told that this was a regular occurrence, but neither does the text indicate that it was unusual. The two elements that offer varying possibilities are the word “sound” (qol) and the phrase “cool of the day” (ruaḥ hayyom).
The first term, qol, is broad in its possibilities. It can refer to many types of sounds—from that which is barely discernible (1 Kings 19:12) to loud voices (Ex. 32:18), from man-made blasts (Josh. 6:5) to thunder of judgment (Ex. 9:23–34). Given this wide range of possibilities, something else in the context must decide what sort of sound is intended. We must analyze the phrase the NIV translates “cool of the day” for its contribution to the discussion.
We have already investigated both of these words in previous contexts (see pp. 74, 80–81). The word ruaḥ can mean “wind” and “spirit,” and yom means “day.” These two words do not occur together like this anywhere else in the Old Testament, so we find ourselves without sufficient synchronic evidence to arrive at a confident interpretation. It is certainly interpretive to deduce that “wind of the day” refers to “cool of the day” and therefore refers to cool evening breezes. But what else could “wind of the day” mean? The words ruaḥ and qol do occur together elsewhere, but only in the context of a storm (Jer. 10:13//51:16) as a reference to “wind” and “thunder” respectively. If that is the appropriate understanding, what is the word “day” there for?
Akkadian terminology has demonstrated that the word translated “day” also has the meaning “storm.” This meaning can be seen also for this Hebrew word (yom) in Isaiah 27:8 and Zephaniah 2:2 (the NIV still tries to translate “day” in the latter verse). The Akkadian term is used in connection to the deity coming in a storm of judgment. If this is the correct rendering of the word here in Genesis 3, we can translate verse 8 in this way: “They heard the roar of the LORD moving about in the garden in the wind of the storm.”2 If this rendering is correct, it is understandable why Adam and Eve are hiding. I do not offer this as the right translation. The major objection is that the word yom only rarely carries the meaning “storm.” The appearance with the other two words here and the logic of the context make this new rendering a possibility, but one that can only be held tentatively.
Serpent Curse (3:14)
SERPENTS ARE OFTEN the object of curses in the ancient world, and the curse in verse 14 follows somewhat predictable patterns. The Egyptian Pyramid texts (second half of the third millennium B.C.) contain a number of spells against serpents, but they also include spells against other creatures considered dangers or pests. The serpent enjoys some prominence, however, since it is represented on the crown of the pharaoh. Some spells enjoin the serpent to crawl on its belly (keep its face on the path). This is in contrast to raising its head up to strike. The serpent on its belly is nonthreatening while the one reared up is protecting or attacking. Treading on a serpent is used in these texts as a means of overcoming or defeating it. This suggests we should not think of the serpent as having previously walked on legs. Instead, the curse combats its aggressive nature.
Likewise, we should not think of the curse of eating dust as a description of the diet of snakes. The depiction of dust or dirt for food is typical of descriptions of the netherworld in ancient literature. In the Gilgamesh Epic, Enkidu on his deathbed dreams of the netherworld and describes it as a place with no light and where “dust is their food, clay their bread,” a description also known from the Descent of Ishtar. These are most likely considered characteristics of the netherworld because they describe the grave. Dust fills the mouth of the corpse, but dust will also fill the mouth of the serpent as it crawls along the ground. Given this background information, the curse on the serpent can be understood as wishing upon it a status associated with docility (crawling on belly) and death (eating dust).
Seed and Enmity (3:15)
THE PARTIES INVOLVED in verse 15 are the woman and her seed and the serpent and its seed. Some have thought it odd (or prophetic) to speak of the woman’s seed because women are not the ones who provide the seed. The ancient world was unaware of the details of the fertilization process and knew nothing of the egg produced by the woman. The process was believed to involve a man planting his seed inside a woman, who provided nothing but the incubator. Nevertheless, once the seed was implanted, it could be referred to as the woman’s seed, as Genesis 16:10 and 24:60 demonstrate.
The word “seed” is a collective noun that typically takes singular pronouns standing in its place. Therefore when the text says that he will crush your head, grammar cannot determine whether this is a reference to the corporate seed or one representative from among the descendants.3
The use of the singular “you” (“your head” and “you will strike”) has sometimes been considered an indication that this must refer to Satan because the serpent does not continue to exist through the generations. Again, however, grammar fails to sustain this argument. In 28:14, God tells Jacob, “Your descendants [seed] will be like the dust of the earth, and you [singular] will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.” Here the singular you is not Jacob but his seed. This is also the case here in 3:15. If the singular “you” refers only to the serpent (as Satan), there would be no reason to mention the serpent’s seed.
The most important interpretive question here concerns the nature of the conflict being described. Throughout the history of the church, this has been read as the first foreshadowing of Christ’s defeat of Satan. This will be discussed at length in the Bridging Contexts section, but here we must address the verbs that are used. The verbs NIV translates “crush” and “strike” are now properly identified as belonging to the same root, šwp.4 We must therefore conclude that the actions performed are comparable. For this reason, the translation of the verb should be fairly generic so as to be suitable to both a strike to the head and a strike to the heel; thus, “He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
If the verbs are from the same root, we must next ask whether the potential damage is the same. While it is true that a strike to the head would appear more devastating than a strike to the heel, a serpent’s strike to the heel is another matter altogether. While not all snakes were poisonous, the threat provided by some, in the haste to protect oneself, attaches itself to all snakes. Of thirty-six species of snake known to the area, the viper (vipera palaestinae) is the only poisonous snake in northern and central Israel. But a poisonous snake is the most aggressive, so an attack by any snake was viewed as a potentially mortal blow. Given the repetition of the verb and the potentially mortal nature of both attacks, it becomes difficult to understand the verse as suggesting an eventual outcome to the struggle. Instead, both sides are exchanging potentially mortal blows of equal threat to the part of the body most vulnerable to their attack. The verse is depicting a continual, unresolved conflict between humans and the representatives of evil.
Woman (3:16)
TWO IMPORTANT EXEGETICAL issues must be addressed in the statement that God makes to the woman. These center around the words “pain” and “desire,” both of which must be explored and clarified.
Pain. The noun translated “pain” in the first line is ʿiṣṣabon, a word used only two other times in the Old Testament (Gen. 3:17; 5:29). Nouns from the same root (ʿeṣeb II, ʿoṣeb II, and ʿaṣṣebet) refer to pain, agony, hardship, worry, nuisance, and anxiety. The verbal root (ʿṣb II) occurs in a wide range of stems with a semantic range that primarily expresses grief and worry. What is important to note about this profile is that the root is not typically used to target physical pain, but mental or psychological anguish (though physical pain may accompany or be the root cause of the anguish).
This is actually helpful because interpreters have generally had trouble working out how conception is painful. Despite the NIV’s “childbearing,” the Hebrew word is specifically concerned with conception. The word translated “pain” in the second line (ʿeṣeb) is used elsewhere to refer to strenuous work and is therefore an appropriate description of giving birth. One last note regarding syntax is that in the first line, “pains in childbearing,” is a hendiadys (two nouns joined by “and” but functioning as a single entity, e.g., American “assault and battery”) and thus conveys something like “conception anxiety.”
From these observations we can conclude that the first half of verse 16 is an extended merism (two endpoints used to refer to everything in between, e.g., “soup to nuts”) referring to the anxiety that a woman will experience through the whole process from conception to birth.5 This includes anxiety about whether she will be able to conceive a child, anxiety that comes with all the physical discomfort of pregnancy, anxiety concerning the health of the child in the womb, and anxiety about whether she and the baby will survive the birth process. Even in a world of modern technology and much more in the uncertain medical climate of the ancient world, we must agree that anxiety defines the birth process. A resulting paraphrase of verse 16a is: “I will greatly increase the anguish you will experience in the birth process, from the anxiety surrounding conception to the strenuous work of giving birth.”
Desire. This term has been extremely controversial, so our approach must be intentional with regard to lexical method. A quick review of methodological guidelines is therefore in order. (1) “Usage determines meaning.” This is an allusion to the synchronic method, which concerns the data derived from studying how contemporary authors used the word. (2) “The history or constituent parts of a word are not reliable guides to meaning.” Thus, diachronic methods (examining the root, related grammatical forms, etymology, and comparative Semitics) must take a back seat but can be factored in as their pertinence suggests is appropriate or as the lack of synchronic data demands.
These two issues are particularly important in the study of the word translated “desire” (tešuqa). The word occurs only two other times in the Old Testament (Gen. 4:7; Song 7:10). This means that the synchronic database is slim, but that does not mean that it can be ignored. Genesis 4:7 occurs not only in the same general context but also features similar circumstances on the syntax and discourse levels. This unquestionably makes it the most significant context to examine. One interpretation, taking its lead from this connection and observing that the context of Genesis 4 suggests domination, has identified the woman’s desire as a desire to dominate. Diachronic information—specifically, the meaning of the root in Arabic—is used to further support that claim.6
The problem with this (aside from the significant distance between Hebrew and Arabic) is that it ignores the Song of Songs occurrence, which cannot be reconciled with the domination concept. It is unacceptable to ignore one third of the synchronic data. A second approach has used the Song of Songs connection to portray the woman’s desire in sexual terms. This has obvious problems with Genesis 4:7, where there is no possible sexual connotation.
The solution must be to back up one lexical category. Since there is no common ground between the three passages regarding what is desired, tešuqa must find its meaning in some other aspect. One possibility, and the one I favor, is that it simply refers to one’s basic or inherent instincts. Song of Songs refers to the male sexual drive, a basic instinct. Genesis 4:7 refers to the basic driving instinct of sin, which is to deprave. In 3:16, then, since the context has already addressed the issue of reproduction, that can easily be identified as a basic instinct of woman. If reproduction is going to be so fraught with anguish, why do it? The answer is found in the woman’s instinct, her desire to have children. The text sees that desire as “for [her] husband” because such a desire cannot be fulfilled without his cooperation.
The basic idea here is that woman’s desire, which renders her dependent, is traceable to her need to fulfill her maternal instinct. . . . For now let us recall what sociologists have called the principle of lesser or least interest: In a relationship involving two partners, the one with the greater need of the other is the more vulnerable, while the one with the lesser interest in the relationship is in a position of dominance.7
In this way, tešuqa is lexically a basic instinct and contextually refers to the woman’s desire to have children and to be a mother. Just as chapter 2 established the basis for the man’s need of woman, chapter 3 establishes the basis for the woman’s need of man. Her needs will put him in a position to dominate.
Man/Ground (3:17–19)
IN VERSES 17–19 we are again faced with a curse, this time directed at the ground. What does it mean for the ground to be cursed? The verbal root used here (ʾrr) is recognized as the opposite of bless (brk). To bless someone is to put that person under God’s protection, enjoying God’s favor. To curse is to remove from God’s protection and favor.8 It does not mean putting a hex on something or changing its character or nature by magical or mystical means. It does not mean to bewitch or put a spell on something. One of the clearest examples is in David’s speech to Saul in 1 Samuel 26:19. If men have incited Saul against David, David declares them “cursed” (i.e., to be deprived of God’s favor, blessing, and protection) because they have deprived him of God’s favor (share in the Lord’s inheritance) and protection (his Presence), thereby sending him to other gods to find protection and favor.
In English, the best equivalent for ʾrr is the word “damn.” It wishes for a person to be eternally removed from God’s protection, favor, and presence. As a result of the ground being removed from God’s favor, protection, and blessing, it will yield its produce only through hard labor. The word the NIV translates “painful toil” is the same word used in the first line of 3:16 (“pains”) that was interpreted above as “anguish.” The impact of this curse is that, though food is still made available to people, it will be much harder to produce it.
Skin Garments (3:20–21)
IT IS A SERIOUS error to read sacrifice between the lines of verse 21.9 The institution of sacrifice is far too significant an occurrence to leave it entirely to inference. Again we stress that it is our objective as interpreters to understand what the author wished to communicate, not to piece together answers we would like to know from reading between the lines. The author is clearly not communicating anything about sacrifice here, for he does not address that issue. What is his point then?
In some contexts, clothing someone is an act of investiture. Kings and priests were clothed in installation ceremonies. Joseph was clothed by his father with a special coat and was clothed by Pharaoh on his appointment to high office. But all of these constitute elevations of status, whereas Adam and Eve are ready to be demoted. In the Tale of Adapa, after Adapa loses the opportunity to eat from the bread and water of life, he is given clothing by the god Anu before being sent from his presence.
For lack of other alternatives, this provision should probably be seen as an act of grace by God, preparing them for the more difficult environment he is sending them into and providing a remedy for their newly developed shame. Insofar as animal death is likely already in the system (see comments on pp. 183–84), there is nothing unusual about using an animal skin for a garment.
Sentence Passed (3:22–24)
FINALLY, THE CONCLUSION is reached as God enforces the threatened punishment. Banishment from the garden and cutting off access to the tree of life are the means by which the death penalty is carried out. Without the antidote to aging, death is inevitable. The cherubim are supernatural creatures who, referred to over ninety times in the Old Testament, usually function as guardians of God’s presence. From guarding the tree of life to the ornamental representation over the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant to the accompaniment of the chariot/throne in Ezekiel’s visions, cherubim are always closely associated with the person or property of deity.
Biblical descriptions of cherubim (e.g., Ezek. 1; 10) agree with archaeological finds that suggest cherubim are composite creatures (like griffins or sphinxes). Representations of these creatures are often found flanking the throne of a king. Here in Genesis the cherubim guard the way to the tree of life, now forbidden property of God. An interesting Neo-Assyrian seal depicts what appears to be a fruit tree flanked by two such creatures with deities standing on their backs supporting a winged sun disk. Ironically, whereas people were originally charged with “keeping” the garden (Gen. 2:15), now that same verb is used as the cherubim “guard” the way to the tree of life, keeping people out. The warden is off to jail.
Bridging Contexts
THE FALL. Subtle differences exist between how we think about the Fall theologically and how the Israelites would have thought about it. We think most easily in Pauline categories, and with good reason. Such thinking leads us to build our theology around the entry of sin into the world and the resulting spiritual death and imputed sin nature (Rom. 5). These are helpful and necessary perspectives, but they do not represent the theological categories of Israel’s thinking.
Furthermore, the Israelites would not have considered the effects of the curse, far-reaching though they be, as representing the greatest loss. In Israel, while there was undoubtedly a recognition of the inherent nature of sin, the biggest problem of the Fall was not concentrated in the change in human nature or the heart condition but in the loss of access to the presence of God and the reduced ability to participate in the blessing. If they ever thought about “Paradise Lost,” I would not expect their thoughts to be filled with the pleasant living conditions they enjoyed, provision of their every need, harmony among all creatures, and so on. The overwhelming loss was not paradise; it was God. Throughout all the rest of the Old Testament one never hears talk of regaining the comfort of Eden, but regaining access to God’s presence was paramount.
As an illustration, consider the case of a family that goes through a divorce. Let’s say that the father gets to keep the luxurious mansion that the family had been living in, while the mother and the four children relocate and, out of necessity, find themselves living in a small two-bedroom apartment. Undoubtedly the children will miss the comforts their home had afforded them, but that sense of loss will be reduced to nearly nothing in comparison to the loss of access to and fellowship with their father. It is a matter of degree.
In a similar vein, when we are challenged to think about our sinfulness, we usually turn our attention toward ourselves. We become aware of the darkness in our hearts, the filth that clogs our minds, the inclination toward disobedience that tugs at our will and at times holds it hostage, and the selfishness that absorbs our every conscious thought. While we may include the idea that our sin makes God sad, the sense of the reality of sin is often achieved only by making us feel disgusted about our unworthiness. Psalm 51 assures us that the Israelites were also aware of the pervasive darkness within their hearts.
But the bulk of Old Testament literature regarding sin comes in the ritual texts (e.g., Lev. 1–7), where the greater emphasis is on the effect of our sin on God. Sin defiles God’s presence and prevents us from access to him. The most vile aspect of human sin is not what it did to each of us, but what it did to God. Our sin is a desecration of God. This desecration does not alter who God is, but it dishonors him. It can be compared to the disrespect done to a country when its flag is trampled on, torn, smeared with excrement, or burned. The country does not suffer in this process, but a patriot will jump to its defense nonetheless. In a similar vein, the most lamentable result of sin to an Israelite is not that it makes people bad but that it makes God distant.
As a result, Israelite thinking did not perceive the ongoing effects of sin and the Fall as moral sludge in the genes. The fall of the human race is not portrayed in terms of sin-laced sperm but in the continuing distance between people and God and the lack of access to his presence. In Genesis this is reflected in the movement away from God’s presence, resulting in increasing isolation from him. We are all born outside of Eden, and our nature, inclinations, thoughts, and actions all confirm our outsider status in that the causes and condition of our expulsion remain.
An illustration from history may help clarify. In the sixteenth century the Church of England withdrew from the Roman Church and from the authority of the pope after Henry VIII had been excommunicated for his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Since that time, all members of the Church of England are, by definition, not members of the Church of Rome. It is not necessarily their commitment to the Church of England that so defines them, but their birth and baptism into the Church of England that, as a body, maintains its distance from the Catholic Church and its independence from papal authority. It is a corporate identity and a corporate position.
Israel would have been more inclined to think on the corporate level, though any corporate body is made up of individuals. Their group-centered identity was the basis on which they understood the fallen nature of humankind. In a group-centered culture the group is viewed as a single unit that is inseparably linked together. An individual’s status is ascribed to them at birth rather than achieved.10 These elements of culture and worldview conditioned how Israel viewed the Fall. The purpose of this section of the text is to explain how humanity, corporately and individually, came to be outsiders and lost access to God’s presence. Israelites understood that it was not supposed to be that way.
In the film Grand Canyon a driver gets lost and suffers a car breakdown in a bad neighborhood, thereby finding himself and his luxury car in jeopardy. As gang members close in, a tow truck arrives, and the truck driver begins to hook up the car, much to the relief of the driver though increasing the hostility of the teenagers. The truck driver’s speech to the gangleader captures the bottom line of Genesis 3:
Man, the world ain’t supposed to work like this. Maybe you don’t know that, but this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be able to do my job without askin’ you if I can. And that dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you rippin’ him off. Everything’s supposed to be different than what it is here.11
We all know this is true because, as C. S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity, we all have an inner sense of fair play. There is something that still makes us want to appear good.
We want to keep up at least our image of the image of God. We want to keep up the masquerade even within our own hearts. Remarkably, the phenomenon of self-deception testifies that we human beings, even when we do evil, are incorrigibly sold on goodness. At some level of our being we know that goodness is as plausible and original as God, and that, in the history of the human race, goodness is older than sin.12
This affirmation is at the heart of Genesis 3. Yet this sense is fleeting, and we catch it only in glimpses. Our experience of life after the Fall knows only the transience of quicksilver or of sand pouring out through our fingers. The true good cannot be grasped. This regret is captured in Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” as it concludes:
The curse disrupts blessing and relationship; the Fall puts God beyond our reach. The yearning in our hearts is for goodness and God. But our direct access to God has been cut off, and the inclination of our hearts is only evil all the time.
Victory? In the Original Meaning section I concluded that verse 15 portrays potentially mortal blows being exchanged between the combatants. It is difficult to find any foreshadowing of victory in those statements. If this is accurate, the verse affirms that the struggle has just begun and will continue unabated. While no champion is envisioned in this interpretation, neither can the verse be considered simply an etiology about people’s fear of snakes. It would have been evident to the Israelite audience that the serpent represented something evil—even if the role of Satan was unknown to them. Sin has gotten its foot in the door. On the one hand, its victory is not thereby an assured result. There will be a struggle. On the other hand, this was not an isolated incident. Savoring success, the influence of evil will continue to try to make headway into human existence. Thus, the battle lines are formed and the warfare begins.
This is not, as the reader is undoubtedly aware, the traditional interpretation of this passage. The traditional understanding, at least throughout church history, has been that in Genesis 3:15 we find the promise of victory and the first proclamation of a plan for God’s redemption through his Messiah. There are a few hints at this interpretation prior to or outside of the church fathers. One of the earliest sources from which this interpretation is inferred is the LXX, where some suggest the Greek translator betrays through his choice of pronouns the identification of a single seed.14
The earliest explicit attestation of the Christian messianic interpretation is to be found in Irenaeus, writing in the second century A.D. From that point it became common to so interpret the passage. Even so, there has never been unanimity. In the Reformation period, for instance, Calvin was more inclined to see in the seed the corporate body of Christ.15
Does “seed” refer to one person or many? There is nothing in the grammar that demands it refer to one person, though certainly the door is left open for the possibility. That evidence being ambiguous, the next step is to look at the hermeneutical issues involved. If we explore the text in light of the author’s intention and the initial audience’s understanding, it is difficult to see how they would conclude that the text foretells the coming of a single person (seed) who would bring victory. The repetition of the same verb describing the battle and the ambiguity concerning the seed do not commend such a reading. If we want to explore the possibility of an intention in the text that transcends the original author-audience matrix, we must establish the ground rules in order to determine how such a transcendent intention can be identified within an authority framework. In other words, if the Genesis audience did not understand this as prophecy of the Messiah, whose idea was it and why should we believe them?
Usually it is on the basis of other texts of Scripture that such a fulfillment is identified that transcends the original context. Otherwise, such an identification has no authority. In this case, however, the rest of Scripture does not help us. Messianic expectation of Israel developed around the concept of a future king of David’s line. That means that it is difficult to have much of a messianic hope prior to David. A few pre-Davidic passages are frequently identified as having messianic significance (e.g., Gen. 49:10; Num. 24:17), but even these are royal in nature (focusing on the destiny of the tribe of Judah).
Even if an additional passage like Deuteronomy 18:15, 18 is included in the list, there is no hint of an Israelite messianic expectation that includes the concept of bringing an end to evil in the world. We should also note that the rest of Old Testament never makes reference to Genesis 3:15 in the development of its messianic expectation, nor does intertestamental literature, including the rich messianic developments in the literature from Qumran.
The situation does not improve in the New Testament. With all of the effort by New Testament authors to identify prophecies of Jesus, the fact that the New Testament never suggests that Christ fulfills Genesis 3:15 is striking. How can we identify a passage as messianic if the Old Testament context offers no support of such an interpretation either conceptually or textually, and the New Testament suggests no fulfillment connection? Some contend that even though the New Testament does not specifically link the work of Christ to Genesis 3:15, other hints are given of its significance, particularly in Romans 16:20 and Galatians 3:16.
Romans 16:20 is not part of Paul’s theological exposition but comes in the closing greetings he appends to his letter. The text reads, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” It need not be denied that this is an allusion to Genesis 3:15, but it is also clear that Paul sees the “seed” not as Christ but as the church at Rome (“your” feet). As a result, here in the only specific New Testament reference to Genesis 3:15, Paul does not follow what has become the church’s traditional interpretation.
In Galatians 3:16 some interpreters have found what they believe to be a Pauline argument that the reference to “seed” in Genesis 3:15 should be taken as a reference to Christ as the single seed. The text reads, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” A couple of important points must be noted. (1) This is not a direct statement concerning Genesis 3:15; it refers to Abraham’s seed (Gen. 12; 17), not Eve’s.
(2) Though some believe Paul is confused about the fact that the Hebrew term is collective and cannot take a plural, the apostle is in fact using his acute knowledge of Hebrew. He is not noting that the text uses a singular rather than a plural (for he would have been aware that the Hebrew word cannot take a plural). Instead, he is pointing out that the Hebrew word uses a collective (seed) rather than a plural (seeds). Just as the grammatical collective represents one standing for many, so Christ is one who represents the many. But in this passage Christ’s representation of the many concerns Israel, not all of humankind, so it tells us nothing about Genesis 3:15.
If there is no biblical identification of Christ as the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15, there is no authority link to support that interpretation. It is therefore haphazard to adopt a messianic interpretation of the text. If we are going to take the text at face value, even on a canonical scale, we must conclude that 3:15 describes only the ongoing struggle between evil (represented by the serpent and all representatives of evil that succeed it) and humanity generation through generation. Such a position does not deny Christ’s victory over Satan or the importance of messianic interpretation, nor does it dilute the messianic element in Old Testament theology. It simply seeks to give the author’s intention pride of place in the exegetical process so as to preserve the authority links of the text.
Curse or pronouncement? Interpreters and theologians have traditionally referred to 3:14–19 as “the curse.” It is easy to see the logic of this in that the term “curse” is used twice and the negative character of the context is evident to any reader. Yet there is also reason to reject this label. As we look carefully at the passage, we see that the serpent is cursed and the ground is cursed, but the people, the ones the Lord actually is addressing, are not cursed (at least the term is not used; cf. 4:11 and 9:25, where Cain and Canaan do come directly under a curse). It is true that there are negative consequences for Eve and Adam, but we must weigh the nature of these carefully. Another way to say this is that we must decide which of the statements are prescriptive (conditions imposed either through curse statements or first-person verbs) and which are descriptive (consequences delineated).16
An initial inkling can be gained when we attempt to identify the relationship between God’s statements and the threatened punishment. God said that when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they would incur the sentence of death (2:17). This punishment is carried out in 3:22–24 as they are driven from the garden and prevented access to the tree of life. What God warned would happen does indeed happen. So how do these other consequences fit in? Has God decided to be harsher than his word? Far be it from us that we should think that!
Instead, I suggest that God’s words are best understood as parental in nature, patiently and sadly describing to Adam and Eve the inevitable consequences of the choices they have made for themselves. In genre this pronouncement shares much with the patriarchal pronouncements of blessing throughout Genesis.17 These pronouncements concern fertility of the family and ground and statements concerning who will dominate whom. They often include both negative and positive statements. The Genesis 3 pronouncement prescribes (by means of curses on the serpent and ground and first-person verbs) and describes (delineating consequences).
This can be supported by observing the structure of the passage. When God addresses the serpent, there is one sequence addressing the serpent as beast (3:14) that includes a prescriptive statement imposing a condition (curse), followed by a descriptive statement indicating the consequences of the new situation brought about by his behavior (crawling on belly, eating dust). A second sequence addresses the serpent in connection with its role as representing evil (v. 15). Again there is a prescriptive statement imposing a condition (enmity) followed by a descriptive statement indicating the consequences of the new situation (mutual striking). When God addresses Adam in verses 17–19, there is a prescriptive statement imposing a condition (curse on the ground, v. 17), followed by a descriptive statement indicating the consequences of the new situation (anguish and thorns and sweat, vv. 18–19).
This pattern would lead us to expect that the same structure is followed when God addresses the woman. The prescriptive statement imposing a condition (complication of the birth process) is followed by a descriptive statement indicating the consequences of the new situation (anguish in childbirth and relationship to husband).
When a teenager has a car accident and totals the family’s auxiliary car, the father may have to arrange a parent-child conversation. It is possible that some prescriptions will come out of the discussion (grounded, not allowed to drive, etc.), but there would also be some descriptions of the situation created by the incident. There will be less opportunity to have independent transportation since the family now has only one car. Insurance costs are going to skyrocket and may even necessitate loss of insurance. Perhaps the driver’s license will be revoked by the state. These are all negative results, but some are imposed by the various authorities while others are the natural consequences of the accident.
If the statement in the last half of verse 16 is descriptive, there is no need to see it as part of a curse and no need to see it as imposed. This can be further supported by the grammar in that the statement “Your desire will be for your husband” is actually a verbless clause. It is therefore not only possible but preferable to translate it as a statement: “Your desire is toward your husband and [result] he will rule you.” As description this is not imposing gender roles but identifying what is inevitable. Eve’s desire to fulfill her mother role will inevitably result in her husband’s domination. Finally, and significantly, note that 4:7 uses similar vocabulary and syntax, and there the verbless clause is clearly descriptive and translated in the present tense.
When we move back to the prescriptive first statement of the verse, we can also now understand this in new ways. In the past it has been common to think that as an act of judgment God imposed on women, labor pains come in giving birth. I have even heard stories of those who refuse anesthetics because they feel obliged to accept willingly the punishment God has imposed. The alternative that the above interpretation suggests is that the way God increased the anguish that characterizes the whole process of conception, pregnancy, and birth was by passing the sentence of death. The presence of death in the system and the urgency that it creates stands as the cause of the anguish.
In the same way, the curse on the ground is prescriptive, but it is carried out by means of the punishment of death and casting them from the garden. The anguish of 3:17 will be a direct result of the reality of death in the system. Survival is going to be continually in question. The text does not suggest that God created thorns and thistles any more than he created labor pains to add to human torment. The ground outside the garden always produced thorns and thistles, but now Adam will have to cope with them.18 The inability to grow all that human beings need to survive will force them to resort to gathering food that grows wild (3:18b, the plants of the field). The curse on the ground, therefore, causes death to loom threateningly over them.
The blessing. The pronouncement is organized around the basic elements of the blessing from chapter 1. The text has already established the blessing as the climax of chapter 1 and the objective of chapter 2. Aside from the idea of the blessing as the author’s main theme, it stands to reason that having sinned and broken their relationship with God, the natural question is: Is the blessing of chapter 1 still intact? This question especially arises since the offense had to do with transgression of the food boundary, a limitation put on the blessing. God’s statements answer this question as he addresses the status of childbearing and food procurement, the two main aspects of the blessing. Yes, the blessing will remain, but the human vulnerability to death now creates an urgency that will change everything in the way the blessing is experienced.
Prior to the Fall, survival was not at stake. Even if death was in the world of creation, Adam and Eve had an antidote that made it a nonissue (eating regularly from the tree of life). With death now an imminent threat, survival hangs in the balance. This includes day-to-day survival, which must be secured by an adequate food supply, and survival of the race, which must be secured through reproduction. The need to secure survival adds an urgency that did not previously exist. What was enjoyed as blessing now becomes essential to stave off extinction. The blessing has not been lost, but the climate has changed considerably.
In eating of the fruit, Adam and Eve attempted to gain autonomy and move away from their dependence on God. In his pronouncement, God outlines the trade-offs that have been made. Both Adam and Eve will still be dependent on him to carry out their primary functions and secure the benefits of the blessing. The anguish and anxiety they experience in their functions will constantly exhaust their resources and cast them on God.
Additionally, there are other dependencies that have been established. Woman will be dependent on her husband to reproduce. That is not a change, but what has changed is the urgency she now feels because of the threat of extinction, which will increase her dependence. Man will be dependent on the ground in order to secure food for the family. That is likewise not a change, but the ground, now under a curse, is not going to be as cooperative as the garden was in supplying their needs. The blessing has fallen on hard times, and Adam and Eve have discovered that there is no such thing as autonomy. The author of Genesis continues his tracking of the blessing as it is transformed from a bounteous privilege that came easily in God’s gracious provision to a grim taskmaster that yields its fruits haphazardly to its beneficiaries only under great duress.
Naming Eve. In chapter 2 we noted that Adam did not name Eve but indicated how she would be classified (as “woman”). Here in chapter 3 he does name her, and in so doing designates her function as mother of all life. This is an indication of his authority over her, which was referred to in 3:16. It is not an authority assigned to him by God in the text or identified as coming to him because she ate first. It is the authority that exists by virtue of her dependence on him to fulfill her basic mothering instincts. It is this role as mother that the name highlights.
The ability to assign or change a name is not always the result of an inherent authority; it may be the result of a circumstantial authority. So, for instance, when Babylonian kings assigned new names to kings of Judah, they were not exercising an intrinsic authority built into the nature of humanity. They had authority only for the time being by virtue of their military strength. The exercise of that authority by giving a name to the king was a symbolic act indicating that authority. In the same way, Adam’s naming of Eve as “mother” is an indication that he has a controlling role in her reproductive function. Adam’s designation of Eve’s name as relating to her mothering role expresses a position of control in that role. This does not demand that everything about Eve be under his jurisdiction. In the ancient world, the reproductive role almost exclusively defined the woman, so control in this area gave virtually absolute control to the man.
HOW GOES THE WAR? As Genesis 3:15 indicates, the war between humanity and the representatives of evil is an ongoing one. Though it changes tactics and battlefronts from age to age and from culture to culture, the battle continues. The war operates in two ways. First are the outright strikes—attempted incursions into enemy territory. The second, the more subtle, seeks to impact the other side through infiltration and changing the way they think. A brief glance at the scorecard offers us a snapshot of how the war goes as we enter a new millennium.
Heel strikes. We can observe heel strikes occurring at every level. Individuals come under attack, societal changes threaten the Christian worldview, international politics bring escalating injustice and violence, and even the church engages in constant cannibalization. A few examples tell the story.
(1) Individuals. When Cassie Bernall of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, was asked if she believed in God, the gun her classmate was holding to her head would have been sufficient to give pause for thought. She uttered a confident “yes,” and the gunshot echoed through the halls of every school in the country. The heel strikes of evil ones sometimes target individuals, and the blow can still kill. Cassie Bernall’s story captures our attention for many reasons, the chief of which perhaps is that it is so unusual for someone in our country to die for one’s faith. We easily forget about the thousands upon thousands of martyrs for the faith throughout the world in each generation, as individuals become targets of the mortal blows of the serpent’s seed.
(2) When we move to the society level, examples become easier to find. It is difficult to decipher the logic behind the way society thinks about issues like partial birth abortion. When a high school student who has hidden her pregnancy suddenly and prematurely delivers her child and, in a panic of confusion, discards it in a dumpster, criminal charges are pursued, and news programs are filled with compassionate stories of how the baby’s life was saved. Not a mile away in the dumpster of an abortion clinic one can find the fragments of a child the same age torn piece by piece from the womb of an equally confused high school student by the forceps of a certified physician. And the same news reporters who were horrified by the first student’s actions support the claims to the rights of the second student and her doctors to exercise choice.
Such convoluted thinking about the dignity of human life is only one of many areas of society where the blows of the serpent’s seed are evident. But it is merely a symptom of the larger poison that currently pulses through the veins of our society. This poison can be defined as the wedding of New Age influence and a postmodern climate, creating a world in which there will be no place for truth.19
Peter Jones has defined the most recent permutation of the battle as “the God of the Bible locked in mortal combat for the souls of men with the goddess of revived paganism.”20 He concludes that the modern influence of New Age theology has boldly infiltrated every area of society and is bringing about sweeping changes in American culture. In his book Spirit Wars, he attempts to demonstrate this claim.
In the last thirty years so many leaders in the news media, entertainment, business, national and international politics, the judiciary, academia and even the Church, have turned for personal renewal to a spirituality that they think is compatible with their past but which at every major point is diametrically opposed to Christianity. Anti-Christian forces have always stalked the church’s earthly route, but rarely has religious paganism entered into the temple of God with such bravado and virulence as it has in our day.21
It is, in part, today’s postmodern climate that has made such a transformation in society possible. Part of postmodern thinking is represented in the value that it places on pluralism. Diversity is unavoidable, and we should not seek to avoid it. Plurality is the natural result of diversity. Pluralism exists when plurality becomes so prevalent that it becomes characteristic of the society. D. A. Carson goes one step further to identify what he calls “cherished pluralism,” in which pluralism has become an important value that is celebrated and protected.22
In this environment those groups that do not affirm pluralism in all of its variations are identified as subversives working against the values of society. Thus Christianity, rejecting religious pluralism, becomes identified as the enemy of the values that define society and is portrayed as an enemy of all that is decent. This threatens to become outright warfare, not merely differences of opinion in an increasingly secular society. Jones views the embodiment of all these elements in the New Age figure of Sophia, the feminine divine.
Sophia is the very opposite of the God of the Bible. She represents monism as God represents theism. Her all-encompassing, encircling womb gives expression to the pagan notion of the divinity of all things, while her name, Sophia, vaunts the human claim to wisdom. With exquisite subtlety she seduces the modern mind by claiming to be tolerant and non-dogmatic. In fact she is neither, for behind the velvet glove is an iron fist; behind the neopagan rejection of doctrine is a firm commitment to a nonnegotiable dogmatic belief in the unity of all things to which humanity and the planet are ineluctably headed; and behind the tolerance is a global system of unimaginable totalitarian possibilities which cannot tolerate the discordant voice of biblical theism.23
Carson labels this last view as “Philosophical Pluralism” and brings out the irony that a worldview committed to the absence of absolutes can be so absolute in its own doctrinaire intolerance.
Any notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong. The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism. No religion has the right to pronounce itself right or true, and the others false, or even (in the majority view) relatively inferior.24
In the process Carson also alerts us to the important distinctives that should characterize a Christian approach to tolerance.
In a relatively free and open society, the best forms of tolerance are those that are open to and tolerant of people, even when there are strong disagreements with their ideas. This robust toleration for people, if not always for their ideas, engenders a measure of civility in public discourse while still fostering spirited debate over the relative merits of this or that idea. Today, however, tolerance in many Western societies increasingly focuses on ideas, not on people.25
It would be bad enough if the field of tolerance had been merely expanded to include ideas, but as Carson points out, tolerance increasingly is being applied only to ideas. There is decreasing tolerance for people who hold a different opinion. The doctrine of tolerance and the pervasiveness of pluralism on every front in society have provided a ripe environment for the unchecked syncretism and virulent feminism that is at times reflected in the New Age movement. Jones offers evidence that it is no longer a fringe movement vying for a bit of publicity. It is increasingly becoming mainstream, and its promise of power and autonomy, especially to women, is quickly obliterating the Judeo-Christian traditions on which our society was founded as it portrays that tradition as hopelessly obsolete and socially flawed. He sees our culture as once again poised on the brink of destiny, as Adam and Eve were long ago.
The eschatological Eve stands transfixed once more before the tree of forbidden knowledge, seduced by the “wisdom” of the Serpent through whom speaks the goddess. Lilith, the serpentine Sophia, dangles before the modern woman the titillating fruit of autonomous freedom and power as the modern Adam, like the first, looks on in silence, afraid to say a word.26
(3) In the world at large, the serpent’s heel strikes often come in the form of wars, insurrections, coups, terrorism, repression that bring death and disease, and the constant unrest and insecurity that accompany the chaos of national and international instability. No matter what steps are taken to achieve a lasting peace worldwide, we know that wars will continue until the end. It is interesting, however, that as we take note of the issues that cause rivalries in world politics, we find variations from era to era. It seems that the serpent has limitless creativity.
This was highlighted in an influential article in 1993 by Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntingdon entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?”27 As Huntingdon takes stock of the changing world scene, he concludes that a dramatic shift has taken place. Instead of economic or ideological factors motivating conflict, it is now and will continue to be cultural, especially religious, factors. In the aftermath of the Cold War, these conflicts take shape in the alignment of Western civilizations against non-Western civilizations.
Civilization-consciousness is increasing; conflict between civilizations will supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as the dominant global form of conflict; international relations, historically a game played out within Western civilization, will increasingly be de-Westernized and become a game in which non-Western civilizations are actors and not simply objects; successful political, security and economic international institutions are more likely to develop within civilizations than across civilizations; conflicts between groups in different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained, and more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization; violent conflicts between groups in different civilizations are the most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead to global wars; the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between “the West and the Rest.”28
The war to end all wars did nothing of the sort; the mother of all wars was only an embryo; there will be no peace in anyone’s time this side of the kingdom. And so sides are chosen, trenches dug, and battle lines formed as we continue to find new things to fight about or the old things dressed up differently. Holocausts become commonplace, trivialized not by their insignificance but by the frequency of their occurrence. Like the great plates of the earth’s crust, the civilizations grind against one another, causing devastation along the fault lines.
On the Eurasian continent . . . the proliferation of ethnic conflict, epitomized at the extreme in “ethnic cleansing,” has not been totally random. It has been most frequent and most violent between groups belonging to different civilizations. In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to Central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders.29
In the years since Huntingdon’s article we have already seen evidences that his assessment was on target. This is not about assigning blame to one side or the other—there is plenty to go around. The culprit is our fallenness, and the serpent’s teeth marks can be seen all over our increasingly volatile world.
(4) Within the larger church, the situation has also become dire as those who claim to be Christian display their trivial disputes for the world to see and ridicule. This is evidenced as thousands of tourists daily make their way through what has been called the holiest site in Christendom, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The sad situation was described this way by A. L. Griffith:
This church is one of the dirtiest, most depressing buildings in all Christendom. It should be torn down and rebuilt. This is not possible, however, because the Church of the Holy Sepulchre belongs jointly to the Abyssinians, Armenians, Copts, Greeks, Syrians and Roman Catholics, and their priests will hardly speak to one another, let alone cooperate in a joint enterprise of rebuilding. Each communion preserves its own separate chapel, and conducts its own ceremonies; and to make the situation ludicrous, the keys of the church have been entrusted to a family of Muslims who in order to answer the call of Allah five times daily, have turned the entrance into a Muslim Mosque. Nowhere in all the world can you find a more tragic symbol of the mutilation of Christ’s body than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.30
It is not just between major religions or denominations that conflict takes place. The heel strikes of the serpent also occur in the church’s petty squabbles about pedantic points of interpretation. Certainly it is not as bad as sixteenth-century Europe, when thousands of Anabaptists were martyred by other Christians over the issue of infant baptism. But when we make a practice of lashing out at other believers for the little ways they do not look or act like us, we are showing our citizenship in our fallen world.
This is not to say that there are no issues worth defending. As always, the serpent is most successful in contexts in which what is true or right can be twisted around to create an obstacle. The fact is that we can defend certain beliefs without defaming or castigating those who have come to different conclusions with integrity. Failing to exercise the grace that we should naturally extend to fellow Christians, we have adopted a Reformation zeal concerning issues that come nowhere near the significance of the battles fought by Calvin and Luther, while we comfortably make our beds amidst the cultural landmines that are exploding all around us.
Modern Defense of the Faith
Whimpering theses tacked on boarded-up doors where no one lives:
vitiating scarecrows;
scathing wraiths;
vindicating plastic skeletons of heroes
who brandish cardboard medals from forgotten wars;
parading champions of paranoia
to discordant strains of “Faith of Our Fathers”
verses one, three and five.
The rightful prey of death withheld:
myopic preoccupation reincarnate,
stalking tarnished mirrors
quixotically tilting at ivory towers,
and tinkertoy windmills;
haunted by lascivious dragons in tow,
sullied by the blood of self-inflicted wounds;
while soothing symbiosis seeps in
through unguarded corridors;
an insidious obscenity
seething unabated about the soul.
Martin, Martin, it’s 11:45
Where are your children?
Head strikes. As we look at the world, the heel strikes are much easier to see than the head strikes. Head strikes cannot just be seen as surviving the heel strikes. They must involve taking the offensive, working against the inroads of wickedness, besieging the gates of hell. In the 1970s and 1980s the movement that came to be known as the Moral Majority was an attempt to make a major head strike in the political arena. It did not succeed, and a book by two of the insiders, Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, identify ways that they believe the movement was fatally flawed.31 Likewise, it must be remembered that the battle referred to in Genesis is framed in terms of potentially mortal blows being exchanged. That means that sparring doesn’t qualify. The church has had no problem finding causes to be proactive in. As valid as the causes might be, company boycotts and marches and picket lines are in the sparring category. Where are the potentially mortal blows that cause the enemy to reel back or retreat to lick his wounds?
(1) As individuals we can strike blows to the head of the serpent’s seed by resisting our natural fallen responses and being the kind of people Christ calls us to be. In November of 1994, Pastor Duane Willis with his wife, Janet, and six kids were on their way from Chicago to visit relatives in Wisconsin. As they drove along I-94 near Milwaukee, a truck that had not been properly maintained (and whose driver had an illegally obtained license) lost part of its taillight assembly. As the Willis’s van (unavoidably) ran over it, a sharp edge scraped a gash in the gas tank. As the sparks ignited the gasoline, the back of the van burst into flames. Pastor Willis and his wife could only look on helplessly as the flames took the lives of their six children.
In the following days and even weeks, the news coverage was massive. It was a heart-wrenching story. The Willises did not hide their grief or appear with plastic smiles that suggested that everything was OK. But they gave a consistent and credible testimony in news program after news program of God’s love and provision for them in their time of deepest distress. Normally jaded news reporters, used to seeing the fallen side of human reactions, were unable to draw the Willis parents into righteous anger, to blame others, or to lament their bad fortune. The simple trust of these godly people struck a significant blow as millions of onlookers were introduced to what faith on trial looks like. Mortal blows can be dealt when the world can see what goodness looks like and can believe again that it is attainable and worth striving for.
(2) American society may be turning in non-Christian or even anti-Christian directions, but it is still possible to use the mechanisms of society to make inroads against evil. One example could be found in the ways that pastors on the south and west sides of Chicago are mobilizing their congregations and communities to take the neighborhoods back from the gangs and ridding the street corners of drug dealers and prostitutes. This is a grassroots movement, but it gains the support of law enforcement officials and sometimes can even achieve formal organization funded by the city in a CAPS program (community policing). Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy see this as a job only Christians can really do:
It is only Christians who have a worldview capable of providing workable solutions to the problems of community life. Thus, we ought to be in the forefront, helping communities take charge of their own neighborhoods. Whether it’s mobilizing efforts to paint over graffiti and clean up vacant lots, or political activism to pass laws enforcing standards of public behavior, we should be helping to restore order in these smaller areas as the first step toward tackling major social ills.32
As an example, they tell the story of the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who led his church in the Dorchester area of Boston. Through tutoring programs, neighborhood patrols, counseling centers, and job placement programs, they turned their neighborhood around. Such success stories are occurring in major cities throughout the country.
What is happening in Boston, Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore, Memphis, Mendenhall, Jackson, and Pasadena is what Christians should be doing everywhere: converting chaos into the tranquillitas ordinis, one house at a time, one block at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one community at a time. Although our citizenship is in the “City of God,” we know that God has placed us in our cities and neighborhoods to reflect his character and to restore his righteous dominion in the midst of a fallen world. We begin with our personal lives and habits, move out from there to our families and schools and then into our communities—and from there into our society as a whole.33
A more formal victory was evident in the April 14, 1999, decision in a Michigan trial to imprison Jack Kevorkian, the so-called “Dr. Death,” known for his role in over a hundred physician-assisted suicides. Despite laws that criminalized his activities, he boldly videotaped a session in which he personally administered the lethal injection and arranged for the tape to be broadcast on the popular TV show 60 Minutes on November 22, 1998. It was his intention to force a trial that he hoped would result in the law being overturned, but at the very least would bring publicity to his cause. When he lost and was given a sentence of ten to twenty-five years, he was happy to be considered a martyr for the cause of euthanasia. This round resulted in a victory against euthanasia, though other battles are sure to follow. Head strikes occur when God’s people fight against evil influences in society and win.
(3) Though Christianity may be waning in Western society, there is much to be optimistic about on the world scene. Church growth is phenomenal in Korea, China, Africa, and many other areas of the globe. Evangelism continues to make inroads into areas where the gospel has rarely penetrated. An example of this can be found in the success of the Jesus film. Campus Crusade reports that in the twenty years between 1979 and 1999, over two billion people have seen the film in 230 countries. There is no more effective head strike than the continued spread of the gospel because the presence of Christ in a life or in a culture checks the spread of evil.
Another significant success story is the impact of World Relief as it provides disaster relief around the world. When Western Turkey was devastated by a massive earthquake in the summer of 1999, relief flooded in from around the globe from dozens of organizations. As the news outlets covered the relief efforts, they were obviously impressed with the competence and the compassion of the World Relief team. In the midst of all the coverage and interviews the executive of World Relief was able to give articulate expression to the organization’s mission and commitment to serving the world in the name of Christ. Besides offering this credible testimony to Christian compassion, World Relief funnels much of its relief resources through local churches in the region to allow Christians to bring aid to their community. We need to have this kind of picture of Christianity held up for the world to see.
(4) Finally, head strikes can occur when the church is successful in resolving its internal strife and making strides toward presenting a unified front. Here we are not talking about ecumenism that resolves problems by accepting any variance in even the most basic doctrinal beliefs as valid. Likewise, we are not talking about syncretism that melds varying systems into one. But if we can agree to disagree in some of the fringe areas and affirm together our acceptance of basic core doctrine, we can benefit from the unity and combined efforts that can result from being undivided.
In this respect, the ongoing dialogue between evangelicals and Catholics is intriguing. While some within the Catholic Church are moving more to the New Age side of the equation, embracing a burgeoning Mariology in combination with ideas of the feminine divine, others seem interested in forging an alliance with conservative Christianity, even to the point of making concessions in the long debate over salvation by grace and grace alone. It has yet to be seen whether Catholicism, or even a branch of it, will be willing to adopt a clear enough expression of salvation by grace to allay the fears of Protestants, some of whom have a long history of venomous anti-Catholic rhetoric and harbor a deep distrust of the Roman Catholic Church. But we must always welcome the prospect of healing wounds when that can be done without compromising faithfulness to our Lord.
Besides the doctrinal or theological wounds that can be healed, the church has also begun to become more involved in racial reconciliation. Head strikes can be accomplished as the church strives to achieve the ideal that all are one in Christ and that there is no distinction between classes, races, or genders.
In a world where heel strikes appear so much more plentiful and serious than head strikes, it is a comfort to know that the major blow has already been struck by Christ on the cross. Yes, even though Genesis 3:15 does not preview this strike, and even though New Testament authors did not make such a connection, Christ certainly struck the mortal blow against evil in the world. But that does not mean that we can rest on our laurels, claim victory, and retire to our heavenly abode. As the body of Christ we must continue to seek out ways to crush Satan beneath our heels, as Paul challenged the Romans to do.
Who’s on first? It is useless to argue whether Genesis 2–3 presents woman as subordinate to man from her creation, with the Fall bringing a negative development to that role, or whether a new state of subordination was imposed as a result of sin. As we have discussed in our treatments of these two chapters, neither chapter indicates the imposition of a subordinate role on women—either by creation or by judgment. The text of 3:16 indicates not a role subordination but a psychological subordination born of the inevitability of the single overwhelming fact: Women desire to have children.
With the heady atmosphere of the successes of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, some came to believe that all gender differences could be cast off, all stereotypes erased, and all biases obliterated. Women would be free to pursue power, successful careers, and personal fulfillment on the same terms as men. By the early 1980s, however, they were discovering that there was something they had overlooked. Betty Friedan, founder of the modern women’s liberation movement, describes it this way:
Again and again, in Cambridge or California, one or another not-so-young woman would ask my advice about having a baby “by myself.” I would reply that it seemed to me difficult enough, and costly enough, to bring up a child with two parents. But the power of this desire to have a child—when women no longer need to have a child to define themselves as women—seems to be as great or even greater than ever.34
What feminism discovered was that as much as some women wanted the same job status as men and as much as some had rejected the validity of marriage, the importance of family, or the need for men in any way, there was a deep-seated undeniable need to have children. In the movie, The Big Chill, the speech sounded like this: “Sometimes I don’t think I even want a man, but here I sit with my ticking biological clock, and the only thing I’ve known in my entire life is that I want to have a child.”
Commenting on that monologue, Laura Kavesh, writing in the Chicago Tribune, says:
It seemed to happen when they reached the cusp of 30. Before that, they thought very little about having babies. Maybe it was part of the plan, having kids, and maybe it wasn’t, but the idea was distant. Then, almost overnight, an internal alarm went off loudly and kind of frighteningly, or professional success stopped filling the gaps. Motherhood became a subject of frequent discussion. Motherhood and the old standby subject, men.
“It’s something that’s there, and every time I see a little baby I turn around,” Anne said. “I am at the point where I am resisting any further career development because in the back of my mind I know that I want to have a baby and I know how difficult it is to combine a busy, busy career with motherhood.
“I need to do it before my life is over. I would be missing something if I didn’t know and experience that love between a mother and a child. I haven’t yet reached the point where I want to do it on my own—without being married—although in the back of my mind it’s a possibility.
“I’m almost objectifying men,” she added. “Men are not sex objects to me. They’re becoming father/husband objects.”
Nobody in the little group of old friends laughed at what Anne had said. Everyone nodded somberly, especially at the last part.35
This trend continues today as families disintegrate and sexual freedom continues to be elevated. The built-in design that Genesis 3 alludes to suggests what is obvious from the above conversation: Women cannot escape their dependence on men. The process of fertilization can be depersonalized through measures such as sperm banks and in vitro fertilization, but these do not eliminate the dependence, for women cannot supply their own sperm.
An article in Newsweek a few years ago entitled “Husbands No, Babies Yes” explored some of the manifestations of this continued search for some level of independence.
Anne Lamott, 39, of San Rafael, CA, is the author of “Operating Instructions,” a journal of her first year as a single mother. . . . “Ideally Sam would have a father who adored me and adored him,” she says, “but we don’t have that.” When Lamott became pregnant by a man she didn’t feel very close to, she decided to have the baby on her own. “I always wanted to have a child,” she says. “I knew so many women who were waiting for that Alan Alda type to come along, and wanting a committed relationship. And they were waiting and waiting.”
The rise in out-of-wedlock births across racial groups and educational levels has prompted a search for new explanations. “Whatever is driving single motherhood, we can’t look at it as a specific product of poverty, race or education,” says Roderick Harrison, chief of the Racial Statistics branch of the Census Bureau. . . .
An increasing number of women who are smart and educated are finding that there aren’t enough men who are up to their standards. Rather than setting their husband sights lower, more of these late-20th century women are choosing the challenge of becoming mothers without being wives.36
Understanding Genesis 3 may give us a little different perspective on what the church’s response to feminism ought to be. In Genesis 3 the “rule” of the husband over the wife is a by-product of biological inevitability, not a cultural, social, or psychological stereotype. The text is not intended as a manifesto on social hierarchy (regardless of whether it delineates how society is or how it should be). Rather than exploiting the passage to try to support respective gender agendas (as some, but not all, do), we should be using it to develop, encourage, and affirm healthy families.
As Betty Friedan indicated above, mainstream feminism has come back (at least in a limited sense) to the idea of family—and that should be viewed as reason for optimism. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Some branches of feminism have sold many women on the idea that they cannot find self-fulfillment in the home, so they should enter the marketplace and find it. There are at least two problems with this. (1) It assumes that self-fulfillment can be found in the marketplace. In contrast to this, many women are discovering that even the world of the powerful executive can be as unsatisfying as changing diapers.
(2) It assumes we all should think in terms of self-fulfillment. Consequently, some have tried to defend the fulfilling aspects of staying in the home. This is a mistake. We rather need to argue that the search for fulfillment is futile and misguided. This is precisely the message of Ecclesiastes 1–2. The church can be instrumental in fostering an environment in which the individualism that sees value in power and self-fulfillment can be replaced by a corporate identity that sees value in any contribution to the group, not just prominent contributions that gain attention.
There will always be women who would welcome the opportunity to be wives and mothers but find it just does not happen. There will always be women who choose not to be wives or mothers, and that is not unbiblical. But for the vast majority of women who are wives and mothers, the value of family needs to be restored. That is not to say that we should try to convince women that fulfillment can be found in raising children. There may or may not be, depending on the individual situation—but that is not the point. The blessing to be fruitful and multiply created the privilege of family, but post-Fall, that privilege is more difficult to achieve.
This is not to suggest that women should not work outside of the home. In the end, we can only say that if the family is going to work (not just survive) in this fallen world, it will not be because we have firmly established roles and hierarchies. Rather, it is because we make the commitment and effort, God helping us, to be better husbands and wives who work at submitting to one another, and better fathers and mothers who do not disengage from the family to pursue our own narcissistic (self-absorbed) path of self-fulfillment.
Our position before God. Genesis 3, if nothing else, reminds us of the reality of sin. In the politically correct climate of the day, the word “sin” has dropped out of our vocabulary. It is more acceptable for a politician to pepper his speeches with profanity than to go around suggesting someone is a sinner. We can speak of crime or corruption, but even in those cases it is considered unacceptably judgmental in our society to label people involved in those activities as sinners. As has been observed in C. Plantinga’s masterful book on sin, “The word sin now finds its home mostly on dessert menus. ‘Peanut Butter Binge’ and ‘Chocolate Challenge’ are sinful; lying is not.”37 In this sense, we can describe ourselves as living in the days of sin’s decline (unfortunately meaning the word, not the behavior).
The awareness of sin used to be our shadow. Christians hated it, feared it, fled from it, grieved over it. Some of our grandparents agonized over their sins. A man who lost his temper might wonder whether he could still go to Holy Communion. A woman who for years envied her more attractive and intelligent sister might worry whether this sin threatened her very salvation.
But the shadow has dimmed. Nowadays, the accusation you have sinned is often said with a grin, and with a tone that signals an inside joke. At one time, this accusation still had the power to jolt people. Catholics lined up to confess their sins; Protestant preachers rose up to confess our sins. And they did it regularly.38
As a result, our society now finds it increasingly difficult to understand salvation. A current advertising campaign is designed to emphasize how easy it is to play the state lottery. It accomplishes this goal by contrasting a series of obvious or ridiculous things that it is hard to do; statements like “It’s hard to meet someone at the airport when you don’t know who they are, it’s hard to do jumping jacks in a phone booth, it’s hard to change a tire using only an ice cream scoop” are squeezed into the lines of a song where they don’t fit. In my family, the catchiness of this jingle and its absurd style of humor commend its adaptation to our daily situations: “It’s hard to get where you’re going when the car won’t start,” my kids are prone to sing. We could easily bring the format into the area of theology as well: “It’s hard to feel a need for salvation when you don’t know you’ve done anything wrong.”
People are willing to admit they have made mistakes or perhaps even that they have on occasion done something wrong. But we don’t need salvation from mistakes. It is much more difficult to bring people to the point where they will admit they are sinners.
Theologians are inclined to speak of human sinfulness in terms of total depravity. This concept has been helpfully defined by J. I. Packer as meaning not that at every point people are as bad as they can possibly be, but that at no point is anyone as good as he or she should be.39 In that sense, we are all less than we were created to be. When my kids report some of the difficulties they encounter at school, or even when the behavior of someone in our own family is less than desirable, I regularly comment that we live in a fallen world. Indeed, the evidences of it are all around us. In the mid-1990s, Ravi Zacharias was able to offer this litany of the perversions of the moment:
Who can explain Susan Smith heartlessly drowning her two young children, supposedly to perpetuate an ill-fated love affair? Who can explain the animalistic cannibalism of Jeffry Dahmer? Who can explain the cold-hearted murder of their parents by Lyle and Erik Menendez? Who can explain the brutal beating and killing of a little two-year-old boy at the hands of a ten-year-old and a twelve-year-old in Liverpool, England? Who can explain the dreadful crimes against at least two teenage girls in St. Catharines, Ontario, when Paul Bernardo tortured, raped, and mutilated them while the sister of one of the victims watched and videotaped it for their later viewing pleasure? Who can explain the honor-roll killings in Fullerton, California, when a handful of Ivy League-bound students bludgeoned one of their classmates to death and then calmly left for a New Year’s Eve party? And who can explain the ripping open of a woman’s body to wrench the child from her womb and kidnap it? The list seems to be endless and sickening.40
But sometimes in our shock at the fallenness of the world around us, it is possible to lose sight of our own fallenness.
We blunt our own conscience, darken our own judgment by self-interest, and rebuke in others the very vices for which we are famous. Each of us carries around a “deep and calm source of delusion, which undermines the whole principle of good.”41
We need a new recognition of our sinfulness, but we all tend to shy away from pondering sin and guilt unless they are kept at a suitable distance. Even in public schools students still read the novels that explore the dimensions of depravity and guilt, such as William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, which depicts the rapid degeneration into anarchy that takes place when a group of well-heeled British schoolboys are shipwrecked on an island. Their inherent depravity shows itself quickly when there are no structures of society to resist its manifestation. The boys begin a power struggle that eventuates in brutality and savage murder.
In like manner, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness views law and civilization as providing what is necessary to save humanity from its own natural depravity to which all would revert with little provocation. Marlow’s encounter with Kurtz represents the classic confrontation between civilized humanity and those who have cast off restraints. The book’s message is that civilization provides only a superficial façade to the heart of darkness that lurks inside all of us.
As these two novels lay bare the inherent flaw in human nature that is theologically described as sin, others investigate the guilt and other consequences that emerge and possess us as a result of sin. Perhaps the most widely read novel on this topic is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne’s crime of adultery is advertised in the bright red capital A that she must wear on the front of her robe. Though Hester reacts mainly with defiance, the symbol comes to represent the guilt that eventually attaches itself to her paramour, the Rev. Dimmesdale.
As the story develops, the scarlet letter becomes the dominant figure,—everything is tinged with its sinister glare. By a ghastly miracle its semblance is reproduced upon the breast of the minister, where “God’s eye beheld it! the angels were forever pointing at it! the devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger!”—and at last, to Dimmesdale’s crazed imagination, its spectre appears even in the midnight sky as if heaven itself had caught the contagion of his so zealously hidden sin.42
One could go on with examples from Shakespeare’s MacBeth to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and to Poe’s The Telltale Heart, or the sin and redemption theme found in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The list is endless. How do we continue to be fascinated with sin and guilt as objects worthy of exploration in literature but cannot face them as realities in our own lives? Undoubtedly, part of the reason is that in literature we can objectify evil and satisfy our fascination while keeping it at arm’s length. Another explanation is that literature is one of the only safe ways left for us to acknowledge that which deep inside we know to be true. Colson and Pearcy illustrate this from statements made by horror/thriller author Dean Koontz.
Koontz believes the popularity of his own novels about serial killers stems from readers’ hunger for pictures of the world painted in vivid moral hues. In our therapeutic age, we have been taught that “one form of behavior is as valid as another,” that even murder and destruction must not be condemned but understood, Koontz says. “In ‘enlightened’ thought there is no true evil.” But in our daily life, we know this isn’t true. This explains why “people gravitate to fiction that says there is true evil, that there is a way to live that is good, and that there is a way to live that is bad. And that these are moral choices.” People have an “inner need to see what they really know on a gut level about life reflected in the entertainment they view or the literature they read.”
In a world where juries excuse the inexcusable, where psychologists explain away the most inexplicable evils, people are groping for a kind of realism that they find, ironically, in fiction.43
Once we admit the idea of sin into everyday conversation, we open ourselves to being labeled as easily as we label others. This begins on the society level, where institutionalized sin begets sin, which society in turn self-righteously decries. It then either risks obvious hypocrisy or loses its ability to deal with social problems because of its own complicity in them.
When society, via its legislatures, funds some of its schools twice as generously as others, when it provides poor schools for poor people, when its public schools clarify moral values instead of teaching them, when it invents gambling schemes and tries to entice its own citizens to wager money on them, when it constitutionally and judicially protects rap lyrics that glamorize the killing of police officers and the terrorizing of women—when society does these things, can it completely wash its hands of crimes motivated by the very resentment, despair, and greed it has engendered?44
If discussion of sin is permitted to enter the realm of public discourse, the ironies and contradictions become overwhelming. I remember well a news report a few years ago in which the FBI, after months of investigation and stakeouts, had “busted” a “gambling operation” where a handful of older gentlemen were involved in some petty levels of formalized wagering. After covering the story, the news station had a commercial break that featured, ironically, a cheery commercial for the state lottery.
When this trickles down to the individual level, our reluctance to fix blame must be measured against our unwillingness to accept blame. We fail to notice what a significant disconnect this causes in our expectations of how the world needs to work.
Human rights and prerogatives depend on human responsibility, on citizenship in a community of responsibility. People in this community properly hold each other accountable. People who respect each other’s full humanity and responsibility refuse to explain moral evil with reference to a psychological or social “root cause” or with appeals to the authority of some party official or professor of victimology. In other words, until they are moved by evidence to the contrary, respectful people assume that evildoers are responsible citizens like themselves and that they are answerable for their evil.45
Only a restored sense of community accountability can restore our corporate sense of shame. But observers of culture such as Ravi Zacharias have concluded that our culture has killed shame. He therefore poignantly asks, “With the name of God now unhallowed and His kingdom not welcome does it make any sense to cry, ‘Deliver us from evil?’ ”46
We need to restore our awareness of sin because if there is no sin, there is no explanation for suffering in the world and we know nothing of God. Archibald MacLeish captures it eloquently:
Without the Fall
We’re madmen all.
We watch the stars
That creep and crawl
Like dying flies
Across the wall
Of night and shriek
And that is all.
Without the Fall . . . 47
We must also restore our awareness of sin to its proper place because one cannot understand God’s grace without an awareness of sin. Awareness of our fallenness inevitably brings a renewed appreciation for God’s grace and compassion. His compassion is not only expressed in what he has done in each of our lives or in what he has done for the whole human race by revealing himself to us and sending his Son to die in our place for our sins. His grace goes all the way back to Genesis 3, for he did not discard this fallen humanity. He could have just ended the experiment right there and been content in the world he had made. But as Augustine observed, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil at all.”48 He had not created simply a pair of bodies that would disintegrate into dust; he had created immortal souls.
But could he not have just called the first round a failure, let Adam and Eve die, and then start all over again? We will address this question indirectly by taking a quick route through Broadway. George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara is a comedy, but it has many profound moments. Barbara, the daughter of the socialite Lady Britomart and a militaristic father who worships money and gunpowder, has joined the Salvation Army. Conversations in the play argue back and forth the case of morality and the issue of power, whether it is found in money, in arms, in intellect, or in religion. It is Barbara’s suitor, the Greek teacher turning arms manufacturer, who makes the comment, “You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.”
This is near to the mark, for only God is incorruptible. If God had determined to have a created humanity, it would not have mattered whether he started again or not. Fallenness was, in some sense, inevitable, for as human beings we are corruptible. This is theologically inferable from the fact that Christ’s work was foreknown from before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20). Perhaps God’s attribute of redeemer is as important an expression of his character as his attribute of holiness.
This is not intended to suggest that God needs fallen people so that he can redeem them, nor that our sin is excusable because it gives God the opportunity to be gracious (a suggestion to which Paul aptly exclaimed, “By no means!” Rom. 6:1–2). It only suggests that God’s character is not of the sort that he would shirk redemptive opportunities. Expressing his love and compassion is just as essential to who God is as expressing his justice and holiness.