Christian Scholars
Review 31.1 (2001) 31-57.
Copyright © 2001 by Christian Scholars Review; cited
with permission.
The Call of Wisdom/The Voice
of
the Serpent: A Canonical Approach
to the Tree of Knowledge
By Nicholas John Ansell
Does
not wisdom call out?
Does
not understanding raise her voice? (Prov. 8:1)1
She
[wisdom] is a tree of life to those who embrace her;
those who lay hold of her will be blessed. (Prov. 3:18)
When
the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to
the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she
took some and ate it.
(Gen.
3:6)
Say
first, for heav'n hides nothing from thy view
Nor
the deep tract of hell, say first what cause
Moved
our grand parents in that happy state,
Favored
of Heav'n so highly, to fall off
From
their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who
first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stirred
up with envy and revenge, deceived
The
mother of mankind ... (John Milton, Paradise
Lost I, 27-36)
Introduction: On
Trusting the Serpent (Within Limits)
This essay has three main aims: to
foster a positive attitude to the revelatory
power of creation as symbolized in the Bible by the
call of (and to) wisdom; to
develop a radically anthropocentric view of the origin
of evil which also entails a
creation-wide view of the nature of evil; and to explore a
"canonical" approach to
Scripture
that can shed biblical light on these concerns in a way that historical-
Is
biblical wisdom the art of hearing the "voice" of creation as the
voice of God? Or was God's
revelation countered by temptation and deception
from the very beginning? In this essay,
Nik Ansell suggests that
a "canonical" appreciation of the serpent of Genesis helps us dis-
cern the human origin and
cosmic nature of evil in a way that is missed by most popular and
scholarly approaches to the Bible. Formerly a sessional lecturer in Philosophy of Religion
and Theology at the University of Bristol, England,
Nik Ansell is now lecturer
in Theology at
The King's
31
Christian
Scholar's Review 32
critical and grammatical-historical approaches to
the Bible cannot.
To this end, I will offer a rereading of
the Fall narrative of Gen. 3, focusing on
the significance of the serpent and its
relationship to Satan. This is a test case in
developing a hermeneutic that calls into question
some of the predominant ways in
which the Scriptures are read and heard in the
Christian and scholarly communi-
ties. Attention to the canonical shape of the Bible,
I suggest, reveals a relationship
between the voice of the serpent and the call of
wisdom that has major
implications
for
our own approach to (the tree of) knowledge.
Our view of wisdom and knowledge, and
thus our vision not only of scholar-
ship but of life itself, is intimately related to
our view of creation. Our ability to
trust creation, however, is closely tied to our
understanding of the origin and nature
of evil. In the Scriptures, human history has its
beginnings in original
blessing rather than original sin. Evil has
neither the first word nor the last word,
yet its reality is seen as all-pervasive. So where
does this evil come from? Was the
power of temptation part of the world that Gen. 1:31
describes as "very good"?
Why
was there a serpent in the Garden of Eden? In pursuing wisdom today, can
we trust the "voice" of creation? These
are some of the questions I wish to explore.
One very influential Christian
understanding of the nature of evil (recently
popularized by the best-selling novels of Frank Peretti) assumes that accepting the
biblical account of the existence of Satan,
demons, and powers and principalities
commits us to an "otherworldly"
perspective in which the "real" battle with the
forces of darkness takes place "above" this
world of appearances in a supernatural
realm far beyond our normal experience and natural
abilities. In this view, special
knowledge is required if we are to contend with
the demonic realities that lie "be-
hind" the various manifestations of evil which
we may all encounter but which
only the charismatically gifted may effectively
oppose.2 Thus, a particular
approach to "wisdom" goes hand in hand
with this view of evil.3 Indeed, our ideas
of wisdom, revelation, creation, and evil are
always interrelated.
This kind of severe dualism reflects some
key theological distinctions that were
formed in the pre-modern era. By contrast, much
contemporary theology is characterized by a focus on our human responsibility
for evils such as militarism,
nationalism, and environmental destruction. In
modern theologies that have been
shaped by the "wisdom" of the Enlightenment,
it is frequently assumed that
biblical talk
1 All biblical quotations
will be from the NIV unless otherwise stated.
2 For an example of such
a dualistic-supernaturalist approach, see See Frank Peretti, This Present
Darkness (Westchester, Ill.:
Crossway, 1986) and idem., Piercing The Darkness (
helpful overview, see Nigel G. Wright,
"Charismatic Interpretations of the Demonic" in An-
thony
Heavenly Realm (Carlisle, UK:
Paternoster Press; Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), chap.
8.
Here I am merely describing an extreme position within the wider Charismatic
movement.
3 Given the obvious links
between our view of wisdom and education, it is interesting that
Peretti's Piercing
The Darkness focuses on the struggles of a
Christian school.
The
Call of Wisdom/The Voice of the Serpent 33
about evil powers and malevolent beings needs to be
translated into more "down-
to-earth"
categories if it is not to distract us from the tasks at hand.4
This approach, while rightly
critical of Christian views that are out of touch
with the all-too-human origins of the problems we
face, nevertheless raises ques-
tions about whether we have
anything significant and distinctive to say as Chris-
tians to a secular world. In
this essay, I wish to propose a "third way" that attempts
to avoid the twin dangers of supernaturalism and
naturalism, dualism and reduc-
tionism. I am convinced that we
need to develop a view of the origin of evil that
rejects the theology of Paradise Lost without
losing touch with the story of the
Garden of Eden. To this end, I will
offer an interpretation of the biblical portrayal
of the serpent and Satan that, to the best of my
knowledge, has not been suggested
before.
At
the level of hermeneutics, I will focus on biblical texts in their final form
and narrative order within the wider canonical
context in which they are to be
found. In this approach, Gen. 3 should be read, first
and foremost, in the light of
Gen.
1-2, then the Book of Genesis as a whole, and then the Pentateuch as the
canonical unit in which Genesis is situated.
Attention should also be paid to the
New Testament development of themes from Gen.
1-3.
This approach differs from
that of popular theologies that attempt to build up
a view of Satan from a
collection of isolated texts. It is also a
departure from much scholarly writing
which tends to be preoccupied with reconstructing the
(his)story "behind" the text
rather than with elucidating the story "of"
the text as it is presented to us.
Despite the dominant "divide and
conquer" approach to the biblical writings,
a focus on the final form of the Scriptures is
certainly not unknown in contempo-
rary scholarship.5 Scholars who approach the Bible in this way
may be compared
to linguists who choose to study the meaning of
words by attending to their usage
4 For a classic example
of a naturalistic-reductionistic approach, see Rudolf
Bultmann, "New
Testament
and Mythology: The Mythological Element in the Message of the New Testament
and the Problem of its Re-interpretation" in
Hans Werner Bartsch, ed., Kerygma and Myth,
trans. Reginald H. Fuller (New York: Harper and Row,
1961), 1-44, especially pp. 1-2, and
idem., Jesus
Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), 20-21. For schol-
arly resistance to Bultmann on the biblical portrayal of evil, see Trevor
Ling, The Significance
of Satan: New Testament Demonology and its Contemporary
Relevance
(London: SPCK, 1961),
1ff.
Ironically, at the level of interpreting how the New
Testament authors see the world,
Bultmann and Peretti
are in substantial agreement. This is because neither realizes that the
categories of "natural" and
"supernatural" are alien to the Bible. On this point, cf. J. E.
Colwell,
"Supernatural,"
in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair
B. Ferguson and David F. Wright
(Leicester:
Inter-Varsisty Press, 1988), 669, and Leonardo Boff, Liberating
Grace, trans. John
Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 41.
5
See,
inter alia, Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (
Fortress
Press, 1979), and the different (though not incompatible) approach of James A.
Sand-
ers, Canon And Conmrunity: A Guide to Canonical
Criticism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). There are many works
available in rhetorical criticism and synchronic approaches to
exegesis, the influence of which may be detected
in Everett Fox, The Five Books Of Moses:
A
New Translation with
Introductions, Commentary, and Notes (London: The Harvill
Press, 1995).
Special
note should also be made of the Interpreting Biblical Texts series, the first
volume of
which is Terence E. Fretheim,
The Pentateuch (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1996).
Christian
Scholar's Review 34
in a living language rather than by seeking to
determine their etymological origins,
which may be irrelevant and even misleading for their
present purposes. By anal-
ogy, historical or
"etymological" questions such as "Where did the notion of Satan
come from?," "How can inter-testamental material shed light on its development?,"
and "Which Egyptian and/or Mesopotamian ideas
about serpents have influenced
the biblical authors?" certainly have their
place. Nevertheless, I will largely ignore
such questions because, for the purposes of this
essay, I am not interested in
reconstructing the various (possibly
quite different) ways the ancient Hebrews and
first Christians might have thought about the nature
of evil. My concern is with the
message of the Bible as canon that cannot be
reduced to the intentions and beliefs
of its authors, their sources, and other influences.
As this is a contentious point in some
circles, it might be worth clarifying with
an analogy. The recent British film, The Full Monty (which tells the story of
a
group of unemployed steel workers who become male
strippers), has not only
received critical acclaim but has also sparked
much speculation about the origins
of its title. One oft-repeated suggestion traces
this phrase back to the kind of
breakfast enjoyed by Field Marshall Montgomery.
Attempts have also been made
to establish a link with a restaurant in the north
of
comedian Ben Elton, who used the phrase prior to
the film. As far as I know, all
these suggestions may be correct. They could even be
interconnected. But to
understand what "the Full Monty" now
means in our language, one simply must
see the film.
Historical-critical
concerns are not illegitimate. If some of these historical
speculations actually shed light on The Full Monty itself and on what people
now
mean by that phrase, then they are to be welcomed.
Etymologies can provide
important clues to current meanings. But the film,
viewed in its final form, must
take priority. What is frequently referred to as the
"crisis" in biblical studies6 has
much to do with scholars who believe that
researching precisely what and how
much
determine what the phrase "the Full
Monty" really means today. As an approach to
the Bible, such a focus is virtually guaranteed to
"lose the plot."7
In rereading the narrative of Gen. 3 and
exploring the relationship between the
serpent and Satan within the story that the
Bible tells, my intentions are both criti-
cal and constructive. The tendency of dualistic
views to locate the staying power
of evil beyond humanity in a supernatural realm is
supported by (and reflected in)
the assumption that the Bible sees the primordial
origin of evil in the fall of Satan,
6 See, for example,
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger et al., Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The
Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, edited by Richard John
Neuhaus (
7 See the apt comments on
the "atomism" and "geneticism" of
much Old Testament scholar-
ship in David J. A. Clines, "The Theme of the
Pentateuch," Journal for the Study
of the Old
Testament Supplement
Series 10
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978), 7-10. On going "behind" the text,
see the end of "Satan and the Serpent"
and also n. 60 below.
The
Call of Wisdom/The Voice of the Serpent 35
who, in the form of the serpent, subsequently
seduced Adam and Eve into joining
his rebellion against God. A central aim of this
essay is to reject thoroughly this
assumption and the hermeneutic that supports it.
Instead, I shall insist that Gen. 3,
unlike all the other accounts of the origin of evil in
the ancient world, has been
rightly identified by Paul Ricoeur
as "the anthropological myth par
excellence."8
The alternative interpretation of the story of
the Fall and the origin of Satan
that I offer below can be described as
"anthropocentric" because it focuses on the
way in which the entire creation--that is, not only
the "natural world" but all that
exists--has been pulled into the vortex of human
disobedience. This discussion
links the narrative of Gen. 3 to the nature of
idolatry, which is arguably the central
Old Testament category for understanding the
nature of evil.
It is my contention that the phenomenon of
idolatry--in which we give our
religious allegiance to created realities with the
consequence that they gain a
power over us--not only sheds light on the New
Testament language of "powers
and principalities" but also helps us
elucidate the nature of Satan and the serpent
of Genesis. This perspective honors the important
biblical conviction that the
power of evil is not reducible to "flesh and
blood" without directing our attention
"beyond" the creation which has become tragically caught
up in our sin. At the
same time, my argument assumes that secular
naturalistic categories are
thoroughly inadequate for getting to grips with the
evils that face us.9
As my title suggests, I believe that
this investigation of the nature of evil has
positive implications for our view of wisdom and
for how we might approach the
8 See Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil,
trans. Emerson Buchanan (
1967), 232. My exegesis will differ from Ricoeur's, especially with respect to the role of the
serpent. While I am open to the possibility that
one or more of the numerous technical mean-
ings of "myth" may
shed some light on Gen. 3 and the nature of confessional language in
general, I reject Ricoeur's
myth/history distinction, preferring to opt for the "history of a
special type," which he rejects on p. 235,
n. 1. Thus, I also reject the approach of Claus
Westermann, Genesis
1-11: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion (
lishing House, 1984), which is
rightly criticized from a canonical point of view by Childs in
his Introduction
to the Old Testament as Scripture, 154-155. I find myself in basic
agreement
here with Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (
1997),
48-62. Another very helpful discussion of this topic, which wisely refuses to
oppose the
historical and the symbolic by showing how the
symbolism of a political cartoon can capture the
significance of a historical event,
see Albert M. Wolters, "Thoughts on
Genesis," Calvinist
Contact (14 December 1990): 4. Also very helpful is
the concept of "certitudinal history" de-
veloped by James H. Olthuis in his A
Hermeneutics of Ultimata: Peril or Promise?
(Lanham,
MD:
University Press of
9 For a very important
example of an attempt to find a third way beyond dualism and reduc-
tionism in this context,
special note should be made of Walter Wink's trilogy on the Powers,
Naming The Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (
Press,
1984), Unmasking The
Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence
(Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1986), and Engaging The Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a
World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1992).
I am sympathetic to a great deal of
what Wink says, although my own perspective differs
from his on a number of points (cf. nn. 50
and 52 below).
Christian
Scholar's Review 36
tree of knowledge. I do not wish to read Gen. 3 as
representing a positive step in
human development as was popular in German
Idealism."' Nevertheless, in advo-
cating a thoroughly
anthropocentric view of the origin of evil, I am rejecting the
view that the Fall was a response to a primordial
power of temptation. I am thus
not only taking leave of the kind of theology
reflected in Paradise Lost but am also
calling into question the host of Bible
translations and commentaries of all theo-
logical persuasions that introduce the serpent
of Gen. 3 as "cunning" or "crafty."
For
us as for Adam and Eve, there is, I suggest, a positive link between the call
of
wisdom and the voice of the serpent that must be
carefully--indeed wisely--dis-
cerned. When we can make this
connection, we should be in a better place to un-
derstand how the voice of
creation might be heard in faith as the voice of God.
Towards an
Anthropocentric View of Evil
Contrary to popular opinion, there is
no biblical evidence for the widespread
belief that Satan fell prior to the disobedience of
Adam and Eve. There is, in other
words, no Fall before the Fall. In the Old Testament,
there are only three books
that explicitly refer to Satan. His most extended
appearance--as "the Satan"--occurs
in the early chapters of Job. Otherwise, there are
just two passing references to him
in I Chron. 21:1 and Zec. 3:1-2. His origins are not discussed in any of these
texts.
The
two Old Testament passages to which appeal is sometimes made for his
primordial fall--Isa.
14:12-15 and Ezek. 28:12-19--are simply mock laments that
celebrate the fall of human kings from power, as
both evangelical and non-
evangelical commentators have argued.11
In the New Testament, there are just two
references to a "fall" of Satan (Luke
10:18 and Rev. 12:9), both of which refer to
his defeat in human history.12
Traditionally, Satan is believed to have fallen to
earth with a host of rebellious angels. Yet the very
few biblical texts that refer to
angels sinning and/or being ejected from heaven (Rev.
12:9, 2 Pet. 2:4, and Jude
1:6)
refer to events long after the disobedience of Adam and Eve.
This leaves only the story of the
serpent in Gen. 3, which will be the focus of
our attention. Instead of letting this chapter tell
its own story, the traditional inter-
pretation assumes that this
account of the Fall contains gaps that must be filled by
10 See Christ of Gestrich, The Return of Splendor
in the World: The Christian Doctrine of Sin and
Forgiveness, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1997), 92ff.
For a more
recent reinterpretation of Gen. 3 that also differs
from my own, see James Barr, The Garden
of
Eden and the Hope of
Immortality
(London: SCM, 1990).
11 For a recent survey
from an evangelical perspective, see Sydney H. T.
Page, Powers of Evil: A
Biblical Study of Satan
and Demons
(Grand Rapids: Baker Books; Leicester: Apollos,
1995), 37-
42.
For a contemporary Roman Catholic perspective, see Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A.
Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy, eds., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (
Biblical
Literature, see James L. Mays, ed., Harper's
Bible Commentary (
and Row, 1988), 560 and 686.
12 Some may wish to
include John 8:44 and 1 John 3:8 here. These texts are discussed in n. 51
below.
The
Call of Wisdom/The Voice of the Serpent 37
information allegedly gleaned from later parts of
the biblical narrative. Appealing
to various parts of the canon in this way does not
amount to what I mean by a
"canonical" approach to the text. The traditional
reading does not explore the sub-
sequent deepening of biblical themes that are
developed or even implicit in the
Genesis narrative. It reads conclusions
based on isolated Old Testament and New
Testament
texts back into Genesis. Not only does the traditional reading do vio-
lence to the Genesis text, as
I hope to show, but it comes perilously close to imply-
ing that its opening
narratives form an inadequate introduction to the biblical
drama. My counter-proposal is deceptively simple: we
should begin by reading
(that is, interpreting) Gen. 3 in the light of Gen. 1-2.
When we first meet the serpent in 3:1,
there is no textual evidence whatsoever
that anything bad has happened in or to the good
creation described in Gen. 1-2.
To
assume that we are supposed to understand a "fallen angel" in this
context is
unwarranted.13 The text describes the
serpent as the "wisest"14 of "the wild
animals," a phrase that refers back to the
previous chapters. By this we are meant
to understand a creature made on the sixth day as
described in 1:24-25 and named
by Adam in 2:19-20.
Gen. 1:24-25 refers twice to
"creatures that move along the ground" of which
the serpent is clearly one (see 3:1415).
It is thus of great significance to our under-
standing of the creature introduced in 3:1 that
God says in 1: 26: "Let us make
man in our image, in our likeness, and let them
rule over the fish of the sea and the
birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the
earth, and over all the creatures
that move along the ground." The connection with the serpent is
reiterated in 1:28,
when God tells humanity: "Be fruitful and
increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it.
13 Although there is
biblical warrant for linking the serpent and Satan, to be explored in "Sa-
tan and the Serpent" below, and although Paul
tells us that Satan "masquerades as an angel
of light" (2 Cor.
11:14), Satan is never defined as a fallen angel in the Bible. Many major
commentaries on Genesis stress that
the serpent is not a satanic figure, especially given its
description as a creature of God in 3:1. See, inter alia, Claus Westermarm, Genesis 1-11,
237-238,
and Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A
Commentary, trans. John H. Marks, revised edition
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972), 87. For commentaries that
accept this while still
emphasizing the sinister nature of the serpent, see Victor
P. Hamilton, The Book Of Genesis
Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (
1990),187-188, and Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, volume 1 of Word Biblical Commentary
(Waco,
Texas: Word, 1987), 72-73. For an example of the traditional identification of
the serpent
as the instrument of Satan, see Meredith G. Kline,
"Genesis" in D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer,
eds.
New Bible Commentary, third edition
(Leicester: InterVarsity Press;
1970), 84. Satan seems to be identified with the
serpent prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve in
Wisdom of Solomon 2:24, but I do not
consider this a challenge to my position as this text is not
in the Protestant canon.
14 On the NIV translation
of 3:1 which describes the serpent as "more crafty than any of the
wild animals," see n. 29 below. The
connotations of serpents in the Pentateuch are explored
towards the end of "Satan and the
Serpent" below.
15 That God declares in
judgment that the serpent will crawl on its belly (3:14) does not mean
that it had not done so before. God is simply,
though forcefully, doing what Adam and Eve
should have done already: putting the serpent in its
place (cf. Isa. 65:25).
Christian
Scholar's Review 38
Rule
over the birds of the air and over every
living creature that moves on the
ground" (my emphases).
The fact that the serpent not only moves on the ground
but is described as "wild" suggests that
it represents (and perhaps symbolizes16) all
creatures and all aspects of the world beyond
cated.17 Yet the text makes it
clear that Adam and Eve are called and empowered to
rule over it.
Although it is a mistake to see the serpent as
an evil being at this stage, it is
nevertheless important to recognize
that the opening chapters of the Bible do not
portray anything in creation as
"absolutely" good in the etymological sense of be-
ing "absolved"
from or immune to the relationships in which it stands. When Gen.
1
speaks of a "very good" creation, we should not understand this in
terms of a
Greek philosophical notion of static perfection. The biblical account is
thoroughly
dynamic, viewing life before the Fall as on the
move towards an eschaton, a fulfill-
ment (in and) of history.18
It is also thoroughly covenantal or relational. The ongo-
ing goodness of human
culture and the non-human creation, which includes those
realities symbolized by the serpent, depends on
whether Adam and Eve will exer-
cise the authority that they
have been given and to which they are called.
Read as an introduction to the whole biblical
drama, the opening chapters of
Genesis
tell us how the Creator began to fill and subdue the earth by making
into a home for Adam and Eve and by blessing and
empowering humanity to do
the same for God with the world beyond the Garden.
To this end, they were to
extend the work of creation, thus making the whole of
existence into a place where
God
might dwell. The call to "fill" the earth (as well as to
"subdue" it) goes beyond
human reproduction to include the "cultural
mandate" or the call to make history.19
To
fill the earth humanly is a calling to let the earth be filled with God, to let
the
light of God's presence fill the darkness (Gen. 1:3).
In Old Testament language this
is the hope that one day the earth will be filled
with the glory of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea (Hab.
2:14).
16 In my view, this text
should be read as an example of symbolically intensified history writ-
ing that is focused on
questions of ultimate significance. Cf. n. 8 above. On the choice of a
wild animal and more specifically a serpent as a
symbol, see "Satan and the Serpent" below.
17 On the significance of
wild rather than domestic animals later in the biblical story, see Rich-
ard J. Bauckham,
"Jesus and the Wild Animals (Mark 1:13): A Christological Image for an
Ecological
Age," in Jesus Of
Testament Christology, eds. Joel B. Green and
Max Turner (
1994),
3-21.
18 On this point, see Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming Of God:
Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM, 1996), 264.
19 This task is closely
related to the meaning of humanity being made in the "image of God"
(Gen. 1:26-27). While all the other
creatures are made after their "own kind" in Gen. 1, this is
not said of humans because we are made after
"God's kind." On the "cultural mandate" of
Gen.
1:28 as being as broad as life itself, see the
quotation from Ludwig Kohler in Hans Walter
Wolf,
Anthropology of the Old Testament,
trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM,-1974), 164. See
also Albert M. Wolters,
"The Foundational Command: 'Subdue The Earth!"' (
tute for Christian Studies,
1973).
The
Call of Wisdom/The Voice of the Serpent 39
In the New Testament, the theme of
"filling" the earth is picked up most ex-
plicitly by Paul in the context
of his claim that God will become "all in all." For
Paul,
God "fills everything in every way," but this fullness is presently concen-
trated in Christ and his Body
(Eph. 1:22-23)--a limitation that will be removed when
evil is finally overcome (1 Cor.
15:28). This process is now tied to the redemption
and restoration of creation. But for Paul, God
becoming "all in all" does not signify
a return to a state that existed prior to the
Fall. Arguably, Paul assumes that God
was not "all in all" in the beginning,
even though the original creation was very
good. While the coming of the eschaton
to a fallen world will involve the eradica-
tion of the evil that we
have introduced into history, it does not result in the clock
being turned back. Instead, it will mark the
completion of a calling and process that
had barely begun before the eschatological movement
of history was closed down
by our disobedience.
Paul's language about God as the One who
"fills everything in every way"
(pleroumenou,
Eph. 1:23) echoes the language used to describe the original call to
humanity to fill the earth (plerosate, Gen. 1:28 LXX).20
Furthermore, the subduing of
evil and the filling with God's fullness that is now
being accomplished by Christ
and his Body in 1 Cor.
15:24-28 is explicitly linked by Paul to Psalm 8 and thus to
the imago Dei and cultural mandate (by means of the
quotation of Ps. 8:6 in Eph.
1:22).
Thus, Paul would seem to understand the original call to image God, filling
and subduing the world beyond the confines of
ative work by bringing the
whole world to its divine "fulfillment."
But, to return to Gen. 3, Adam and Eve fail to
rule over the serpent. The cre-
ation that should have been
blessed by humanity as humanity was blessed by God
is now cursed. The serpent thus goes awry, no
longer occupying its proper place in
creation. To keep it in its true place as a
creature that crawls along the ground will
now be impossible without violence and suffering
(3:14-15). Similarly, the thorns
and thistles that were once easy to keep in check
will now flourish and be out of
control (3:17-18).21 The darkness,
which was not evil in the beginning (Gen. 1:3),
now resists being penetrated and filled by the
light of God's glory (John 1:5).
In Rom. 8:20, Paul tells us that "the
creation was subjected to frustration, not
by its own choice, but by the will of the one who
subjected it." Although New
Testament
scholars disagree about whether it is God or Adam who is referred to
here, this may be a false dilemma. God tells Adam
that the ground is now cursed
because of him (Gen. 3:17). God's judgment, as I
read it, only describes and ratifies
what humans have done, though the promise of
redemption is added. The scope of
20 LXX denotes the
Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament (and other writings)
frequently cited in the New Testament. For a
helpful discussion of the Old Testament (rather
than Gnostic) background to pleroma
in this passage, see Markus Barth, Ephesians: Introduc-
tion, Translation and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, volume 34 of The Anchor Bible (Garden
City,
NY: Doubleday, 1974), 203-205. While Barth does refer
to the creaturely filling of creation
in Gen. 1 (see p. 204, n. 317), the link with the
cultural mandate is not developed.
21 I think it is a mistake
to see 3:18 as speaking of the origin of thistles and thorns as such. Cf.
Isa. 5:3-6; 7:23-25 and n. 15 above.
Christian
Scholar's Review 40
human responsibility is indeed awesome: what we bind
on earth will be bound in
heaven (
The bondage or curse of creation is linked in Genesis
to Adam and Eve's deci-
sion to eat of the
"tree of the knowledge of good and evil." This tree, as I under-
stand