Re: Adam never met Eve

From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Fri Nov 24 2000 - 17:58:48 EST

  • Next message: Glenn Morton: "RE: Adam never met Eve"

    I (Wayne) wrote:
    <<
     If we are going to insist on anything, we should insist on the
     Exodus and on Christ because those are the key testaments to
     the faith.
    >>

    Chuck Vandergraaf commented:
    <<
     This comment has placed me back on my ice floe again!
    >>

    Maybe this needs something more said. Surely the main event
    that would have motivated writing for posterity anything
    at all would have been the exodus. I don't think Abraham's
    life by itself would have done that, nor Isaac, nor Jacob,
    nor Joseph. They would all be forgotten in the depths of
    time past. However, the Exodus was a fulfillment. Moreover,
    it was an event that took God's divine action to accomplish.
    Anyone with any sense of gratitude at all, would surely make
    some effort to remember those events. Even if one insists on
    a JEDP theory for the construction of the old testament, it
    would have relied on early documents as well as oral traditions.
    At least some of it must have been written not so long after
    the Exodus. Finally, the Exodus is a central theme that surfaces
    again and again throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

    So for myself, not having grown up being told that the Bible
    was true most of my life, and coming to a faith in college,
    the first 11 chapters of Genesis have never been that important to
    my confidence in testamony of scripture. However, if I must
    accept that the Exodus is merely a "good story", I honestly
    would have to reject most (if not all) of my Christian faith,
    or at "best?", to preserve some remnant of my faith, I would
    have to commit something akin to a Marcion heresy. I think
    it would be quite difficult to preserve a faith in the Gospel
    if the "Law" is simply a "good story".

    What remains problematical is that the first 11 chapters do
    contain geneologies like the later writings. If I am to take
    the later geneologies seriously, which I think we should (at
    least after allowing for some minor "telescoping"), then it
    remains to be explained what divides Genesis 1-11 from the rest
    of the Old Testament. I don't have an answer to that. There
    are some people on this list who have done a great deal of
    effort on that, and their ideas have inspired me to consider
    Noah (for example) as an actual historical event, but whatever
    the case may be, I do no pin my faith on whether or not the
    account given in the first 11 chapters of Genesis is historical
    or not. I do pin my faith in part on the events that lead
    to the Exodus.

    Without the Exodus, and surely without the life of Christ, God
    is of little significance to any of us even if there is one.

    by Grace alone do we proceed,
    Wayne



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