A Mini Analysis of Genesis and the Sabbath

A number of Seventh-day Adventists along with myself are being accused of being false Christians or false teachers because we do not adhere to the “plain statements” of Genesis with respect to the creation. In order to counter these accusations I will embark on a nutshell analysis of Genesis 1, or at least the first part of Genesis 1 in order to show that the plain statements I ignore are not as plain as people might think.  I will then move to an analysis of Exodus 20:8-11.  As always, all references are taken from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

I believe the issue of creation versus evolution is dividing the Seventh-day Adventist church unnecessarily.  It concerns me that administrators and amateur theologians are attempting to force professional scientists and teachers of science to teach something that is generally considered unscientific.  If a Seventh-day Adventist science teacher actually believes in evolution, or some form thereof, that person should not be demonized nor castigated as evil, or non-Christian as they are currently experiencing today.  Our church leaders tell us we must accept Genesis as it reads, taking it as exact historical revelation.  These leaders are political and not theological.  They are ignorant of both theology and biblical exegesis and they are leading our church further and further into irrelevance. 

I believe that on the issue of creation versus evolution, we should live and let live.  In other words, we should not judge or condemn those who believe in a 6,000 year earth, and we should not judge and condemn those who do not believe this.  My reason for saying this is that the issue is not clear cut and unambiguous to many people.  By being dogmatic on this issue we are dividing the church over something no one witnessed directly and which we can only have opinions about based on examination of evidence.  This causes me great sadness.  I do not recall reading about the sheep affirming their belief in a 6,000 year old universe while the goats believe in evolution.  I hope the following discussion will serve to illustrate that those Christians like myself who believe in evolution and a much older earth are, in fact, Christians.

Genesis 1

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2).

This translation conveys the meaning of Genesis 1:1 and not the exact literal translation.  Literally, the Hebrew reads:  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  The word “when” does not appear.  But a number of translations do include the “when” because it accurately conveys the meaning of the text.  That is, we are meant to understand that when God started to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was in a formless and void state.

This translation is interesting because instead of rendering the Hebrew as the spirit of God hovering, it states that the wind of God swept over the face of the waters.  The word for spirit can legitimately be translated as wind and is often translated in that manner.  Thus, either wind or spirit can be used here.  In a way, the distinction is not so important because the Holy Spirit is the divine wind.  But does this mean actual wind blowing over the water or does this refer to a member of the Trinity?  That is, is this a physical description of wind blowing over H₂O or is this saying that a part of the godhead was present?  Both are legitimate and I will not debate this much here.  I favor this translation because of the Hebrew verb which is rendered here as “swept.”  The form of the verb is one which shows intense action and therefore fits wind better.  Translations like the NIV which say “the spirit of God was hovering” do not accurately render the Hebrew in my opinion.[1]

What I am concerned with here are the waters.  Let me paint a picture of the cosmos so far.  We have only three things in the cosmos:  H₂O, darkness, and either a wind blowing or the Holy Spirit, take your pick.  I won’t debate that point here.

For now I will simply ask a question.  At what point did God create water?  At no point in Genesis 1 does God say “Let there be water.”  The water exists before God creates light.  In fact, the water is there before God says a single word.

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1:3-5).

The first day does not start until God separates the light from the darkness.  Prior to God’s first words, there is only darkness so you cannot have a day as such.  So at this point, a 4^th element is added to the universe.  We now have light.  But we also have a zone of light and a zone of darkness.  We are not told that the waters rotated in any way.  We are simply told God separated the light from the darkness so for all we know, one part of the universe may have had permanent light while the other may have still been bathed in permanent darkness.  Any statements about moving zones of light and darkness so that a day and night lasted 24 hours are assumptions on our part.  The text neither supports nor denies that assumption. Genesis does say that on the 4^th day of creation God created the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night.  Thus if we take Genesis 1 strictly on what the text says, the first 24 hour day begins on day 4 of creation.  Now the fun begins.

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. (Genesis 1:6-8).

Here we see the creation of the sky.  The word translated dome means a solid rounded expanse which in this case is hollow as is evident from the 4^th day of creation.[2]  The cosmos now has light and dark, as well as water and sky.  At this point, what does the cosmos look like?  It has three layers.  The lowest layer beneath the dome (sky) consists of H₂O .  Then we have the sky.  Above the dome is more H2O.  At this point there are no stars, sun or moon.  Thus the entire cosmos consists of water, a sky, and more water.  People tell me that the waters above the dome are only in the vicinity of the earth but this is not what the bible says.  If we take Genesis literally, as I am told I must, the only conclusion is that water is the only thing that exists above the sky.  There are no stars.  There is only water.  When we get to the 4^th day of creation, we will see clearly that the dome is massive so that the waters above the dome are a very long way from the earth.  This is why people jump in to interpret the second day of creation to bring the text more into alignment with our modern understanding of the universe.  But by doing so, they do not take it literally.  The cosmos consists of water, empty sky and then more water.  That’s it.  That is what Genesis says.

Thus at this point, there are two intriguing things about the H₂O.  First, it was never created by God through his spoken word.  The Bible does say elsewhere that everything was created through the Word of God so God must have created the water at some point.  But when?  According to Genesis 1, which I am taking literally, God never spoke the water into existence, at least not in this creative sequence.  The second intriguing fact about the H₂O is that Genesis states quite clearly that the entire cosmos consisted only of H₂O.  That is what it says if you take it exactly literally like I am told I should.

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.  (Genesis 1:9-13).

It is here that we learn that the water we have been speaking of is H₂O.  This is why I referred to it as H₂O so as not to confuse it with some sort of mystical substance called water.  The waters below the sky were gathered into one place and dry land appeared.  Since the waters below the sky are called seas, we can only assume that the waters above the sky are also a number of seas or perhaps one vast ocean.  In other words, H₂O exists below the sky, and H₂O exists above the sky.  My point is that above the sky there is only H2O.  In the entire vastness of the universe, there is only H₂O.

Let us consider the dry land for a moment.  God said “let the dry land appear.”  Was the dry land already there and it only appears when God gathers the water into one place, or did God create the dry land out of nothing after gathering the waters together into one place?  In the other things God creates, he says things like “let there be.”  In other places God says let such and such bring forth.  We see this here where God commands the earth to bring forth vegetation.  But with the dry land he says “let the dry land appear.”  Thus the waters may have covered the earth all along and only now that the waters below the sky are gathered to one place do we see the dry land.  Alternatively, God could have gathered the waters together to one place leaving water and emptiness, then popped the dry land into existence to fill the emptiness created when God gathered the waters together. 

Imagine you are watching a video of this happening.  You would see God piling the waters up at one part of the universe below the sky and then dry land appearing.  It is perfectly legitimate to hold that the dry land was always there and God merely uncovered it.  That makes the most sense in my opinion.  I will take a little time to explain why I hold this view but before I do, I will also say that my view is debatable.

The bible records two instances in which God gathered water together to form dry land.  In both instances, the dry land was already there, being covered by the water.  In both cases, the mechanism God used for gathering the waters was wind.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided;   the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated; (Genesis 8:1-3).

When the great flood was at its peak, the earth resembled the state it was in before dry land appeared during creation week.  We can assume that while the skies were pouring continuous rain on the earth the sun was pretty much obscured and much of the earth would have been in near darkness.  In addition to the rain stopping, God caused the waters to recede by making a wind blow over the earth.

A second instance when God required waters to move aside in favor of dry land was when Israel crossed the Red Sea.  I always have the picture of Moses, played by Charlton Heston in the classic movie the Ten Commandments lifting his hands toward heaven and waving his staff causing the waters to part immediately.  While that scene is very dramatic, even with special effects over 60 years old, the Bible paints a somewhat different picture.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-22).

I remember going to Universal Studios many years ago where the Red Sea scene was filmed for The Ten Commandments.  The water is ankle deep if that and forms part of an artificial lagoon.  Off in one corner was the lagoon set for Gilligan’s Island.[3]  To film the Red Sea scene the wizards at Universal constructed a long metal half-pipe with the top of the pipe open to the sky. The bottom of the half-pipe was flat with curved sides.  To divide the water in the lagoon, at least in the immediate vicinity, the air jets shot air in both the right and left directions.  These air jets combined with the metal half-pipe itself to create the effect of two walls of water, one on either side.  As I said, the water is ankle deep if that.  The cinematography did the rest along with a painted backdrop of a stormy sky.  Somehow the cameras turned that extremely shallow water into massive piles of water on either side.  The cinematographers also obscured the metal half-pipe to make it appear that the Israelites walked through the Red Sea on sand.  I can only imagine the awe those special effects must have inspired in those who first watched Charlton Heston lead the Israelites through the Red Sea over 60 years ago.

I do not know how wind blowing from the east could have created two walls of water on either side, but then we are talking about a miracle.  That must have been the strongest wind in world history.  My point should be pretty obvious.  In both instances, God used a special wind to gather waters together to cause the dry land underneath to appear.

These two instances do not make a full-proof case for the same thing happening in Genesis 1, but they make a strong definitive case.  The picture I believe Genesis 1 paints is of a strong wind blowing on the waters so the dry land underneath is exposed.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.  God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. (Genesis 1:14-19).

Now we discover that the dome of the sky is massive.  The sky is not only the atmosphere surrounding the earth, it is the observable universe.  The sun, moon and all of the stars are placed in the dome.  So now let us look at our universe.  Below the sky we have dry land and oceans.  Then we have the observable universe, replete with stars, as well as the sun and moon.  Then outside the dome, that is, above the dome, we have more H₂O.  This is what the Bible says.  We learn here that the distance between the waters below the dome and the waters above it is vast indeed.  This dome is huge.

But of course, I have actually departed from my attempt to take Genesis literally because I call the dome the observable universe.  Genesis does not say this.  We know today that the earth is surrounded by the universe.  Below the earth there are stars and above the earth there are stars.  But Genesis does not say this.  It calls the sky a dome.  Therefore if I take Genesis 1 literally, I must say that the observable universe extends only above the earth.  If I were at the South Pole what I would see is matter below the earth in the form of stars and galaxies.  But Genesis says the dome with the sun, moon, and stars, only exists above the earth.  That makes sense because otherwise it is not a true dome.  So according to Genesis if I looked below the earth from the South Pole I would see, well I don’t know exactly what I would see since the Genesis cosmology makes no provision for anything below the earth.

We have the earth which now consists of seas and dry land plus vegetation.  We then have a solid dome placed on top of the earth.  It has a hollow interior and the sun, moon, and stars are placed in the interior of the solid dome.  Above the dome is H₂O.  As to what is below the earth, Genesis mentions nothing so we must conclude one of two things.  There is nothing below the earth and the cosmos consists of layers like a cake, or below the earth there is only H₂O since there is no dome below the earth and there are no stars below the earth either.

Let me be even blunter than this.  Genesis 1 states specifically that the Earth sits outside of the hollow dome or expanse containing the sun, moon and stars.  We have the earth.  Then we have a solid expanse which separates the earth from the rest of the universe.  Then we have H2O above that.  In other words, the earth sits outside of the known universe.  The dome or expanse was placed between the waters which eventually became the Earth, and the rest of the universe.  Since we are talking about a hollow expanse I must therefore conclude that the sky is a hollow shell composed of some sort of solid substance which separates the Earth from the rest of the universe.  Really?

I am constantly criticized for not taking Genesis exactly as it reads.  Well I am here and you see where this leads.  I expect people will be indignant when they read this because they do not like the conclusions I reach when I take Genesis 1 literally.  My critics know full well that the earth is surrounded by vacuum and the stars exist in that vacuum. 

I also find it fascinating that God spends 5/6 of his creative time on one planet located in an outer arm of an ordinary galaxy.  Meanwhile the rest of the universe only gets part of 1/6 of his creative time.  The cosmos of Genesis 1 places the earth at the center of all of God’s creative activity.  The stars are merely there to help determine signs and seasons.  Of course, we cannot see the vast majority of the universe with the naked eye but because we are taking Genesis 1 literally, we must conclude that galaxies 13 billion light years distant are there to help us determine the seasons on this little planet of ours.[4]  On the 4^th day of creation when God created the stars, he made it so we could see a small percentage of them.  Just how small a percentage?  The estimated number of stars visible to the naked eye is often stated as 6,000.  The Yale Brightness catalogue lists 9,100 stars with a brightness greater than magnitude 6.5.  About half of these can be seen at any time from any point on Earth.  So let us assume that Adam had massively enhanced eyesight and that the completely clean atmosphere allowed him to see 100 times that number.  Let us assume that Adam could see 100 X 5,000 stars from Eden or 500,000 stars.  Genesis does not tell us anything about Adam’s eyesight nor does it mention any telescope he might have had but Adam is often said by creationists to have been a perfect physical specimen so I think 100 times the number of stars humans can see today is a fair place to start.[5]   The estimated number of stars in the entire universe is 3 sextillion.  That is a 3 followed by 23 0’s.[6]  This means Adam would have been able to see .000000000000000166667% of all the stars.  This means about  99.999999999999999833333% of the stars supposedly created for signs and seasons would have been useless to humankind from the very beginning.   Even if we allow for an expanding universe, the fact Adam saw any stars at all means that God transported light from some of those stars to Earth making it appear as though the stars were millions and billions of years old because under normal circumstances, it would take light that long to reach us here.  When we see a star, we see it light years in the past because it takes that long for the light to hit our retinas.   So from day 4, God has deceived us, making us believe the universe is billions of years old when it was only 96 hours old. 

So not only do we get a layered cosmos in Genesis 1, we get one in which the earth is pretty much the lowest layer.  We also have a cosmos in which H₂O is the primal element.  Now we’re getting really scientific here.  It frightens me that the Seventh-day Adventist church wants its science teachers to teach our children this cosmology.  But oh yes, I’m supposed to take Genesis 1 exactly literally and throw my brain out the window in the process or else I’m an evil person.  Heaven help us.

Of course I do not expect our church schools to teach a cosmology like this.  No self-respecting science teacher would allow it.  But those who proudly boast of taking Genesis literally, exactly how it reads, while proclaiming that it reveals exact literal history need to take a long hard look at the text and realize they are full of themselves.  It is vain pride they have for they do not, in any way, shape, or form, take Genesis literally.  What they do is read their own understanding into it and mistake that for the sole interpretation which has any merit.  They inject modern cosmology where it does not belong and deceive themselves into believing that Genesis exhibits our understanding of the universe.

To take Genesis 1 exactly literally is akin to playing with a two edged sword.  Too many in our church are too stupid to realize they have been cutting themselves and those around them with this sword, making our church a laughingstock.  Being a laughingstock is not in itself a reason to abandon a point of view.  But being a laughingstock unnecessarily is and it is about time many in the church exited Disneyland where they have been living all their lives and enter the real world.  The brutal truth is Genesis 1 reveals an ancient cosmology that is so vastly different from ours, that any attempts to force Genesis 1 into our modern cosmology are foolish.

The Sabbath

Let me now turn to Exodus 20:8-11 in which God commands Israel to keep the Sabbath holy as a memorial of creation.  God himself thunders that he created the world in six days and rested on the Sabbath day.  God did not mean six vast ages etc.  But did God actually say this?  Stupid question right?  Not so fast.

I must here distinguish between history and theology.  Imagine you have a video camera and God allows you to use it on the day he spoke directly from Horeb.  What would that camera record God as saying about the Sabbath?  The answer is we don’t know.  We don’t know because someone who was there has a different version of the story.

Deuteronomy 5:1–5 (NRSV)

Moses convened all Israel, and said to them: Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I am addressing to you today; you shall learn them and observe them diligently. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire.  (At that time I was standing between the Lord and you to declare to you the words of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said: (Deuteronomy 5:1-5).

It is clear Moses is recounting what happened on Sinai.  In case you are wondering, Sinai is the mountain range while the proper name of the actual mountain is Horeb.  This is not a contradiction in the bible.  At the end of Deuteronomy 5:5 we read “And he said.”  Is what follows what Moses said, or is Moses quoting from God?  The answer is the latter, Moses is going to quote God next.  We know this because the next verse begins “I am the Lord your God.”  It is clear Moses is quoting God and that 5:6 is not a quote from Moses as in Moses saying ‘I am the Lord your God.”  The first three commandments are given without difficulty.  But when we get to the fourth we read this.

Deuteronomy 5:12–16 (NRSV)

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).

Here in Deuteronomy, an entirely different reason is given for observance of the Sabbath.  Theologically speaking, you might blend the two reasons together to form a composite picture of why we should observe the Sabbath.  But I am not talking about theology.  I am asking what your video camera would have revealed were it rolling on the day God thundered forth the 10 commandments.  God commanded Israel to observe the Sabbath not as a memorial to the creation, but as a memorial to being slaves at one time.  Moses states explicitly here this was the reason God commanded observance of the Sabbath.  Remember that Moses is speaking here of the specific day when God uttered the 10 commandments.  Moses is saying that God thundered forth the Sabbath command on Sinai and then gave as reason for that command a need to remember when the people were slaves.  Remember too that Moses is quoting God.  So either you have Moses saying that redemption from slavery was the reason God gave the Sabbath command on Sinai, or you have 5:15 as a direct quote from God, in which case Moses states specifically that God did not talk about the creation, but about redemption from slavery.

Historically speaking then, you cannot say for certain what God said regarding the Sabbath because you have two contradictory accounts of the events.  As I said before, theologically you can smooth things over, but I am talking about history.  What actually happened?  The answer is “we don’t know.”  How can we when we have two different accounts of the events.

People thunder at me all the time that God said explicitly that he created the earth in six days etc.  In doing so, however, they are either ignorant of Deuteronomy 5 which clearly contradicts that account historically, or they choose to ignore it.  But you cannot have both historically.  Your video camera would pick up either the creation reason or the slavery reason, not both.

This is one of many reasons why the vast majority of biblical scholars speak of multiple authorship and different textual traditions.  It is clear that some debate existed as to why the Sabbath should be observed but more importantly, we have two different historical accounts of the Sinai event.

This point is so important for us to understand, I am going to illustrate this with another example which has nothing whatsoever to do with what I am talking about here.  To illustrate the difference between the bible as history and the bible as theology, consider the following two passages in Matthew and Luke respectively.

Matthew 4:1-11

Luke 4:1-13

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ” Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.  If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ” Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Any honest person reading these two passages has no choice but to conclude a contradiction exists.  Theologically, it matters not in which order Satan delivered his temptations to Christ.  Both passages also agree that Satan gave Christ three temptations, and both passages agree on the three temptations presented to Christ.  But they blatantly disagree regarding which temptation was presented first, jumping off the temple, or being given the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping Satan.  Historically speaking, we do not know for certain which temptation was offered first.

We can glibly argue this does not matter and, in fact, I would agree.  The reason this sort of thing matters is that the ignorant church leaders constantly tell us that the Bible, as it reads, must be taken as exact and 100% accurate historical truth.  How can any honest person take these two gospel passages as 100% accurate history?

If I write a book about World War II, for example, it matters which event came first, the German attack on Poland, or the Allied invasion of Normandy.  To reverse the two would be ridiculous as history.  Reversing the two temptations here is not ridiculous since it in no way detracts from the point of the story.  However, we cannot say that the gospels present us with 100% accurate history.

Suppose you had a video camera record the scene between Christ and Satan in the wilderness.  What would it have recorded?  The answer, like that regarding Sinai, is that we do not know.  We don’t know because Matthew and Luke disagree on the order in which Satan presented his temptations.  They contradict one another chronologically.

The Sabbath question is similar in that we have two versions of the one story, the giving of the ten commandments.  In one version, the Sabbath was given as a memorial of creation.  In another version, it was given as a memorial to one nation being slaves in one country.  Just as we do not know what the video camera would have recorded on Sinai, we do not know what it would have recorded in the wilderness as Christ was tempted.

In John 5:17 Christ states clearly that the Father works on the Sabbath. Empirical evidence shows us clearly that the universe runs the same way on the Sabbath as it does on the other six days.  Thus, if God is involved in doing any work to maintain the cosmos, he certainly does not rest on the Sabbath.    Not a single created object or being acts any differently on the Sabbath day than on any other days.  Animals do not refrain from gathering food and plants do not refrain from photosynthesis.  Volcanos do not stop erupting on the Sabbath day and waves continue rolling along on that day. If anything, Jesus seems to support the Sabbath as a memorial to slavery version though only tangentially. 

The most logical explanation is there are two different traditions regarding the Sabbath which were held by different groups of Israelites.  Scholars traditionally place the Exodus 10 commandments story as part of the J tradition, while the story in Deuteronomy 5 is considered a D tradition.[7]  The classification of Exodus 20 as a J text has been challenged by many modern scholars to the point that uncertainty abounds as to which of the J, E, or P groups this text belongs, if at all.  The one thing scholars do agree on is that Exodus 20 differs from Deuteronomy 5.

Evolution and Redemption

I am often presented with the following argument.  If evolution is the way things happened then there is no room for a Savior because we did not fall.  Traditional Christianity teaches that things were once perfect and because of mankind’s initial sin, mankind fell and necessitated the need for a Savior.

In order for me to answer this argument I will begin by asking a question.  It is a simple question but it is one that is overlooked by most Christians.  My question is this.

What is the purpose for redemption?

Put another way, what goals does God want to achieve by redeeming us?  For many Christians, the first thing that comes to mind is John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

On the surface, Christ seems to be saying that the purpose for redemption is eternal life.  But Christ’s words go much deeper.  To understand what I mean, I will refer back to the Eden story contained in Genesis 3.  In this section I am temporarily moving away from the historical aspects of this investigation into the realm of theology.  It is the theology that reveals God’s goals in redeeming us.  According to Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they acquired the knowledge of good and evil.  Prior to eating the fruit, mankind did not know the difference between good and evil so they were not like god.  Eve ate the fruit because she wanted to be wise and be like God.  Only after they ate the fruit did they become wise.  One thing that did not happen is they did not die as a result of eating the fruit. 

Then the Lord God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. (Genesis 3:22-23).

Had God simply wanted us to live forever, he would have allowed us access to the tree of life.  Despite eating the fruit, mankind was perfectly capable of living forever so God acted in order to prevent this from happening.  Why did God do this?  God also says here that mankind had become like “one of us” knowing good and evil.  It is clear that mankind acquired the ability to know good and evil and God knew that mankind would not deal with this well.  When we read the punishments bestowed on serpent, woman, and man, we see that suffering lay in store for mankind. 

 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.  Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. (1 John 3:1-6).

This text reveals the purpose or goal of redemption.  Put simply, God wants a group of human beings who can live forever because they freely choose to do good and to avoid evil.  They freely choose love instead of hate.  Though they know the difference between good and evil as God does, they do not do evil.

When Adam and Eve first ate the fruit they became like God only in one aspect.  They had the ability to know good and evil (they had yet to really experience either).  But they were not fully like God because they did not have the capacity to freely choose good and to avoid evil.  When mankind ate the fruit, they began the Romans 7 experience in which the desire to do good fought constantly with the desire to do evil.  They lacked the power by themselves to be free of the grip of sin and evil.

Now that we understand the goal of redemption we can move back to the question of evolution and creation.  Since the goal of redemption is to become like God in both the intellectual and spiritual aspects, does God actually require a fall first?

The argument I hear from creationists all the time is that if mankind crawled out of the jungle or swung down from the trees, you cannot blame mankind for being selfish.  After all, we are products of a dog eat dog survival of the fittest world.  You cannot say that mankind has sinned because we are only doing what comes naturally.  And since mankind has not sinned, there is no room for a redeemer.

This picture completely misses the point of redemption.  It focuses on the blame game.  If we swung down from the trees, then God cannot blame us for our mistakes or our character.  But does blame really matter?  Salvation or redemption is not about clearing away guilt, it is about achieving the goals of redemption which I have expressed above.  God wants to transform us from what we are to what he wants us to be.  Does it really matter why we are what we are?  Does it matter who is responsible for us being the way we are?

Suppose you were a massively intelligent being with lots of powers.  You look at dolphins or chimps and realize that they are close to sentience but not quite there yet.  So you give them a little boost genetically.  Now dolphins and chimps are sentient.  They can now learn right from wrong.  Of course, both dolphins and chimps will have to start their Romans 7 experience and the slow and arduous process of transformation begins. 

Redemption does not require an initial fall.  God can choose whomever he wants.

Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac.  Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.” As it is written,  “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.” (Romans 9:10-13).

With respect to redemption God does so in spite of our condition.  Our redemption is not based on works.  It is based on the state we are in and the desire for God to change our state.  And of course for this we need a redeemer.

People say that when mankind first sinned, it became necessary for someone to die in order to save them.  Says who?  Is not God capable of forgiveness without killing someone?  Of course he is just as we read:

I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you. (Isaiah 44:22).

Here, long before the cross, God tells Israel he has swept away their sins.  Redemption begins with God.  He first loves us.  This allows him to forgive us.  Once God has forgiven us, he takes action and redeems us.  There are many texts in the Bible which essentially say “You went astray.  You have done what is not right but you know what, I don’t care because going forward, I’m going to redeem you because I love you).  Examples of these are Hosea 4-11, Ezekiel 36 and Isaiah 44 and 48.  I could also add Psalm 14, Psalm 53 and the book of Romans.

Redemption is not about removing blame but accepting that we are the way we are, taking responsibility, and then allowing God to redeem us.  No fall required.  It does not matter how we got to where we are, what matters is that we get from where we are to where God wants us to be.

This is why evolutionists can be Christians  Belief in evolution does not negate the need nor the existence of a redeemer because when we truly understand the purpose and goals of redemption, we realize that God loves us regardless of how we arrived at our present state. 

Redemption is surrounded by a lot of theology and theological terms but it is really very simple.  If you love someone and wish to improve their lives, you help them regardless of how they got where they are.  God wants to give us happy, fulfilled lives that last forever.  That qualifies as an improvement of circumstances.  He wants to do this because he loves us.  Maybe we swung down from the trees and God decided to give us something more.  Maybe we once lived in paradise and threw it all away and suffered ever since.  No fall required.  Thus both creation and evolution have equal room for redemption and a redeemer.

When I say God can forgive us without blood people often misunderstand me.  They think I am teaching Christ’s death was not necessary or was unimportant.  A lot of Christians believe Christ died to pay the blood price required. The Bible does use language which might yield such a conclusion as a result of a surface analysis.  Indeed the two most common theories of the atonement are the ransom theory and the substitution theory.  In the ransom theory, Satan demands the blood of the son of God as the blood price for God to redeem us.  In the substitution theory, God’s justice demands a blood price and Jesus sheds his blood so we do not need to shed ours.  The substitution theory is most commonly taught in Christianity today.  Usually, when I confront people with the absurdity of either theory, they deny they ever believed such things but the fact is, these two theories are the dominant theories of modern Christianity.

This is what I believe in a nutshell.  God knew that if his son lived on earth and refused to use his super powers to save himself, he would die.  He would die because it was inevitable that someone would kill him.  Suppose God calls you to walk in the middle of Iran’s capital city and boldly claim that the prophet Mohamed was a fraud.  You might say that while his first wife was alive, she held the purse strings so polygamy was out.  After her death when the prophet took over the finances, things changed.  Now suppose God called you to do this without any angels to protect you.  How long would you live?  This is essentially what Christ did.  His life revealed the world’s life to be a fraud.  He revealed most of the religious leaders of his time as frauds and cheats.  If Christ had lived and taught, then skipped away to heaven as soon as things got rough, he would have demonstrated his lack of conviction in his beliefs.  The average peon cannot simply skip away to paradise.  Thus Christ knew what would happen to him if he did not save himself.  Knowing this, he paid the price.  The price was not set by God or Satan to pay anyone.  Jesus paid the inevitable price of his ministry to show us that his way is worth living by, and dying for, and God has power over death and the grave.  You might say the price of redemption was set by market forces, not arbitrarily by Satan or God.  Such redemptive action does not require a fall,  Indeed, to say otherwise makes a mockery of the gospel and the Old Testament.

Conclusion

My intent is not to undermine the Bible in any way.  My intent is to reveal the truth about the bible.  Many Seventh-day Adventists live in a Disneyland world which is defined by their own mind and beliefs.  In this Disneyland world, the Bible is perfect.  Perfection in this world means that the Bible contains no contradictions whatsoever.  It contains no ambiguity.  Everything is clearly and easily understood.  In this Disneyland world, only those in this world know “the truth.”  Everyone else is wrong and needs to be enlightened.  God wrote the Bible in this world.  Thus although God used various men as his writing instruments, there is only one author and everyone has always agreed on which books of the Bible were good and which were bad because it was clear and obvious which were which.  In this world, there are no significant manuscript variants.  Indeed there is no need to worry about such things as different versions, different traditions or different meanings for words.  None of these exist with respect to the bible.  Any evidence which overthrows the world view of those who live in this Disneyland world comes about through evil people who consciously and deliberately engage in a conspiracy to overthrow this world.  This evidence need not be examined or weighed in any way because it is automatically satanic.

As fun as Disneyland is (I have always loved Disneyland even as an adult), you have to leave it at some point.  Sadly, many Seventh-day Adventists have not left that world.  You can only benefit from the Bible when you know and understand the truth about the Bible.  There are many things which are straightforward in the Bible.  Jesus is clearly put forth as the Son of God in the Bible.  Kings ruled Israel and prophets gave guidance to those kings.  We should not kill and we should not steel.[8]  We should love one another and treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated.  There is enough clear instruction and history for everyone.

But for whatever reason, God has left some things open.  Perhaps this is so we won’t be bored by knowing everything or perhaps the unknown motivates us to use our intelligence rather than wait to be spoon fed answers.  How did we get here and where are we going are two examples of open ended questions.  In this discussion I am exploring the question “how did we get here.”  Did we evolve gradually into what we are now or were we zapped as is into existence?  Does the answer lie somewhere between these two extremes?  The problem is a lot of people make Genesis 1 say something it does not say.

These people claim that Genesis 1 reflects our current understanding of the universe and that by taking it literally, we have a clear and unambiguous answer to the how did we get here question.  But if we take Genesis 1 literally, we end up with a cosmology so foreign to what we know that it is almost like a different universe.  Our present understanding of the universe is very incomplete.  There are many things we do not know.  What we do know, however, is that there is no solid structure which separates the earth from the rest of the universe.  At any rate I have described the differences between the cosmology of Genesis 1 and our cosmology already. 

If we are willing to acknowledge that the Bible does not contain clear unambiguous answers to the how did we get here question, we can more easily tolerate those who view this question differently from ourselves. And if we can do this, we might just get along better.  We should by all means probe, explore and discuss.  We can even do so passionately.  This is where the line should be drawn.  When we move into castigation, demonization, and anathematizing over this issue, we cross the line and enter into an unchristian world.

It took the Roman Catholic Church 400 years to acknowledge it made a serious mistake with regard to its treatment of Galileo.    In the case of Galileo, theologians and church administrators thought they understood science better than the foremost scientist of the day.  They were wrong.  They were all wrong, and in fact, they were all very wrong.  Today Seventh-day Adventists stand ready to make that same mistake.  Theologians, many of whom are amateurs at best, along with politically motivated church administrators think they know science better than real scientists.  They, like the Inquisition before them, stand willing to force their uninformed views on others.  It is not a crime to honestly examine evidence and come to a conclusion.  Some people examine evidence and conclude the earth is 6,000 years old.  Others study evidence and conclude it is 4.5  billion years old give or take.  So long as people are honest in their examination of evidence, no wrong has been committed by anyone.  No one is raising a fist against the Holy spirit, or plotting against God.  Relax.  Live and let live on this issue.  Christian fellowship is far too beneficial and enjoyable to come to an end over this issue.

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[1] Hovering evokes the image of positioning in one spot above an area, such as a helicopter hovering over a river.  The Hebrew verb in my view shows intense movement which is something that a physical wind does.

[2] See Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon.  The picture presented in Genesis is that of a  solid vault-like structure created by God which separated the waters.  The waters below the vault or dome eventually formed the oceans of the earth while the waters above the vault stayed as is.  The hollowed out dome separated the earth from the rest of the waters.

[3] It has been many years since I visited Universal Studios.  I do not know whether the lagoon set from Gilligan’s Island is still there.  I hope it is since it is so familiar to millions of television watchers.

[4] The farthest known astronomical object is over 13 billion light years from Earth.

[5] The Yale University catalogue of stars can be found at http://www.alcyone.de/brightest_stars.html..

[6] For an explanation as to how this number is derrived, go to http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/12/01/the-estimated-number-of-stars-in-the-universe-just-tripled/#.UPqKLfJ5d8E.

[7] I refer to J, E, D, and P.

[8] Although in general life these commands are clear, there are many aspects of these commands which are not straightforward.  For example, is it OK to kill in war?  Given that the Seventh-day Adventist church in Germany declared for Hitler during World War II this question might be an uncomfortable one for us to answer  If your children are starving and the only way you can save their lives is to steel bread, should you violate the prohibition against steeling in order not to violate the prohibition against killing since by letting them starve even though you could prevent this, you effectively kill your children?  Many Christians have faced these very questions.