The creation account in Genesis 1-2 is contrasted with the fall of God’s greatest creation, man and woman, in Genesis 3. Man’s first sin committed is based on a greed for knowledge, a natural desire that becomes corrupted with the temptations of the serpent. Many would say God’s omniscience is based on his superior knowledge to humans, and so man’s corrupted desire for it is really a sinful desire to be God. When man and woman eat from “the tree of knowledge of good and bad”, they gain a specific type of knowledge through a sexual awakening. Their knowledge was not good knowledge, as they confused what had been created good by God with bad. For example, nudity was now nakedness, and innocence had been lost. Adam and Eve ate the fruit, which is important to note because it highlights a human dependence on the earth and the natural world. They disobeyed God through their human frailty, and ironically had been overpowered by the very things they had been given dominion over – the serpent and the tree. Adam and Eve had become like God in their ability to make judgments of what God had created. However, their “godliness” clashes with their innate human form, as they were forced to be banished from the garden. The serpent had lied in his promise of what would occur after they ate the fruit. Adam and Eve’s sin was an act of disobedience, but it also allowed death to enter the world. They did not die immediately, but they would eventually return to dust of the earth and their relationships with each other and the world were forever altered. Fortunately, God’s ability to bring even greater good out of the situation through his Son would represent the next step in his mercy toward Adam and Eve.
14 January
According to this account of creation, God has established several truths about the natural world and mankind. Primarily, a reader realizes that God is innately “good”, not as a quality but as good itself. Before God’s work, “the earth was a formless void” and lacked goodness. The writer of this account is sure to use strong detail to illustrate the vibrancy of what God had created, which contrasts with what existed before creation. After every event of creation, the author notes that “God saw that it was good”. This phrase is repeated verbatim five times, emphasizing the goodness of creation and matter itself. This detail is critical, because many people have argued throughout history that sin and death have corrupted the world to the point where creation itself is innately bad. The creation account directly disputes this point. God blesses his creation, calling it “very good” on several of the days. He also separates the human person from the rest of creation by creating them “in our image, according to our likeness” and allows them to “have dominion” over the rest of creation. Man and woman are also created on the last day, and God is so satisfied with this final creation that he leaves the seventh day for rest. This reinforces the higher degree of importance God assigns to mankind in comparison to the animals and other aspects of the world. “God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it”, which foreshadows the Sabbath celebrated by the Jews and later by Christians in remembrance of his Son’s death. This serves to demonstrate God’s omnipotence and even hints at his promise to save mankind after the first sin. Obviously, God has no need for rest, because he is free from human frailty and shortcomings. However, by including a day of rest, he acts as an example of how important this day is for humans, to take time away from work for family and prayer.
Responses for Foundations of Theology 