Discerning Truth: The Importance of the Literal History of Genesis

Hi folks, Jason Lyle here with Discerning Truth, the podcast of the Biblical Science Institute.

What I'd like to do today is give kind of an apologetic for apologetics.

I want to give a defense for why it is that we should defend the Christian faith and why we focus so much on

creation.

Apologetics, that term, makes you think of an apology, and an apology today really

means kind of the opposite of what it originally meant.

When you give an apology today, you're saying, I'm sorry, I'm guilty, and I regret what I did.

Please forgive me.

But originally, apology meant the opposite.

It meant that you're giving a defense of yourself.

You're saying, I'm not guilty, and here are the reasons why.

It's a defense of your position, like you would do in a courtroom.

Socrates, when he was put on trial for corrupting the youth, he gave an apology.

He didn't say, I'm sorry.

He tried to defend himself from that accusation, and of course Plato then wrote down the events of that,

the apology, Plato being the student of Socrates.

Apologetics is therefore the defense of the Christian faith in the context in which we're using the term,

and we are supposed to do that.

Believe it or not, some Christians are very anti -apologetics.

I've heard some Christians say, well, we shouldn't worry about defending the faith, just preach the gospel.

But I got news for you.

The gospel won't be effective if people do not believe it because they think the Bible's been disproved

by science, because of things like evolution and so on.

Some people make the very pious -sounding statement that, oh, you know, the Bible's like a roaring lion.

You don't need to defend a lion.

It'll defend itself.

That sounds cool, but it's not scriptural.

The Bible tells us we're to defend the faith.

We're to contend earnestly for it.

First Peter 3 .15 tells us to sanctify the Lord Jesus in our heart so that we'll be ready always to

defend the faith for anyone who asks a reason of the hope that's in us, and to do so with gentleness and respect.

And that word apologia is in that verse.

That's where we get our apologetics.

It's interesting, too, that it was Peter who made that claim.

Some people think that apologetics is just for scholars, it's just for academics.

Peter was a fisherman, and he's the one that made that claim.

Being a fisherman, that's a perfectly noble career, but it's not one that we would normally consider academic or highly scholarly,

and yet the Lord used him to make that statement.

That's important.

It tells us it's for all of us.

God calls certain people to do apologetics in a sort of professional way, full -time, and

so on and so forth as a vocation, but we're all to defend the faith to the best of our abilities.

Why creation?

Why such an emphasis on that one particular aspect of the Christian faith?

After all, there are a lot of other aspects of Christianity, and they certainly should be defended as well.

But one of the things I've noticed is that, first of all, Genesis is one of the most attacked portions of the Bible.

That's the one where the skeptics will really say, you know, well, maybe we'll grant you that the Exodus happened, but there's no way that God

created in six days and a global flood.

That's nonsense, they would say.

So it's attacked, but also because it's so foundational.

I would submit to you that every major Christian doctrine that you can think of, directly or indirectly, has its

foundation, its rational justification, in Genesis.

And not just in the story, but in the literal history of Genesis.

It won't do to treat Genesis as just a fictional story or a parable containing certain spiritual truths.

No.

If it's not literal history, then I submit to you that no aspect of Christianity makes any sense

whatsoever.

Christianity starts in Genesis.

It doesn't just start in the Gospels.

Granted, people weren't first called Christians until Antioch, but the Christian worldview, the Christian way

of thinking, begins in Genesis.

But the Bible tells us that to those who are perishing the Gospels' foolishness, because they don't have that

foundation in Genesis.

Think about it.

Think about the most important Christian doctrine you can think of.

I hope that's the Gospel.

That's the one that should pop into your mind.

The Gospel is the good news.

The good news is that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, he took our place on the cross, and

by his grace we are saved, received through faith.

That's the Gospel.

The good news.

But that good news only makes sense in light of the bad news.

And the bad news is recorded in Genesis.

The bad news is where we find that we need a Savior.

The bad news is that we are all sinners, that we've committed high treason against an infinitely holy God.

And treason, that's a capital offense.

We deserve death, and we've sinned against an infinitely holy God, we deserve an infinite death.

And you see, you find all of that in Genesis.

That's where it starts.

In order to understand the Gospel message, you have to know something about God, who God is.

You need to know something about man.

You need to understand something about sin.

That's the problem for which we need a Savior.

Well, the answer to all of those things is given to us in Genesis.

It's in Genesis where we learn that God is the Creator.

He's sovereign.

He doesn't answer to anyone else.

We're dependent on other things.

We need air to breathe, water to drink.

God needs nothing.

Everything depends on Him.

He spoke the universe into existence.

He is the all -powerful King of Kings, absolutely sovereign.

And we learn about that in Genesis, that God is the Creator, and as such, He has the right to do with His universe

as He pleases, in the same way that a potter can shape clay into various forms as He pleases.

This is God's universe.

We learn that God is good, that everything God does is good.

We learn that in Genesis 1.

God does something, He looks at it, it's good.

He does something else, He looks at it, it's good.

And when God is finished with creation, it's very good, because of course, it's not only good, but it's now complete.

What about man?

By the way, the word man in English and in Hebrew can refer to an individual man, or it can refer to

all of humanity, mankind, as it were.

And we know that all of humanity, mankind, is made in the image of God.

And we learn that in Genesis 1.

It's important for a number of reasons.

First of all, it's important that we're a creation.

We depend upon other things in order to survive.

We're not independent.

We can't exist in and of ourselves as God does.

But we're a very special creation.

That's the second part of that that's important.

We're made in the image of God.

That's something that the animals, that's a privilege they don't have.

Now, being made in God's image doesn't mean we physically look like God, because God is non -physical in the fullness of His

deity.

He is a spirit, one whom the universe cannot contain, the Bible says.

And so, no, we're not physically like God.

Rather, we have some aspects of our nature that are like God.

Perhaps our ability to be rational to some extent, perhaps our understanding of morality and so on.

We can talk later about what it means to be made in God's image.

But the point is, we learn about that in Genesis.

And so, human beings have a special privilege over any other of God's creations.

Because we're creations of God, God can do with us as He pleases.

He's the potter, we're the clay.

The Bible itself uses that analogy.

But we learn about that relationship in Genesis.

That's where we learn that God's the creator, we're the creation.

What about sin?

Where do we learn what sin is?

Well, it's in Genesis that we learn what sin is.

Sin is disobedience to God.

God has laid down certain laws for us to obey, and as creator, He has every right to do that.

It's His universe, He made it.

And therefore, there are consequences when we don't obey God's law.

When we disobey God, that's sin.

It's a capital offense, because it's treason against the King of Kings.

Where do we learn what the penalty for sin is?

Well, we learn that it's death, and we learn that in Genesis.

Now, that's reiterated in the other scriptures.

You'll find that statement in Romans as well, that the wages of sin is death.

But that's a reference back to Genesis, isn't it?

Absolutely.

And so, sin is not just my personal preferences or yours, right?

I don't personally like it when people put anchovies on a pizza, but that's not sin.

We might say it jokingly, oh, that's a sin.

But it isn't, really, because violating my personal standard, who am I?

I'm not your creator.

You don't owe me anything.

You owe God everything.

All of these are Genesis themes, you see.

It's in Genesis where God specifically says that death is the penalty for sin.

It makes sense, because God is a God of life.

And when we reject God, we're saying, no, we don't want life with you.

What's the alternative?

It makes sense.

And, of course, we've sinned against an infinitely holy God, and therefore we deserve an infinite death.

And the rest of the scriptures spell out what that means.

But the foundation is right there in the beginning in Genesis.

Where do we learn about the Messiah?

The fact that God, in his mercy, will provide a

substitute on our behalf, someone who will take our place, die our death, the death we deserve,

and we get the life that Jesus deserves.

Where do we learn about the first promise of the Messiah?

It's given there in Genesis.

It's in Genesis 3 .15 where God promises that a descendant of Eve would deal with the problem of sin by crushing the head

of the serpent, symbolizing his power.

We learn in Genesis that our good works can't fully cover our shame.

Adam and Eve tried when they sinned.

They suddenly knew they were naked.

They were ashamed because of what they had done.

They sewed fig leaves together, but that was insufficient.

God provided coverings.

Skins, and those would be animal skins, which mean God killed an animal or animals to provide the skins of clothing.

So we see animal sacrifice.

It actually starts in Genesis.

And we don't know when people began doing that on a regular basis,

perhaps right away.

It was eventually encoded into the ceremonial laws that the Hebrews would have to

have obeyed to teach them about substitutionary atonement.

Animals do not pay the penalty for sin because we're not related to them.

It has to be a kinsman redeemer, a relative, a blood relative of ours that will deal with the penalty for sin.

And we first learn that in Genesis, that it would be a descendant of Eve who would deal with the problem of sin.

Animals can't do it.

They just symbolize the Christ who was to come.

And the Bible is very clear about that in Hebrews and other places.

By the way, if evolution is true, then we are related to animals.

And why can't they be our substitute?

Why do we need a human being?

Why do we need the God -man?

Well, that doctrine goes away if you say Genesis is not real history.

Now, if the events in Genesis didn't really happen, if they're just

fiction, a story, then we don't really know anything about God or sin

or the penalty for sin because, oh, that's just a story that was made up by somebody.

If it didn't have a basis in history, we don't know that God's our creator.

If you can't trust Genesis 1, we can't be sure of that, can we?

And how do you know what the penalty for sin is?

And how do you know that there's a Messiah that was prophesied who came and died our death for us?

And why would that even make sense?

All those doctrines go back to Genesis.

And it's not just the gospel.

Other Christian doctrines are found in Genesis.

Marriage.

Christians teach that marriage is one man and one woman united by God for life.

But where does that concept come from?

Well, that's a Genesis theme.

The reason that marriage is that way is because God instituted the family unit as one man and one

woman.

They were told then to go and multiply and fill the earth and so on.

That's marriage.

And God gets to define it because he's the creator.

Marriage goes back to Genesis.

Many people today teach that marriage is just whatever you want it to be.

It can be a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a dog, or a woman and a toaster.

I mean, it could be anything.

And frankly, if Adam and Eve is just a story, then there is no

basis historically for marriage.

It's just a cultural trend and hey, if the culture changes, why shouldn't the definition of marriage change?

Many Christians are rightly upset by the attempts of the secularists to redefine marriage.

But my point is, if you don't believe in the literal history of Genesis, you cannot define marriage.

You can't rationally defend it and define it as one man and one woman united by God for life because you have no

historical rational basis for it.

It's just preferences again.

And who's to say your preferences are better than my preferences and vice versa?

What about the sanctity of human life?

Christians teach that human life is valuable and we shouldn't go around aborting babies and so on.

I'm very grateful for their Christian organizations and many Christian individuals who really fight against

abortion and that's very commendable.

But my point is, why is abortion wrong?

And the answer is because human beings are made in the image of God and they are so from conception.

The Bible indicates that.

And we learn about human beings being made in God's image.

That's in Genesis.

That's where we learn that we're different from animals and plants, which God also created.

Why is it that eating a carrot is not considered murder?

You're destroying life, at least in the modern biological sense of the term.

Why is that not murder?

Well, because they're not, carrots are not made in God's image.

In fact, they're designed to be food for animals and for the humans that God created in his own image.

And so that's, we understand that.

These doctrines do go back to Genesis.

Morality.

Christians teach that some things are morally wrong and other things are morally acceptable.

But how do you know?

And what does that even mean?

People have opinions, very strong opinions on right and wrong.

But are those opinions just personal preferences?

It's just, you shouldn't do that because I don't emotionally like that.

Well, if so, then somebody else can come along and say, but I do, right?

I mean, if right and wrong are just our own personal preferences, or the average preferences of a large

group of people, such as the majority opinion on something, then they're not really binding on anyone

else.

Why should I be obligated morally to appeal to your preferences?

Now, there's something more to right and wrong than just personal preferences, because then they would be totally relative.

You couldn't say that that action is objectively wrong, because it might not be wrong for that person, because he gets to

define his own moral code.

Now, we might jokingly say, that's wrong, if it goes against my preferences, when people, again, when they put anchovies

on a pizza, oh, that's just wrong.

But we understand that's not really wrong, because it's not violating any kind of objective

standard.

But how can we have an objective standard, a standard that's the same for all people?

It can't just be any one person's opinion or a majority opinion, because I'm not your creator, I can't

tell you what to do on my own authority, but God is the creator, and he's over everyone.

We're all responsible to God, because he's the creator, we're the creation.

And so you can have objective moral laws in the Christian worldview.

And we can define right and wrong in the Christian worldview.

Right is that which God approves of, that which is consistent with his law, that which brings about his blessings.

And wrong is that which is contrary to God's law, that which he disapproves of, that which incurs his wrath.

The Christian can define these things and do so objectively.

Now, that's not to say there won't be nuanced issues in terms of, you know, do we know if God approves of this very nuanced

specific action, and we'll have to search the scriptures for that.

But the point is, morality is based in Genesis, because that's where we learn that God is the creator, that God is a

linguistic being who speaks, who has given us certain laws, certain commandments that we have to obey, and

that there are penalties if we don't.

That whole moral system is based in Genesis.

The rest of the Bible fleshes it out, certainly, but the foundation is there in creation.

Clothing, for that matter.

Why wear clothes?

If people went around naked in public, that would be upsetting to most, and they'd be arrested.

Of course, there's civil laws against that, but why is that such an issue?

You take your dog out for a walk, your dog is naked, and people don't seem to get upset about that.

Well, again, that goes back to Genesis.

Genesis is where we learn about the origin of clothing.

Originally, we didn't need any, but because we're sinners, God provided clothing as a sort of a symbolic

covering of our shame.

Now, some Christians reject the history of Genesis, for whatever reason.

Maybe they think it's been disproved by science and what -have -you, but they embrace the gospel.

Are they saved?

Well, yeah, if they've embraced the gospel, of course.

No one's claiming that you have to believe in creation or six days of creation to be saved.

I have heard critics of Christianity sometimes make that slanderous claim against creationists.

All creationists, they teach you have to believe in six days in order to be saved.

Well, I mean, there's seven billion people on the planet.

I suppose it's possible that somebody holds that view, but I have yet to meet one.

That is certainly not the position of anyone that I know.

It's not my position.

That being said, I would suggest that the gospel message does not make sense apart from

the literal historical Genesis, because all the things that the gospel entails—sin,

death being the penalty for sin, substitutionary atonement—all those things we learn about in Genesis.

We learn about the fact that we've committed high treason against the King of Kings, and we rightly deserve death as

a result of that.

And it's in Genesis that we learn that God promised a Messiah.

So yes, you can be a Christian, and I don't doubt your sincerity, but if you reject Genesis, you're being

inconsistent, because you have a worldview that's internally irrational.

It's schizophrenic.

On the one hand, you're saying, oh, death has always been in the world.

Life came about as a result of evolution, or maybe God creating over millions and billions of years of death and suffering.

On the other hand, death was introduced when Adam sinned as the punishment for his sin.

That's why Jesus had to die on the cross.

Well, is death the penalty for sin, or is it something that preceded mankind long before anybody sinned?

You can't have it both ways.

It wouldn't make any sense.

It makes no sense to believe the gospel while simultaneously rejecting the history and Genesis upon

which that gospel is based.

But fortunately, God doesn't require us to have perfect theology.

There is a certain minimal theology we must have, understanding that Jesus is God, he's Yahweh,

man as well, and therefore took our place on the cross.

But nonetheless, even though it's not a salvation issue, I would suggest that

Christians, all of us, out of gratitude for salvation, ought to get our theology as right as possible, and that includes

our theology of creation.

But then there are Christians who would say, oh, I believe in Genesis, I just don't interpret it the way you do.

So let's talk about that for a little bit.

You've probably heard that before.

Well, that's your interpretation.

Mine's different.

We're both believing the Bible, we just have different interpretations of what it means.

Some would say that Genesis is just a parable.

Jesus spoke in parables.

They aren't meant to be taken as something that happened in history, but rather something that represents

a spiritual truth.

Some people say Genesis is like that.

Others would say Genesis is poetic in nature.

It's kind of like the Psalms or the Proverbs where we have these statements that are not meant to be taken in a wooden literal

sense.

And by the way, I don't take all of the Bible literally.

It is true that in sections like the Psalms, God often uses figures of speech.

When the Bible says there's no rock like our God, it doesn't mean that God is literally a rock.

I understand that.

There are poetic sections in Scripture, but I would suggest you that Genesis isn't one of them, and we'll take a look at how we can know that.

Some people would say it's kind of sort of history, but it's the history of God telling Moses something rather than the actual

events that are being explained.

That's a very difficult position to hold, but we'll discuss that in the future.

Some would say Genesis is literal history, but the words don't mean exactly what they say.

So six days, that doesn't really mean days.

Well, that's not, by the way, literal.

Okay, literal means that the words mean what they say.

And so if somebody thinks that God actually meant that he created in six ages, I think you should be honest about

that and say, well, I'm not taking the word day literally there, and you ought to say, and I think I have some biblical reasons for

why it should not be interpreted literally.

But to say that is literal, it just doesn't mean what it says, is to misunderstand the word literal.

Literal is it means what it says.

All of these positions have something in common.

One, they cannot be rationally defended.

You cannot argue on the basis of the text of Scripture that Moses intended to communicate

anything other than that God really created in six days, supernaturally speaking things into existence, a worldwide flood, Noah in the

ark, and so on.

The style of Genesis is unquestionably biblical historical narrative.

It's the same style as Exodus, Leviticus, and so on.

It's recording events that happened in history, and that's how it's therefore to be understood.

But the other thing you need to understand about these unnatural readings of Genesis is that

they undermine every Christian doctrine we just talked about.

If you say, well, I think Genesis, I believe in Genesis, it just, it's just symbolic for evolution.

You can't defend the gospel, because if you got billions of years of death and suffering before Adam sinned, Adam's sin did not bring

death into the world.

I know some people say it's just human death.

We'll talk about that in the future.

I don't think that can be defended biblically either, the idea that just human death was introduced, because everything God made was

very good from the beginning, very good.

Death is an intrusion into a world that was once very good.

You say, Adam and Eve, that's just a story, that's just a myth that God used to explain that he's a

creator.

Well, then you can't defend marriage, because marriage depends on the literal history of

Genesis.

If Adam and Eve is just a story, then marriage is based on a story, and somebody else could come up with a different story.

But if Genesis is history, you can't come up with a different history, not in reality.

You can claim it's that, but you can't actually recreate history.

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to interpreting scripture,

exegesis and eisegesis.

Now exegesis is reading out of the text what the author intended to convey.

It's trying to get to the author's intention.

What is in the text?

What can I take out of it?

Exa, out of, exegesis.

The person who's doing exegesis says, I want to understand what the author is trying to tell me.

Conversely, exegesis is reading into the text based on your preferences.

What can I read into this text?

And of course, in principle, you can read anything into any text.

And so somebody who's doing exegesis might come across that passage that says, you shall not murder.

They'd say, but you know what?

That goes against my preferences.

I really enjoy murdering.

And so I'm gonna interpret that to be sarcasm.

God's just saying, oh yeah, don't murder.

It's a joke.

He doesn't really, it doesn't really mean what it says.

That would be an example of exegesis.

Some people even defend exegesis.

Yeah.

Some people will say that we are free to interpret a text as we wish, according to our own preferences.

Words mean what we want them to mean, not what the person speaking meant.

We're to interpret words according to our preferences.

And to someone like that, I would say, oh, I'm glad you agree with me that we are not free to interpret words according to our preferences.

No, that's not what I said.

I said we are free to interpret words according to our preferences.

I said, I know, but I'm choosing to interpret your words as agreeing with me, that we're not free to interpret

words as we see fit.

And so you see, it's a self -refuting position.

Someone who claims that we're free to interpret words in a way that the speaker or

writer did not intend, nonetheless expects us to take his or her words as he or she intended.

And so it's a self -refuting position, really.

It's ironic too, because sometimes they might even get upset at that.

They'll be like, well, you know, you can't do that.

Oh, what?

You don't like it when I interpret your words contrary to your intention?

Well, think about how God feels when you do it to his word.

That's really the issue.

If you're doing eisegesis, you might as well not even bother reading the text,

because it's utterly irrelevant to your position, to what you believe, to your conclusions on any issue.

If you're going to say this text means what I want it to say, why bother reading it?

Just write down your opinions, really.

It's disrespectful to the author as well.

Most texts we read exegetically.

When we pick up a book on the American Civil War, we understand what that means.

It's a history book, it's recording events that happened in history, and we interpret it as such, and there's very little

disagreement on what it means.

Outside of the Bible, most people would agree on what most literature means.

But not when it comes to Scripture.

When it comes to Scripture, people have a tendency to read into it their preferences.

Now why is that?

I want to suggest to you, it's because we're free to disagree with any fallible text that is

contrary to our opinion.

So if you're reading that book on the Civil War, and you look up and you say, I don't think that date's right.

There's no doubt what the author intended to convey.

He intended to convey this date.

And you say, and I disagree with him, I think he's wrong.

But you see, you can't do that with the Bible, because it's God's word, it's authoritative.

So you come into something in the Bible you don't like, I don't agree with that, I think God's wrong.

Well, you can't say God's wrong, that's not going to work.

Because the Bible has authority, because it's God's word, we know we can't just disagree with

God and have any hope of being right on the matter.

And so we tend to interpret the Scriptures in accordance with our preferences.

It's a common failing.

We don't want to give up our preferences, and so we tend to read the text in a way that allows us to continue to believe what we

already believed.

It is our fallen sinful nature to read the Bible eisegetically rather than

exegetically.

And you say, even Christians?

I would say especially Christians.

Because you see the secularists, you ask any secularist what Genesis means, and they'll tell you, yeah, Moses

meant that God created six days and there was a global flood, and Noah and all the animals on the ark, and

I disagree with that is what they'll say.

They say, that's all nonsense.

But you see, they don't have a dog in the fight in terms of, they have no reason to try and

build up the Scriptures as true, and so they're free to interpret it according to its own context,

rightly.

They just disagree with it.

Whereas Christians who have been taught that such things are foolish, creation in six days, a worldwide flood, but

then we know the Bible is the word of God and it says those things.

And so our tendency is to say, well, it can't mean what it would seem to mean on the surface.

It must mean something else.

And so we tend to read into it our preferences.

We all have that worldview.

We all have a way of thinking about the world, foundational beliefs.

Some are right, some are wrong, but because they're foundational, we're reluctant to give them up, especially if it's

something that we enjoy doing that maybe God doesn't approve of.

And so inevitably when we're reading Scripture, we will come across sections that are contrary to our

worldview, contrary to the way we've been thinking.

And then you got a problem.

You have a question you need to ask yourself.

Are you going to reinterpret the passage to align with your worldview, or are you going to allow the

passage to correct your worldview?

And how you answer that question will reveal the extent to which you really have faith in God.

Are you willing to allow the Scriptures to systematically correct your worldview?

The Bible has that power.

We come into the world with a faulty worldview.

Some things right, some things wrong.

God knew that, but he made the Bible so clear that when you read it, there is a

natural understanding there.

And the question is, are you going to allow that to correct your worldview, or are you going to insist, no, my worldview just

can't possibly be wrong, and so the verse must not mean what it says.

It must mean something else entirely.

Those who try to defend full -blown eisegesis, the idea that we are free to interpret

the text any way we like, very easy to refute that position, because you just say, well, I'm glad you agree with me

that we're not free to interpret the text any way we like.

That's how I choose to interpret your words, and there's no defense against that.

It's a self -refuting position, and that's why it's very obviously wrong, self -defeating.

But there are others who would defend partial eisegesis.

They would say that we interpret the text exegetically, except when it states something that we just

know isn't true.

And there are many Christians honest enough to admit that taking Genesis at face value, it is saying

that God created everything supernaturally in six days, and then there was a worldwide flood, that Noah and his

family and the animals were spared on the ark and so on, but they don't believe that because of

considerations by secular scientists who say such things are not possible.

And those Christians would say, so those portions, we have to we have to interpret those a little differently.

And again, I'll grant it's our temptation to do that.

It really is.

We just we think our worldview is right, and when the Bible says something contrary to it,

it's hard to read, allow the Bible to say what it says when it's something we really don't like.

But then there are also those who engage in eisegesis claiming that it's exegesis.

They're reading into the scriptures based on their preferences, but they claim that they're not, that they're actually reading the

scriptures on their own merits.

And so such people would say that what Moses really meant to convey in Genesis, what he really meant was that God used

evolution over billions of years.

He's just he's just using it, he's using a sort of a wordplay to describe it, and that there was really no global

flood.

God really meant to imply that there was just a local flood and what have you.

Or alternatively, that God created organisms, slaughtered them off, created

another group of organisms, slaughtered them off over millions of years, finally got around to making man, and so it's very good.

And they will say that that that view, their view is a legitimate interpretation.

The interesting thing is most people who hold that kind of view would also say that six -day creation

is a legitimate interpretation.

That taking the text as literal history, that's a legitimate interpretation too, which I find interesting.

How many interpretations of a given passage of scripture are legitimate?

That's what I want to know.

What does it even mean?

If by interpretation we mean what we're what we're taking away from it, the belief that forms in our brain

after we walk away from reading a text, then there are an infinite number of interpretations because you can

you can interpret a text any way you like, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily faithful to the text.

So while there are an infinite number of interpretations of any text, there is only one meaning.

The author who penned the text had a particular idea in his mind that he wanted to convey using the words that

he did.

And so what that means is there is only one correct interpretation.

It should be obvious, but believe it or not, there's so much relativism in our culture that people sometimes think that there

are several interpretations of this passage.

Granted, but there's only one meaning.

Only one of them is correct.

Now you might say, I don't know which one it is.

Fair enough.

You'll have to do your homework on that issue.

You'll have to study the scriptures to find out what it means.

But my point is, there isn't any more than one correct interpretation of any given passage of scripture.

The notion that there are multiple correct interpretations really is relativism, and that is not a biblical position.

It's kind of interesting.

I debated Dr. Oliphant years ago on the age of the earth.

He's actually ambivalent to the age of the earth, but he thinks the Bible allows for millions of years.

And the interesting thing is, at one point in the debate, he said that the position that I hold, that Genesis is

history and the words mean what they say and so on, he said that is acceptable.

So that was interesting.

He said that would be welcome in our congregation.

And I thought, I didn't say it, but I thought to myself, I'm really glad that what the Bible directly states

is one of the views that you allow.

I'm a little troubled that it's not the only view that you allow, that there could be other things contrary

to the direct teaching of scripture that are also permissible.

Now I'll grant there are sections of the Bible that are difficult.

Not many, most of the Bible is very easy to understand.

It's just hard to accept there are differences between those two, if you think about it.

But I'll grant there are a few places that are hard to understand.

And in some cases, because most of us don't read the Bible in the original languages, and so there's a translation issue and what have you.

Yeah, there are difficult sections.

Genesis ain't one of them.

That's all I'm saying.

Genesis is very clear in what it states.

And all of the other scriptures treat Genesis as literal history, which is important.

And it's something that we'll, in a future podcast, we'll deal with that a little bit.

During Christ's earthly ministry, Jesus was constantly appealing to the written word,

the written word of God as his ultimate standard.

How many times do you say it is written?

Have you not read in total over 20 times that we read in the gospels?

He constantly quoted scripture.

And you know what's interesting?

Not once did Jesus ever even remotely suggest that there were multiple possible

interpretations of a scripture, or that there was any difficulty whatsoever in understanding the meaning of the

passage.

He took it for granted that when you quoted scripture, that people would understand the meaning.

Jesus was under the impression that the scriptures are pretty clear.

And I think that's because the scriptures are pretty clear.

We just don't often want to accept what they say.

And how did Jesus take Genesis?

And this is the real issue, because Jesus is God.

He inspired the people that wrote the Old Testament and the New Testament.

It was his Holy Spirit that moved them.

How did Jesus take Genesis?

He took it as literal history.

He took it as the foundation for Christian doctrines, the very ones that we talked about earlier.

If you read in Matthew chapter 19, for example, when the religious leaders came and they tried to trap Jesus, they

tried to test him, and bad idea, bad idea.

That always ends up badly for the person who tries to argue against God.

But how did Jesus respond to this?

Well, Jesus explained marriage to them, and he did it by quoting Genesis 1 and 2.

Let's have a look at the passage.

Matthew chapter 19, verse 3, some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him and asking, is it lawful

for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?

And he answered and said, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

And said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one

flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Now, it's interesting.

Jesus quoted from Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

By the way, a lot of people think that there's a contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2.

Jesus quoted from them back to back.

He obviously didn't see them as contradictory.

Genesis 2 is primarily just an amplification, an expanded account of the events

that happened on day six, and that's something that we can talk about in a future podcast.

But no, Jesus quoted Genesis 1 to his literal history and as the foundation for marriage for this reason.

That's why we have marriage today, because that's the way God designed it, and he did that historically in the beginning.

And he uses that as an argument for the foundation of why we should not divorce for just any reason today.

Now, of course, the Bible allows divorce in certain instances, but not for any reason, because what God has joined,

let no man separate.

That would make no sense if God did not literally create Adam and Eve the way Jesus said they did.

If Jesus quoted Genesis as historical reality, then how can we Christians do any

less?

If we're Christ followers, we need to follow the example that Christ gave us.

Now, some of you watching this are probably saying, but I'm not a Christian, Dr. Lyle.

Well, you should be.

God is commanding everyone everywhere to repent.

There is no rational basis for rejecting the Christian worldview.

And in fact, you are morally and rationally obligated to embrace the Christian worldview.

Any alternative leads to absurdity, and that's something that I've demonstrated in writing, and it's something that we'll cover in future

podcasts, Lord willing.

Now, if you want to learn more about these topics, we have a DVD called Understanding Genesis that covers

the fact that Christian doctrines are based in historical Genesis.

And I also have a book on the topic, also called Understanding Genesis, that goes into how is it that we know that our

interpretation of the text of Scripture is the right interpretation.

And I really give kind of general hermeneutical principles.

How do we interpret the Scriptures, and how do we know that the way in which we're interpreting the Scriptures is the right way?

Are we really getting at the intention of the author?

So that book covers that, and it applies then those principles to Genesis to show that many of the views

that people express that are what we might call a non -natural reading or an unnatural reading of Genesis really do

not stand up to hermeneutical scrutiny.

So thank you again very much for joining us.

We'll see you next time.

God bless.