Excerpts from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener as appearing in Pneuma Review Fall 2013

“Are Miracles Possible?” by Craig S. Keener
http://pneumareview.com/are-miracles-possible-craig-keener/

“Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity,” by Craig S. Keener
http://pneumareview.com/miracle-accounts-craig-keener/

“Miracle Accounts: Multicultural Approach,” by Craig S. Keener
http://pneumareview.com/miracle-accounts-multicultural-approach-craig-keener/

“Miracle Accounts: Majority World Perspectives,” by Craig S. Keener
http://pneumareview.com/miracles-majority-world-perspectives-craig-keener/

“Miracles and Medical Documentation,” by Craig S. Keener
http://pneumareview.com/miracles-medical-documentation-craig-keener/

An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From the introduction to Part 3, “Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity”

Pages 209-210

The principle of analogy once used to argue against all ancient miracles (either the occurrence of some sorts of extranormal phenomena or their supernatural causation) now undermines that very argument. In Hume’s day, many Protestant theologians distinguished sharply between biblical and postbiblical miracles as part of their anti-Catholic polemic. Their polemic played into the Humean argument against ancient miracles based on the lack of many comparable modern claims. Many theologians in turn accommodated this nonmiraculous approach, further emphasizing the lack of postbiblical miracles and eventually often renouncing miracles altogether.

Today, however, abundant claims of miracles, particularly from the Majority World, challenge Hume’s skepticism about the existence of many credible eyewitnesses. Hume demanded “a sufficient number” of witnesses of unquestioned integrity and intelligence who would have much to lose by testifying falsely.¹ In today’s academic climate, many who testify to miracles have much to lose even by testifying truly; but I shall first respond to Hume’s quantitative demand. In contrast to the environment assumed by Hume, today hundreds of millions of people claim to have witnessed miracles. Moreover, eyewitnesses claim what they believe are miracles even in the West, and this has been the case through most of history, even when Hume framed his argument within the theological framework of academic circles often reticent to acknowledge miraculous claims. Some of these eyewitness claims involve even the healing of blindness, the raising of the dead, and nature miracles. I will treat some of these subjects in turn in subsequent chapters: claims from the Majority World (chs. 7–9); Western history (ch. 10); the modern West (ch. 11); and some specifically dramatic claims like those involving blindness, death, or nature (ch. 12).

Virtually no one would suggest that all claims reflect clearly authentic miracles (see discussion in ch. 13). Nevertheless, such claims, however we interpret them, clearly exist on an eyewitness level and hence need not be excluded from first- and second-generation testimony in the Gospels and Acts. Statistics suggest the vast numbers of claims; my primary interest in chapters 7–12 is to illustrate some of the variety of sorts of cases involved in them. While the primary point of these chapters is not the interpretation of events, some of these reports may have a bearing on that question. At the least, given the vast number and variety of claims, one can no longer simply take for granted that uniform human experience a priori excludes extranormal events for which many observers would find a specifically theistic interpretation particularly persuasive (see discussion in chs. 13–15).

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

Alan J. Delotavo, Back to the Original Church: The Secret Behind Church Movements (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2010), 100 pages, 9781556355660.

Regular and careful Bible readers inevitably piece the Bible story together until they have a sense of the grand sweep of things. We do the same with the history of the church. Sometimes unconsciously, we jump from the Book of Acts directly to Martin Luther, then to Azusa Street, and finally to the present day. Delotavo fills in some of the blanks to draw out a valuable lesson that can only be seen from an overview.

Back to the Original Church is Delotavo’s University of Pretoria ThD thesis in popular form. This conversation about the flow and progress of church history calls us to see church movements as gifts to the wider church restoring something neglected and not stopping points or ends in themselves.

Delotavo provides examples of church movements that attempted to restore an essential part of church life or faith, but which became bogged down to the point of needing their own renewal. The Reformation era focused on the recovery of the gospel in view of accumulated abuses and theological “defects.” This gospel recovery included the teaching of “the priesthood of the believer,” that each Christian had direct access to God without the need of clergy. Delotavo points out that this set up a division between laity and Protestant clergy and also spawned a divisive spirit throughout the Reformation. Further splits occurred till today denominations around the world number into the thousands. The Lutheran church became State church (protected by law and supported by taxes) and fell into the sorry state of doctrinal correctness with experiential coldness. The Reformation had become an end in itself. To recover what was needed, Pietism arose about a century later. This was an attempt to bring vital Christian experience, including conversion, assurance and holiness back into the Lutheran state church. Once more the renewal movement, although truly helping many, lost its way. Splitting many ways, some parts impacted world missions and future movements, other parts become theologically liberal, and still other parts become radical or revolutionary.

Delotavo’s excellent point bogs down, however, in historical omissions and stretches. He jumps directly from the early church to the Reformation period. The era of the main church councils (AD 325—787) he considered a breakdown of Christianity due to political connections to the Roman Empire. The “Dark Ages” or better, the medieval church, is thought to have no value. He sees the church largely pursuing the expansion of Christian civilization at the expense of “genuine experience of salvation.” Delotavo seems to ignore that in the West, the church was living through the crushing of the Roman Empire under “barbarian” invasions; that in the East, Constantinople was rising to power as the new center of the Roman Empire; and that Islam was racing across North Africa, into Spain and southern France. He could have pulled examples of church movements from these periods that prove his point, but he did not. Does he not recognize the value of that period of the church’s life?

The way forward for Delotavo is found in American Evangelicalism. He noted that several awakenings or revivals had occurred in American history from colonial times, each a church movement in itself. By the end of the nineteenth century, modern Liberalism rapidly set in resulting in the backlash of Fundamentalism in the early twentieth century. In its original form, Fundamentalism was truly a church movement to recover much that was being lost; however, it degenerated into anti-intellectualism and a belligerent separatism. In the 1940s, a corrective movement, Evangelicalism, arose to call the church back to theological basics, to academic engagement, and to a loving spirit. Here, Delotavo believes, is the apex of church movements, breaking down all barriers, and penetrating all denominations and traditions. Here is what the church was meant to be at last! Delotavo forgets his own warning: church movements are means to an end (renewal for the entire church) not ends in themselves (the final best expression of the church). Is this the climax of church history?

From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

Wolfgang Vondey, ed., Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, Volume 2 (Pickwick Publications, 2013), 301 pages, ISBN 9781620327180.

It can be a terrible thing when we believe that we ourselves are right and all others are wrong. Terrible, because it can reinforce an arrogance caused by insecurity, causing us to be unwilling or resistant towards the legitimate Biblical perspectives and insights of others. Sadly, ignorance of the basis of faith shared with others, whose experience of church culture is sometimes so foreign and different from ourselves, can lead to caricature and even misrepresentation, often on the basis of anecdotal reflections or bad personal experiences.

This book is for those who are prepared to view things a different way. It is the second volume in a series looking at Pentecostal involvement in cross-denominational discussions regarding the basis of Christian unity. It is intended as a source book and reference work, divided into two parts. Firstly, a selection of narratives that represent ecumenical dialogues in which Pentecostals have recently been involved. Secondly, a selection of official reports on conversations between Pentecostals and two major denomination groupings, as well as the fruit of a conversation between Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostals.

But this book is useful for more than that. It illustrated one important function of Pentecostalism, which is moving the agenda from abstract and obtuse theological concepts and categories into ‘what is real is what is experienced’. It invites an engagement in an ecumenism that focuses on missional matters, and the exploration of experiential realities: what it means to enter faith, to grow in faith, or to receive the Holy Spirit.

The narratives in part 1 are valuable in showing how people, coming from diverse backgrounds, can find a ‘cross check’ in confirming the propriety of their Christian practices. For whether we readily recognise it or not, there is—at the theoretical, dogmatic level—not always a lot to choose between in the differing systematic theologies offered by competing traditions because of shared roots in historic Christianity, they are sometimes simply amended copies or slight variations of one another. It is at the level of practices that we see the difference. The value of these conversations is in how they lead us to reflect on what we do; and on why we do what we do.

This collection of records and documents is also a book providing a good resource for those looking for a way of finding a positive interface between Pentecostals and both Lutheran and Reformed, as well as Roman Catholics.

Reviewed by James Purves

From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, Prophetic Preaching: A Pastoral Approach (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 138 pages, ISBN 9780664233327.

There are some occasions where the reader finishes a book unsure whether they should praise the author for writing a challenging and necessary work or criticise them for missing vital emphases. Prophetic Preaching is one of those books.

To begin with, the author’s definition of prophetic preaching is surprising. For Tisdale, “prophetic preaching” is not tied to any prediction of the future nor to speaking out any directly Spirit-inspired words but instead to preaching “based on prophetic biblical texts that call people to live into God’s vision for justice, peace, and equality in our world” (p. 3). What is presented then is a “social justice gospel” in much the same way that the preaching of some within certain Pentecostal traditions has been labelled a “prosperity gospel”. The rest of the book will provide ample evidence of both the potential and the danger of adding the phrase “social justice” in front of the gospel.

The first chapter covers a few definitions of “prophetic preaching”, before using these definitions as a basis for outlining seven hallmarks of this kind of preaching. These hallmarks range from an expression of the Biblical grounding of prophetic preaching (p. 10, point 1) to the corporate focus of prophetic preaching (p. 10, point 3). Reflecting what will be one of the most welcome arguments of the book, point seven points out that prophetic preaching “requires of the preacher a heart that breaks with the things that break God’s heart … and a strong reliance on the presence and power of the Holy Spirit” (p. 10). The chapter then ends with seven reasons for resistance to prophetic preaching. In six of these seven reasons, Tisdale covers ground that will be recognisable to many church leaders, including the insecurities than can render preaching less effective. What is most striking is the first reason, where Tisdale takes issue with models of Biblical interpretation that focus on evangelism over social justice (pp. 11-12). Many in Pentecostal churches would almost certainly take issue not only with her view that social justice better reflects “the heart of the gospel” than evangelism but also that such a view of the gospel “relegate[s] prophetic texts to the periphery of the Scriptures” (p. 11). These are arguments that will be returned to later.

In the second chapter the book really comes into its own, with its focus on “reclaiming a spirituality for activism” (p. 22). Tisdale’s appeal for a reconnection of silence and prophetic speech (pp. 22-23), individual and corporate aspects of biblical interpretation (pp. 28-32) and “prayer and prophetic witness” (pp. 32-35) all tackle issues that are key for the modern church. The overall theme of this chapter is a call for preachers to join together what the Bible says to each of us as individuals and what it says to us as a church or nation. The only issue in this chapter is the lack of an explicit appeal for preachers to call their congregants to reconnect their private and public service to God, an appeal which would obviously have strong biblical grounding (e.g. the book of Haggai, Isaiah 58 etc).

Craig Keener and M. Daniel Carroll Rodas, eds., Global Voices: Reading the Bible in the Majority World (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2013), 144 pages, ISBN 9781619700093.

The chapters that make up this book were originally papers that were presented at a meeting of the Institute for Biblical Research which was held in San Francisco, California in 2011. The authors of these chapters are scholars who come from a number of different ethnic backgrounds. The contributors to this book are: J. Ayodeji Adewuya, M. Daniel Carroll Rodas, Daniel K. Darko, David A. deSilva, Nijay Gupta, Craig S. Keener, Grant LeMarquand, Barbara M. Leung Lai, Osvaldo Padilla, Chloe Sun, Edwin M. Yamauchi, and K. K. Yeo.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate the value and importance of multi-ethnic readings of Scripture. Multi-ethnic reading of Scripture means that Christians in one culture, or from one part of the world, listen to believers from other cultures or parts of the world, in order to learn how they “hear the text.” Such readings can help us gain a greater understanding of the Bible. All of us, regardless of who we are, read the Bible from a particular frame of reference; our culture, upbringing, etc. As a result, we may learn some very important things, but we may also miss some other important things. If we listen to one another then multi-ethnic readings of Scripture can help us draw out the riches of truth found in God’s Word.

A couple of examples from the book may be helpful at this point. Reading from a Hispanic diaspora perspective, M. Daniel Carroll Rodas alerts us to the possibility that Abram’s deception, regarding his wife Sarai (Gen. 12), may be an example of just what one may do in a potentially dangerous situation in order to cross a border. Those of us who have never crossed a border, especially in potentially dangerous circumstances, may miss this in the text because it has not been a part of our experience. The second example comes from Barbara M. Leung Lai. In her chapter she views Daniel’s experiences as instructive to us as a survival manual. She looks at Daniel’s private life and how that impacts his public life. Her examination of the biblical text is very insightful. These examples show us that multi-cultural readings of Scripture can help us to uncover our blind spots and see truth that we might otherwise miss.

This book brings a very important topic to the surface, one that needs to be addressed, because Christianity is a global religion. Multi-ethnic readings of Scripture are especially important because Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in the majority world. I did not find this book especially easy to read. However, I think that the main point that the book makes is vitally important. We have the Bible, and we have the Spirit, but we need one another as well. The Bible is best interpreted in the community of faith, in the global community of faith.

Reviewed by John P. Lathrop

An interview with Andrew Schmutzer about The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused, and part 2 of his chapter, “A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse: Creation, Evil, and the Relational Ecosystem” as appearing in Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

 
A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse—Part 1 A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse—Part 2

Interview 1 Interview 3

Note from the Editors: Beginning a conversation about sexual abuse is uncomfortable, but we feel strongly that this topic is something the church needs to address. We believe the testimonies of authentic recovery can help us embrace the pain of the hurting and make openings for God to bring healing.

Pneuma Review: You wrote, “Christian theology has historically separated culture from nature and nature from theology, which unfortunately has dichotomized the temporal from eternal, material from the spiritual, and so creation from redemption.” Please give us some examples of this.

Andrew Schmutzer:

Andrew J. Schmutzer discussing The Long Journey Home in 2011, by Lulu Hé. Courtesy of Moody Bible Institute.

My point here is to inform the reader of how common dualisms are in Western theology (e.g., body vs. soul, etc.). These polarities are more anesthetizing than energizing and this has had a devastating effect on a theology of personhood (what is called anthropology). Western Christianity as a whole has emphasized a highly individualized salvation. Eschatologically separated from creation and community, salvation, as it has traditionally been taught, has scorned the physical world and with it human embodied sexuality. In practice, it has been part of Christian pietism to associate sexuality with the “world, the flesh, and the devil,”—all bound to sinful humanity. Waiting for this world to just “burn up” and a better one to begin does not welcome people to live now. An isolated salvation has resulted in an isolated life, a simplistic human being, and a simplistic view of trauma.

An emphasis on a “deeper” spirituality has been code for ignoring the complexities of embodied life, on the one hand, and declaring “victory” over suffering, on the other hand. Along with a minimization of the physical realities of life, this world view can loom so large that there is little if any basis for physical and relational consequences of sin in relationships. When grace becomes perfectionistic, the raw pain of an abused teenager can be easily dismissed with reminders that “one day we’ll all shuck this physical container, anyway.” As a survivor, I’ve heard such statements as: “Just move on to victory,” “Just submit to the Holy Spirit,” “All things are new in Christ Jesus,” and others. Making such statements to a victim—especially from a non-survivor—actually rejects their pain, informs them they can’t be frustrated with God, and ignores the embodied realities of their suffering (e.g., dissociation, panic attacks, cutting, gastro-intestinal illnesses, etc.).

Abuse tears apart the wholeness of a person. Abuse does not merely objectify a person, it coldly approaches and latches on, hobbling its victim with complex wounds. As such, sexual abuse de-personalizes because it tears out pieces of the person that are intimately connected to the larger fullness of being. This violation does not extinguish life, it deadens life along a spectrum of security and terror, respect and shame—wholeness and brokenness.

An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From Part 3, “Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity”

Chapter 7, “Majority World Perspectives”

Pages 238-241

For these countries alone, and for Pentecostals and charismatics in these countries alone, the estimated total of people claiming to have “witnessed divine healings” comes out to somewhere around 202,141,082, that is, about two hundred million. Among Pentecostals, an average of 73.6 percent claim to have witnessed or experienced divine healing, and among charismatics the proportion is 52 percent; given estimates of possibly half a billion Pentecostals and charismatics worldwide, we might be looking at claims of closer to three hundred million among them alone.¹⁵⁴ My estimates extrapolate on the assumption that numbers and percentages above are roughly accurate; in fact, all such figures are merely estimates, but they give us the best current ballpark figure to work from. Even if for some reason we later estimated only one-third of these figures (a much greater margin of error than seems likely), the numbers are already enormous even before we add (below) the noncharismatic claims.

Lest I be misunderstood, I must emphasize that in noting the prevalence of healing claims, I am not offering a blanket endorsement of all the beliefs on all issues that command majorities among these groups (elsewhere in the same survey), including beliefs about healings. I am also not suggesting that all claims of cures are authentic; still less am I suggesting that none of the claims could have alternative explanations,¹⁵⁵ though from my research I suspect that the majority of those who claim to have witnessed some miracles could specify some fairly substantive claims.¹⁵⁶ My point here is simply to invite attention to what this survey indicates about the vast numbers of people worldwide who claim to have witnessed supernaturally effected healings. The examples that I offer in the following chapters may make this observation more concrete, but my examples obviously pale before the statistics.

Such Claims Not Limited to Pentecostals

What may be more interesting in this survey, however, is the category of “other Christians,” with somewhere around 39 percent in these countries claiming to have “witnessed divine healings.” That is, more than one-third of Christians worldwide who do not identify themselves as Pentecostal or charismatic claim to have “witnessed divine healings.” Presumably many of these claimants believe that they have witnessed more than a single case. Note that these are not simply people who say that they believe that supernatural healing occurs; these are people who say that they believe that they have witnessed or experienced it.¹⁵⁷

Of course many of these claims would not withstand critical scrutiny, and presumably an even higher percentage would fail to persuade others predisposed not to believe. But those who would simply reject all healing claims today because Hume argued that such claims are too rare to be believable should keep in mind that they are dismissing, almost without argument, the claimed experiences of at least a few hundred million people. (Even if one were to err extremely on the side of modesty, one could easily speak boldly of “tens of millions” of claims.) In contrast to starting assumptions on which Hume built his case, it is no longer feasible to consider such claims rare.

As noted above, the greatest concentration of these claims is in Africa, Asia, and Latin America rather than in the West, though in chapter 11 I shall note abundant examples from the West as well. Non-Pentecostal Western Christian workers active in such areas often report dramatic phenomena similar to those reported by Pentecostals.¹⁵⁸ Worldview is probably one important factor in generating more faith recoveries in many non-Western regions;¹⁵⁹ for example, nearly a decade ago one of my students, a sincere Baptist pastor from India, complained that Americans he prayed for were rarely healed, but almost everyone he prayed for in north India was healed.¹⁶⁰

Accurate or inaccurate, reports of prophetism, dreams, visions, and healings (sometimes of incurable, terminal illnesses) on a massive scale characterize many areas where Christianity is expanding rapidly and with intense religious fervor among non-Christian populations.¹⁶¹ Although some¹⁶² Westerners historically used cultural dominance from colonial cultures or (especially in Latin America) force to spread Christianization, many indigenous evangelists today instead embrace the missiological model they encounter in Acts and believe that they are following Paul’s model.¹⁶³ One Western charismatic missiologist argues that whereas some Asian Christians appreciated Western missionaries bringing teaching about God, many Asian missionaries are now demonstrating God’s power through miracles.¹⁶⁴ Another writer recounts that missionaries to one region in Africa who merely left behind Gospels returned to find a flourishing church with nt-like miracles happening daily, “because there had been no missionaries to teach that such things were not to be taken literally.”¹⁶⁵ Indigenous readings of Scripture often noticed patterns there “that the missionaries did not want [local believers] to see.”¹⁶⁶

Although the most visible growth has occurred in the last three decades,¹⁶⁷ already in 1981, at one large U.S. seminary with students from many nations, Christiaan De Wet of South Africa wrote a thesis on signs involved in church growth around the world. He surveyed more than 350 theses representing most of the world and interviewed countless missionaries. He complained, “My research has turned up so much material on signs and wonders that are happening and churches that are growing, that it is impossible to use all of it.”¹⁶⁸ He noted that miracle claims help drive Christian growth in many parts of the world.

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From Part 4, “Proposed Explanations”

Chapter 15, “More Extranormal Cases”

Page 721

Implications of and Prospects for Medical Documentation

Gardner insists that modern comparative examples can chasten our excessive tendency to skepticism of all ancient accounts. As an example of this approach, he analyzes one report of a missionary doctor in Pakistan where the patient is supposed to have recovered miraculously. Examining it as skeptically as possible based on the lacunae in the information, he concludes that the recovery could have occurred naturally (though not that it was invented). But because the source was a contemporary one, he was then able to obtain all the medical details and to show that the recovery was indeed extranormal (the woman may have “lost more than her total blood volume” in a forty-eight-hour period, with only two pints available to be added). He concludes that whereas “the normal techniques of historical scholarship” would have inclined us to dismiss the story, the availability of medical data in this case demonstrates that something quite unusual did (hence could) happen.⁷¹

That some doctors would testify to miracles is not as surprising as one might suppose if one assumed that all intellectuals accepted Hume’s view on miracles. In one 2004 national study of 1,100 physicians, 74 percent responded that they believed “that miracles have occurred in the past,” while almost the same number, 73 percent, affirm that they “can occur today.” The majority of physicians (59 percent) pray for their patients, and roughly 46 percent encourage patients to pray at least partly for God to answer their prayers. What might be the largest surprise in the survey, however, is that 55 percent of physicians claimed to “have seen treatment results in their patients that they would consider miraculous.”⁷²

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

An excerpt from The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused, edited by Andrew J. Schmutzer. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

The Long Journey Home

A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse

Creation, Evil, and the Relational Ecosystem

Part 2

 by Andrew J. Schmutzer

The Relational Ecosystem: Sexuality Amid Consequences

Christian theology has historically separated culture from nature and nature from theology, which unfortunately has dichotomized the temporal from eternal, material from the spiritual, and so creation from redemption.¹¹⁷ “Science has now stepped in as lord of the domain which man used to refer to Creation.”¹¹⁸ All this has left a fragmented universe¹¹⁹ and a truncated salvation that lacks holism and restoration (cf. Rom 8:19–22).¹²⁰ This is disconcerting at several levels.

As God’s vice-regents, people live and interact within a *relational ecosystem of dynamic proportion.¹²¹ In the garden-sanctuary, foundational bonds are established between: the human and God, humankind and the ground, human and animal, and between humans. Though somewhat distasteful to contemporary readers, in the theology of Genesis, one’s place of origin and the nature of their birth determine the core characteristics and purpose in life.¹²² In addition to humankind made in the image of God (1:26, discussed above), other significant “bindings” include: the “human” (’ādām) extracted from the “humus” (’ădāmâ, 2:7) and the “woman” (’iššâ) extracted from the “man” (’iš, 2:22). So Adam is uniquely bound to the fertility of the soil as Eve is uniquely bound to the fertility of the body.¹²³ The animals are also “formed out of the ground” (2:19) as “creatures that move on the ground” (1:30). Thus, the biblical notion of self is a relationally “embedded” self, rooted in a web of extended relationships.¹²⁴ This contrasts with the Western value of the individual as an unembedded self. It’s important to observe then, how the relational ecosystem is shattered in Genesis 3. The mistrust of rebellion breaks this web of relationships (3:5).

The “Bindings” Break Apart

Both functional and relational,¹²⁵ the compensatory judgments of 3:14–19 follow the order of transgression (serpent → woman → man; cf. 3:1–7).¹²⁶ Naham M. Sarna helpfully observes that the judgment for each party not only: (1) affects what is of central concern in the life of that entity, (2) but also regulates an external relationship.¹²⁷ Thus, there is some measure of correspondence between the offense and the judgment, point of origin, and future orientation. Relational hostility will exist between humans and the serpent (3:15).¹²⁸ The woman will pursue fertility amid relational antagonism with the man (3:16b).¹²⁹ Similarly, the man pursues the soil’s fertility amid its antagonism (3:17–18). Their points of origin no longer offer security or fulfillment. While the Creation Mandate remains, it is pain and alienation that bind relationships now (Gen 5:29; Eccl 2:23). The man’s “painful toil” (῾ṣābôn, 3:17) working the ground repeats her “pains” (etseb) enduring childbirth (3:16).¹³⁰ A final bond is ruptured when the couple is “banished” from the presence of the Lord (3:23). Once Abel’s blood soaks into “the ground” (4:10), it “will no longer yield its crops” for Cain (4:12), and ultimately a pervasive “wickedness” reigns in “the human heart” (6:6), stunningly matched by the “pain” (atsab) of the Lord’s grieving “heart” (6:6).¹³¹ Sin has ecological and cosmic effects—from creature to Creator, the entire relational ecosystem now suffers (6:7; Deut 11:13–17; Rom 8:22).