Doc Notes Lesson 2 Part 11

Last studies in Genesis
Gentle Readers,
Well as you might imagine we have been busy changing over to our “new” scriptural studies site! I told Marti that I wasn’t going to move any more but after more moves that Bobby Fischer (the World’s Chess Champion) I had enough! (But if the right offer came along....

At any rate we are going to look at Genesis one more time. Some have ask me why I don’t go into any depth that what I have especially with my background. The answer is to be quite frank, simple, most can’t understand what we are saying anyway, and the purpose is to educate those wanting to grow in their understanding, not those looking for quick answers to fit into their particular doctrinarian position.
After this study we (Marti and I will take a sabbatical our last for me anyway was in 1996 a very good year).

Thus far we have not given separate consideration to the four pivotal persons-Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, around whom the whole of the narrative revolves in the second part of the Book of Genesis Chapters 12-50. But in this present study they come under review, though as part of a larger theme. I will give here some final examples of the type-teaching in Genesis, and them make certain closing suggestions about the further study of the Book, along with your first set of questions for your personal study.

The principal personalities which are brought successively before us in the Book of Genesis all have a typical significance. That is so clearly shown by New Testament references such as that in which Paul speaks of Ishmael and Isaac as representing the two covenants “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband”. (Gal 4:22-27), and at the same time representing two natures “that which is after the flesh” and that which is after the spirit” (Gal 4:29). The priestking Melchizedek is another example (Heb. 7); and the first man of all, Adam, is declared to be a “figure (type) of Him that was to come. (Rom. 5:14).

Turning then, to the main figures in Genesis, we observe, that not only are some of them types of persons ( as for example Isaac and Juoseph are a types of Christ), but when viewed collectively they typify progressive stages of spiritual experience.
The first man, Adam, besides being (in his relationships) a type of Christ, is (in his fallen state) a type of natural man, or might we we say of unregenerate human nature. He is referred to again and again in the New Testament (Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Rom 6:6) That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; (Eph 4:22) Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; (Col 3:9). Now one of the leading purports of Genesis seems to be that all which springs from the first Adam-all that which can spring from him, both good and ill, both by nature and through the influence of Divine grace. So we come to the matter of what has been called by Augustine “original sin”! Which to Augustine was the deliberate fall of man. But in reality was the deception of Satan. Adam and eve were actually duped to believe that Satan was helping them when in fact it was a test of God. Would God rescue His own creation. The Word was given. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Gen 2:16-17)

Here too the man was to commence his own spiritual development. To this end God had planted two trees in the midst of the garden of Eden; the one to train his spirit through the exercise of obedience to the word of God, the other to transform his earthly nature into the spiritual essence of eternal life. These trees received their names from their relation to man, that is to say, from the effect which the eating of their fruit was destined to produce upon human life and its development. The fruit of the tree of life conferred the power of eternal, immortal life; and the tree of knowledge was planted, to lead men to the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil was no mere experience of good and ill, but a moral element in that spiritual development, through which the man created in the image of God was to attain to the filling out of that nature, which had already been planned in the likeness of God. For not to know what good and evil are, is a sign of either the immaturity of infancy (Deu: 1:39), or the imbecility of age (2Sam: 19:35); whereas the power to distinguish good and evil is commended as the gift of a king (1Kings 3:9) and the wisdom of angels (2Sam: 14:17), and in the highest sense is ascribed to God Himself

Why then did God prohibit man from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the threat that, as soon as he ate thereof, he would surely die? (The inf. abs. before the finite verb intensifies the latter: ). Are we to regard the tree as poisonous, and suppose that some fatal property resided in the fruit? A supposition which so completely ignores the ethical nature of sin is neither warranted by the antithesis, nor by what is said in Gen: 3:22 of the tree of life, nor by the fact that the eating of the forbidden fruit was actually the cause of death. Even in the case of the tree of life, the power is not to be sought in the physical character of the fruit. No earthly fruit possesses the power to give immortality to the life which it helps to sustain. Life is not rooted in man's corporeal nature; it was in his spiritual nature that it had its origin, and from this it derives its stability and permanence also. It may, indeed, be brought to an end through the destruction of the body; but it cannot be exalted to perpetual duration, i.e., to immortality, through its preservation and sustenance. And this applies quite as much to the original nature of man, as to man after the fall. A body formed from earthly materials could not be essentially immortal: it would of necessity either be turned to earth, and fall into dust again, or be transformed by the spirit into the immortality of the soul. The power which transforms corporeality into immortality is spiritual in its nature, and could only be imparted to the earthly tree or its fruit through the word of God, through a special operation of the Spirit of God, an operation which we can only picture to ourselves as sacramental in its character, rendering earthly elements the receptacles and vehicles of celestial powers. God had given such a sacramental nature and significance to the two trees in the midst of the garden, that their fruit could and would produce supersensual, mental, and spiritual effects upon the nature of the first human pair. The tree of life was to impart the power of transformation into eternal life. The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil; and, according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accomplished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming eventually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntary resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good. By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e., to one in accordance with his own likeness to God. He would have detected the evil in the approaching tempter; but instead of yielding to it, he would have resisted it, and thus have made good his own property acquired with consciousness and of his own free-will, and in this way by proper self-determination would gradually have advanced to the possession of the truest liberty. But as he failed to keep this divinely appointed way, and ate the forbidden fruit in opposition to the command of God, the power imparted by God to the fruit was manifested in a different way. He learned the difference between good and evil from his own guilty experience, and by receiving the evil into his own soul, fell a victim to the threatened death. Thus through his own fault the tree, which should have helped him to attain true freedom, brought nothing but the sham liberty of sin, and with it death, and that without any demoniacal power of destruction being conjured into the tree itself, or any fatal poison being hidden in its fruit.

To Be continued....

Note: Judaism holds no concept of original sin. According to Christian belief, all human beings are born into the world with a sinful nature because of the transgression of Adam (Romans 5:12-21). Judaism's emphasis is not on original sin but original virtue and righteousness. Although Judaism acknowledges that man does commit acts of sin, there is not a sense of man being totally depraved or unworthy as is found in Christian theology.