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I posted an earlier version of this essay on 3/8. I have updated it in light of additional reflection and class discussion.

Here is the latest edition:
The Missional Character of God in Genesis 2-4

A missional hermeneutic of the Scriptures is acutely interested in tracing God’s missional activity as presented in the Scripture. Those who work in missional hermeneutics begin with the metanarrative in the Bible. In this essay, I want to comment briefly on God’s response to human disobedience in Genesis 2-4. These chapters begin to offer a portrait of God’s missional activity specifically. Part of the power of this portrayal is the overarching grace and mercy present in God’s response. It is important in a missiological reading of these texts to recognize that this is a suprising element. Sin has consequences and these texts make no bones about the graveness of sin and its repercussions are immediate and creation distorting. Yet in spite of human rebellion and callous disregard of God’ creational intentions, the Creator does not withdraw and leave creation to unravel through its own devices. Rather, God continues to offer guidance and relationship. The biblical God is not merely a “fair weather deity”; the LORD God remains engaged in the messiness of human affairs in order to act redemptively.

The backdrop to these texts are the creation stories: 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-2:25. These offer a portrait of God’s creational intentions and humanity’s role within them. We are also introduced to God’s missional character as one who acts to bring order, beauty, and rest to Creation. Humanity stands at the pinnacle of God’s creative work and at the center of God’s plans. Humanity was created to serve as God’s visible representatives before Creation to serve as stewards over it and to fill it so that God may be witnessed to and glorified all over creation.

The tragic story of Genesis 3:1-7 undoes this original plan. Humanity is shown to lack trust in the true sovereign over creation. How does God respond to the disobedience of Adam and Eve?

Let us consider these key post-Fall texts in Genesis 3-4:

3:9 “Adam, where are you?”
On one hand, this is one of the saddest moments in Scripture. The relationship between humanity and God has been ruptured from the intimate portrayal in Genesis 2:4-25 to such an extent that Adam and Eve hide from their Creator. On the other hand, this line demonstrates God’s continued engagement with humanity despite their disobedience. God doesn’t withdraw from Creation – he goes looking for his lost people. The verb used for God’s pursuit of humanity is qr’ “called.” The Lord calls out to a humanity that has alienated itself through its actions.

3:9ff God continues to speak with humanity in the Garden. Humanity’s sin does not mark the end of verbal revelation.

3:21 “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
The immediate result of Adam and Eve’s consumption of the fruit of the forbidden tree is the realization of their own nakedness. This marks the irony of their disobedience. They were seeking wisdom and instead reveal their own folly. They move from “naked and unashamed” in chapter two to “naked and ashamed” in their new heightened state. Yet, God shows great mercy here. Instead of leaving them exposed and humiliated, he graciously provides a suitable covering for the man and woman.

4:1-2 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.
In giving birth to her firstborn, Eve recognizes the hand of God. God’s creational mandate for humanity of “being fruitful and multiplying” remains valid. God continues to permit humanity to fulfill its mission. Disobedience does not alter humanity’s ability to fill the earth.

4:6-7 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
This is perhaps the most astonishing example of missional engagement in these chapters. In these verses, God attempts an intervention before Cain takes a disastrous road. He offers a grave warning to Cain and offers him an alternative path that would open the way to a new life. This profound act of grace goes unheeded but it demonstrates that God continues to desire the best for humanity.

Moreover, God’s verbal revelation to Cain suggests that God’s Word continues even in a post-Garden of Eden world. God’s revelation is not confined to Eden but is operative and available outside of Eden. Humanity is expelled from the Garden but this does not mean that humanity is cut off from verbal communication. It may not heed God’s Word, but it will be available to those with ears to hear.

4:15 But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.
In a remarkable act of mercy, God protects Cain from the very fate suffered by his brother. Unlike Cain who showed no such mercy to Abel, God provides Cain with a protective mark.

4:17-24 Cain to the 7th Generation
Cain is not merely a “fugitive and wanderer” as the LORD had spoken (v. 12). Cain settles in the land of Nod. There he marries and has a son Enoch. Moreover he founds a city named after his own son. Cain is not cut off from humanity. Instead he has descendants. The pattern is familiar. There are consequences to Cain’s actions, but God’s mercy continues to show its face.

4:25-26 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” 26 Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.
God works to redeem the death of Abel by blessing Adam and Eve with another son, Seth. The last sentence of verse 26 suggests that this side of the family begins the proper worship of Yhwh. This is surely the response desired by God in his missional response to the infestation of sin in humanity. Most English translation use a plural here suggesting unnamed persons responding to Yhwh. The Hebrew in 4:26 is singular. The closest possible subject is Enosh or the line of Seth in general. The LXX clearly understands Enosh or the line of Seth as the one who begins to “call upon the name of Yhwh.” The word translated “callED” (Heb qr’) is the same one used in 3:9 of God’s initial response to humanity’s sin.

Concluding Reflections
1) God’s saving actions for humanity reach their climax and fullest revelation in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. But God begins the movement that will culminate in Jesus immediately upon the entrance of sin in the world. Thus, from the beginning of the Bible to the end, it is God who initiates salvation.

2) God’s mercy and grace in response to human sin and messiness serves as a missional model for the community of faith. Sin is not taken lightly and its grave affects are clear, but God continues to reach out with hope and love to His fallen world. In fact, God takes the initiative to redeem humanity. As noted above, God’s first response is to call out: “Adam, where are you?” or simply “Where are you?” God makes the first move. Yes, sin is profoundly tragic, but it does not alter God’s desire for real relationship with humanity.

3) These texts give no warrant for a knee-jerk withdrawl from engagement with the world. The community of faith, if faithful to God’s missional model, will remain engaged in the world rather than seeking to separate and build a bulwark around itself to keep the world out. Genesis 3-11 offers a snapshot of the world that we inhabit. It is not merely some far off place. If God continues to engage his lost world, this remains our mandate as well.

4) There are persons who will respond to God’s missional actions. God shows great patience and acts broadly in search of those who will respond to his grace. This suggests that followers of Christ should practice a consistent and persistent witness of loving service and clear communication of the Gospel to as wide a population as possible. As God’s missional work in Genesis 3 and 4 involved both words and deeds, so should ours. The only tangible response to God in these chapters is the actions of Enosh in 4:26. A person in the line of Seth began to call upon God’s name. The word call (Heb qr’) brings to mind God’s call to Adam in 3:9. Finally, God’s invitation for relationship is heeded. The lesson here is about faithfulness. God’s people must commit to offer a clear and persistent witness to the Gospel. There is no guarantee of a response from everyone, but this text reminds us that there will be some who will indeed.

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

What does a missional hermeneutic or a missional approach to reading Scripture look like? Here are a few thoughts about how one may profitably read Genesis 1:1 through the lens of missional hermeneutics.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” So reads the opening sentence of the First Testament. The first two chapters of the Bible unfold God’s creative activity and offer a snapshot of God’s plans and intentions for Creation. Genesis 1:1 is crucial for a couple of reasons. First, it affirms that there is an active personal deity behind all that is. The creation is not the result of an impersonal force or forces. It is not an accident or the result of some cosmic battle between gods. God (Heb elohim) will later be identified specifically as Israel’s covenant God known as the LORD (Heb Yhwh). Second, though Genesis 1:1-2:3 explicitly challenges the theology of the creation stories of Israel’s neighbors, it remains staunchly international in focus and in scope. It is vital to make the simple observation that Israel’s Scripture opens with its more generic name for God (Heb elohim). In Hebrew, this noun is ambiguous in form and referent. It is a plural noun and can be translated “gods.” But in the context of the Scriptures of Israel, the plural form is deployed with Israel’s god as the clear referent. It is not until Genesis 2:4 that the reader of the Bible encounters God’s personal and relational name—Yahweh (typically rendered LORD in our English translations). There the form is Yahweh Elohim (the LORD God). In other words, Genesis 2:4 links explicitly elohim of Genesis 1:1 with the personal name of Israel’s God that was revealed to Moses at the time of the Exodus (Exodus 3 and 6). Why is this important? I think that it points to the missional intent of the Scriptures. If the Bible opened “In the beginning Yahweh created the heaven and the earth”, this claim (though completely true) forces the reader to react to Israel’s claim that its god Yahweh is the Creator. Instead, the Bible opens with 35 recurrences of elohim before one encounters Yhwh in 2:4. Notice the power and wisdom of this word selection. Genesis 1:1-2:3 audaciously argues for a solitary and powerful Creator, but refuses to name the deity. The opening of the Bible demands only a belief in God or gods as the precondition for reading its pages. It allows the narrative to shape the reader’s understanding of God. Last, it affirms that the created world, all that is, is separate from God. Rocks and trees are not divine. Dogs and cats are not divine. Women and men are not divine. The environment may be beautiful but it is not god. From the opening verse of the Bible, the reader encounters a transcendent deity who stands over creation as Lord and King of Creation. This is all present in merely the opening verse.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

My colleague and former OT teacher Lawson Stone has been writing an excellent series of posts on Bible translation based on his extensive reading in the history of the early church. By discussing the translation issues confronting Origen, Jerome, and Augustine, he covers questions and problems with which today’s Bible translators/translations still wrestle.

Bible Babel

The Holiness and Hazzards of Translation

So Look It Up

Just Stoppin’ the Lean

A Matter of Equivalence

Fruit’s Fruit, Right

“Getting It”

Some Words are More Equal than Others

Formal Equivalence

Lawson is an excellent writer. You will find these essays worthy of your time.

The key to developing new language for proclaiming the Gospel is learning to listen to the culture for metaphors that may be adopted and adapted for use in communicating the good news. It is not about our creativity as communicators but about our capacity to listen and study attentively the culture. Our assumption is that our missional God in the person of the Risen Christ is leading his people into the world on mission. Jesus goes before us. It is our task to be attentive to the Spirit’s leading so that we may build upon what God is already doing. In other words, the new language already exists. It is up to us to find it, refit it with Gospel content and deploy it. Think of Paul on Mars Hill in Acts 17. It is about committing to using the language of the street and the marketplace rather than only the language of the church. When we read the Scriptures within their ancient contexts, we will discover that the biblical authors in both testaments have drawn deeply from the prevailing culture in deploying the metaphors and symbols of the day as vehicles for telling God’s story.

Let me offer examples from the Bible:

The creation stories in Genesis (Gen 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-25) are profound in the setting of the stage for the remainder of the Scriptural story. But they are also part of the broader Ancient Near Eastern culture that produced other Creation stories. This is not the place to debate the origin of Israel’s creation stories vis-à-vis those of her neighbors, but a close study reveals a common vocabulary that is deployed distinctly to highlight Israel’s understanding of Creation in light of and against the Ancient Near East. Profoundly these stories declare the existence of a Creator God who is able to act unilaterally by his word apart from any context of conflict with the “gods” to bring into being and shape the Creation. Moreover elements that were worshipped by Israel’s neighbors, e.g., the sun, moon, and stars of Day 4, are merely reckoned as parts of God’s creative work. Most profoundly these texts emphasize the profound role that humanity, both women and men, were to play in God’s creational intentions. It is humanity alone that bears the divine image (1:26-27). Humanity stands at the pinnacle of God’s creative work in the Six days of God’s acts (Gen 1:1-31) and at the center of the narrative developed in 2:4-25. These elements served a profound role in their Near Eastern context.

The Song of Moses and the Israelites (Exod 15:1b-18) is a powerful hymn that celebrates God’s victory over Egypt at the Sea and God’s future victories on behalf of his people. Yet a careful study demonstrates that it is presented using language and motifs drawn from the Baal Epic known with the wider regions of Syria-Palestine. The Song of Moses and Israelites deploys the mythic themes of conflict, order, kingship, and palace (or temple) building in order to emphasize the transcendent meaning of the Lord’s vanquishing of the forces of Egypt as a demonstration of his sovereign power to reign. Moreover by drawing from Canaanite mythic patterns, the Song of Moses and the Israelites serves to subvert the status quo religions of Canaan by boldly proclaiming Israel’s Gospel of a god, the Lord, who enters the human historical plane on the side of an oppressed people against the power of Egypt and who after the defeat of Egypt simultaneously causes dread and terror in God’s people’s future enemies and brings God’s people to his holy mountain. Such actions are astonishing within their Ancient Near Eastern context. Gods typically sides with the powerful and gods do not invite mere mortals to their cosmic mountains. Yet this is precisely how Israel experienced its salvation from the forces of Egypt. The Exodus story is profound and powerful regardless, but seeing how it spoke directly to its Near Eastern Context raises the communicated truth to a new level and serves as a model for gaining the Gospel a hearing in our day.

Paul’s exhortation to the Philippians Christians in 1:27a draws on the motif of “citizenship” to articulate Paul’s vision for a missional ethos in Philippi. Many of the Philippian Christians enjoyed the status of being Roman citizens. This gave them privileges and rights that very few within the empire enjoyed. At the core of this exhortation is a verb that most English translations struggle to translate. Politeuomai has at its root the idea of serving, conducting, or serving as a good citizen. Most English translations correctly capture the force of the verb by choosing phrasings such as “conduct yourselves” or “live your life.” In Paul’s other writings, he uses the Greek work (peripateo) meaning “walk/live” (1 Thes 2:12; Col 1:10; Eph 4:1) in similar expressions. But these miss the allusion to citizenship that would have been unambiguous to the Philippian Christians. If Paul merely wanted to say “conduct yourself” or “live your life” he could have used peripateo. But he doesn’t. Moreover it makes it difficult for the English reader to see that the main argument of Philippians 1:27-4:1 is framed by references to citizenship (1:27 and 3:20). Paul consciously chooses politeuomai because he is using the Philippians’ context to help them understand what it means to be a Christ follower in Philippi. They are no longer to live merely as Roman citizens. Their lives are now to be shaped by the values and ethos of the Kingdom of heaven.

Implication: Be creative in engaging contemporary culture. Be committed to finding the best words.

© 2010 Brian D Russell

I am working on a brief synopsis of biblical interpretation as a precursor for a more expanded discussion of how to move toward a missional hermeneutic for my upcoming book (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World. Here are some of the key questions that an interpreter needs to think about while exegeting a passage. What else would you add?

Key Questions to Ponder:
1) Have I prayed for the Spirit’s guidance and direction?
2) Do I understand the geographical and /or cultural references in this passage?
3) How does our text function within the wider argument in the book?
4) What are the key words and phrases in the text? How are these words and phrases used elsewhere by our author?
5) If I am working on a NT text: What OT texts are alluded to or quoted? How does the OT passage illuminate the meaning of the text I am interpreting? For OT texts: Are there quotations or allusions to other texts in the OT? If so, how do the texts illuminate one another? Is there a NT appropriation of my text? How does the NT author understand the OT text?
6) How is my passage structured? How does the structure of the passage contribute to its meaning? Does the passage flow logically? How does the story flow spacially? How do the characters function within the story?
7) For those with facility in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek: What nuances are present in the syntax and word order of the original language that are ambiguous or not explicit in the modern translations? Pay particular attention to verbal aspect and force of prepositions.
What are the major interpretive issues present in this text? How are these resolved in the major English translations?
9) What are the possible ways that we may misread the text based on the English text?
10) What is the genre of my text (narrative, parable, discursive, prophetic, apocalyptic)? How does the genre affect my understanding of the passage?
11) What does this text assume to be true? How do these assumptions affect our reading of the text?
12) What elements in the text may be offensive in our contemporary context? What issues raised will be difficult for insiders? What issues in the text will be difficult for outsiders? What are the obvious objects that one could raise to the claims of the text? In what ways does the text answer these objections?

© 2010 Brian D Russell

Here is another snippet of my forthcoming book (re)aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World. It will be published by Wipf and Stock in late 2010.

There is no substitute for a careful and deliberate engagement with the biblical text. The Scriptures may be likened to the earth’s vast oceans. There are multiple levels and depths of meaning. If one only studies the seas from a single shoreline, one may observe and record accurate observations, but much will be missed. It is vital for interpreters to go as deeply as possible into the text and to read it carefully from a variety of angles in order to engage it in its fullness. This book focuses on a missional approach to the Bible, but such an approach assumes a deep engagement with the text. I will turn now to a brief introduction or perhaps refresher on good reading practices.

The primary determinant for the meaning of a text is its context. It is vital to read the Bible in large chunks rather than in isolated verses. Reading Scripture is an intimate dance between the reader and the text. The wise reader must be acutely aware simultaneously of the broad movements of the wider Scriptures and the specific details of the portion of text being interpreted. To focus only on the big picture risks missing the nuances of the Bible, which fill out and unpack its larger truths in the lived lives of its original audience. The temptation is to flatten out the Bible by making its individual sections conform to our assumptions about the big picture. To focus only on the specific details runs the danger of missing the message of the whole. It is like having a closet without hangers or shelves. All of our clothing is scattered randomly without any discernible organizing principles.

What are key elements or tools for the interpretation of the Bible?

© 2009 Brian D Russell