“Answers” seem insufficient for a people, who with St. “Answers” seem irrelevant to the sons and daughters of Abraham, the father of all faith, who are called to go without knowing where they are going. Answers are an illusion for a people desperate for certainty that never reveals itself. This is the book of the human struggle to be in right relationship with God. This is the Church’s book, not an old-fashioned Yellow Pages with specific answers. “Answers” may not be the purpose of the Bible. Sarah’s mistreatment of Sarah and Abraham commanded to sacrifice his son, Isaac, are only two of the strange stories that are short on answers. The rest of Genesis is not any more adept at answers than the prehistorical chapters of 1 – 11. Walter Brueggemann notes, “At some other point, it served as a polemical etiology for the city of Babylon, even though the etymology claimed in verse 9 is false.” And he adds: “The theme of the tower may have referred originally to a Babylonian ziggurat, a temple-tower presented as an imperial embodiment of pride and self-sufficiency.” The story has more in common with Isaiah’s vision of the end result for Nebuchadnezzar in Isaiah 14: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven I will raise my throne above the stars of God I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.” The tower of Babel in chapter 11 becomes a story that is short on answers. And the questions pour out like a box of overturned Lego pieces. God started and ordained and approved slavery. Southern preachers in the 19th century read this as the “answer” to slavery. Then, after the flood, we are told that Noah got drunk on wine from his own vineyard, one of his sons saw him naked, and Ham was cursed. The story of Noah, the ark, and the world-wide flood is hard enough to swallow. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” The line for questioners forms here.
Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals for ever, for they are flesh their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterwards-when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. “When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. As a boy in Sunday school I asked, “Where did Cain’s wife come from?”īy the time we get around to reading Genesis 6, the answer meter falls to zero and the questions proliferate. Then we are overwhelmed by stories that seem more related to stories and cosmologies of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. And that’s just the first three chapters. A cursory reading of Genesis 1 – 11 raises questions about creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit, and the fall of man.
BIBLE STUDY IMAGES CROSS FULL
This raises a question about these “answers”? If the Bible is at once so clear and full as the answer to all matters of Christian doctrine and practice, why are Christians so divided over the “answers”? What if the “answers” depend not on Scripture but on “private judgment”?įor example, “Answers in Genesis” raises more questions than it answers. Look at all the “answers” that have come from Scripture as the major denominations have formed: Catholic, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, Charismatics, and etc.Įvangelicals, like the Southern Baptists and the PCA, place great stress on the “answers” in the Bible as the only true, real, and correct answers. “Answers” are tough to come by from the Bible. The claims offer more than they can deliver. Bible Gateway asks: “Do you need answers to biblical questions?” And offers this response: “Bible Gateway has the answers.” Ken Ham has built a multi-million-dollar enterprise under the auspices of “Answers in Genesis.” No one loves “answers” like evangelicals. Davis puts it, “The Scriptures are chock-full of embarrassing, offensive, and internally contradictory texts, texts we do not wish to live with, let alone live by.”
In a world that touts certainty, inerrancy, literalism, I am shocked at the lack of clear-cut answers to questions about biblical texts and subjects. Recently, someone engaging me in fierce argument, asked, “Do you believe in women preaching?” “Believe in women preaching? I retorted. I realize this is a highly charged emotional subject for many.
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