The Importance of the Historicity of Genesis Chapters 1-3 for Theology Proper, Anthropology, and Christology

By Micah Everett

Perhaps no portion of Scripture is more frequently misunderstood and reinterpreted than the early chapters of the book of Genesis. The style and content of these chapters indicate that they are intended to convey an account of actual historical events and people, [1] and yet many interpreters — including some who claim to hold to the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible — insist that these chapters should be read allegorically, if not mythically, [2] and that doing so will not have a negative impact upon one’s view of the rest of Scripture. [3] This interpretation defies the plainest reading of Scripture; is contrary to the New Testament, which readily refers to Adam (1 Tim. 2:13-14), Enoch (Jude 1:14), and Noah (Matt. 24:37-39) as historical figures; and lies outside of the mainstream of theological opinion as held throughout the history of the church. [4] With some notable exceptions, [5] theologians throughout the Church Age have agreed that these chapters neither demand nor even admit an allegorical interpretation, but instead must be interpreted as true history. [6] Only in the past two centuries, in the face not of mounting scientific evidence but rather of mounting naturalistic and evolutionary interpretations of the available evidence, has a historical reading of these chapters been abandoned in many sectors of the church. [7]

This abandonment has brought only catastrophe, including increasing unbelief, apostasy, and the decimation of churches and denominations. [8] The whole of biblical teaching on the nature of God; the special creation, nature, and fall of man; and salvation from and victory over sin through the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, is built upon a literal, historical understanding of the first three chapters of Genesis. [9] When belief in the veracity of this crucial portion of Scripture is shaken, belief in those Scriptures that build and develop doctrines upon these early chapters is compromised as well. The abandonment of much or even the entirety of Scripture and of the God who reveals Himself therein almost inevitably follows. [10]

This paper will survey the ways in which a literal, historical understanding of the first three chapters of Genesis is crucial for the proper development and understanding of biblical doctrine as expressed in three of the Reformed loci: Theology Proper, Anthropology, and Christology. While the treatment of these subjects here will be brief, this paper will demonstrate how such an interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis leads to a proper understanding of the whole of scriptural teaching on these subjects, and how the attempt to reduce these chapters to the level of allegory or myth sets its adherents upon a path of ever-increasing compromise.

Theology Proper

Of the many roles in which God acts in relation to the world, the first one revealed in Scripture is that of Creator. The first verse of Genesis reads, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In this sentence alone, God has revealed to mankind that He is the Creator of all that exists, as well as a number of His attributes. He is preexistent, having been present before “the beginning” of everything else that is. He is solitary, He alone having existence independent of all other beings or things. [11] He is omnipotent, having created all things ex nihilo, requiring no assistance and no preexisting material in order to bring all that He desires into existence. [12] Finally, the goodness of the world as originally created reflects the inherent goodness of its Creator. [13]

That God created all things is confirmed throughout the Scriptures, both Old and New Testament. The Psalms exalt God as Creator (Pss. 124:8, 146:6, 148). Isaiah repeatedly references His creation of all things (cf. Isa. 42:5, 45:12-18), and Paul does the same (Acts 17:24; Col. 1:16). In the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is presented as God the Creator in language that intentionally mirrors that of Genesis (John 1:1-3). All of these references to the creative work of God, and perhaps especially John’s identification of Jesus Christ with the Creator God introduced in Genesis 1, indicate the consensus of the biblical writers that God is indeed the Creator who alone acted with great power to bring all things into being.

For the person who affirms the literal historicity of the creation account in the early chapters of Genesis, those Scriptures elsewhere in the Bible that refer to Genesis will serve to strengthen his faith in the inspiration and consistency of Scripture. Contrarily, the person who denies the historicity of the Genesis account of creation will, if he is consistent, lose faith in these and other passages that, implicitly or explicitly citing Genesis 1-2, refer to God as Creator. [14] If the biblical creation account is merely an allegory or myth, then the later writers have erred by citing it as history, and the reader must of necessity call into question the veracity of the writings of men that could be thus mistaken in their view of origins. The “slippery slope” begins here.

Because God is Creator, He is sovereign over His creation, particularly over the lives and actions of men.15 Mark Dever wrote:

Here in these early chapters of Genesis, we also find that God is a sovereign God. He is, we must remember, the Creator of everything that is, so we should not be surprised to find him sovereign over what he has made. The author of all has authority over all. [16]

This connection between the doctrines of creation and of God’s sovereignty is expressed throughout the Scriptures. The following are two such passages:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring (Acts 17:24-28). 

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created (Rev. 4:11).

In the first passage, Paul grounds his insistence that men “should seek the Lord” in the fact that He created them for this purpose. The elders speaking in the second passage speak in more regal terms, ascribing to God worthiness to receive veneration as Lord because of having created all things. In both passages, God’s right to rule over men and to require both praise and fealty from them is established because He is their Creator and Sustainer.

A god who did not create all things might still exercise sovereignty, but upon far different grounds. As human history repeatedly demonstrates, powerful overlords and dictators can demand obedience and even worship simply because “I am bigger and more powerful than you,” receiving submission only out of fear of reprisal. A god who “created,” perhaps using preexisting matter, through a purposeless process of evolution and natural selection (or, worse, a god who was, like all other creatures, a product of such a process) has no better grounds upon which to exercise sovereignty than a human dictator that rules through brute force. And yet, if the creation account of Genesis 1 is abandoned, one is left with such a god, and New Testament passages such as the two cited above become nonsensical.

God made all that exists for His glory, and specially created man as His image-bearer. [17] God exercises sovereignty over every aspect of His creation (Heb. 1:3) and every aspect of each person’s life, and yet this is the sovereignty of a loving, benevolent Creator, one who “giveth us all things richly to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17) and who genuinely desires the willingly given worship, companionship, and love of those He has created as His image-bearers (Acts 17:24-27; 1 Tim. 2:4). This is the sovereignty of a God who is perfectly good, a trait also amply revealed in Genesis 1.

Repeatedly in Genesis 1, God refers to the goodness of His creation, culminating in the comprehensive statement of verse 31:“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” That God would create only a “very good” universe is consistent with His nature; Scripture reveals “that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5), and “there is none good but one, that is, God” (Matt. 19:17). This “very good” creation was idyllic, free of the scourges of pain, toil, loss, and especially death. Death entered into the world only as a result of sin. God promised that this would happen if man sinned (Gen. 2:17), visited this curse upon man because of his sin (Gen. 3:19), and reaffirmed the connection between sin and death in the New Testament (Rom. 5:12, 6:23). The world did not come from the hand of God in its present, fallen state; its present condition is a perversion of the original creation, for which man has only himself to blame, and which will be corrected only when creation is purged of all sin (Rev. 21:3-4, 27).

How different is this biblical portrayal of creation from those of evolutionary theories, whether “theistic” or naturalistic! Under such schemes, the world has reached its present condition only after billions of years of change, struggle, death, and extinction. “Theistic evolutionists” must wrestle with the incongruence between the biblical portrayal of God as perfectly good, and the testimony of nature that (according to their system) God allowed or even caused billions of years of violent upheaval, destruction, and death to plague the world before the first man ever walked the earth, much less introduced sin into the world. [18] Tennyson recognized this contradiction between biblical creationism and evolutionary naturalism when he wrote the following in 1849:

Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation’s final law,—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravin, shriek’d against his creed,— [19]

The denial (whether implicit or explicit) of the causal relationship between sin and death as presented in the Scriptures destroys the Bible’s presentation of God as perfectly good, for such a God would never declare a world full of death and suffering to be “good.” [20] Any such evolutionary scheme also causes difficulties for one’s understanding of Anthropology, as this system necessitates a denial of the special creation of man and the existence of a literal Adam. This, in turn, causes major problems for the doctrine of original sin.

Anthropology

A plain reading of Genesis chapters 1-2 (and of the entire Scripture) will not admit any evolutionary interpretation for the origins of creation. [21] This is true of the creation of the physical universe, of vegetation, and of all animal life, but it is particularly true of the creation of man. In Genesis 1:26, God discusses within Himself the special nature of this creature, the one that alone would bear His image (Gen. 1:27), enjoy fellowship with Him, [22] and act as His vicegerent on the earth, exercising dominion over the other creatures. [23] The Scripture elaborates on man’s creation in Genesis 2:7, describing the peculiar care with which God created the first man and then, in verses 21-22, the woman. Unlike the other creatures, which were apparently created in sufficient numbers to immediately populate the earth (cf. Gen. 1:21), God created mankind as a single pair, from which the entire human race descended. That God initially created only one man and one woman is implicitly taught throughout Genesis 2 and is explicitly stated in Genesis 3:20, and is also confirmed in the New Testament by Paul (Acts 17:26). The denial of the historicity of the Genesis account thus forces one not only to allegorize Genesis, but also to reinterpret New Testament passages that are built upon this account. Doing this wreaks havoc upon the doctrine of original sin as presented in the New Testament. [24]

Paul’s teaching on man’s inherited sinful nature is grounded in the truthful account of origins as presented in Genesis 1-3:

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor. 15:21-22). 

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 5:12-21).

The New Testament’s teaching on original sin depends upon the historicity of the Genesis account of man’s creation and fall. In both of the above passages, Paul refers to sin (and its consequence, death) in the world as having been introduced by one man, Adam, who was specially created by God as His image-bearer and as the federal head of the human race that would proceed from him. [25] If sin did not enter the world through the real disobedience of this real first man, leaving all men hopelessly corrupted from the very moment of conception (Ps. 51:5), then the entirety of the Bible’s teaching on the origin, nature, and consequences of sin is faulty. Furthermore, if Adam never existed, or is at best part of a myth or allegory about human origins, then the credibility of the New Testament references to Adam such as those just discussed also is called into question; Paul would then have based his entire theology of sin and its punishment upon mythical events surrounding a person who never existed. If there was no literal Adam in whom all mankind sinned, the theological result can only be the promotion of a shallow Pelagianism, in which each individual is born “good,” possessing an inherent capacity for righteousness that might or might not be tarnished by the “accident” of sin and evil. [26] If this is true, then the Bible’s teaching of the absolute necessity of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for man to enjoy fellowship with God can be discarded. [27]

Even worse, without original sin, the God that would visit the consequence of sin, death, upon those that are unable to willfully commit acts of sin, such as infants or the unborn, is made into a monster. This is a serious and even heretical departure from the God presented in Scripture as a good, loving, and benevolent Lord who, while exercising unquenchable wrath upon unrepentant sinners (Matt. 3:12), nevertheless does so with the utmost righteousness and justice (Rom. 9:14) and furthermore freely offers salvation through His Son Jesus Christ to all who will come to Him in repentance and by faith (John 3:16). Like the doctrines discussed previously, the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ is both established by and dependent upon the historicity of the first chapters of Genesis.

Christology

Not only does Paul’s explanation of the origin of human sin break down if the first chapters of Genesis are not literally true, but his teaching on the atoning work of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, is also compromised.28 In 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, Paul discusses the federal headship of both Adam and Christ. When Adam sinned, his sin was imputed to all those who are “in Adam” (1 Cor. 15:21-22); in like manner, when Christ perfectly fulfilled the Law and then died and was raised for His people, their sin was imputed to Him and His righteousness was imputed to them (cf. Rom. 4:21-25).29 This is the “good news” of Christianity: even though all mankind has fallen in Adam and therefore stands condemned by God (John 3:18), those who believe in Christ have been redeemed through His blood and therefore stand before God in Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). This comparison is so vital to New Testament theology that if the literal historicity of Adam is denied, then Paul’s explanation of Christ’s work as compared to that of Adam must be jettisoned as well. Morris wrote:

It is quite impossible, therefore, for one to reject the historicity and divine authority of the Book of Genesis without undermining, and in effect, repudiating, the authority of the entire Bible. If the first Adam is only an allegory, so is the second Adam. If man did not really fall into sin from his state of created innocency, there is no reason for him to need a Savior. [30]

If we deny the historicity of Genesis 1-3, we discard the basis upon which Paul builds his teaching on the necessity and the nature of Christ’s work. From that point there is but a short leap intellectually to constructing a “Jesus” who is not the Savior of the people that He purchased with His own blood, but is instead merely a “good example” or a “moral teacher,” if He existed at all. Such a construction is biblically, historically, and intellectually unacceptable, as C.S. Lewis noted in an oft-quoted paragraph:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. [31]

If Christ is no more than “a great moral teacher,” or, even worse, a literary example that never really existed in history as He is presented in Scripture, then “we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. 15:19), for “if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17).

The second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, who came to earth as a man to live perfectly according to the Law and then suffer and die for the sins of His people only to be raised again the third day, is the central figure of Scripture. The entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, bears witness to Him. [32] This Christ is the subject of numerous Old Testament prophecies, all of which He perfectly fulfilled. Josh McDowell wrote, “Jesus fulfilled sixty major Old Testament prophecies (with about 270 additional ramifications) — all of which were made more than 400 years before his birth.” [33] The first of these prophecies, sometimes called the protoevangelium, occurs in Genesis 3 and was spoken by God Himself. Addressing the serpent in verse 15, God said, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” That the serpent of Genesis 3 is Satan is evident from the immediate context, and is explicitly affirmed in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2. Most commentators agree that the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 is Christ Himself, although Calvin notably disagrees with this assessment. [34] John Gill offers a credible argument that “seed” here indeed refers principally to Christ, though it can in a secondary way refer to Eve’s descendants more generally, at least those that are in Christ. Paul wrote to the church in Romans 16:20, “And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” [35] Still, the final bruising of Satan is accomplished by Christ Himself, just as promised in Genesis 3:15. Satan’s destruction is made sure by Christ’s death (Heb. 2:14), and is consummated in Revelation 20:10 as Christ comes, seated on a great white throne, to judge all men.

If the events of Genesis 3 never literally took place, then all of fallen humanity never “sinned in Adam,” and Christ’s work is rendered both theologically unnecessary and historically questionable. Further, if Genesis 3 is not real history, God never delivered the first promise in Scripture of the Messiah who, being “bruised” Himself (cf. Isa. 53:5), would deliver a final defeat to sin and to Satan. Finally, the denial of the historicity of Genesis 3 would make the New Testament account of the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 and Satan’s defeat as prophesied in Revelation 20 nonsensical, since that account harks back to Satan’s manifesting himself as a serpent in Genesis 3. Just like the doctrines of God and of man, the complete and consistent biblical development of the doctrine of Christ depends on a literal, historical reading of the early chapters of Genesis. Without this, the plain teaching of God’s Word is lost in a sea of inconsistency and doubt. [36]

Conclusion

Scripture is entirely true, and when doubt is cast upon any portion of its teaching, the truthfulness of the whole is questioned. When the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis in particular is denied, the accuracy of later documents that cite these chapters as true historical accounts must, logically, also be denied. Because God is Creator, He has the right to exercise lordship over His creation. Denying the historicity of Genesis 1-3 weakens or even eliminates God’s role as Creator, and therefore denies Him the right to legitimately exercise sovereignty over the universe. Furthermore, if God “created” by means of millions of years of evolution and natural selection, then He afflicted the world and its creatures with death even when no sin had yet occurred. Such an accusation assaults the character of God and severs the vital scriptural connection between sin and death, which itself can only be maintained if Adam and Eve were the real first human beings, specially created in the image of God as reported in the book of Genesis.

As the first man and the progenitor of the entire human race, Adam was tested by God on behalf of all of his posterity and failed, [37] plunging the entire human race into sin. [38] Adam’s failure is contrasted in Scripture with the work of Christ, the Second Adam, whose sacrificial death atoned for the sins of all of His people, and whose perfect righteousness imputed to them makes them worthy of heaven. The coming of this Christ, who would deliver the final death-blow to sin and to Satan, was first predicted in Genesis 3. This protoevangelium is a very important part of biblical prophecy concerning Jesus Christ, comforting believers by assuring them that God had prepared the way of salvation for His people even before the world began (cf. Eph. 1:4-6) and bringing this hope of final deliverance from sin and from Satan to mankind almost immediately after the first sin was committed. If the historicity of Genesis 3 is denied, then this first biblical prophecy regarding the Messiah is eliminated, robbing believers of this portion of the great hope of deliverance through Christ.

The denial of the historicity of Genesis 1-3 thus proves catastro­phic for one’s understanding of Theology Proper, Anthropology, and Christology. The Scriptures are a unit, and each new portion of revelation that God gave during the period of its composition was built upon the revelation already given. When these foundational chapters are denied, all of the doctrinal material built upon them is compromised. A logically consistent reader that denies or allegorizes Genesis 1-3 will soon find himself denying or reinterpreting other parts of Scripture as well, until eventually the whole is often discarded and the reader embraces unbelief.

While there are professing Christians who have accepted allegorical interpretations or other alternative readings of Genesis 1-3 without denying the faith, these are able to do so only by allowing logical inconsistencies in their thinking, refusing to see the theological implications of their faulty reading of Genesis 1-3 to their necessary end. In Scripture, God has graciously given man a thorough and truthful revelation of Himself, one free of the inconsistencies and falsehoods that plague even the best of mere human writings. When God’s people plumb the depths of this Word, taking at face value all that God has revealed therein, they will find there an all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful Creator, who made man in His image and then graciously redeemed fallen man in Christ. These simple yet profound truths are obscured if not destroyed when the first three chapters of Genesis are compromised. The church must therefore accept only a literal, historical reading of these chapters, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Notes

1. Henry Morris, The Genesis Record (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), 21-22.
2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 2:490 –95.
3. J. Gresham Machen, Education, Christianity, and the State (Unicoi, Tenn.: The Trinity Foundation, 2004), 38 – 40.
4. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1982), 2:7-14.
5. Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Compromise (Green Forest, Ark.: Master Books, 2004), 56 –58.
6. Schaeffer, Complete Works, 2:7-14.
7. Douglas Kelly, foreword to Refuting Compromise, by Jonathan Sarfati.
8. Henry Morris, Defending the Faith (Green Forest, Ark.: Master Books, 1999), 229.
9. Morris, The Genesis Record, 22.
10. Morris, Defending the Faith, 229.
11. Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Pensacola, Fla.: Chapel Library, n.d.), 3-7.
12. Ibid., 47-53.
13. Ibid., 60-64.
14. Morris, Defending the Faith, 229-30.
15. Pink, 30-35.
16. Mark Dever, The Message of the Old Testament (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2006), 71.
17. J. Gresham Machen, The Christian View of Man (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 116, 144 – 45.
18. Morris, The Genesis Record, 79 – 80.
19. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” in The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson (New York: John B. Alden, 1883), 193.
20. Morris, The Genesis Record, 79 – 80.
21. Philip Mauro, Evolution at the Bar (Boston: Hamilton Brothers Scripture Truth Depot, 1922), 62.
22. “The Westminster Shorter Catechism,” in Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 3:676.
23. Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 78 –79.
24. B.H. Carroll, An Interpretation of the English Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 1:63.
25. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), 242-43.
26. R.C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology? (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 121-22.
27. Morris, The Genesis Record, 22.
28. Ibid.
29. John Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1959), 64 –70.
30. Morris, The Genesis Record, 22.
31. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 52. Though we do not always concur with C.S. Lewis, in this instance he is a reliable guide.
32. Edmund P. Clowney, Preaching Christ in All of Scripture (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2003), 9-10.
33. Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler, Beyond Belief to Convictions (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House, 2002), 66-67.
34. John Calvin, Commentary upon the Book of Genesis, in Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 1:170-71.
35. John Gill, Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (Paris, Ark.: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 2006), 27.
36. Morris, Defending the Faith, 229.
37. Machen, The Christian View of Man, 162-63.
38. Schaeffer, Complete Works, 2:60-61.