The first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, so Bishop Kallistos Ware tells us, were described by St. Gregory of Nyssa as “not so much history as ‘doctrines in the guise of narrative.’” It is not whether the Genesis creation story is literally true which is essential, but what is of absolute importance is the truth which the story tells. We learn from this how the Fathers of the Church looked far beyond any literal reading of the Scripture to seek the fullness of truth that God reveals to humanity. Genesis is important to us not so much for its human history as because it reveals the doctrines of God. As for God, He conveys His revelation to us in narrative, history, parable, poetry, spoken word, symbol, typology, pre-figuring, sign, written word and in a host of other ways.
Genesis 1 opens with a bang – not the Big Bang by which astrophysicists claim the universe came into existence, but with a very intense theological revelation. The Book opened with God, the main character of the creation story (the only character!) creating the center stage upon which the creative poetrywhich He will recite brings the entire cosmos into existence. In Genesis 1, the Word of God is the actor in the narrative, not the narrator himself. God “clothes” His active love in words which bring the physical universe into existence. God’s words becoming physical reality will culminate in the New Testament when the Word became flesh and God actually enters into history and into the world which He created. The incarnation of the Word changes everything and yet it is only the culminating completion of what God started “in the beginning.”.
God originally clothed humans in glory, and at least by the understanding of the early Christian, it is precisely this garment which humanity lost when it sinned against the Lord. Sin led to God exchanging the garment of glory in which He originally clothed the humans for the garments of skin. Such was the Fall of humanity – we lost something vital and beautiful. The world we now live in is not the Garden of Paradise God originally planted for us nor where He intended us to reside.
Genesis 4-11 is completely the postlapsarian world (terms in bold print are defined in the Glossary) – a look at humanity immediately after Eve and Adam had committed that original sin against God and were expelled from Paradise. These early chapters of Genesis place us in the world as we know it, but they do not intend to leave us here for they are written with a sense of motion. They are moving us to and through the events which ultimately culminate in Christ coming into the world. In this sense Genesis 4-11 might be described as the precursor or prequel to the story of the incarnation of Christ.
It is only with the incarnation of the Word of God that glory is restored to humanity, something which the Orthodox commemorate at each Saturday evening Vespers with the Prokeimeon, “The Lord is king, he is clothed in majesty.” It is a hymn of the incarnation in which the flesh is not glorious but is glorified by the God-man putting it on. It is the Word of God putting on flesh which bestows majesty to that flesh with which He has clothed Himself. Christ is God in the flesh working to undo the effects that ancestral sin has had on all humanity. Each Saturday evening at Vespers we celebrate the fact that God has not left us in the world of Genesis 4-11 but has in fact begun the process of salvation in which His Kingdom breaks into this fallen world giving us hope for the future and a reason to love and obey Him in this world.
However, to understand the salvation given to us in Jesus Christ, we do need to understand the world to which God sent the first humans when He expelled them from Paradise. In Genesis 4-11 the story of creation is going to become decidedly more focused on the humans rather than on the Creator as God recedes into the background (or into the heavens, if you will). God will play an active role in the story, but in some ways the story is less God’s story and more the story of God’s creation and of the creation’s relationship to its Creator God.
The same narrator who described the creation of the cosmos “in the beginning,” continues with his reporting of events. The narrator offers us no editorial comment about what he is describing, very little moralizing. His task is descriptive not prescriptive. It is our task as the readers of or listeners to the Scriptures to understand their meaning which is derived from the big picture – the entirety of Genesis and of the Old and New Testaments. “When you read Holy Scripture, perceive its hidden meanings,” as St. Mark the Ascetic (5th Cent) said. “For whatever was written in past times was written for our instruction (Rom 15:4)… Those who do not consider themselves under obligation to perform all Christ’s commandments study the law of God in a literal manner, understanding neither what they say nor what they affirm (1Tim 1:7). Therefore they think that they can fulfil it by their own works.” St. Mark argues that those who think they can fully understand the scriptures by themselves are relying on their own works for salvation. He argues that the Christian cannot simply read the scriptures literally, he must be willing to do what Christ has taught, and for St. Mark this will only occur in Christian community where one can see others living according to the commandments and be taught and corrected by them. For Christians the key to understanding Genesis is found in Christ. (St. Hilary of Poitiers wrote, “Scripture is not in the reading but in the understanding.” In other words absolute literalism itself is insufficient for understanding the Bible). And the key to opening the full meaning of the text comes with being willing to obey Christ within His chosen community. Genesis is seen by Christians as bearing witness to Christ, and being fulfilled and explicated in and by Jesus Christ. (St. Augustine claimed, “the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament lies open in the New.”) Thus to read Genesis apart from Christ is to miss its main purpose and meaning. Our main way of reading scripture in Christ is to do it within His Body, the Church. Thus my reflections on Genesis include quotes from the New Testament and from the Patristic writers in which we learn how Christians inspired by God have interpreted the text of Genesis through the centuries. I also have included quotes from our sacramental and liturgical prayers and hymns which are related to the texts we will be studying to show how Genesis 4-11 is used in the worship of the Orthodox Church which shapes much of our understanding of the Bible.
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That’s the thing with the Fathers. They manage to say with words, that which cannot actually said with words. The spiritual truth is the literal truth. I love the OT Church. In many ways, the pre-incarnate Christ is is easier to see! The holy cross too easily forms a beam in my eye!