www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Scripture and Patristic Writings Calvinists delete Genesis

My mother heard something very interesting from her aunt, a former member of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

The denomination known as Christian Reformed is one variant of the Dutch Reformed tradition (others include the Reformed Church in America, the Netherlands Reformed Congregations, and the Protestant Reformed Church), and is very common in my area (Iowa, Minnesota). It has long been known for its strictness.

But this denomination apparently deleted the Book of Genesis from the Bible, which I guess means it will have to publish its own Bible excluding the book. As you can imagine, this caused a schism which led to the founding of the United Reformed Church back in '98.

I was just shocked, and I am wondering, why Genesis? Does anyone else know about this or familiar with this denomination?

I've never heard of this. Genesis is the "hinge" upon which the entire Gospel turns - without it, neither the OT nor the NT makes any sense. The salvation offered by Christ the New Adam, the New Moses and as a fulfillment of the universal covenant prefigured in the Noahic and Abrahamic covenants (partially fulfilled in the Davidic) makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! And what about all those passages and allusions in the NT that are taken from Genesis?

Plus, the Pentateuch really should be treated as a single narrative unit. Pick any narrative and imagine deleting 1/5 of the chapters at the beginning. Doesn't it make the reader ask:

Wait a second...

- Who are these characters?
- What are their backgrounds?
- How are they related to one another?
- How did they get here in this situation?
- Why do they act the way they do?

I'm sure these were some of the questions Moses was trying to answer for Israel.

Blessings,

Gordo

I would imagine the truth of the matter is that some scholars have said that the book of Genesis or more precisely the first 13 chapters are no longer to be taken literally but only symbolically. This is in many ways tantamount to removing the book but I doubt seriously that they physically removed the book from their Bibles. But it does make for good gossip, I admit.

CDL

my earliest White ancestors in the US were Dutch Reformed (New Amsterdam 1639) and you can best believe that they were strict.
however, thanks to Barth and the rest of the neo orthodox ilk along with their liberal predescessors, the Old Testamenat has been disregarded, and the Christian Reformed along with the rest of mainline Protestants are floundering in their anti Biblical theology. we have the Wellhausen hypothesis (its matrix was Hegelian thought)with its JEPD system that has trashed the Pentateuch. Rome dances to the tune as any look at the introductory part of the Pentatuech in the NAB will tell.
do all Calvinists follow the line? absolutely not!while the idea that the Christian Reformed eliminating the early chapters of Genesis may be a foolish rumor, let me assure you that such Calvinist bodies as the Presbyterian Church in America hold to Bible inerrancy and the truth of the Pentateuch as the written word of God.and I am in agreemant with that stand.
come on folks, let's avoid rumors, even where the mainline Protestants are concerned, it is a violation of the Commandment that forbids bearing false witness against one's neighbor.
Much Love,
Jonn

I googled Christian Reformed Genesis and came up with a lot of sermons, Bible studies, and more, all from Christian Reformed sources quoting Genesis. If this is so, it must be very limited.

This should be of interest:

The Belgic Confession

The oldest of the doctrinal standards of the Christian Reformed Church is the Confession of Faith, popularly known as the Belgic Confession, following the seventeenth-century Latin designation "Confessio Belgica." "Belgica" referred to the whole of the Netherlands, both north and south, which today is divided into the Netherlands and Belgium. The confession's chief author was Guido de Br�s, a preacher of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands, who died a martyr to the faith in the year 1567.

...

Article 4: The Canonical Books
We include in the Holy Scripture the two volumes of the Old and New Testaments. They are canonical books with which there can be no quarrel at all.

In the church of God the list is as follows: In the Old Testament, the five books of Moses-- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; the books of ...

Source:
http://www.firstchurchsh.net/BelgicConfession.htm

Reformed Church in America:

The following confessions and creeds are statements of Reformed beliefs:

Three historic documents--the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort

Three historic creeds--the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed

Source:
http://www.rca.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=299&srcid=2059

NOTE: The Heidelberg Confession quote Genesis throughout (about 24 times).

Source:
http://www.carm.org/creeds/heidelberg.htm

Genesis is also quoted in the Canons of Dort:

Source:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~jvd@iinet.net.au/Canons/ch2art1-5.htm

Christian Reformed Church

Bible: Authority

History
The issue of biblical authority was raised because of theological unrest in the Netherlands in 1969 and the influence of that unrest on the CRC. The initial overtures on this subject, to Synod 1969, were concerned about CRC seminarians going to study at the Free University of Amsterdam, where professors were teaching new methods of interpreting Scripture, especially the first chapters of Genesis. Synod 1968 denied the overtures to look into the matter because they concerned teachings of men from another denomination. However, the following year, synod agreed that the issue was also affecting the CRC and therefore commissioned a study committee. In 1971 the report of that study committee was referred to the churches and to the Reformed Ecumenical Synod. In 1972 seven recommendations from the report were adopted, and the report was published for further study under the title "The Nature and Extent of Biblical Authority." Objections to the report in subsequent years were not sustained by synod.

References
Acts of Synod 1968, pp. 93-95, 574-77, 584, 588
Acts of Synod 1969, pp. 101, 501-04
Acts of Synod 1970, pp. 53, 240
Acts of Synod 1971, pp. 102-03, 106, 128, 459-95, 664-65
Acts of Synod 1972, pp. 66-69, 493-546, 627-28, 641, 644-47
Acts of Synod 1973, pp. 33-34, 46, 717, 731-33
Acts of Synod 1974, pp. 105, 644-45
Acts of Synod 1977, pp. 98-101, 682-84, 699

Source:
http://www.crcna.org/pages/positions_authority.cfm


Sincerely,
Joe Thur

Hi,

For what is worth, I believe Genesis is a nightmare for "Sola Scriptura" Christians.

How many times did God create the universe once or twice?

If twice, what happened to "the other" universe. If once, then why we have two mutually contradictory accounts of it?

After Cain killed Abel, who was Cain afraid from to fear for his life? Who is this wife if his, where did she come from?

Were there really people living 900+ years? How does that play with archeological evidence of human civilization well beyond the 6000 year (give or take) time frame that the dates of Genesis suggests?

I mean, if I believed all these passages to be literally and historically correct, I would have a very hard time with modern science. I would be very tempted to dump one of them either Genesis or modern science, as perversely untruthful.

Shalom,
Memo

Memo,

The majority of fundamentalists I know who rigidly adhere to sola scriptura reject modern science completely. For an example: http://www.answersingenesis.org/museum/

One of those fundamentalist literalist guys was on TV and he showed a Romanian coin with this image on it:

[Linked Image]

He then said that this proves that people up until the Middle Ages were still fighting and killing dinosaurs! :p :rolleyes:

Memo,

You touch on a number of issues that I wish I had time to address, but I do not at present. I will only offer three brief points as a matter of consideration:

1. Underlying all of your assumptions here is that Sacred Scripture contains error. This clearly contradicts the patristic witness regarding the inspiration and inerrancy of the sacred writings, and the proper posture a Christian should have when approaching and interpreting the Bible:

Saint Augustine

Saint Clement of Rome

Saint Irenaeus
Saint Justin Martyr

Saint Athanasius

Saint Gregory Nanzianzus

Saint Epiphanius

Saint John Chrysostom

Saint Jerome

Within our Christian worldview, Sacred Scripture has dual authorship - divine and human. It is not possible that error can be intermingled with divine revelation since that would make God the author of such error in which case He would not be God and we might as well pack our spiritual bags and go somewhere else.

While some may argue that these Church fathers are only reflecting an antiquated view of the sacred writings that we moderns can disregard, I would offer two arguments sed contra: a) Given their close proximity to the events in the sacred writings and to the time of the apostles, the fathers come closer to reflecting the true mind of the Christian Church in interpreting these Scriptures b) If we can cast aspersions on the teaching of the fathers on this matter, why not on other matters of doctrine and belief?

2. According to the patristic method of exegesis (aka "the quadriga") the foundation or "sacrament" of the spiritual meaning of the text is its literal/historical meaning. I could no sooner accept the spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament which the Gospel represents while doubting its true historical character (when properly understood) than I could accept a meal that has just a "little bit of poison" mixed in with it. There are spiritual consequences to error and it cannot coexist with the truth.

3. So - all of this begs the question: if from the perspective of faith (especially as taught by the fathers) one cannot acccept the notion of the admixture of error in an inspired text, how does one reconcile that with the difficulties of passages and events like the ones you mentioned and science and our "modern" experience?

Here are a few additional thoughts worth considering in light of the patristic method:

http://www.rtforum.org/study/lesson4.html

I would only offer that if there is any limitation to inerrancy it is in our own understanding and interpretation of what the text is intending to communicate and not in the text itself. Deference must be given at all times to what is divinely revealed in and through the inspired writings - which includes the events properly interpreted. Inerrancy and infallibility are the natural corrollaries to inspiration. Otherwise our whole faith is a castle built on sand!

As to the specific texts you mention, it will take a bit more time to respond to these. But I thought I would deal at first with your underlying assumptions in light of patristic and magisterial principles of interpretation.

Blessings,

Gordo

Gordo,

Look again at the quote you posted from St. John Chrysostom. He says that there are discrepencies in the text, but they do not significantly affect anything that is taught as doctrine.

If you were to do an extensive study of biblical interpretation in the early Church, you would find that a number of authors had difficulty with the discrepencies in Scripture. Even more problematic to them, was the depiction of God in the Old Testament. It was common to see allegorical method as the answer to these problems. Here is one way of thinking about it. God inspired the authors of Scripture but he didn't take away their own limited historical and cultural perspectives. The epistle of Hebrews says that the prophets only spoke of God in a partial way. Complete revelation is given through the Son. I would suggest that this means that not all Scripture is equal in terms of the clarity of its revelation. Older parts of Scripture have the revelation of God more obscurely present. Hence, the Israelites believed that their acts of genocide against the canaanites and God's wiping out the first born of Egypt were orders given from God. Rather, I would suggest that the obscure revelation in these passages is that God will honor his covenants and will see to the victory of his people. Perhaps, this is in spite of their sins.

For the fathers, especially the desert fathers, it was common to allegorize such passages by suggesting that the Israelites actions against the canannites were really meant to symbolize the actions we should take against the demons in our spiritual life.

Finally, it was common for many fathers to say that God intentionally put contradictions in the bible in order to make us move beyond the literal text and see the true spiritual meaning hidden in it. This was most common among the Alexandrian fathers, Origen and St. Clement of Alexandria.

I don't think that we should take an all or nothing approach to biblical inerrancy and literalism. This is what fundamentalist protestants do and, honestly, I think they end up with a view of reality that is simply incoherent. Revelation is progressive and it is only fully given in the New Testament. The best way to interpret the Old Testament is to do so Christologically. All of Scripture is the witness to the Word of God, Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ who is the Word of God. And the Scriptures are the Word of God in that they testify of him (see Karl Barth). Peace in Christ,

Joe

The reference here is to the Gospels specifically, I believe, which is a topic unto itself. Nothing that is written in the Gospels cannot be reconcilied through a proper canonical reading, which respects the structure the author intended as well as the event character of what is conveyed.

That certainly is one argument, but I do not think it respects the narrative, nor does it respect the inspired nature of the text. One has to read it in context through the lens of divine accomodation. God stoops down to our lowliness in order to raise us up to His heights. It was in the spirit of this accomodation, for instance, that Moses permitted divorce and remarriage (after the pivotal recapitulated Fall with the Golden Calf incident). It was permitted as an accomodation to Israel's weakness since Israel was in such a spiritual state at the time that the men would have murdered their wives to remarry!

The annihilation of the Canaanites, without trying to oversimplify it all, is another example of divine accomodation. Taken in narrative context, the Canaanites were interlopers on Israel's land and, as the cursed descendants of Ham they were the sources of some of the most corrupting influences in the land, including human sacrifices and orgiastic ritualism. The cleansing of the land commanded by God should also be seen in terms of Israel's failure to be a light to the nations and her perpetual desire rather to be LIKE the nations. Israel became the instrument of God's judgement against the Canaanites yes, but also because Israel would be too tempted by cohabitating with the Canaanites (and in fact did give in when the commands of God were not followed) since she was weak and prone to falling and unable to convert them. All of this has to be seen in light of Israel's divine vocation to be a soure of salvation to the nations in light of the universal promise to Abraham.

One risks slipping into a form of neo-Marcionism by forcing expectations from a new covenant perspective into one's reading of the Old Testament texts. As the fathers say, God treated Israel with the medicine she needed at a particular stage of her illness - or, to use another analogy, God fed Israel with the food and teaching she needed at her particular stage of development. Marcion (and the Gnostics) asserted that the Old Testament God was a different god altogether because they could not reconcile the Gospel teaching with the commands to kill Canaanites, the different ritual laws, etc etc. This presented a real issue for the early Church, especially when trying to convert pagans. How could they reconcile the differences between the testaments and still worship the same God? The key to its proper interpretation as argued by the fathers is divine accomodation.

(Perhaps the best synthesis of this patristic teaching can be found in Stephen Benin's The Footprints of God: Divine Accomodation in Jewish and Christian Thought [amazon.com] . Benin is a Jewish scholar who is very conversant with the patristic attempts to reconcile the Old and New Testaments. His treatment is masterful, IMHO, and he resurrects an ancient approach that is lost on many contemporary scholars - especially as it pertains to the "fall" with the Golden Calf.)

But allegory as used by the fathers (Origen's over allegorizing tendencies may be the exception - although I may be being unfair to him) always respected the event character of the literal meaning. Using the Canaanite example, to be sure one could read the passages tropologically (that is, at the moral level of spiritual exegesis) and see in the "cleansing" of the land the command to remove all demonic influences from the terrain of the heart - sort of a cleansing of the spiritual middle earth/homeland! But it is IMPOSSIBLE to say that a non-event can prefigure anything. If God did not command Israel to cleanse the land, than no amount of "spiritualizing" of the text will change the fact that what is being put forward as revelation is really falsified.

The two concepts - biblical inerrancy and literalism - need to be treated as distinct realities. I advocate for biblical inerrancy when the text is properly understood, but not biblical literalism. Biblical literalism should not be confused with either canonical interpretation or the literary meaning of the text. I sit with fear and trepidation at the feet of an exegetical master like Saint Augustine, not Billy Sunday or the Scofield Reference Bible commentary team. You need to avoid lumping the two together, or buying into the tendency of modern schlarship to assume anyone who would respect the inspired nature of the text (as opposed to taking a prosecutorial posture as they do) as well as the canonical context is a fundamentalist. Such labels are inaccurate and unhelpful.

Be careful here. Taken to its furthest conclusion, you are undermining the inspired nature of the Old Testament which unwittingly removes the foundation of the New Testament, which is the "spiritual interpretation" of the Old. You may also risk slipping into forms of Marcionism.

The fullness of revelation given in the New Testament does not preclude, but rather ASSUMES the revelatory and inspired nature of the Old Testament. To say otherwise is to completely contradict none other than Saint Paul and his inspired writings in the Pauline corpus of the same New Testament!

Agreed, and there are many wonderful works to suppport this, beginning with the New Testament! But again, the spiritual reading of the Old Testament assumes and respects its event character, when properly read and understood according to its narrative context and literary meaning.

Peace be the pilgrimage,

Gordo

Thanks for the comments here, Joe. Very informative and expressed well especially the above paragraph.

In Christ,

Porter

Porter,

Respectfully, I disagree.

Actually many of the issues we face in the Church are due to the fact that many biblical theologians, catechists and the faithful have lost touch with patristic methods of exegesis while labelling as "fundamentalist" what is in fact the position of the fathers.

Labels such as these are "thought bombs" that shock, shame and silence, but do not serve thoughtful exegesis or dialogue. They can serve the purpose of making us feel comfortable being dismissive of what is in fact part of the deposit of faith when it is inconvenient or difficult to reconcile with modern views and sympathies.

As for me, I cannot reconcile faith with the notion that Sacred Scripture is not to be trusted to the Church and her teaching authority and Tradition, but rather to exegetical "experts" whose underlying assumptions (some driven by their own philosophical or theological bias, as well as political and career aspirations - hence then Cardinal Ratzinger's suggestion that we should apply the historical-critical methods to the critics themselves!) usually place the burden of proof on the deposit of faith rather than on their wild and presumptuous theories and "demythologizing" tendencies that only undermine the faith.

The Scriptures are - first and foremost - an ecclesiastical text, and, as I have seen argued recently, a liturgical text. Certainly such an approach annihilates many of the tenents of biblical fundamentalism and literalism, but it does not require questioning the inspiration or inerrancy of the text. I would much rather question my own assumptions and interpretive abilities than the text itself, respecting the canonical narrative as received but without imposing on it either fundamentalist or modernist categories of thought. The Scriptures must be read within the context of the Church in general and the Church's worship in particular.

Peace,

Gordo

Gordo, how would you treat the following alleged contradictions?

1.) The buying of the potter's field & death of Judas:

Matthew 27:3f-When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, take the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money." So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day..."

Acts 1:16f- "Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus, For he was numbered among us, and was allotted his share in this ministry. (Now this man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowls gushed out, and it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)....

2.) The death of Saul

I Samuel 31:4f-Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword, and thrust me through, and make sport of me." But his armorbearer would not; for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. And when his armorbearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword, and died with him..."

II Samuel 1:5f-Then David said to the young man who told him, "How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?" And the young man who told him said, "By chance I happened to be on Mount Giloba and there was Saul leaning upon his spear; and lo, the chariots and the horsemen were close upon him, he saw me, and called to me. And I answered, 'Here I am.' And he said to me, 'Who are you?" I answered him, 'I am an Amalekite.' And he said to me, Stand beside me and slay me; for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.' So I stood beside him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen..."

These seem like clear contradictions to me. God bless. Peace in Christ,

Joe