PAPER NO. 85

AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY

  1. INTRODUCTION
  1. Historic Christianity is based on the Bible (Special Revelation or Scripture).
  2. The basic themes of biblical revelation are creation, fall, and redemption.
  3. Scripture is redemptive revelation. It assumes the reality of sin in the rejection of the word of God in man as reason and in the creation as clear general revelation.
  4. Scripture is the word of God written. It reveals how God is both just and merciful to man in sin.
  5. Scripture focuses on the person and work of Christ, the word of God incarnate, who restores mankind to life in the knowledge of God.
  6. Biblical revelation is organic, a unity that grows. In Genesis 1–3 is given the foundation of Scripture in organic seed form. Scripture builds on, is to be understood by, and is the development of what is revealed here. Understanding the beginning is necessary for understanding all that follows.
  7. Understanding the Bible assumes the use of reason and knowledge of general revelation to understand its terms and the implications of its statements.
  1. CREATION—GENESIS 1

    1. Original creation is ex nihilo; there was no pre-existent material. This is opposed to pantheism (everything is a part of God) and to dualism (both matter and spirit are eternal). Only God is eternal. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in being, wisdom and power.

Subsequent creation are acts of forming (by separation) of the original substance of creation and filling.

  1. Creation is revelation. The whole earth is full of the glory of God.

The acts of God necessarily reveal his nature.

The revelation was intentional. Everything created was good, as intended.

The revelation of creation is exclusive. There is no other revelation apart from creation.

  1. Each kind of being is created directly by God. This is opposed to theistic evolution.
  2. Man is created in the image of God. Man is finite, temporal and changeable in being, wisdom, power, justice, goodness holiness and truth. These are formal characteristics which man never ceases to have regardless of how their content may change. Man will always be devoted (be holy) whether he is devoted to God or to self. Man will always have beliefs about truth, whether he believes God exists or believes there is no God.

Male and female are both aspects of the image of God. These characteristics are in God, spiritually, and originate from God.

  1. Knowledge of God is through the work of dominion. Man’s calling is to rule in the creation. By this rule he is to develop the powers latent in himself and in the creation. As God’s work of creation is revelation of the glory of God, so man’s work of dominion is to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God.
  2. Original creation was very good. There was no moral or natural evil. Animals were given the green vegetation for food. Human beings did not die.
  3. The Sabbath signifies that the work of creation is completed. A new work, the work of providence, upholding and directing the creation, begins and continues.

The Sabbath is to be observed by man who is the image of God. As God completed his work of creation, so man will complete his work of dominion.

The Sabbath is a perpetual reminder to man of his origin—God created all things; of his destiny—through dominion man is to fill the earth with the knowledge of God; and of hope—man’s work will be completed.

  1. THE COVENANT OF CREATION—GENESIS 2

The purpose of the covenant made with man in the Garden is to accomplish God’s gracious purpose to bring man from a state in which he could sin, to a state in which he cannot fall away from God.

  1. Man is created a body-soul unity.

Man is not created as an angel, nor is he a soul that happens to be in a body.

Man is not an already living body to which a soul is added.

The separation of soul and body by physical death is unnatural.

The state of the soul in heaven without the body is an unnatural condition due to sin. Redemption requires the resurrection of the body.

  1. Man is created to dwell on the earth. All natural needs are provided for in Eden.

Eden is the biological, geographical and historical center of life on earth: all human life flows from Eden; all plant and animal life flow from Eden.

  1. Man has a choice between good and evil, between life and death. These two ways are visibly represented by the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

By understanding the nature of things Adam had understanding of good and evil and life and death. Good for man is based on his nature, made in the image of God, and capable of understanding. Evil is to act contrary to that nature. Good was to acknowledge his nature and purpose as determined by God, to know God. Evil was to deny one’s creatureliness and seek to determine good and evil independently of God who, as creator of the nature of things, determines good and evil.

  1. God’s covenant with man involves representation and probation. As covenant head of the human race, Adam represents the entire race. His act will affect all men and all of nature. The probation is a time of testing regarding his choice of good or evil. The outward act of eating or not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will reveal whether he has pursued the knowledge of God as the good or whether he has denied God as creator and is determining good and evil from himself. In the day he denies God he will die, spiritually.
  2. The covenant of marriage reflects man’s relationship with God and is fulfilled in man’s relationship with God.

Adam begins his work of dominion; in naming the creation he shows his understanding of the revelation of God in the creation. In doing this work he sees his need for help and his difference from the rest of creation. God’s creation of a suitable helper establishes the context of marriage. Marriage is to serve God’s purpose for man, not man’s purpose for himself. Marriage is for dominion and the knowledge of God. Companionship is an effect of serving this purpose, and children, in the generations to come, are to serve this purpose. All mankind together are to glorify and enjoy God forever. Marriage and childbearing ends when the work of dominion is completed.

In the creation of a suitable helper, what was one in man became two persons, and the two persons are to become one in marriage, establishing a new unity. She is called ‘woman’ for she was taken ‘out of man.’ There is an equality of persons in that she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. There is a diversity of persons in distinct functions—the man leaves his father and mother; the woman is given in marriage.

  1. THE FALL OF MAN—GENESIS 3

    1. Man is created in a state of moral innocence and purity. They felt no shame in either their inward or outward condition.

The fall of man is a change in the condition of man from righteousness and life to sin and death.

The account of the fall of man depicts the original sin and accounts for how sin at its root originates.

  1. The temptation of man is not the cause of sin but is a test which serves to reveal the inward condition of man, whether he has been pursuing the knowledge of God as the good.
  2. Temptation begins with questioning the meaning of God’s command. It goes on to deny the consequence of spiritual death for disobedience (you shall not surely die), and offers instead the impossible promise of attaining divinity (you shall be like God, knowing good and evil.)
  3. Before the outward act of sin, the inward act of believing what is false about sin and death and about the difference between God and man, had already occurred. This lack of understanding the difference between the finite creature and the infinite God reveals that man had ceased seeking to know God and had not retained elementary truth about God. Inwardly he had already put himself in the place of God to determine good and evil. The outward act of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil naturally followed this inward reality.
  4. In the account of the fall of man there is a clear revelation of the nature of sin.

Sin is not seeking God, not understanding, and not doing what is right.

Sin is unbelief, unholiness and unrighteousness.

Sin is the failure to see what is clear (the difference between the infinite creator God and finite man.)

Sin is the failure to use reason to see what is clear.

Sin is the denial of one’s nature as a rational being to avoid what is clear.

Sin is autonomy, the denial of one’s creaturely dependence on God.

Sin is putting oneself in the place of God.

  1. The inherent consequence of sin is spiritual death. It is the necessary consequence of the denial of one’s nature. Inwardly it is meaninglessness, boredom and guilt. Outwardly, it is the breakdown and reversal of the order established by creation.
  1. REDEMPTION—GENESIS 3

    1. Redemption is the act of God by which man is brought out of sin and death to righteousness and life. It begins with the call to repentance, the forgiveness of sin and the removal of the power of sin. It culminates in the completion of dominion and the earth being filled with the knowledge of God.
    2. The first call to repentance is inward, through one’s conscience, and is felt as shame. Man’s response is to avoid it by covering up sin in self-deception.
    3. The second call to repentance is outward, through a question, ‘Where are you?’ calling for self-examination. Man’s response to this call is to avoid it by self-justification. He blames the woman and God for his act of disobedience.
    4. The third call to repentance is through the curse and the promise. It is the final and continuing call to all men, made necessary by man’s continuing self-deception and self-justification. The curse is not punishment which is inherent to sin; it is the imposition of natural evil on man and the creation in increasing intensity, to call man to stop and think. It serves to restrain, recall and restore man from moral evil. It is first manifested in toil, strife, old age, sickness and death. It is more fully manifested in war, famine and plague. Natural evil will be removed when moral evil is removed and there is no more call to repentance.
    5. In the promise, the order of creation is to be restored through spiritual warfare, age-long and agonizing, until good overcomes evil. The promised seed of the woman will bring this about.
    6. Man’s response to the third call is repentance and faith. He accepts the curse and believes the promise and will obey and be fruitful. His faith and obedience is seen in naming his wife Eve.
    7. God’s first response to man’s faith is to justify man by covering his guilt through an atoning sacrifice. Man is given the garment of skin to cover his nakedness.
    8. God’s second response is to sanctify man by expulsion from the Garden to suffer the effects of the curse. He is prevented from re-entering the Garden to avoid the curse of death. There is no life apart from the knowledge of God, and now, under sin, there is no knowledge of God apart from suffering in the work of dominion.
  2. REDEMPTIVE HISTORY
  1. Biblical history is the unfolding of man’s response to God’s revelation in creation and Scripture. Original creation was very good. It revealed the glory of God. Evil was permitted to serve God’s purpose. It deepened the revelation of God’s glory. Evil is allowed to work itself out in history in every form of unbelief and every cultural expression of unbelief.
  2. Biblical history unfolds through several epochs of apostasy, curse, deepened revelation and renewal leading up to the coming of Christ. Biblical revelation ends in a vision of continued spiritual warfare between belief and unbelief until the work of dominion is completed in which good overcomes evil and the earth is filled with the knowledge of God.

This paper was originally developed for an Introduction to Christianity course.


© 1999 Logos Papers Press