Dr Paul Allen

In Genesis 6:1–4, the reader encounters one of the most challenging passages in all of Scripture to interpret. Here’s the passage in the ESV. When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Echoes from Genesis 1–3 People multiplying is an echo of Genesis 1. God made “man” (Gen 1:26–27), and then he commissioned his image-bearers to be fruitful and “multiply” (1:28). In 6:1, we read of this multiplication happening. The reference to God as “Spirit” in Genesis 6:3 reminds us of 1:2, the second verse in the Bible. There, th...

When Did Sin Begin? : Human Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin, Calvin University physics professor Loren Haarsma surveys the current state of this debate, outlining the prevailing schools of thought among evangelicals without taking a particular side. Jay Johnson, a former journalist and frequent writer on topics of science and faith, reviewed the book. “Drawing from a dozen recent books on the subject,” writes Johnson, “Haarsma runs through the four main options: God selected Adam and Eve from an existing population to represent all of humanity. Since they represented everyone, the consequences of their failure immediately affected everyone. God selected Adam and Eve from an existing population to represent humanity, but after being expelled from the Garden, their sinfulness was spread to others by culture or genealogy. Adam and Eve aren’t literal individuals. Rather, Genesis 2–3 is a stylized retelling of many human events compressed into a single archetypal story. Although ...

The teaching of Scripture on the subject of human origins is foundational to the rest of the Bible. It is also vital to our understanding of who we are as humans in relationship to God and to the rest of creation. This should not be surprising, as every culture in history has had a set of origin stories that answer similar questions. The theory of evolution functions in this role for many modern people — as an explanatory story of origins rather than as a technical account of scientific processes. Did mankind gradually evolve from various lower life-forms, rising by a purely naturalistic process until finally reaching our present state (as taught by naturalistic evolution)? In that case, the biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve is, at best, a figurative myth that may describe the human condition, but has no connection with actual events. This is the BioLogos position. Or was the slow onward and upward progress toward humanity steered by God and perhaps decisi...

The conclusion below will be drawn from silence, and cannot be taken dogmatically. It is inferential only, and the final answer will have to be one that we seldom like, ‘we will have to wait and see.’ However, just because something is drawn from silence does not necessarily mean it is not true. We have absolutely no record that Jesus ever bathed, but we can be almost certain that he did. It is certainly true that both Adam and Eve attempted to sidestep their responsibility of eating from the forbidden tree. Adam blamed Eve, while Eve blamed the serpent. However, both did not deny that they had actually violated the command. God has said that if you eat from this tree, “you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:17) That was the explicit punishment, death. Their sentence was to “suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.” (2 Thess 1:9) The reason that this could be said is, justice required death, with no provision for anything else at the time that they were given the command. It does ...

Christians are often taught to interpret the Bible literally. There are problems that can come out of overemphasizing literal interpretation.  If we interpret the text at face value, so the idea goes, we’ll more often than not be interpreting Scripture correctly. This approach—though well-intentioned—isn’t always the best strategy, for several reasons. One is that the most straightforward reading can produce bizarre outcomes. Genesis 4:1 is a case in point: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.’” We might look at this verse and see nothing amiss, but the English translation is concealing a controversial problem. In Hebrew, Eve says, “qanithi ish eth-YHWH.” The English words “the help of” were supplied by the translator of the ESV; they are not represented in the Hebrew text. In addition, the Hebrew verb qanah (the basic form of the word qanithi, translated “I have gotten” in the ESV) el...

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” ( Genesis 2:18). Throughout Genesis 1 we see God pronouncing His creation as good. Then in Genesis 2, e find God saying that something is not good: loneliness. Even though Adam had the fellowship of God, the situation was not good until he also had the fellowship of other human beings . Loneliness is a serious problem in our day, that has been further complicated by sin. Many of our technological advances only serve to increase personal loneliness and alientation. God made the woman from the flesh of the man and brought her to be his helper. It is difficult to discuss the role of the wife as a helper to her husband because in our society men have so grossly perverted this function of the woman. The feminist movement is largely the result of the abuse and degredation of women in pornography, the increasingly widespread phenomenon of incest, and the failure of men to lovingly pr...

For by him all things were created (Colossians 1:16a). The word for God in Genesis 1:1 and the Old Testament is elohim, which is the plural of the Hebrew el. The verb create is singular, however, so we cannot translate the verse “the gods created,” but rather we must see the plural elohim as referring to a singular Being. Because elohim is used, however, many expositors in church history believe this is a cloaked reference to the Trinity. The Bible makes it clear that all three Persons of the Godhead were involved in the creation, and so it is felt that the use of a plural word here and elsewhere in the Old Testament is a hint of the tri-unity of God. We cannot be dogmatic about this, however, since in Hebrew the plural form is often a plural of majesty, as when a king uses we to refer to himself. Christians often believe that creation was the work of the Father , redemption of the Son, and sanctification of the Spirit. Actually, all three Persons are involved in each. We ...

When Scripture calls God , or individual Persons of the Godhead, "holy" (as it often does:  Lev. 11: 44, 45; Josh. 24:19; 1 Sam. 2:2; Ps. 99:9; Is. 1 :4; 6:3; 41 :14, 16, 20; 57:15; Ezek. 39:7; Amos 4:2; John 17: 11; Acts 5:3, 4, 32; Rev. 15:4), the word signifies everything about God that sets Him apart from us and makes Him an object of awe, adoration, and dread to us.  It covers all aspects of His transcendent greatness and moral perfection, and is characteristic of all His attributes, pointing to the "Godness" of God at every point. The core of this truth, however, is God's purity that cannot tolerate any form of sin (Hab. 1: 13) and calls sinners to constant self-abasement in His presence (Is. 6:5). Justice, which means doing in all circumstances things that are right, is one expression  of God's holiness. God displays His justice as Lawgiver and Judge, and also as Promise keeper and Pardoner of sin. His moral law, requiring behavio...