The Basic Plot of Scripture, Part 1

What is the Bible about? Can we reduce it to a basic plot summary? Like any other literature, it tells a story. Some elements are crucial; other elements elaborate. Granted that everything God says is true and important, He nevertheless emphasizes some things over others. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit superintended the arrangement of revelation into a particular form and order. What is that form and order? What can it teach about God’s purposes in history? Can it function as a basic “road map” for biblical interpretation, providing orientation in more difficult Scripture passages? Can it inform ethics or apologetics?

The storyline of Scripture presents three basic ideas: creation, the fall, and redemption. Genesis introduces each of these themes early on; each continues throughout the whole of Scripture; and each finds its conclusion in Revelation. The themes of creation, fall, and redemption are like three poles of a teepee, leaning against one another. If one goes down, they all go down, for we define and understand each in light of the other two. This series of articles begins by laying the exegetical groundwork for these three themes. Then I suggest a few areas in which a right understanding of these themes can help us.

Creation

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). From the first verse, the Bible presents God the Creator and everything else as the creation. This Creator-creature distinction remains the most fundamental distinction in Christian thought. That God speaks everything into existence says something about His power. (“And it was so… . And it was so.”) What He spoke into existence—light, dark, water, air, earth, flora, sun, moon, stars, fish, fowl, fauna—says something about His goodness. (Even today, one glance at an elephant reveals a great deal about God’s overflow of goodness. If you fail to see the point here, bring a child with you.) He Himself is pleased with His work: “And God saw that it was good.” Also observe that while the Bible was not written to teach anything about Ptolemaic or Copernican astronomy, it does teach a kind of geocentrism: God’s attention is on the earth, and He gave even the celestial bodies for the sake of giving light and marking time (Gen. 1:14). The earth is not the center of the solar system, but it is the center of God’s activities.

God’s attention focuses more narrowly on day six: He created mankind “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27). A first-time reader thus far knows one principal thing about God: God is the Creator. If God made mankind in His image, mankind must be creative. It should be no surprise, then, that God gave mankind dominion over creation and told us to be procreative. Procreation is the closest approximation to ex nihilo creation mankind will ever know: in procreation, somehow (the exact means is debated and not important here), a new eternal soul begins its existence. Dominion, also known as subduing the earth, is part of what separates mankind from the beasts. Mankind has the capacity to build a civilization with complex communication, economics, progress, education, and so forth. Although we can teach beasts bits and pieces of humanlike behavior, they will never build a civilization out of it. A bird’s nest is a marvel, but birds design their nests the same way year after year: they don’t go in for heat efficiency, garbage disposals, or picture windows. Lassie can tell us that Timmy is in a well, but Lassie will never teach a class in first aid.

So mankind should engage in creativity and procreativity. In fact, mankind’s procreative and creative capacities are intertwined: we will need more than one man and one woman to subdue the earth. We will also need a larger economy (“workforce”?). Adam exercised dominion right away by naming animals. How can we work efficiently with “stuff” and “things” without more specific verbiage than “stuff” and “things”? Notice that God leaves this task to Adam: God could have given Adam a guided tour with pre-established terms and definitions, but He didn’t.

This passage also presents order, personality, and fellowship. Concerning order (and authority), the God who has the ability to make both men and trees has the authority to say from which trees men may eat. God has already given a kind of command—along with His blessing, God has given the command to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. God gave tremendous amount of flexibility as to how this command is executed. Given mankind’s capacities and proclivities, one might almost say that obedience to this command would “come naturally.” But then God issued another command about a particular tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat from that tree. Period. No reason given other than, “Because I said so.” (“Thou shalt surely die” is a threatened consequence of disobedience, not the grounds for the command. “Thou shalt surely die” is better approximated by, “If you touch Mommy’s blown glass collection, I will spank you” than by “If you touch the hot stove, you will burn your hand.”) In addition to the order we see in the relationship between God and man, we also see an order between man and woman. If we import our New Testament understanding, we know that the man-to-woman relationship—with the woman as a fitting help—is an earthly replica of the God-to-His-people relationship (Eph. 5:32; Rev. 21:9–14).

Concerning personality and fellowship, we see God taking pleasure in His own handiwork during His Sabbath rest and later Adam appreciating Eve’s virtues. Both God and mankind have the capacity for happiness, aesthetic experience, delight. They can also delight in sharing the world and sharing themselves with other persons. The shameless nakedness seems to suggest uninhibited intimacy: what was there to hide? What ought to be held back? Later, when Adam and Eve do hide, we learn that enjoying direct fellowship with God Himself was evidently customary. And their marriage union is called a “one flesh” union.

We can say much more about creation, but this is a basic overview.

Fall

In light of such a glorious creation and God’s overflowing goodness, we see the fall for the enormity that it is. How? How could a creature be so ungrateful as to disobey the single restriction in a wide and wonderful world? (If you look within yourself, you may find hints of the answer.) Until now, everything obeyed the voice of the Lord. Now that word was questioned. The serpent questioned the Word of God, directly contradicted it, and left Adam and Eve to obey or disobey, to continue to believe what God has said or to strike out for themselves to see whether God knew what He was talking about.

The serpent’s promise is highly ironic: he promised them that eating from the forbidden tree would make them “as gods” (Gen. 3:5). But God had already made them like Himself. Adam and Eve were as like God as they could get. Their sin brought death to their souls and then to their bodies. God is alive; He has breathed into mankind the breath of life. By sinning, mankind lost that connection to the God who is alive, lost immortality, and became subject to the physical processes that degrade them back into dust. They think they’ll ascend to heaven, but instead descend into the grave (and beyond, were it not for God’s mercy).

The consequences were immediate. Communication was broken. Nakedness was no longer innocent; Adam and Eve had something to hide. Instead of working together in mutual love, they pulled each other down and shifted blame.

God cursed this disobedience, and the punishment fit the crime. God gave mankind two tasks—creation and procreation—both to be carried out by God’s direction and blessing. Mankind has refused God’s authority and hence forfeited His blessing and instead received a curse. While mankind rebelled against God, now creation would rebel against mankind. Adam expected resistance in his work (thorns, thistles, sweat, vanity); Eve expected multiplied sorrow and pain in childbirth. The harmony God intended to mark a marriage was now strained, and man and woman will compete rather than complement.

The sum total of this curse is death (cf. Rom. 6:23). Every earthly woe—hardship, frustration, strife, pain, alienation from God—is just a prelude to death. Thus the term “fall” includes both what the fall is—unbelief, pride, covetousness—and its consequences—a curse on creation and procreation that culminates in death. Were it not for God’s intervention, this curse and all it includes would have been mankind’s sole expectation. Certainly Adam and Eve expected no better, or else they were terrified to presume upon God’s mercy: they were hiding from Him. If they had come out and asked for mercy at this point in history, such a request would in fact have been presumption. What did they know of redemption? Nothing. Redemption is God’s prerogative, and since it springs from His own private counsels, it is something only He can reveal.

Redemption

The early chapters of Genesis spend little time developing the idea of redemption. Redemption is developed throughout the rest of Scripture. Yes, both creation and fall are developed throughout the rest of Scripture, but God’s plan of redemption becomes the driving force in the plot of Scripture, right on into its eschatological conclusion.

For now, Genesis begins with the promise of redemption, packed into an enigmatic prediction that enmity would be between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, but that the seed of the woman would finally crush the serpent’s head and in so doing incur a wound to the heal. We find the whole plan of redemption compressed into a few lines of Hebrew poetry: there would be two “seeds,” one the offspring of the Devil, the other of the woman; one wicked and rebellious, the other righteous. Someday the seed of the woman (Christ Himself in the ultimate sense, but all of Christ’s people in a lesser sense) will crush the serpent’s head. Christ will end the power of sin; He will put Satan to shame; He will interpose His blood to justify sinners and render Satan’s accusations groundless. But for now, we read, “seed.” This term, this idea of lineage, becomes important as Scripture progresses. (Hold the thought.)

We also see God’s redemption in His merciful dealings with Adam and Eve. Even when stripped of its foreshadowing of vicarious blood atonement, God’s provision of animal skins to clothe Adam and Eve is a gracious gesture. He helped them cover their shame more adequately.

Conclusion to the Introduction

Genesis 1–3 introduces these three themes like a symphony in three movements: creation and its attendant programs of creativity and procreativity, the fall and its attendant consequences, and redemption and its eschatological consequences. Creation is in a major key, the fall in a minor key, but redemption in a major key once again.

The story of Scripture moves on, but it does not leave creation, fall, and redemption in the first three chapters of Genesis. Rather, it takes all three right through the remainder of Genesis, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. They may not always be discussed with such directness, or in such close proximity to each other, but they are always there somewhere, and they can help us navigate our way through Scripture better. When we understand them in relation to one another, they can also help us navigate daily ethics and even apologetics. The next installment in this series of articles will discuss the themes’ continuation throughout the rest of Scripture.

Michael Osborne received a B.A. in Bible and an M.A. in Church History from Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC). He co-authored the teacher’s editions of two BJU Press high school Bible comparative religions textbooks What Is Truth? and Who Is This Jesus?; and contributed essays to the appendix of The Dark Side of the Internet. He lives with his wife, Becky, and his daughters, Felicity and Elinor, in Omaha, Nebraska, where they are active members at Good Shepherd Baptist Church. Mike plans to pursue a further degree in apologetics.