THE FIRST CHAPTERS OF EVERYTHING
How Genesis 1-4 explains our world
By Alasdair Paine
Christian Focus. 189 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 781 913 239
He is a brave man who takes on the task of explaining what Genesis 1-4 is all about!
But Alasdair Paine is a brave man and he refuses to let sceptical scientific theories frighten him away from what are arguably the most important chapters in the Bible. After all, as the title succinctly suggests, if these are the ‘first chapters of everything’ a wrong exit at this point leads to the ‘badlands’ of ignorance, confusion and despair, which is pretty well where Western society is today. Put simply, if you foul up on Genesis 1-4, you foul up everywhere.
But the author is also an experienced preacher. He knows how to make complicated ideas manageable. He also uses helpful illustrations and witty asides; best of all he’s lucid and easy to read.
His purpose is also crystal clear. This is not meant to be ‘a technical academic commentary’ nor ‘an attempt to show the relationship between …Genesis and scientific discovery’ (p. 7). His focus is the message of Genesis 1-4. When necessary, he adds ‘Extra Notes’ after some chapters and comments briefly on contested subjects.
Reliable guide
On key issues he proves a reliable guide: Genesis isn’t about proving God’s existence, but it is the only account that is intellectually coherent; it is intricately crafted and, in parts, stylised, but it is real history; the separate creation of man and woman is vital; human beings are made to be the rulers of what surrounds them, but their being and not just their status as ‘rulers’ (as some teach) constitutes them in God’s image; human physical death came through human sin; sex is good but marriage is to be between a man and a woman only – and so on.
But, to return to the book’s focus again, the author’s ‘message’ takes us robustly and unashamedly towards salvation through Christ. So we have both a helpful (though designedly simple) commentary and a winsome evangelistic tool within a subject which, as was said, has been neglected even by evangelicals and which needs to be addressed full on. It would have been even stronger had it fleshed out, more than it does, how the Genesis model for Adam and Eve inspires us not merely to evangelism but to the restoration of all that lies within our field of ‘dominion’.
