I made a mistake.
Covid fog? Maybe.
Last week a young-ish seminary student posted a Tweet,
One of the most haunting verses in the account of the Fall is Genesis 3:21 - “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife….”
Why? B/c it tells us that God killed animals, in front of Adam and Eve, giving them a graphic picture of the death that now awaited *them.*
A friend passed it along to me.
I tapped out a Tweet of my own,
Hey @albertmohler, time to revise your hermeneutics course. When the Gospel witness of a Seminary Pres is exchanged for culture war hot takes this is what you get.
Many responses to my Tweeet were critical, sophomoric, and missed the point altogether. I confess to feeling as though the level of reading comprehension on Twitter is rather low despite Pew Reearch suggesting that the app’s users are,
younger, more highly educated and wealthier than the average American adult (fivethirtyeight.com)
What seemed to upset most was the thought I was referring to the young seminary student’s tweet as a cultural hot take. However, the referent to opting for cultural hot takes was directed toward the Seminary President. The logic went that if the Seminary President were paying more attention to the lack of hermenutical precision, we would not have students tweeting out that God killed animals in front of human beings giving them a graphic picture of the death that now awaited *them.*
My objections were two-fold. First, that the Seminary President spends an inordinate amount of time maintaining his brand of culture warring. Second, that a seminary student at said Seminary President’s institution offers an interpretation of Genesis 3:21 that sounds more like human vengeance writ large needs help; and not from Oswald Chambers or Matthew Henry.
Kenneth Tanner asked what the implications might be. I had not thought about it at the time. Ken clarified his question by wondering if the person were using the interpretation in support of Capital Punishment. One certainly might use that interpretation for just such a justification, even if the passage says nothing about it.
What really prompted my Tweet?
The Genesis Story does not require a vision of God killing animals as an object lesson to stoke fear leading to obedience. Everything about the narrative indicates that the couple already felt shame and were afraid. Adding fear to fear seems excessive. In the Ireneaus quote above, which does not comport with the young seminary student’s interpretation, the emphasis is upon the mercy of God to provide a proper covering, one that would not irritate the body. Think of it as an early indication that no matter what sort of self-flagelation one might consider appropriate to shame and fear, God says, “No, I will cover you.” The Voice in the Garden had already issued a promise, the Good News, that the Powers at work in the Garden would be defeated.
Even if such a graphic picture were the aim leading to obedience, it would prove to be a total failure. Despite the knowledge of a future death, human beings persisted. Whatever law could have been introduced in the graphic picture was not a deterrent enough. The next story has Cain killing Abel. One Tweeter replied with Cain as in Cain killing his brother over a better sacrifice. Cain put to death the graphic picture, Abel, who reminded him of righteousness. Like humanity killing Jesus to put an end to the graphic reminder of forgiveness and grace, Cain killed his brother. (Yes, I never unhinged the Hebrew Scripture from the Gospels, another pot shot taken by a different Tweeter.)
Gerhard Forde explicated Luther’s approach to the Gospel in his book, Where God Meets Man: Luther’s Down-to-Earth Approach to the Gospel. According to Forde, Luther believed God should be feared for what we do not know. He referred to this as the hidden God. Speculating about the hidden God would lead to all sorts of ideas about God but not necessarily lead anyone to God. Most of the time we admit that we fear what we do not know. Luther taught that whgat we do not know about God righty prompts us to fear God.
But to use Forde’s description, we do not need to fear the Down-to-Earth God. That is, God revealed to us what God is like in the cross and resurrection. When we see the cross as the place God revealed himself and realize with the Apostle Paul that such a revelation was vindicated in the resurrection, we need not fear. Instead, we see in the cross and resurrection the Down-to-Earth God that comes to us while we are still in sin.
Another way to think about it is that God revealed in Jesus the Christ, in the cross and resurrection, is no longer hidden. What started out as fear - the beginning of wisdom from the hidden God - now becomes for us grace and mercy revealed in the Down-to-Earth God. Forde emphasized the difference is in a theology of the cross over against a theology about the cross.
Rather than view Genesis 3:21 as a graphic picture of the death that now awaited *them*, we find the earliest graphic picture of the Down-to-Earth God. Whose footsteps were heard in the Garden? From whom did the couple hide? How did God kill the animals? How did God skin the animals? How did God stitch clothes for the couple? Let’s speculate here all the while keeping in mind how the Down-to-Earth God revealed himself in the cross and resurrection. And here we are dealing with interpretation not text. Disagreeing with an interpretation is not the same as disagreing with a Text, unless of course we tie the Text to our interpretation.
Interpretations are just that. How we interpret often says more about us. Richard Rorty contended that interpretation goes all the way down. Allow me to apply that differently. The Down-to-Earth God is the interpretation that goes all the way down. We need not return to the hidden God in order to make a claim about any Text that has been revealed in God’s final Word - Jesus.