As traditionalists we are probably not greatly inclined to acknowledge the positive contributions which have been made to Christian thought over the past fifty years.  Maybe we should now have the confidence to make reappraisals.  One facet that we might endorse is a renewed emphasis on creation.  Of course we know that most of this ‘renewal’ comes from the churches desire to ‘jump on the bandwagon’.  Nature, the beginnings of life, the interdependence of living things… all feature in a broad popular preoccupation.  It is almost impossible now to switch on the television without being confronted with some sort of nature programme.  Nevertheless the Church should turn its attention to its endlessly repeated confession (we have just sung) of God the maker, the almighty ‘poet’, fashioning matter and meaning together. 

Yet the very Biblical accounts on which this confession is based have become something of a hot potato.  Ever since Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1) threw these accounts into a notoriously heated debate, Genesis, especially its first few chapters has become an embarrassment to many Christians.  For us traditionalists this will not do: not only because, of all Christians, traditionalists obviously treasure Sacred Scripture most! not even because Genesis is central to the traditional liturgy (e.g., Holy Saturday and the beginning of the Lenten lectionary at Septuagesima), nor because of its prophecy of the Blessed Virgin as the last Eve. More fundamentally still it is because it is here we find the only distinction which God created and ordained within humanity (2).  The Holy One (blessed be He) did not call humanity black and white, fat and thin, clever and stupid, certainly not rich and poor, but male and female.  Conceivably we could be mistaken to oppose the priesting of women.  Yet even if we were mistaken in this respect , surely we will be vindicated at the Judgement for our insistence that there must be a deeper spiritual meaning to this division within humanity than mere ease and pleasantness of procreation. 

So the early chapters of Genesis are of fundamental importance even though they are not easy to understand or interpret, and despite the controversial overtones acquired during recent history.  Much of this controversy, however, seems wholly unnecessary.  In the 1860s it was objected that Science gave a contradictory account of human origins to the Bible, so one of them had to go.  Yet the Bible itself gives different accounts of creation.  Genesis 1 is quite unlike Genesis 2, while Gen. 9:1-17 seems to form another distinct tradition (although not creation out of nothing but out of the ark).  Then there are echoes of further creation accounts in the Psalms and other books, all different but all equally biblical. If then the sacred Scriptures themselves have room for more than one view, why should the latest incomplete geological and biological accounts be seen as outright contradictions of God’s revelation?

Then again there was the objection ‘how can man be said to have a God-given, unique soul if we merely evolved from apes?’  Yet Gen. 2:7 says God “formed man of the dust of the ground.” Why, therefore, should the existence of our souls be more probable or sacred if we come directly from dust than from apes? Surely of the two, it is the apes that form more promising raw material from which living souls might be fashioned?(3)  We need to go back to Genesis realising that its accounts are for all time, and thus has been inspired and framed to be equally applicable to all people – from the ancient Israelite shepherd to the 21st century rocket scientist.  An inspired text is so framed that it cannot become out of date. If, by supernatural intervention, Genesis had been so inspired as to present itself in terms of late 20th century knowledge, not only would it have been wholly incomprehensible throughout the entire Mosaic and Christian eras until the 1950s, but it would be held in contempt by the 2050s.

Biblical criticism has also caused chaos among the churches for over 150 years, but then bad workmen not only blame but also misuse their tools.  Critical methods of examining the sacred text have been used as an excuse for not believeing it anymore, but it is the weakest of excuses. Criticism has brought us the twin advantages of learning anew to look below the surface of the text and of re-evaluating the conventional interpretations imposed upon it.  [“Shameful! first we’re told that the nature cult is good, then women’s ordination may not be wrong, now biblical criticism can bring benefits – we’re here on false pretences, I’ll get my coat.”]  My point is that in this congregation we are traditionalists without the paranoia, devoted to Scripture without the floppy Bible.  If we refuse to reflect thoroughly and ignore genuine information we are not ‘doing the truth.’  We need to return to the study and to the sanctuary to measure what we know against the rule of faith as established before the most major divisions of the Church.  So what might we find when returning to consider Genesis? The accounts of re-creation, in and through the resurrection life, supply the key to unlock the whole subject of creation, most especially its sacred records.  Arguments over creation were never truly a matter of faith versus reasoning, but what lies beyond both reasoning and mere ‘reading the story.’

The resurrection life, secretly conveyed to Mary’s womb and secretly seeping from the tomb, changed the course of this world and, indeed, re-wrote history.  To all appearances, however, life went on much the same: animals still preyed upon one another, wars continued to rage, diseases abounded, humanity continued to sin, the death rate returned to 100%.  Yet ‘in the midst of death we are in life.’  “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.”  2 Cor. 4:16.  Christ’s resurrection was both unique and shared, it was extended to His own. As I said in last year’s sermon something exceptional was taking place in the earliest years after our blessed Lord’s resurrection. St Stephen passed through death with the vision of Christ in glory, St Peter, at the last moment, was sprung from the condemned cell, many ancient martyrs (Matt. 27:53) and later our Lady St. Mary, were woken from their repose in the grave.  Our Lord’s words at Mark 9:1 are among His strangest:  “There be some… that stand here, which shall not taste death, till they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.”  His prophecy yields not superficial meaning; a suffering kingdom, therefore, rather than a kingdom of peace, must have been intended.  There were also those few who had remarkable experiences at or after their deaths which, perhaps, were also a fulfilment of those words and give us glimpses of what the re-creation is.  Today’s festival is entirely consistent with what we know of the gift of new life even though the Papal pronouncement of 1950 has failed to silence an earlier debate.  Namely whether the assumption was a vision, like that experienced by St. Stephen, or had the character of a vision yet actually effected a material change, such as Peter’s deliverance from prison.

Traditionalism is not about preserving the status quo but en ever deepening recovery.  The truly traditional interpretations of a passage are often not all the same as the conventional ones, which are usually no older than post-Reformation anyway.  The conventional interpretations of Gen. 3 – ‘apples and snakes’ – assumes that it is a comprehensive, literal summary of the origin of evil and suffering (4).  Yet not only is this sort of abstract, semi-speculative thought generally alien to ancient Hebrew theology, but further the very theme of ‘fall’ is scarcely taken up in the remainder of the Old Testament.  It is a chilling thought that is is the first ever recorded theological discussion that leads to ruin.  The warning is against rationalism – ‘Ye shall surely not die’ – rather than against snakes and nakedness!  Surprisingly then, this theme of deprivation is not exploited in the rest of the Old Testament, save for faint echoes in Ezek. 28:15,16 (5).  The positive images, such as ‘Tree of Life’ recur, and, in later Judaism, the idea of the Temple and its liturgy as the recovery of Paradise occurs frequently.  Whereas the contrasting silence about the ‘tree of knowledge’, sin and expulsion from surely points to its deeply prophetic character.  It took the New Testament, the Blessed Virgin, the Resurrection and St. Paul to decode this hidden message of Gen. 3. Recapitulation, as it is known, is no mere Patristic, picturesque conceit, it is within every nerve of the New Testament.  Recapitulation is a fancy word for ‘retracing our steps’ in the person of our Lord and undoing the damage. St. Paul, of course, teaches that Christ is the last Adam while Holy Tradition (with a capital T) holds that Mary is the last Eve (6).

In Gen. 3. God puts into the minds of His people questions which He Himself will answer millenia later.  Even God’s response does not tell us everything we care to know about evil, death and sin, it simply by-passes the human debate.  Instead we are called, indeed commanded, to follow Christ and, additionally, invited to put ourselves in the place of his Holy Mother, and invisage how she who ‘pondered all these things in her heart,’ may have done the pondering.  Thus St. Ephrem the Syrian, in praising the holy Mother, tries to put himself in her place and speak on her behalf:
 

The point about the Christian festivals is not that they are so picturesque, comforting or colourful but that they enable us to firstly to contemplate these mysteries and then to participate in them.  So this festival is not an excuse for sentimentality – “Oh! Our blessed lady… so pure, so lovely… a mother’s tears…” or any such kitsch rhapsodising.  This festival means business, as did our Lady St. Mary herself.  This glorious completion of both her personal earthly pilgrimage and her ministry to mankind directs us to the beginning.  Not just her beginning, but beginning of us all – “in the beginning.”  The ‘Mother of silence’ directs us to the intonation and interpretation of the sacred text.  This festival’s significance is most assuredly not its superiority over sacred Scripture, nor that one of us has been promoted over our heads, but that this Mother of spiritual life is one of us still.  Mary’s glory is her very Eve-ness, but recreated, sanctified; it is her lowliness still, but now clothed in glory; it is her simplicity but as made wise in contemplation and adoration. 

This mystery is not about mere survival versus extinction, but about the Resurrection life overcoming spiritual death; the leaves of shame, cursed and withering, giving place to the robe of glory – “as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  When using such (almost jargon) phrases as resurrection life or prophetical I do not intend to promote a glib spiritualised view that is devoid of substance.  The resurrection life is not less than material but more than material.  In saying that the meaning of Genesis, as disclosed by the long awaited Gospel, is prophetical I do not mean to imply that it is merely as useful myth. (8)  Moreover the prophetical interpretation is the most ancient Christian understanding, not a newly contrived one to avoid difficulties.  Thus the Resurrection Life is that life in abundance a life of belonging.  Last Sunday’s epistle Rom. 8 – in the old Anglican use, of course – contained that resounding passage, “Ye have received the spirit of adoption, where by we cry, Abba, Father.” [N.B. not Daddy has J. Jeremias tried to foist upon an already sentimentalised Church.]  But Father and Master, One who is not just protective but “fighteth for us.”  We are prone to think of St. Paul as only interested the Holy Cross and death of Christ.  Although inescapably instrumental in our redemption, in our reclamation of sonship, St. Paul saw further than this.  He saw and experienced the fruits of our redemption; this Resurrection Life conveyed and governed by God the Holy Ghost making us true children of our Father.  In any family relationship, in any sense of belonging, the role of a mother is obviously essential.  In the very midst of this recreation and re-adoption process is the silent, humble, interceding mother, the true and last Eve, the mother of all living.
 
 

(1) The ineptitude of Wilberforce’s part in the debate has been somewhat exaggerated, but his written  arguments are not well judged. 
(2) As our cantor today, Michael Farrar has often emphasized.  The existence of this distinction in no way implies women’s inferiority since Gen. 2 represents woman as the pinnacle and completion of creation. 
(3) My concern here is not to defend the theory or theories of evolution as such, but to suggest that much of the debate is irrelevant. 
(4) The story “suggests profound spiritual truths in regard to the character rather than to the origin of human sin… a fact quite independent of the Scriptural evidence… attested by the moral experiences of humanity.”  R.L. Ottley, Aspects of the Old Testament, [Bampton Lectures], London, Longmans, 1898, pp.59-60. 
(5) Walter Brueggeman, Genesis, John Knox Press, 1982, pp.41-48.  This commentary has some very useful insights which are marred by a mild existentialist outlook and some grotesque Sixties-style expressions. 
(6) The earliest references are in Justin Martyr and St Irenaeus.  Again, as said before, one should not so stress this truth that we arrived at a distorted view of presumed spiritual inadequacies of women.  Thus the silence of the N.T. on this title is almost providential, indeed it scarcely refers to Eve’s sin while it devotes more the man’s and perhaps even more to the corporate sin of mankind, see Ottley p.60 (note).
(7) Hymns on the Nativity 16:11 & 17:4.  See Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, 1992, pp.89-90.  See also pp.96-7, especially for the idea of the altar as surpassing Eden.
(8) There is substance and reality here, but not history as we know it. Genesis is not based on eye-witness accounts as the New Testament claims to be. Nevertheless we are on holy ground and must never be over-confident in our assertions or negations of its details.  Writing, in pencil, in his lectures on Genesis’ Types and Prophecies Pusey observes, “Men argued when they should have worshipped.”