The Puzzle of Christianity. Peter Vardy

and we just happen to be in the universe that had the right conditions for stars, planets and life to form. Christians reject both of these and see the universe as a result of the purposeful intention of a loving creator God.

      This idea has its roots in the earliest stories in the Hebrew Scriptures where God’s creative Word is held to have uttered the universe into existence. God is also shown as responsible for the sea and dry land, for all animals, birds and fish and, above all, for the creation of men and women. Men and women are the pinnacle, the crown of creation, and God created a perfect world for them and was pleased with all that God had created. The story of the Jews, therefore, begins with creation. The Word of God is central to the creation story and indeed to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is the Word of God that creates the heavens and earth, and it is the Word of God that later comes to the great Hebrew prophets. The God of the Hebrews is beyond all human categories. The whole of the universe cannot contain God, and yet God is radically present among God’s chosen people. The Word of God is therefore active and creative. It is a Word for guidance, exhortation and sometimes condemnation. The Word has power and can not only create from nothing but also intervene in and through human affairs.

      There are two different creation stories written, biblical scholars generally agree, about 400 years apart and, of course, long after the events that they seek to describe. They recount, in different ways, the universe coming into being and the presence of human beings in the world.

      However, these stories continue with the immediate disobedience of the two figures recorded as placed in the perfect world (the Garden of Eden) which God created – Adam and Eve. This disobedience of these two primal figures led to disruption of the world with the entrance of pain, death, evil and suffering. The Hebrew Scriptures are in no doubt about the extraordinary position that human beings occupy in the whole created universe. They are the apex of creation and are essentially different from everything else in the created order because they have rationality and also free will.

      Obedience to the Word of God is a central theme in the Hebrew Scriptures and from the creation of the world the Scriptures record the tendency of humans to be self-centred and disobedient. This disobedience is not a rejection of an autocratic power figure; God creates human beings and wants what is best for them, what will lead to human fulfilment.

      Figure 1: Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel in Rome shows, on the left, Eve taking the fruit from the serpent. Notice that the body of the serpent changes into the form of a woman. On the right are Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden by an angel with a sword (Genesis 3:23–24).

      The story of Adam and Eve begins the Hebrew Scriptures and most Western Christians consider that it represents a myth – but myth can convey truth. The truth resides in the claim that God created the universe and all that is in it, and that human beings are in a special position, having free will. They constantly choose to disobey and yet God always forgives and provides a new start. A peaceful and wonderful world is portrayed and human beings were placed in it to enjoy it and to enjoy God’s presence. However, for modern Christians, the issues are more complex. Most Christians accept Darwin’s theory of natural selection and, whilst maintaining that God created and sustains the universe, nevertheless see human beings as evolving from lower animals. Generally, Christians do not see a tension between their faith and science, although there are some who still hold to a literal interpretation of the text and who therefore reject evolution – but these are a minority.

      Following the exclusion of Adam and Eve from Eden, God also showed God’s care for them by cherishing them and being with them in spite of their difficulties. This is another theme found throughout both Judaism and Christianity – that God will never forsake God’s people and will be with them even though this presence may not be obvious. The story of Adam and Eve and the population of the earth continues through the story of Noah, when God is recorded as being so angry with human beings because of their selfishness and disobedience that the whole of creation was nearly destroyed but Noah and his family and the entire created order were preserved as a result of the righteousness of Noah and the mercy of God. Some Jewish rabbis have seen parallels with the subsequent righteousness of the Jews preserving the whole of creation from destruction.

      Arguably, the single most important figure in the Jewish Scriptures is Abraham. He was a descendant of Noah and lived in the city of Ur in what is now Iraq. He worshipped a single God and this was unusual and unpopular in the world of his time. The legacy of Abraham was enormous. He is revered as the father not only of the Jewish nation but of all Jews; he is seen by Muslims as the first to submit to Allah and, therefore, the first Muslim; and by Christians as the ‘father of faith’, as his whole life is centred on obedience to, and worship of, God. The story of Abraham is at the core of the faith of any Jew and Jesus would have been no exception. The whole of Abraham’s life was based on trust in God and in the promises of God, even when these promises seemed absurd. He trusted God when God promised him a son even though his wife, Sarah, was past the menopause. He trusted God in every aspect of his life, even to the extent of being willing to place obedience to God before his duty to his son and family. It was to Abraham and his descendants that God is held to have made a covenant or promise that the land of Israel in Palestine would belong to them, and Jews still look to this promise as a justification for a Jewish homeland. Abraham was the first to show clearly the single most important requirement of the God of the people of Israel: that God demanded absolute loyalty. God had to be at the centre of the whole of the life of every devout Jew. Everything else was to be put in second place. It was failure to keep this command that Jews saw as the chief reason for the troubles that were to befall them in their history.

      God entered into a covenant, effectively a binding promise, between God on one side and Abraham and his descendants on the other. Provided the children of Abraham maintained loyalty to God, then God would protect them. God would never abandon them totally, even though at times God might seem far away.

      Abraham had two children: one by Sarah’s slave Hagar (with whom Abraham slept at the request of Sarah when she was convinced that she was barren and could not have children) and the other by Sarah herself. The second child was named Isaac (which means ‘laughter’) and it was from Isaac and one of his two sons, Jacob, that all the tribes of Israel were seen as descended. Blaise Pascal referred to the ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars’. He was emphasising the personal nature of God and the relationship that God is recorded as having with these three great ancestors of the Jewish nation and which he considered continued in the Christian tradition. It is important to recognise that the people of Israel and modern Jews see themselves as descended from Abraham through Isaac and then Jacob; there is a real sense in which the people of Israel were a great extended family. Jews, therefore, were concerned with their lineal descendants – parents mattered. Jews tended to marry Jews and Jewish identity was maintained by dietary laws and by various practices, including the removal of the foreskin from the penis of baby boys (circumcision). Jewish identity has always been a key feature in maintaining the existence of the people of Israel, and these outward signs were seen as acknowledgement of this dependence.

      The Hebrew Scriptures record the story of the people of Israel who were, at this early stage, merely a group of families descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The extended family prospered but, eventually, they faced starvation and famine in Palestine where the rains are often uncertain. After years of drought, they were forced to flee to the land of Egypt which, because of the river Nile, had always been an area of prosperity; the adventures and events which gave rise to this Exodus are related in detail. God’s hand is always seen as working through history; at the time, isolated and seemingly unrelated events occur but behind these events is God’s guiding hand. Christians sometimes refer to ‘salvation history’: God acting through history to bring God’s purposes about. An anonymous poem called ‘The Loom of Time’ expresses this well:

       Man’s life is laid in the loom of time

       To a pattern he does not see,

       While the weavers work and the shuttles fly