A Brief Explanation of Each of the 12 Studies.
Each numbered title links to the corresponding full study. The brief explanations further below show how the articles build upon one another and help readers choose where to begin.
Beginning the Journey with Christ
- Understanding the Journey Back to the Beginning with Jesus
- Who Should Explain Genesis?
- Why the Ascended Christ Continued to Teach His Church Through His Apostles
- Why Do Jesus and the Apostles Keep Returning to Genesis?
- Jesus, the Beginning and the End: The Story of Creation
Learning to Read Paul
- Who Should Explain Paul?
- How Should We Follow Paul’s Argument?
- How Should Paul’s Appeals to Genesis Be Read?
Applying the Method
- What Does 1 Timothy 2 Have in Common with 1 Corinthians 11–14?
- Are We Asking the Wrong Question of 1 Timothy 2?
- Why Paul’s Appeal to Adam Belongs to His Theology of Creation
Theological Culmination
Introduction
The Genesis2Paul project invites Christians to accompany Jesus and his inspired apostles on a journey back to the beginning.
Again and again, they return to Genesis—to creation, Adam and Eve, the image of God, male and female, marriage, sin, death and God’s purposes for humanity.
They do so because Genesis lays the foundations of the biblical story. The great themes developed throughout Scripture do not appear suddenly in the New Testament. Their beginnings are already present in the opening chapters of the Bible.
Yet those foundations can be understood fully only as they reach their fulfilment in Jesus Christ.
The twelve studies therefore begin with Christ, develop a method for reading Genesis and Paul, and then apply that method to Paul’s teaching about the gathered church, Adam, Christ, the new humanity and the new creation.
Each study prepares the way for the next. Together they provide both an introduction to the Genesis2Paul project and a substantial overview of the method and theology that guide it.
1. Understanding the Journey Back to the Beginning with Jesus → Explore this study ←
The opening study introduces the purpose and direction of the whole series.
Christians do not approach Genesis merely as historians examining an ancient document. They approach it as people who already belong to Jesus Christ and have become new creations in him.
The One through whom all things were created repeatedly returns to the beginning of creation. He returns to Adam and Eve, marriage, humanity, sin and death in order to reveal more fully what God intended from the beginning and how those purposes are fulfilled in him.
The study also introduces two ordinary but essential principles of careful reading.
Dictionaries tell us what individual words are capable of meaning. Authors use words together within sentences, narratives and arguments to communicate what they actually mean.
A difficult biblical word must therefore be understood within the work of the author who used it. Words belong within sentences, sentences within paragraphs, and paragraphs within complete books.
These principles lead to the controlling question of the Genesis2Paul project:
How do Jesus and the inspired apostles read Genesis?
The first article introduces the journey. The next asks who should guide Christian readers as they seek to understand Genesis.
2. Who Should Explain Genesis? → Explore this study ←
Many disciplines contribute to the study of Genesis.
Grammar helps readers understand its Hebrew language. History and archaeology illuminate the world in which it was written. Literary study examines its narrative form. Theology draws together its teaching with the rest of Scripture.
These are valuable tools.
But tools are not the same as authorities.
Before allowing modern controversies, reconstructed backgrounds or later theological systems to govern the interpretation of Genesis, Christians should first ask how Jesus and the inspired biblical authors understand, develop and apply it.
Genesis should first be read carefully as Moses wrote it. Its words, structure, repetitions and unfolding narrative must be heard on their own terms.
But Christians also possess something Moses’ first readers did not yet have: the completed work of Christ and the completed Christian canon.
Jesus and the apostles repeatedly return to Genesis. They do not replace Moses or correct him. They show how the realities introduced in Genesis unfold throughout God’s revelation and reach their fulfilment in Christ.
The Bible therefore does more than state that Scripture interprets Scripture. It demonstrates how later inspired revelation explains and develops earlier revelation.
This conclusion raises a necessary question. Why should the explanations given by Paul and the other apostles be received as the continuing teaching of Christ?
3. Why the Ascended Christ Continued to Teach His Church Through His Apostles → Explore this study ←
The New Testament never asks Christians to choose between Jesus and his apostles.
Some modern approaches treat the teaching of Jesus as authoritative while regarding the apostolic letters as later reflections that may be accepted, modified or rejected. The New Testament presents a very different relationship.
Before his ascension, Jesus prepared his chosen witnesses for a continuing ministry. He promised that the Holy Spirit would remind them of what he had taught, guide them into the truth and glorify him by making his teaching known through them.
The apostles did not continue Christ’s ministry independently of him. The ascended Christ continued his own ministry through the Spirit and through the representatives he had appointed.
Acts presents this continuing work in narrative form. Paul did not appoint himself as an apostle, nor did his ministry arise merely from human recognition. He was personally confronted and commissioned by the risen and ascended Christ.
His calling was then recognised by the other apostles and by the churches. His letters were received, circulated and read as authoritative instruction among Christ’s people.
The apostolic writings are therefore not alternatives to the words of Jesus. They belong to the continuing teaching ministry of Jesus after his ascension.
Receiving the apostolic writings is receiving the teaching Christ chose to give his Church through his appointed representatives.
Having established why the apostles should be heard, the series can now ask why Jesus and those apostles return so frequently to Genesis.
4. Why Do Jesus and the Apostles Keep Returning to Genesis? → Explore this study ←
Once the New Testament’s use of Genesis is noticed, the pattern becomes difficult to ignore.
Jesus returns to creation when teaching about marriage. He speaks about Adam’s descendants, Abel, Noah, Lot and Abraham. Paul repeatedly returns to Adam and Eve, the image of God, marriage, sin and death.
Peter, James, John and the writer to the Hebrews also assume that Genesis provides indispensable foundations for understanding God’s purposes.
This study asks why.
The first answer is that Genesis introduces the basic realities upon which the rest of the biblical story is built:
Creation.
Humanity.
The image of God.
Male and female.
Marriage.
Life and death.
Sin.
Blessing and curse.
Promise.
The nations.
These themes are not first invented by later biblical authors. Their foundations are laid in Genesis, and the rest of Scripture continues to develop them.
Jesus and the apostles therefore return to Genesis because the beginning supplies the theological categories needed to understand what God is doing throughout the biblical story.
This article answers the first part of the question, Why Genesis?
Genesis matters because it reveals the beginning of God’s purposes for humanity and creation.
But a deeper question remains. Why is the New Testament’s return to Genesis so consistently centred upon Jesus himself?
That is the distinctive subject of the next article.
5. Jesus, the Beginning and the End: The Story of Creation → Explore this study ←
The preceding study explained why Genesis provides the foundations of the biblical story. This study explains why those foundations are inseparable from Christ.
Jesus is not merely the Saviour who enters the story of creation at a later point.
John presents him as the eternal Word through whom all things were made. Paul describes all things as existing through him and for him. Colossians declares that he is before all things and that all things hold together in him.
The One who entered creation is therefore the One through whom creation itself came into being.
The New Testament also presents Christ as the One through whom creation is redeemed and brought to its goal.
He enters the world he made.
He bears its sin and death.
He rises as the beginning of the new creation.
He renews humanity.
He will finally bring creation to its appointed fulfilment.
The Bible therefore tells one unfolding story:
Creation.
Fall.
Redemption.
New creation.
These are not four independent subjects. They are movements within one purpose of God, and Christ stands at the centre of each.
This provides the deeper explanation for the New Testament’s repeated return to Genesis.
The Creator returns to the beginning of his own creative work in order to reveal its true meaning, its fulfilment and its final destination.
With that Christological framework established, the series is ready to turn more particularly to Paul—one of the apostles through whom the ascended Christ continued to teach his Church.
6. Who Should Explain Paul? → Explore this study ←
Paul’s letters have been interpreted through many different frameworks.
Some readers begin with later theological systems. Others begin with reconstructed historical backgrounds, philosophical categories or modern debates concerning authority, gender, salvation or church order.
These approaches may contribute valuable insights.
But before Paul is explained by others, Paul should first be allowed to explain himself.
God inspired Paul to write letters, not collections of independent theological statements. Each letter possesses its own pastoral purpose, literary structure and developing argument.
Paul introduces ideas, returns to them, develops them and draws conclusions from them. A verse therefore receives much of its meaning from the argument in which Paul placed it.
The immediate literary context should be allowed to interpret a statement before external explanations are made primary.
The argument of the complete letter should then illuminate its individual parts. Paul’s wider writings provide a further context, followed by the rest of Scripture, the witness of the Church and modern scholarship.
Historical background remains important. It can help explain the circumstances that prompted Paul to write and the problems he was addressing.
But a reconstructed background should not replace the theological explanations Paul supplies within the letter itself.
The central principle is:
Paul should first be read as the inspired author of complete letters containing carefully developed arguments.
The next article explains how readers can put that principle into practice.
7. How Should We Follow Paul’s Argument? → Explore this study ←
One of the simplest principles of interpretation is also one of the most important:
Keep reading until Paul has finished making his argument.
Paul rarely communicates by placing isolated doctrinal statements beside one another.
He introduces themes.
He develops them.
He answers objections.
He qualifies earlier statements.
He balances one truth with another.
He finally draws conclusions.
A single word or verse should not be made to carry theological weight that Paul distributes across an entire passage or letter.
Paul’s letters also reward repeated reading.
During a first reading, the broad movement may become clear. Later readings reveal repeated expressions, connections between distant sections and themes that begin early but reach their full significance only near the end.
This is particularly important in disputed passages such as 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2.
Discussion of 1 Corinthians 11 often concentrates upon the meaning of the word head. Paul, however, continues by speaking about Genesis, glory, honour, man and woman, mutual dependence and the conclusion that all things are from God.
Discussion of 1 Timothy 2 frequently concentrates upon one disputed word or prohibition. Yet the passage belongs within a letter concerned with salvation, truth, godliness, creation, life and the household of God.
The safest interpreter of one part of Paul’s argument is therefore frequently another part of the same argument.
The next article applies this way of reading to Paul’s repeated use of Genesis.
8. How Should Paul’s Appeals to Genesis Be Read? → Explore this study ←
Paul appeals to Genesis while addressing real churches facing real pastoral difficulties.
His appeals must therefore be read both historically and theologically.
The historical situation helps explain why Paul chose to appeal to Genesis at that particular moment. It identifies the pastoral occasion that made the appeal necessary.
Genesis, however, supplies the theological content of the appeal. It explains what Paul believed about God’s created order and why his argument carried theological force.
These two levels should not be placed in competition.
If interpretation considers only the reconstructed historical setting, Adam and Eve can become little more than convenient illustrations produced by a temporary controversy. Genesis may be reduced to a rhetorical tool used to solve a local problem.
But if the historical circumstances are ignored, readers may fail to appreciate why Paul selected that particular part of Genesis to address that particular church.
Paul’s argument requires both historical sensitivity and canonical theology.
The historical situation explains the occasion of Paul’s appeal. Genesis supplies its theological content.
This principle has implications beyond one passage.
If Paul repeatedly applies the same creation narratives while addressing different churches and different circumstances, those Pauline passages may need to be read alongside one another.
The next article tests that possibility.
9. What Does 1 Timothy 2 Have in Common with 1 Corinthians 11–14? → Explore this study ←
First Corinthians 11–14 and 1 Timothy 2–5 are usually studied as separate discussions.
First Corinthians is commonly treated as a passage concerning worship in a charismatic congregation. First Timothy is commonly treated as a letter concerning church order, leadership and pastoral oversight.
Yet when the two extended sections are read together, several important similarities emerge.
Both concern conduct within the gathered church.
Both regulate forms of public verbal ministry.
Both give an important place to learning.
Both use the language of submission.
Both regulate appropriate restraint in speech.
Most significantly, both appeal to Genesis 2 when discussing men, women and the life of the assembly.
In 1 Timothy, Paul writes that Adam was formed first and then Eve.
In 1 Corinthians, he develops the same narrative sequence by speaking of woman as being out of man and for man, while also affirming their continuing interdependence and concluding that all things are from God.
The passages are not identical, and Corinth and Ephesus did not face identical problems.
Nevertheless, their shared vocabulary, concerns and theological foundations suggest that Paul is applying a coherent theology of creation and the gathered church to different pastoral situations.
Reading the passages together allows each to illuminate the other.
It also raises the question explored in the next article: have modern discussions allowed authority to become the controlling subject of 1 Timothy 2 when Paul himself frames the passage more broadly?
10. Are We Asking the Wrong Question of 1 Timothy 2? → Explore this study ←
Most discussions of 1 Timothy 2 begin with questions about authority.
What does authentein mean?
Who may teach?
Is Paul prohibiting authority itself, the misuse of authority or an attempt to assume authority wrongfully?
Is the instruction permanent or temporary?
These are important exegetical questions.
But they may not be the questions that organise Paul’s argument.
Complementarian and egalitarian interpretations often reach opposing conclusions while beginning with the same basic assumption: that authority is the central subject of the passage.
One asks who should possess or exercise authority.
The other asks who has been excluded from authority or whether authority has been abused.
In both approaches, power may become the interpretive centre.
Paul begins somewhere else.
Before reaching the disputed instruction, he has already spoken about:
God our Saviour.
Christ Jesus our Hope.
Grace, mercy and peace.
Love from a pure heart.
A good conscience.
Sincere faith.
God’s desire that all people be saved.
The one mediator, the man Christ Jesus.
Life within the household of God.
Paul therefore frames the passage through the gospel, God’s saving purpose and ordered life within his household before he reaches the disputed questions of teaching and authority.
The first question should not be merely, “Who possesses authority?”
It should be:
What argument is Paul making about redeemed life within the household of God?
Recovering that framework does not remove the difficult exegetical questions. It places them within Paul’s own argument.
Once that has been done, Paul’s appeal to Adam can be considered on its proper terms.
11. Why Paul’s Appeal to Adam Belongs to His Theology of Creation → Explore this study ←
This study asks a different question from Article 10.
Article 10 reconstructs the gospel-and-household framework within which Paul gives his instruction.
Article 11 asks why Paul explains that instruction by returning specifically to Adam and Eve.
Paul does not appeal merely to “creation” as a general or abstract doctrine.
He appeals to the developing Adam narrative:
Adam formed from the ground.
The woman formed from the man.
Adam and the woman in relationship.
Deception and transgression.
The continuing life of humanity through man and woman.
Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 are not two unrelated theological sources. They form one continuous narrative in which created order is followed by sin, judgment and the continuing history of humanity.
Paul repeatedly reasons from this Adam narrative across his letters.
In Romans 5, Adam stands alongside Christ as the representative through whom sin and death entered the world.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul contrasts the first Adam with the last Adam.
In 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2, he returns to the creation of man and woman while addressing life within the gathered church.
First Timothy also returns explicitly to God’s good creation in chapter 4, where Paul defends marriage, food and everything God created as good.
Paul’s appeal to Adam in chapter 2 therefore belongs within a wider theology of creation. It is not merely a convenient illustration borrowed to address a passing local problem.
But Adam is not the end of Paul’s story.
The final article asks how Adam’s humanity can be understood and renewed only in relation to Christ.
12. Why Can’t We Understand the New Humanity Without Both Adam and Christ? → Explore this study ←
Genesis introduces God’s good purposes for humanity.
Adam then becomes the representative of humanity under sin and death.
Paul does not abandon that beginning when he proclaims the gospel. He brings Adam and Christ together.
Adam is the first man.
Christ is the last Adam and the second man.
Through Adam come sin, condemnation and death.
Through Christ come righteousness, resurrection and life.
The relationship between Adam and Christ shows that salvation is not God’s rejection of creation or his abandonment of humanity.
God does not replace humanity with something unrelated to the people he first created in his image.
In Christ, humanity is renewed according to the image of its Creator. God forms one new humanity and begins the new creation within those who are united to Christ.
Creation, salvation, new humanity and new creation are therefore not four independent doctrines.
They belong to one gospel and one unfolding purpose of God.
Adam helps us understand the humanity that has fallen under sin and death.
Christ reveals the true goal of humanity and becomes the beginning of its resurrection and renewal.
The new humanity can be understood only within the complete movement from Adam to Christ and from creation, through redemption, to new creation.
This is the theological culmination of the twelve studies and prepares the reader for the next stage of the Genesis2Paul project.
From Methodology to Observation
These twelve studies establish the method that guides Genesis2Paul: read words within authors, authors within complete books, Paul within his developing arguments, and Genesis within the completed Christian canon as Jesus and the apostles explain it.
The next stage applies that method to 1 Corinthians 11:2–16.
Before choosing between competing interpretations, the Observation Series examines what Paul has placed in the passage—its words, repetitions, contrasts, structure and connections with the rest of the letter and the wider canon.
Observation must come before interpretation.