Podcast: What’s Up with That Talking Snake? (Mitchell Chase)

June 05, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Understanding the Story of Genesis 3

In today’s episode, Mitchell Chase walks us through the story of the fall from Genesis 3, showing how it connects to the whole of Scripture and highlighting key moments that we need to understand.

Short of Glory

Short of Glory

Mitchell L. Chase

In this accessible book, Mitchell Chase identifies biblical themes found in Genesis 3, explaining why they are essential to understanding the biblical narrative and identifying why these themes are crucial for believers today. 

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:02 - Why Did God Create a Garden?

Matt Tully
Mitch, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Mitchell Chase
Matt, I’m glad to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

Matt Tully
Set the stage for us. Going back to the Garden of Eden, why did God create a garden?

Mitchell Chase
The location of the garden and the beauty of Eden was a particular location on the globe that was meant to have a trajectory of global dominion and glory to honor God and to bless his image bearers. And the goal of the garden was never to remain in that particular spatial location.

Matt Tully
Do we have a sense for where that actually was?

Mitchell Chase
You have rivers that are named. You have the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and you have the Gihon and the Pishon rivers, and these are named in Genesis 2. Two of those rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, are still known today. So, it’s in that ancient Near Eastern area of Mesopotamia that the Lord had created this sanctuary, this blessed paradise, for his image bearers. This creation of a garden—an edenic paradise—was so that his image bearers, and thereby his glory and name, would be exalted around the earth. That means outside of Eden there were realities that would be different from what’s inside Eden.

Matt Tully
That’s something that the text doesn’t speak about, at least in those opening chapters, but what might be a reasonable assumption about what was outside of Eden at that time?

Mitchell Chase
I do think we have very little that we could imply with that kind of question, because we are speculating a bit. And yet if there is an exile from Eden at the end of Genesis 3, then obviously outside of Eden there must be some kind of removal or alienation from the life and potentiality that Eden did hold out, especially with a couple of those very important trees that were put in the garden. And that means something about Eden would represent the favor and blessing and life of God with his people that outside would not be so easily acquired or accessed. It seems that by exiling Adam and Eve from Eden, it would ensure their physical death even. So, those realities outside Eden were to be subdued and the image bearers were to exercise dominion over them. And, of course, Adam and Eve are exiled, having been subdued by the evil one and having had their own sin exposed, and then suffered the consequence of exile. And so the first Adam failed, setting up the question, If the garden had this goal and trajectory, and the first Adam failed, how will this project of Eden and how will this Adam figure ever accomplish what the Lord had set out to do?

Matt Tully
I want to get back to that key crisis of the story, this temptation in the garden and then Adam and Eve’s ultimate failure to obey God, in just a minute. But before we get there, the text says early on right after Adam and Eve were created that God put Adam in the garden to “work and keep it.” What does that mean? I think sometimes we have in our mind just a picture of Adam being just a gardener. Is he planting trees?

Mitchell Chase
And that was my vision of this when I was growing up, thinking about Adam in rows of dirt with things growing and with plants at harvest time.

Matt Tully
An idyllic existence.

Mitchell Chase
I think the Pentateuch as a whole helps us with this very early passage in the Bible. I’m very persuaded that we should allow later and clearer texts to illuminate and explain what was already in seed form in earlier texts. If we notice those verbs, to work and to keep, these verbs are used later in the Pentateuch for the priests. These are priestly verbs in the pairing of those verbs. They occur independently throughout the Old Testament.

Matt Tully
So they’re pretty generic terms—to work and to keep.

Mitchell Chase
That’s right. But when they come together as a pair of verbs and occur in priestly context in the Pentateuch, it makes us realize Adam’s role of working and keeping in Eden that was more like care for and priestly work at a sanctuary, a proto-temple. Scholars over the years have written very profoundly about how the tabernacle and later the temple under Solomon reflect earlier edenic realities. I think that’s absolutely right. I think one of the clues there is what we find in Genesis 2, where God puts Adam there as a priest in a proto-temple—a sanctuary where God’s name would be treasured and his image bearers would exercise faithfulness and then expand the borders of Eden for the glory of God.

Matt Tully
So Adam, in that sense, was acting as a priest, representing God to creation and caring for creation on God’s behalf?

Mitchell Chase
I think so, but the Genesis 1:28 commission to exercise and subdue as well means that this priestly task is going to be something that the image bearers are going to be wrapped up in, that they would be extending the glories and wonders of God and his majesty in their obedience to him and their worship of him. As they lived and were fruitful and multiplied, more than just Adam would be involved in this project, which means that Adam, if you will, is a kind of head—a federal head or representative—who has gone before us and whose decisions would have tremendous impact, no matter which way those decisions went.

06:41 - The Two Trees

Matt Tully
Let’s start getting closer to those decisions that we see in the early chapters there. Let’s talk about those two trees. We all know that there are these two trees in the garden. Let’s start with the tree of life. What do we know about the tree of life?

Mitchell Chase
The importance of this tree is highlighted in Genesis 2, because we’re told that it was placed in the middle of the garden, along with this other tree, but the tree of life is automatically given some significance because there’s a descriptor. It’s a tree of life. What kind of life is this? I think the clue in Genesis 3 is that when Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden, that they may no longer have access to this tree, lest they eat it and live forever. Reading Genesis 3 back into Genesis 2 helps us see with clearer eyes that this is a tree of potential life—that they would have through their access to this tree, their obedience to the Lord, the grace of God at work in creation—and they’re alienated from it in exile. So this tree of life really symbolizes the kind of life they were made for. We could call this an embodied life—an embodied glory, an immortal existence. Genesis 3 with saying that they’re exiled from Eden, lest they take of that tree and live forever. Adam, therefore, is created as a mortal creature. We should not imagine that he was created immortal, and then the fall changed things.

Matt Tully
I think that’s the way we typically assume that it worked.

Mitchell Chase
Exactly. And when you notice the unfolding of the narratives, it seems that Adam was created with a mortal life, then denied access to a tree that would cause him to live forever in its fruit, so that this tree holds out the life we were made for in what it symbolizes. There’s nothing magical about the fruit; it’s what the Lord had put it there to represent: a life that is extended from the hand of God, the life of God, the blessing of God, immortality, embodied glory. Adam was made for these things. But in Adam we have fallen short of the glory of God.

Matt Tully
Should we assume that before the fall Adam and Eve were partaking of the tree of life and that was sustaining them in some meaningful way?

Mitchell Chase
This is less clear. G. K. Beale, in his book A New Testament Biblical Theology, he does offer the plausible suggestion that Adam and Eve would’ve had some kind of access and perhaps even eating from the tree, but not in its most consummative or escalated sense, so that if they’re now denied this tree, they are not going to achieve what they would have. It’s also possible that they have not eaten of this fruit.

Matt Tully
In the text God only forbids them from eating from that one tree, the one we haven’t talked about yet. So as far as we can see in the text, there’s no reason they couldn’t have been partaking of it.

Mitchell Chase
In Genesis 2 he gives them the trees of the garden to partake, and he did not deny them the tree of life. So I don’t think there’s any theological or textual objection to them having eaten, but it just might not be what readers would normally imagine them doing. And that’s okay. I think that there’s a degree of speculation there.

Matt Tully
Let’s turn now to this other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. First, why do we call it that? Maybe a more natural understanding of what this would be used is “the tree of evil.” But this is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which just complicates it a little bit in our minds.

Mitchell Chase
Your question is the absolute right question: Why is it called this? This descriptor also should be seen in light of later Old Testament passages. To know good and evil is to have wisdom. Wisdom is what the proverbs hold out to discern the right path from the wrong, to pursue the way of life and avoid the way of death. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is a longer phrase that I think simply represents wisdom. That does not mean God created a good tree and a bad tree. But for the longest time when I was growing up, I think that’s the way my own mind thought about it, that God put in this garden a good tree and a bad tree.

Matt Tully
I think that’s still the way, again, most of us come to this passage: This is the bad tree that represents evil.

Mitchell Chase
I would want readers to consider that these trees are part of what God had said throughout creation: he has declared it good and very good. He is pleased with all that he has made, including these trees. They represent God’s authority and glory and life. The danger in taking from this tree apart from God’s direction—in fact, in violation of his prohibition—the danger in taking from it is it was a seizing of something before the time, in one’s own manner, and in defiance of God’s prohibition. It was a rejection of God’s ways in wisdom and a seeking to establish it in Adam’s own case.

Matt Tully
So it wasn’t so much that the tree itself was inherently evil or represented sin or rebellion itself; it was the fact that they took it when God had not given it to them yet.

Mitchell Chase
I think that’s correct. They should trust the Lord, and it was a lack of trust that led to that eating. God had given warnings about taking from it. And if the Lord had given them warnings about taking from this tree and eating, then they should trust the Lord with that prohibition. All of his words are good to establish and uphold and direct his image bear is to life. And, of course, he even is clear about the penalty: In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. And so to seize something for oneself, apart from God’s wisdom in ways, is to defy God’s wisdom and to try to establish an independent moral authority—an autonomy which violates our very image-bearing status. If God is God and we are his image bearers, then we should reflect his wisdom in ways and character, trust all of his commandments, and not try to seize moral autonomy as if we can be God in our own authority.

Matt Tully
I want to try to understand a little bit more about the moral autonomy dynamic and even the fact that you’ve said that calling it the tree of wisdom is perhaps another way to say it. So in taking from the tree and eating that fruit, you would say that we’re meant to understand that as Adam and Eve trying to exert their own autonomous decision-making discernment on what is good and what is evil, instead of just listening and obeying to what God had said?

Mitchell Chase
I think that’s right. And in some Reformed theology, what you notice is that they will talk about Adam and Eve as having a kind of maturation period, or a probation period, where they are learning to trust; they’re being trained in righteousness. And we can imagine a parent-child illustration where we can see that there will come a time when this child will be ready to take on something, but not now. This is not the time. And as the parent, you know that certain commands to take and certain prohibitions not to are done from a vantage point of moral authority and wisdom. If we were to take that human illustration and try to see this in light of the garden, I think the garden rebellion is involving people who are to be trained for righteousness and live out what it means to be a faithful image bearer, and there’s a rejection of God’s ways, wisdom, and timing—a seizing and a morally independent grasp of fruit. So the fruit itself, it’s not as if it was some magical fruit. It’s not as if it was a bad and spoiled tree. It was the act of going against the command of God; that is disobedience.

14:08 - The Snake

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about that snake. This is perhaps the most vivid and also perplexing—genuinely perplexing—facet of this story. There is this talking snake in the garden that makes a beeline, it seems, for Eve and tries to deceive her into eating this forbidden fruit, and then similarly with Adam. Why a talking snake?

Mitchell Chase
This is one of those elements of the story where I understand Bible readers looking at this and thinking, This is so strange. What do I do with this? Again, I would want us to consider later texts. According to Revelation 20 and Revelation 12, the ancient serpent and dragon is the devil. I think this is interpreting Genesis 3.

Matt Tully
So that’s a comment on Genesis 3?

Mitchell Chase
Exactly. I think it is to give us greater clarity about what the reader could reasonably imply from Genesis forward anyway, that there is an archenemy of the people of God; someone who not only wants to defy the ways and wisdom of God, but who wants to lead out in rebellion to deceive and tempt image bearers. If this has been his goal since the beginning, then what we see in Genesis 3 is his murderous designs to lead astray God’s people. Now, the image bearers have been given authority over creation, to subdue the created things. There may be an irony we should detect in Genesis 3. This is not Satan coming in some sort of angelic form.

Matt Tully
That was a question I had. In this whole account it talks about all these animals being created, one of the animals is actually the one coming to deceive. What is behind that?

Mitchell Chase
It seems that in the strategy of the evil one, this would be an act of subversion. If Adam and Eve are to exercise dominion, here is an element of creation, a creeping thing, that is going to subdue them. It is to invert and overthrow the good design of God in creation. I don’t think this is a randomly chosen thing. We even learned from Genesis 1 that they were to have dominion over all the creeping things. And then we find in Genesis 3 this very strange encounter. Part of the strangeness may have been the fact that this is a communicative moment, and here you have Eve exchanging words with what must have seemed like a super normal experience. That may have been part of the compelling experience in itself, that this was so abnormal. Maybe if this is what a creature is doing, that this is something she should listen to.

Matt Tully
Because there’s no reason in the text to assume that other animals were speaking to them.

Mitchell Chase
I don’t think we have enough information to assume that. And I wouldn’t imply that from the text because the manifestation of the evil one’s designs through a creature. We see possession and use of animals and humans even in the New Testament Gospels. You see the demons going into a herd of pigs, in Mark’s Gospel, and running into the sea; demons taking possession of human beings and overcoming their faculties. I would want us to have a category that there is more than meets the eye to what we can see going on in the world visible. There are principalities and powers seeking to subvert the designs of the Lord, to lead astray his image bearers, and that this is not a new strategy; it’s an old strategy. Even taking the form of a serpent to lead Eve astray is a subverting of God’s good design, and Eve being subdued by the creation. And even Eve being created to be a helpmate for Adam and Adam being the head of the human race, we even see perhaps a significance that the serpent goes to Eve first and not to Adam, so that when Eve acts, she then leads astray her husband.

Matt Tully
She’s not being a helper to him in that moment.

Mitchell Chase
Not at all. And so you have a violation of God’s design and goodness. The evil one’s strategies seem to be on full display and power, and it’s a grievous episode.

Matt Tully
Perhaps the next logical question, and this is a question that I know comes up and has a certain logic to it because it’s a question that our kids will often ask us when we get to this part of the story, and that’s why would God allow Satan to be there? He’s made this beautiful, perfect garden. He’s set up this clear command for his people to obey, and it seems like they’re doing a pretty good job with it. And then all of a sudden, he allows this deceiving serpent, Satan, to pollute this beautiful place that he’s made. Why would he do that?

Mitchell Chase
When we talk about the fall, we have to talk about it in light of the full panorama of Scripture—of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Those are four terms that are often given to describe the big story of the Bible. When my own children ask questions about these events in Genesis, we have to remind ourselves that we have the fullness of God’s word to see that he’s always been sovereign and that his plan to bring a Savior into the world was not a plan B; it was a plan A. The created act of God—and even the creation of this one who would rebel against God and be the Satan of Scripture, and even his image bearers who would go astray—these are not things surprising the Lord in Genesis 3. When he asks questions in Genesis 3, these are not meant to give information to God.

Matt Tully
Like, Where are you?

Mitchell Chase
Yeah, exactly. Where are you? He is all-knowing and ever-present and all-sovereign. And that means that the fall is part of God’s plan to glorify his Son—the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam—who would come to bring victory. And in that redemptive story, God’s glorified, in a way, through the redemption of those events that, in his wisdom, he deemed more necessary, if you will. Even the ways that we talk about that are tricky because we’re trying to explain from our vantage point what God must have decreed from the foundation of the world, but seeing in the fullness of Scripture we have an all-sovereign God who is not surprised by the fall, but has made a plan of redemption that has included it.

Matt Tully
Why does the Bible connect their eating of the fruit with Adam and Eve realizing that they were naked?

Mitchell Chase
This nakedness imagery appears not just in Genesis 2–3. I’m going to do what I did earlier and mention that in later biblical texts, we see that nakedness can be connected to shame and dishonor. There seems to be a play on this picture in Genesis 2–3. It tells us at the end of Genesis 2 that Adam and his wife were naked and they were not ashamed. That sets up, intentionally, the shameful act of rebellion in Genesis 3. That means there is a vulnerability, an insecurity, a shame that comes into this world through their brokenness and fractured soul. I think that that imagery of nakedness and wanting to cover themselves is resonating at a deeper level throughout the rest of Scripture. We feel a sense of guilt and shame. We want to hide. And so the language of nakedness and clothing, I think, plays right into that by the design of the author.

21:15 - The Judgment

Matt Tully
Let’s turn to Genesis 3:16. God is now cursing all the parties involved in this deception and in this sin. What’s the significance of the way that the blame is shifted from Adam to Eve to the serpent, and then the curses seem to originate in the opposite direction, from the serpent to Eve to Adam. What’s going on there?

Mitchell Chase
That’s so true. I think that reversal you’re acknowledging is so that Adam would be the last one addressed, as the head and representative of the human race, who in his act, as our federal head, has done what was disobedient to bring death and exile. Starting with the serpent also makes sense because of the serpent’s act of deception. By starting with the serpent and ending with Adam, you’re addressing the deceiving party and ultimately highlighting, with an emphatic position, the head of the human race with his very gross rebellion and outrageous action by taking the fruit and not guarding his wife, not protecting her, not leading faithfully, not being a faithful priest, but failing as a priest in the sanctuary of Yahweh.

Matt Tully
What do you make of Genesis 3:16? This is the particular judgment that God casts upon Eve. It’s a verse that’s been somewhat controversial over the years. It’s hard to understand what it means. There are different opinions on that. So how do you take Genesis 3:16?

Mitchell Chase
Genesis 3:16 is definitely a more controversially interpreted passage. We see that there are elements about their design and function as image bearers, male and female, that are being addressed in these pronouncements. And I think what we should notice in Genesis 3:16 is that the various relationships that Eve will have are affected. We have her childbearing that is addressed, her relationship with her husband that is addressed—that sin has a toxic way of filtering into our relationships. I think that’s what Genesis 3:16 is trying to head off there. It’s trying to recognize that when we experience strife in marriages, in childbearing, in parenting, these are large signals of living in a broken world. We also notice in Genesis 4 a similar paralleling of ideas about desiring something and being subdued. And this could help us see in Genesis 3:16 that unfavorable realities are being described. These are not good realities of having to have pain, a desire contrary to husband, and having his rule over you. These are actually things to notice in a broken world that are true outside of Eden. We notice all the kinds of suffering and relational conflict in the world around us. It’s proximate to us. It is also remote from us. And we are reminded that things are not the way they ought to be. We can see these as signs of a broken world. So even amid some of the controversial minutia of the verse, I think that even interpreters can recognize a consensus on those realities that we can establish from Genesis 3.

Matt Tully
And that’s where it becomes so important to understand that the curse in Genesis 3:16 presupposes some of the relational dynamics that we see established earlier with Eve’s creation and what she’s designed to be for Adam.

Mitchell Chase
That’s right. And Adam’s own responsibilities and his work and toil on the earth—all of that being affected. Not because work is sinful, but because we now live as image bearers in a world affected by the fall. And Adam himself experiences this.

Matt Tully
Theologians have sometimes made a point of emphasizing the fact that the text says that God made Adam and Eve “garments of skins and clothed them” in Genesis 3:21. What are they getting at when people say that’s significant? Why would they say that’s significant? What do you think about that?

Mitchell Chase
Well, it’s interesting that there’s a making of garments after Adam and Eve have already tried to sew something. We’re told in Genesis 3 that they sewed fig leaves together. And you can notice this in Genesis 3, and you see this when they have initially rebelled against God and they’re naked, they’re ashamed. We see this in Genesis 3:7. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths. We are noticing at the end of the chapter God providing garments of skin for them, which seems to imply they cannot cover themselves as they need to. That, I think, has both a physical but also spiritual significance, because they cannot deal with the degree of their shame and vulnerability in a fallen world. Only God can come to them with the grace to cover them and the mercy that they need. These garments of skin are interesting, too, because while Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves, skins come from animals. And if Adam and Eve are clothed with garments of skins, scholars have sometimes implied, Okay, is this the first animal death? Is this a sacrificial signal that we are to pick up on?

Matt Tully
Did God kill these animals for them?

Mitchell Chase
Exactly. And there is this provision, at least of these garments of skins, to then foreshadow the fact that what God will relate to with the Israelites is the sacrificial system, where there will be sacrifices, animals that are offered, and even on the very tabernacle itself garments of skin, or layers of skins, over the very tabernacle’s holy place and most holy place. In other words, the people of God coming to the tabernacle, with the land of Israel, and with the tabernacle’s resonance of Eden, with the echoes of priestly service and drawing near to this sacred sanctuary, perhaps we have those early signals already foreshadowed with Adam and Eve. God is providing an offering, a sacrifice. And then in Genesis 4, Adam and Eve’s children, Cain and Abel, are bringing offerings to God. So, who is the one who is training his image bearers to approach him? God is showing them how to come to God. They cannot do this on their own. They are inadequate in all their means to clothe themselves. God will reconcile them to himself by grace. And I think these are the seeds of what’s flowering much later. We would want to notice that what I’m trying to do is read Genesis 3’s garments of skins in light of some later realities in the life of Israel. If Moses is providing the Torah for his people, the people of Israel are engaging in this life of corporate community and sacrifice. And what are part of those stories they’re noticing? Well, they have the book of Genesis, and they see their ancestors and they see God in this proto-temple with his image bearers, clothing them with skins. I think these kinds of things would resonate with the later Israelites, those who had ears to hear and eyes to see. They would notice that this is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’s the God of Adam and Eve. He’s the God who comes to people and brings them to himself through sacrifice.

28:09 - Reading Genesis through the Lens of the Rest of Scripture

Matt Tully
It’s amazing how many times in this conversation we’ve had thus far that you’ve referenced other passages in the Old Testament, even going so far into the New Testament, to the very last book of the Bible, and let those other passages and books help to inform our reading of Genesis. That can be so different from the way we approach Genesis sometimes. It’s the very first book of the Bible, so we start our new Bible-reading plan and so we just start with Genesis 1:1. And sometimes we don’t even have the knowledge that the original hearers would’ve had about God and about how he’s worked with his people and what these things mean. Speak to that momentarily here, the value and the importance of reading the book of Genesis, in particular, through the lens of the rest of the Bible.

Mitchell Chase
The New Testament authors expect us to know the Old Testament in order to understand their own writings. The Gospels are drenched in Old Testament stories. We could also rewind and recognize the Old Testament uses the Old Testament. There is a reliance upon earlier revelation, and it speaks to the Christian approach and posture to the Bible. What sort of book is this? Well, it’s written by over forty different human authors, but there’s a divine author that is telling one big story. In the four-fold paradigm I mentioned earlier of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, we are to see the effects and event of the fall in light of what God’s story is trying to tell us. And it’s a story of redemption. It’s a story to foreshadow and then announce as arrived the Savior, who is Christ Jesus our Lord. And that means I can understand Genesis 3 best when I keep reading, when I keep seeing where these events are going. The subtitle of my book, Short of Glory, is A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall. So what I’m interested in doing is noticing these later echoes, trying to see how later texts are expecting us to remember what’s happened. If you think about going to a movie and having to run out to get popcorn or run to the restroom and you come back, if you’ve missed a really important scene, for the rest of the movie you’re just scratching your head thinking, Okay, I was just gone for a minute. What happened? In Genesis 3, it’s really the kind of story that when we look at Genesis 1–2 and then we dive into Genesis 4, the reader can think to themselves, What just happened? What will be explained in this mysterious chapter? And Genesis 3 is that pivotal event. Therefore, the later scriptures help us see a canonical value to reading the whole counsel of God, and that’s because the Scripture is from a divine author. God expects us to see his word in this way. I also think it helps later readers understand the world they’re in. Everybody is born outside of Eden. Why is that the case? Why were the biblical authors, as well as every image bearer who currently reads the sacred text, why is the world the way it is? The earlier passage of Genesis 3 has incredible explanatory power for why things are the way they are. And it sets up the good news of the gospel. If we notice the problem of sin and brokenness, we are set up for the glorious announcement of good news that God has provided a Savior. So we need Genesis 3 in light of the rest of Scripture for all those reasons.

31:22 - Seeing the Trinity in Genesis

Matt Tully
In Genesis 3:22, after the curses are pronounced, God then decides how he’s going to respond, ultimately, to their disobedience, namely by kicking them out of the garden. The text says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.’” Who is he talking to in this passage? He seems to be talking to someone else. He’s referring to “us”—a group of people, seemingly. So who is the “us” in this passage? Is it right for us to jump right to Oh, this is the Trinity in Genesis.

Mitchell Chase
I think it’s okay. In my judgment, Genesis 1:26 is a Trinitarian reference, but I say that because I’m wanting to read it in light of all of Scripture, where the Spirit of God hovers over the waters and by the Word nothing was made that has been made without the Word. And the Word was with God and was God in the beginning. If I read Genesis 1 in light of those later texts like John 1, Colossians 1:15–20, I think it’s fine to see a Trinitarian reference. That’s a controversial statement.

Matt Tully
What would be the other opinion? For somebody who disagrees with you, what would they say?

Mitchell Chase
Somebody might say God has made angels before this. And you even see a rebellion that Satan has apparently led that’s implied by his own malicious approach to the image bearers. So they might say maybe he’s speaking about the court of angels. I’m not saying that there can’t be other valid views. I do think it’s not a problem to see a Trinitarian reference when we read the Scripture canonically. I think Genesis 1:26 as well as Genesis 3:22 probably means that. God is recognizing that something has happened to these image bearers, and they have gained an internal experience that wasn’t there previously—a pursuit of moral autonomy—and they are broken, and they should leave Eden to confirm the punishment to be administered.

33:21 - Is Genesis 3 Literal or Figurative?

Matt Tully
How would you respond to the Christian listening right now who would say you just described, in beautiful terms, the story that we have presented to us in these first chapters of Genesis, and you’ve even drawn out some of the literary qualities, the poetic qualities, the symbolic qualities of this story. And that’s really what’s important. It’s symbolic of humanity’s rejection of God’s authority over our lives and our fall into sin. But it’s not actually meant to be taken as a literal story. There wasn’t actually a literal talking snake in this garden. There weren’t actually two trees. They represent things, but that’s it.

Mitchell Chase
I think as readers we can be so influenced by a modernistic way of looking at things, where we see stories in the Bible and think, Surely, that wouldn’t happen that way. The danger on that slope is that you would end up doing the same thing to the story of Jonah and the fish, or that you would do the same thing to the walls of Jericho that were marched around and people shouted and they fell. Or the idea of the Red Sea parting in Exodus 14. The Bible is full of incredible things. But as one pastor put it, if you can believe Genesis 1:1, there’s nothing after that too difficult to believe if God created the heavens and the earth. So the question is, Does the Bible use figurative and symbolic imagery in the Old Testament? There are places where that kind of imagery is used and is not meant to be taken literally, and we have to consider the genre. But if later Scripture is treating an earlier part of the scriptures as historical, then we should be much more hesitant to say, Oh, that’s just symbolic, and that didn’t really happen that way. We see the idea of a historical Adam taught in Romans 5, where he is named as the head of the human race who disobeyed and through him brought sin and death into the world. We see Christ Jesus being depicted as the last Adam and the greater deliverer and head for the human race to bring new creation. That type/anti-type relationship is based on a real historical figure. I also think it runs us into problems when we look at genealogies biblically. If you go to Genesis 5, the Genesis 5 genealogy takes you up to the story of Noah. But before Noah, you have his father Lamech. Before Lamech you have a host of other people. Well, if those stories, or those figures, were just symbolic and didn’t really happen, Lamech is holding forth a hope that a son will be born to deliver them from their toil, which is alluding to Genesis 3. Where does Lamech get this hope? I think the better way to read these texts is that these later characters are descending from and maintaining the hope held out from a real rebellion against God reported in Genesis 3—a real Adam and a real Eve; a real subversion of God’s good design; a real exile from Eden. Later scriptures, like in Ezekiel 28 or even New Testament depictions of tabernacle and temple imagery in the Gospels and Hebrews, they are relying on these earlier dwelling places that themselves echo an Edenic reality. I think we should understand them to all be rooted in an earlier historical truth Genesis 3 is teaching us. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t difficult questions to then follow up on, or that there might be some challenging and head-scratching verses for the reader. I’m just saying the Bible is not a postmodern book in the way these stories are told. This is not a closed universe. There is a God who has made all things for his glory, and he does incredible things that the Bible testifies about. We should have a posture toward the word of God that we will believe those stories are all interconnected together, because once we start pulling at different events and characters and threads, we need to realize other things are gonna give way. And once we start pulling on Well, maybe there wasn’t a historical Adam, well, was there a Seth? And what about the one after Seth? Where in the genealogies do the historical figures appear, and all the ones before that were mythical? We should look at this as a tapestry of beautiful revelation, of progressive unfolding truth for the people of God. And we don’t want to meddle with that, because in meddling and trying to be smarter than the biblical stories themselves, we can end up theologizing ourselves into disaster.

Matt Tully
Mitch, thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through this classic story that we all know so well, but it holds so many surprises as we take a closer look.

Mitchell Chase
I’m glad to have done it, Matt. Thanks for letting me reflect on it with you.

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