Question: I read an article recently in a brotherhood paper which said that it was Jesus, not the Father, who was âwalking and talkingâ with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. His reasoning was that âA Spirit does not have feet and a voice …â And since Jesus is the only one from the Godhead who was said to become âflesh,â it must have been Him in the garden, and not the Father. This is confusing to me. Can you shed some light on the matter?âG.J.R., Oklahoma.
I have read the article that you refer to, and while I donât necessarily have an issue with his conclusion, the arguments that he uses to get there are not valid.
The article is on the question âWhere art thou?â from Genesis 3:9. This question was spoken by âThe LORD God,â but as the person who wrote the article showed, the Godhead is comprised of more than one entity. And to quote the article, âtherefore the phrase âLord Godâ does not âdefinitivelyâ answer the question!â To this, we fully agree. Just because something is said to be done by God doesnât show us exactly which member(s) of the Godhead were the doers. For example, Genesis 1:1 says God created the heavens and the earth, but John 1:1-3 shows us that it was âthe Wordâ [Jesus] who did the actual work of creating.
The article makes the statement that âthe Father is the planner,â and gives some passages which show the Father is the one who planned and purposed the life, death, and resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:23, Ephesians 3:11). The article then states that Jesus is the âExecutor,â that is, the one who actually does the doing of things. There is nothing in the article to pinpoint the Holy Spiritâs role is in the Godhead.
While we gladly admit that these statements are often the case, they are not always the case. They are not absolutes. We will show this to be the case momentarily.
The article, however, assumes that these distinctions are true 100% of the time, with no variation, and that therefore the Father is only ever the planner, and never the âexecutorâ or doer of His will. Therefore, Jesus [the Word] is the only âExecutorâ or doer, and that everything that is actively done by God can only be done by Jesus.
Using these two descriptions as absolutes, the article proceeds to reason from them and apply them to Genesis 3:9. The exact quotation is:
[W]hen it is observed that âThe Word/Logosâ is the âExecutorâ and He created all things, it is correctly deduced that it was âThe Wordâ, who became âfleshâ (John 1:14) âwalking and talkingâ in the Garden.
The problem with this reasoning is that the roles of the Godhead in regards to âplannerâ and âExecutorâ are not absolutes. For example, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the Father (Acts 13:30, 37, Galatians 1:1). The Father planned it, and the Father executed His plan Himself.
The quotation continues (immediately following the above quote):
A Spirit does not have feet and voice that spake the world into existence, which asked the question, âWhere art thou?â
It is this argument that I have the biggest problem with. While it might sound good on the surface, the necessary conclusions from this statement violate Scripture. And if the necessary conclusions violate Scripture, then the statement itself must be wrong. The article argues that only one who âbecame fleshâ can be âwalking and talkingâ because âA Spirit does not have feet and voice that spake the world into existence.â
Here, we offer our objections:
(1) If it requires flesh to do âwalking and talking,â then that demands that before the world could be spoken into existence, one of the Godhead had to become flesh. The writer states that a Spirit does not have a voice; therefore the necessary conclusion is that one of the Godhead had to be flesh before creation.
(2) Jesus is the only one of the Godhead who is said to have been âmade flesh.â If it requires flesh for God to speak, the necessary conclusion is that every time we see God talking in the Bible, itâs actually Jesus speaking. This makes for a very interesting conundrum, because when Jesus was raised up out of the water after being baptized, a voice [God] spoke from heaven, saying âThis is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleasedâ (Matthew 3:17). Are we really to believe that Jesus (the only member of the Godhead who was ever in the flesh) was speaking to Himself from heaven, calling Himself His own Son?
(3) The Holy Spiritâone of the Godhead that did not become fleshâcan speak (Acts 10:19-20).
There are other instances that could be used, but we believe these are sufficient to show that these arguments used in this article are not valid.
Please note: the article was written by a good, faithful gospel preacher. This response was written merely to bring to light some issues that the brother probably did not consider in his arguments. His conclusion, that it was Jesus who asked the question to Adam and Eve, is his opinion, and could possibly be the correct one. My problem was not with the conclusion, but with the reasoning used to get there.
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Because this question is now before us, I will present the evidence that I believe might point to a different conclusion.
When people read Genesis 3:8, they make an assumption that God Himself is âwalkingâ in the Garden when this event took place. As in, this is God in human form, literally walking with human feet through the foliage. If thatâs what Genesis 3:8 said, Iâd stop right there and say, âthat might be a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.â But thatâs not what the text actually says.
Genesis 3:8 says âThey heard the voice of God walking in the Garden.â Itâs not God walking through the Garden; itâs Godâs voice âwalkingâ through the Garden. You might ask, âHow does a voice walk?â The word which is translated âwalkingâ is usually translated as went or go (or a variation of these two words). Thus, they heard the voice of God going through the Garden. They didnât hear God Himself in human flesh walking through the Garden of Eden; they heard His voice as it went through the Garden.
Luke 3, in giving the complete genealogy of Jesus, states that Adam is the son of God (Luke 3:38). The member of the Godhead that Adam would have interacted with, it seems, would have been his âFather.â
Weâve already shown from the incident at Jesusâ baptism (and to that, we could add the Transfiguration) that the Father is fully capable of speaking to humans in a voice they can understand.
These arguments are not definitive in answering the question, but they absolutely show that the Father could easily have been the one whose voice went through the Garden of Eden, asking Adam and Eve âWhere art thou?â
-Bradley Cobb