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An Old Testament Christmas, part 2: Of Course He Would Save Us (Second Sunday of Advent)
“I also realized that it was going to require more than a string of words to clear away the cluttered damage that had amassed around me. But it would be the beginning.”
-Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park
“The human actions attributed to Him are those of the body of God the Word; they prove the hypostatic union, and the reality of His body.”
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God
Many well-meaning readers of the Bible go astray right from the start. Holy Scripture’s very first book and chapter, Genesis 1, offers us more than a few opportunities to misread the text as we become enamored or distracted by its detail or lack of it. Read it too literally and you’ll miss the poetry; read it too poetically and you’ll miss the accuracy. But also beware of beginning your Bible reading with a kind of literal chronology, thinking each chapter will build on the next in the order of time passed, and that Genesis 1:1 is the beginning of all time, space, and existence…because it’s not.
Genesis 1:1 gives us the account of this — the start of everything you and I see and experience — by simply saying, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But the very next verse seems to launch us…
