June 28, 2026
The historicity of Genesis has been rejected by prominent theologians for quite some time. This is not because anything in the text calls for a mythical, parabolic, or other ahistorical interpretation, but because fashionable “scientific” opinion disallows an historical Adam and Eve. Fashion requirements are rigidly enforced! Compliance with the denial of the historicity of the creation account in Genesis has brought about untold confusion in our day, as we are reaping the whirlwind of that denial.
God is the doer in the first two chapters of Genesis. He spoke, and it was so. He said, “Let there be,” and there was. God did the doing. He made a man, took a woman from him, brought her to him, and joined them together as one flesh. He married Adam to Eve and Eve to Adam. He did it. He did it here on earth, in space and in time. By doing so, He established marriage as the lifelong union between one man and one woman. When Jesus was questioned about divorce, He demonstrated the permanence of the marital bond by pointing us to what God did in Genesis. By His doing then and there, God blesses marriage here and now. By doing what He did in the beginning, He made marriage what it is and will remain until the end of time.
God does what He did. He created us in love. God is love. What He did in the beginning, He did for us. We confess God as our Father by speaking of what He does for us. “I believe that God has made me.” All that I am, have, enjoy, and depend upon is from Him. It is from Him who made man in His image, male and female, blessed them, and made them fruitful, that I receive all earthly blessings today. This is personal! When we Lutherans confess God as our Father in the First Article of the Creed, we do so in a very personal way. Whenever we talk about what God has done, we talk about what He does, not just in the abstract, defining God according to certain divine principles we discover by our study of creation. No, we talk about God as He personally cares for us, redeems us, sanctifies us, and delivers us from every evil of body and soul, and we know this is true because God has told us so in His Word.
According to natural law, single sex “marriage” is an oxymoron. It does not exist because it is a contradiction in terms. Now, the atheist will argue against the natural law by severing law from God. If there is no God, there is no binding law. If the proofs of God’s existence from nature are unpersuasive, the proofs of natural law will not persuade either. We should not be surprised when atheists embrace the LGBTQ agenda.
We are surprised, however, when those who formally subscribe to the catholic creeds of the church support same sex “marriage” as a civil right that Christian love requires us to respect. How can this be? Are they wholly ignorant of natural law? Can they not reason from the biological facts about men and women and where babies come from that the union of a man with a man or a woman with a woman is not and cannot be marriage blessed by God?
We should not be surprised. When we acquiesce to the denial that God did the doing that makes marriage marriage, we cannot run to the natural law to mend what we have broken. The simple fact is that without the historicity of Genesis, we cannot withstand the various perversions du jure (by law) imposed on us by the elites of our corroding culture. I’m not rejecting the natural law argument. I embrace it! I am saying that to defend marriage as the God-ordained lifelong union of one man and one woman, we must do as our Lord Jesus did and go to what the Creator did in the beginning and start there. For what God did, He does.
Historicity matters because what God does matters. He does not just talk. He does. The historicity of Genesis does not stand alone. It cannot be isolated from the historicity of the incarnation, obedience, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Lord of history and of our lives. In time and space, He assumed flesh and blood, fulfilling His own law, suffering for our disobedience, dying, rising, and rescuing us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. We see the eternal love of our heavenly Father by looking at what He did and does and confessing that He did it and does it all for us.