Another
problem in Genesis chapter 6 is the one found in verses 5-7. Does God Change His
Mind? According with the mainstream Christian view God is immutable, unchanging
in His person, His perfections, His purposes, and His promises. At the same
time, there are several biblical texts that suggest the idea that sometimes God
changed His mind over the course of history. One of those texts is found in
Genesis chapter 6:
“5 The LORD
saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. 6 And the
LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to
his heart. 7 So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings
I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the
air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ 8 But Noah found favour in the sight
of the LORD.” (Genesis 6; 5-8 NRSV)
The
LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to
his heart” is one of the most intriguing texts of the Bible. What does a
Christian expect? God is Omniscient and He knows the future before it happens.
When He created the universe, He knew that mankind would fall by disobedience
and that such behaviour would attract countless sufferings and death. God
decided to create the universe and mankind regardless of the collateral damages.
He had taken incredible risks and responsibilities because beside what is great
He also created the occasion for pain and death.
God should
have known that mankind wasn’t prepared to discern between good and evil and
that it would surely cede when confronted with Satan’s temptation. God had
created man as a very curious being, curiosity being the engine of his or her
interest in reality. The human beings were in fact not free to choose between
good and evil because ignorance is an obstruction for the freedom of choice. Man
and woman have reacted naturally according to their innate essence and absolute
obedience isn’t in human nature. God created human nature and as far as He kept
mankind from knowing good and evil, man and woman could have made only
incompetent decisions.
Adam and Eve
had missed basic education which was replaced by God’s authority and harsh
warnings. How could they understand the meaning of death if even modern human
beings have difficulties when trying to grasp it? In the context of the book of
Genesis, for Adam and Eve death didn’t mean anything because they didn’t see
anyone dying. If death wasn’t present in the creation Adam and Eve just couldn’t
have grasped that notion. If death had been present before the human Fall,
Apostle Paul was wrong in saying that death came into the world through Adam and
Eve’s sins.
The appearance
of death as a real phenomenon on Earth would have happened after God had
mentioned death to humankind, according to the apostle Paul, but that is
inconsistent with logic. For Adam and Eve, the promise of knowledge and the
likeness of God would have had a meaning because they had the occasion to see or
at least to hear Him. At the same time, the word “death” contained in God’s
warning to them would have been meaningless.
Did God not know what the history of the human races would have been before
creating mankind? Either He knew and created mankind according to that knowledge
or He didn’t know and human behaviour came as a surprise for Him. From Genesis
6; 5-8, the second version seems to follow. What are the possibilities? God had
a plan and in this project He knew that mankind would disobey Him, but also in
this plan God decided beforehand that He would kill people and animals at a
certain moment in the future. The Flood would have been planned by God at the
same time as the creation of humankind, and people had to learn from the
experience of the Flood and to become righteous. Did God not know that humankind
would not learn anything and that the world would become even worse after the
Flood?
If God had known that mankind would fail morally, but in spite of that He
created them and after that He killed most of them through the Flood, and in the
end He will condemn the majority of humankind to hell, the conclusion is that
God’s plan itself failed.
The
development of humankind from moral to immoral, proposed by the book of Genesis,
is a reversed reality because true evolution is from an initial immoral,
instinctual way of life to a higher moral standard. Moral life didn’t diminish
from perfection to imperfection, as the Bible says, but it developed in the
opposite sense, toward an increase in morality and toward higher ethical
standards. People became more conscious in time about the necessity of defending
moral values in order to protect the health of the social environment.
Did God have a
plan for all He was doing or did He sometimes regret what He did, as Genesis
chapter 6; 5-8 states? Did God’s remorse also enter into His plan? Did God
anticipate that He would be sorry for the creation of mankind? If the remorse
had been anticipated by God and it was a part of the plan, why was humankind
punished through the Flood? Was this destruction an element of the plan also? A
plan in which God would have needed to liquidate the majority of the human
population on Earth and many animals in order to save few human beings at the
end of the world couldn’t have been conceived by a loving God. A loving God
would have chosen a minimum of collateral damages but according to the Bible He
generates huge destruction.
Either God had
accepted the future state of humankind before creating it or He had created
human beings with the clear intention to destroy their majority at a certain
time. In the first option the Flood doesn’t make sense and in the second one God
cannot be equated with love as some texts of the N.T. maintain.
In Genesis
chapter 6, God’s remorse seems to be authentic and not only a tactic applicable
in His war with Satan. God had regretted the creation of humankind and that
looks like a change in His mind. God created humankind but He regretted its
creation after a while. That description given by the book of Genesis looks like
a lack of both planning and of the knowledge of the future. Either way, not
knowing the future beforehand or planning inefficiently, or not planning at all,
is far from what the Christian apologetics believe about God.
Consequently,
Genesis chapter 6; 5-8, is either an inadequate way of presenting God or speaks
about another Being than the Reality portrayed by Christian commentators, a
Being doomed to failure similar to humankind.
The text from Genesis chapter 6; 5-8 can be also a pure invention of the author
aimed to motivate the alleged Flood, and this inadequate motivation shows that
the book of Genesis isn’t inspired by God.
Let’s see what
the arguments of the Christian apologetics about God’s remorse in Genesis
chapter 6 are. There are many texts in the Bible which affirm that God doesn’t
change His mind such as: Numbers 23:19, I Samuel 15:29, Psalms 33:11; 102:26-28;
Hebrews 1:11-12; Malachi 3:6; Romans 11:29; Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17.
There are also
passages in which God “appears” to change His mind. The following is a text in
which God changed His mind:
“11 But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, ‘O LORD, why does your wrath
burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with
great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, “It was
with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to
consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce wrath; change
your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac,
and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to
them, “I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this
land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall
inherit it for ever.” ‘ 14 And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that
he planned to bring on his people.” (Exodus 32; 11-14 NRSV)
To me this
text looks very strange. What did God try to do with Moses? Was it a game or
something serious? Did God need someone to remind Him about His own oath? Did He
not know human nature and its vulnerability? This is not the image of God which
we are used to contemplating in the Christian teachings. God ready to destroy an
entire population and convinced to do otherwise by a man. Christianity is about
God convincing humankind to be meek but not the other way around. In this story,
Moses convinced God to prove self-restraint. The whole story is in contradiction
with what makes God the Almighty God. The God that we are taught about during catechisms
is much different than what the Bible says about Him. Here is another text about
God changing His mind:
“10 When God
saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind
about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do
it.” (Jonah 3; 10 NRSV)
In the case of
Jonah, the repentance of the population of Nineveh explains God changing His
mind. This is understandable and is a very different situation to the one
happening in the desert which involved Moses. In the latter, God’s decision
wasn’t conditioned by a change in the attitude of the Jewish people and it was a
pure punitive action for disobedience. In the former, the punishment was
conditioned by a change in human behaviour. Another example of God changing His
mind is in Amos:
“3 The LORD
relented concerning this; ‘It shall not be,’ said the LORD. 4 This is what the
Lord GOD showed me: the Lord GOD was calling for a shower of fire,* and it
devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. 5 Then I said, ‘O Lord GOD,
cease, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!’ 6 The LORD relented
concerning this; ‘This also shall not be,’ said the Lord GOD.” (Amos 7; 3-6
NRSV)
God changing
His mind in Exodus 32 is explained by the biblical apologists with the
allegation that He had submitted people to a test. God wouldn’t have wanted to
destroy the Jewish people but He intended to try Moses’ reaction about such a
possibility. This is a very thin explanation. Could Moses have been so
indifferent about his people to endorse God’s decision to annihilate his family,
his friends, and his people? Such a thing would have been a very unlikely
development. In point of fact, God had proposed a similar convention to Moses
that He had with Noah, but Moses didn’t accept that proposition. There is a big
difference between Moses and Noah because the latter was less concerned with his
brothers’ and sisters’ fate. Nevertheless, the repetition of the same motif
degrades somehow the credibility of both stories, giving to both of them the
aspect of a fictitious literary work.
The solution
given by the apologists of a literal reading of the book of Genesis in this case
is highly objectionable for several reasons. First of all, God is expected to
have known Moses before giving him a mission in the interest of the Jewish
people. God wouldn’t have needed a test to know Moses’ response to a certain
situation because He is All-knowing. When God tested Abraham, the challenge was
used as a metaphor for the sacrifice of His Son on the cross. The episode with
Moses lacks a clear metaphorical sense. This kind of test doesn’t make sense in
the biblical context. Comparing with Noah, even if he had failed such a test
because he didn’t object to the destruction of the majority of humankind, Noah
would have been considered righteous. Moses was righteous also without his
defence of the people.
More
importantly, the text in Exodus 32 cannot be considered to be a test because God
had already acted as He said upon the Jewish people, but on a smaller scale.
"20 Then the
LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying: 21 Separate yourselves from this
congregation, so that I may consume them in a moment. 22 They fell on their
faces, and said, ‘O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one person
sin and you become angry with the whole congregation?’ 23 And the LORD spoke to
Moses, saying: 24 Say to the congregation: Get away from the dwellings of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram.” (Numbers 16; 20-24 NRSV)
According to
Numbers God wanted to destroy the whole congregation because of the sins of
Korah and his company. Moses didn’t agree with such a solution, considering it
unfair. Did Moses have a more acute sense of justice than God? Moses asked God
the following question: ‘O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one
person sin and you become angry with the whole congregation?’ God was really
angry, and in His anger He didn’t consider justice, according with the book of
Genesis. Moses has reminded God about justice and only after that speech did He
change His mind. The motif of God killing entire congregations or even nations
for the sins of some people is found again and again in the Bible. What kind of
justice was that? Some commentators would answer that God did whatever He
wished. This isn’t an acceptable solution because God being
righteous, He should have done only what was right.
Another
explanation proposed by the commentators for God changing His mind would be that
when God threatened to destroy a nation, if that nation repented, He would have
changed His mind. The only legitimate objection in such a case would be that in
all nations some people would repent and others wouldn’t. To punish a whole
nation even if not all people are corrupt is something specific for the Bible
and is based on the principle that no-one is naturally pure in front of God and
all human beings are sinners. The principle that humankind is impure is based on
the story of Adam and Eve which is only a legend. If Adam and Eve are legendary
personages what else would make humankind impure in God’s eyes? Human nature
cannot be described as pure or impure, it is structured to allow human beings’
survival in this world. At the same time, human beings can improve themselves
and the Christian solution for that is to change their nature, and that is
possible only with God’s help.
According to
the book of Genesis, God didn’t create “pure” people but complex human beings
endowed with curiosity and thirst for knowledge. God would have created human
nature as it is today. Nonetheless, if Adam and Eve are only legendary
personages their imaginary Fall couldn’t have changed human nature in any way,
consequently humankind is what it is following God’s creation through evolution.
That means that human provenance is linked with the entirety of nature, and
because human beings were originally a kind of animal; they followed the
instincts imbedded in their nature and not high moral principles.
At the same
time, according to the Bible, there always were people considered to be
righteous in God’s eyes, for example Abel, Noah, Lot and his family, Job or
David, and that shows that even human nature cannot be seen as irremediably
lost. How can we admit the existence of righteous people in the O.T. if Adam and
Eve had a sinful nature after the Fall? If we take for granted the story of Adam
and Eve the presence of righteous people would be inexplicable following
humankind’s Fall. Many Christian commentators maintain that the human nature
created by God changed dramatically after the Fall. If this would be the case no
righteous people would have been found on Earth after that event because that
would have been against human nature. Nevertheless, the Bible speaks about a
small number of righteous people in a generation.
Only Noah and
his family have been righteous, all other human beings were unrighteous. What
would have generated righteousness in the attitude of few human beings as
opposed to the majority of humankind? Probably, faith in God would be the most
common answer. At the same time, there isn’t any reason why only one person and
his family would have been considered to have faith in God, therefore to be
righteous if, according to the book of Genesis, humankind already started to
call for His name. This doesn’t make sense because calling the name of God is an
act of faith. (Genesis 4; 26)
The puzzle is
the number of human beings which would have kept the faith in God between Adam
and Abraham, which was very small. Only Noah from an entire generation of many,
many human beings had been righteous. One would expect more than one man being
righteous amongst hundreds of thousands or even several million human beings.
The story is unbelievable if we take into consideration the small percentage of
good people amongst humankind in a certain historical time. A minority of good
people amongst a majority of corrupt ones would be understandable but only one
man on the entire earth is doubtful. Noah was a human being, not the Son of God
coming from heaven, therefore his unique situation amongst the population of the
earth is inexplicable. As a matter of fact, without a law there wasn’t any
objective criteria to know and to judge righteousness. We don’t know how
righteous Noah would have been but unlike Moses he didn’t try to dissuade God
from His decision to destroy the earth through the Flood.
Why didn’t God
reveal Himself to other human beings instead of destroying them? God would have
preferred to annihilate the majority of human population instead of revealing
Himself to it. This is the logic of the book of Genesis which isn’t based on
realities but on a legend which casts a very dark image of God, but that
illustration most probably doesn’t correspond with His character.
The rationale
about the changing of God’s mind in the case of the creation of humankind
belongs to the context of the legend, and within the limits of that, because
Noah also is only a legendary character about whom the Bible doesn’t give
detailed information and he isn’t a real personage. This conclusion can be drawn
from analysing the story of the Flood.
God had
created humankind in His likeness and blessed them and He declared that all His
creation was very good. After a while God changed His mind and from being
blessed humankind became cursed and He decided to destroy beings that were like
Him and who once were very good. Did God bless humankind only for a while? In
chapter 1 of the book of Genesis God had asked humankind to multiply and to
subdue the earth. This is the biblical text:
“28 God
blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’
(Genesis 1; 28 NRSV)
In those
conditions the curse that followed after a while is a pure fantasy. The entire
story of Adam and Eve is a legend but the way in which that legend develops
shows us that God cannot be accused of things that He never did in reality. He
never blessed Adam and Eve because they never existed and He never sent a Flood
to destroy the majority of humankind. If He had done one of those things the
other one would have been in total contradiction with the other.
From the creation of mankind until Moses’ Law there wasn’t any clear set of
norms through which God’s moral standards would have been known by people. Where
God’s Law wasn’t in function it wasn’t any responsibility of humankind before
God and the nations survived by their own laws, before and after the apparition
of Mosaic Law. The Jewish people had been guided initially by the Egyptian laws
and after that directly by God through Moses, but other nations had their own
religious beliefs and their laws. Those nations wouldn’t have been responsible
before God because they didn’t receive His Law.
It is not fair
to despise humankind or human nature just because they haven’t been instructed
by God in the past. Before the Mosaic Law many legal norms of human origin
prescribed similar rules of conduct as Moses’ Law did at a later time. I also
wonder if the way in which the book of Genesis says that the human races would
have developed on Earth, through incest and polygamy, wouldn’t have been a
possible cause for so much sexual immorality if that method of multiplication
would have been real. It is hard to give a definitive answer because the story
of Adam and Eve is only fairy tale, but generally
speaking incest and polygamy can be causes of immorality.
What is here
in contradiction is that God of the Bible sanctioned some causes of immorality
which were incest and polygamy, but also punished harshly their effects.
“7 At one
moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and
break down and destroy it, 8 but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken,
turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to
bring on it. 9 And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a
kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 but if it does evil in my sight, not
listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had
intended to do to it.” (Jeremiah 18; 7-10 NRSV)
It is hard to
believe that all individuals from an entire nation would have had an identical
attitude about good and evil and that all of them would have changed their
behaviour. What would have happened in the situation in which half of the people
in a nation turned from evil but not the other half? Again, that black and white
approach doesn’t cover all situations. People cannot be judged and punished en
masse but they have to respond individually for their deeds in order to reach
justice. Some individuals couldn’t have responded legitimately before God for
the others’ wrongdoings.
Didn’t God
create all humankind? Did He create only the Jewish people? God had a covenant
only with the Jewish people but He didn’t propose covenants to other nations.
Why were the other nations judged harshly? People were condemned in blocks, good
people together with the bad ones. If there had been righteous persons among
Jewish people wouldn’t there have been such persons amongst other nations also?
There isn’t any reason for which other nations wouldn’t have contained righteous
persons together with unrighteous ones. The Bible presents a very strange way of
doing justice, a kind of mass judgement which were applied unrightfully later in
history to the Jewish people, also by the governments of some European
countries. This is the way in which the O.T. depicts the history but most likely
this isn’t the reality. Being just, God cannot be as wrathful as the O.T.
depicts Him to be.
Another
explanation for God’s change of mind which comes from commentators of the book
of Genesis is that He can change His program or strategies but never His
purposes or His plans. Here is an example of this kind of argument:
“God promised
to bring His people into the land of Canaan. Due to their unbelief the first
generation did not possess the land, but the second generation did. When Jesus
came He offered Himself to Israel as the Messiah. Her rejection has made
possible the offer of the gospel to the Gentiles. Nevertheless, when God’s
purposes for the Gentiles have been accomplished, God will once again pour out
His grace and salvation upon the Jews. God’s program changes, but not His
purposes (cf. Romans 9-11).”[1]
Such an
explanation cannot be used to explain the destruction of the majority of
humankind through the Flood. God had to know that humankind would fall
beforehand and the solution of killing so many people through the Flood wouldn’t
have been an efficient one. The Flood could have killed human beings and animals
but it couldn’t have been able to eliminate human nature and the sin. After the
Flood the situation of humankind from a moral point of view wouldn’t have been
superior to what was before. God from the book of Genesis should have known
better, sin couldn’t have been eradicated through the Flood.
In Genesis
chapter 6 verse 3 God said:
“3 Then the
LORD said, ‘My spirit shall not abide* in mortals for ever, for they are flesh;
their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ (Genesis 6; 3 NRSV)
This verse is
not in conformity with what the book of Genesis says would have happened after
the Flood. Noah lived nine hundred and fifty years and not one hundred and
twenty years as he would have lived according to Genesis chapter 6:
“28 After the
flood Noah lived for three hundred and fifty years. 29 All the days of Noah were
nine hundred and fifty years; and he died.” (Genesis 9; 28-29 NRSV)
Other
patriarchs also lived more than one hundred and twenty years, therefore Genesis
chapter 6 verse 3 is in contradiction with other biblical texts also from
Genesis.
“10 These are
the descendants of Shem. When Shem was one hundred years old, he became the
father of Arpachshad two years after the flood; 11 and Shem lived after the
birth of Arpachshad for five hundred years, and had other sons and daughters.”
(Genesis 11; 10-11 NRSV)
“12 When
Arpachshad had lived for thirty-five years, he became the father of Shelah; 13
and Arpachshad lived after the birth of Shelah for four hundred and three years,
and had other sons and daughters.” (Genesis 11; 12-13)
The book
of Genesis contradicts its own assertions. If the human beings were destined to
live for one hundred and twenty years there isn’t any reason for which they
lived for hundreds of years. If God had set a limit for human life why wasn’t
this limit respected? Human beings who lived for hundreds of years are an
exaggeration if we accept the opinion of creationist commentators that after the
alleged Fall human nature would have suffered a degradation. Most commentators
maintain that human nature was badly affected by Adam and Eve’s Fall. At the
same time, in spite of this supposed “degradation” human beings would have lived
for hundreds of years, against God’s recommendation that they would reach only
one hundred and twenty years. Such a situation doesn’t make sense.
[1] https://bible.org/seriespage/7-sons-god-and-daughters-men-genesis-61-8
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