Introduction to the Edenverse

Home > Resources > Articles >

  • Introduction to the Edenverse

I have been addressing people’s questions about the Bible for decades now. That doesn’t mean I have all the answers; however, it does mean that, for whatever reason, the Lord has seen fit to continue to put me in situations where people naturally bring me their questions. It is an honor and a privilege to have had and continue to have these conversations, because even though most questions fit under eight to ten different topics (“Why is there evil in the world?” “Are the Scriptures reliable?” “Is there only one way to God?”, etc.), each person asking these questions has a unique story that makes the question a very personal one. I am genuinely humbled to sit with people in their questions and, by God’s grace, guide them along.

I have learned many lessons through this experience, but one of the most important ones is that probably more than half those questions, some of which were the source of significant emotional weight on the questioner, were easily resolved by looking at the passages or practices in question through the lens of the original audience. Given my experience, I am confident many people are unnecessarily shackled to false narratives that drive home negative beliefs about God and the Scriptures, problems that just a little bit of study and guidance can solve. Thus, the Edenverse. 

The Edenverse is Eden Project’s attempt at helping our audience connect to and even learn to enter into the world of the Bible. Through articles, podcasts, and video resources, we hope to equip you to explore your own interpretive lens, examine the roots and origin of it, and allow a deeper understanding of an ancient context to open you up to seeing things from a new perspective.

So, to begin, we must recognize that all truth claims are based on presuppositions that form the lens through which people view the world, themselves, and God. These presuppositions are shaped by personal experience, family systems, cultural influence, etc. [See the article “We Are Storied Creatures”]. Biblical and theological claims are no exception. In order to think rightly about what God has revealed through Scripture, we must ensure (to the best of our ability) our interpretive methodology is grounded in an appreciation of and respect for the people the Scriptures were written to and the culture and norms they lived in.1 While God gave inspired Scripture for everyone, the books and letters that make up Scripture were written to certain people or people groups.2 

When this simple fact is ignored (and it’s often ignored), we moderns end up believing Scripture was written to us, and the actual meaning of the text is lost to spurious slogans like “the plain meaning of the text,” or “this is what the passage means to me,” which more often than not is simply a guise for eisegesis, or making the text say whatever we want it to say. Just as the listener who stops paying attention to the speaker damages a conversation (and the personal relationship), failing to listen to the author “will destroy a functioning relationship with any text, and not just Scripture. You’ll mow over any kind of communication. You’ve decided that what you’re interested in supersedes what someone is interested in telling you. You’ve become the tyrant in the conversation.”3 

If we ignore the context of the author and audience we create confusion at least, and at most, total misunderstanding. But if what we misunderstand is the character and nature of God, that has enormous implications for the formation of an individual’s God image, and every aspect of life, including spiritual formation. That’s why starting in the beginning with the correct framework is so critical in getting the narrative of Scripture right.

Any time we pick up a text (any text) and read, we cannot avoid reading through our own unique lens. It is a part of who we are. There is nothing wrong with this, although it does present unique challenges for anyone who wants to interpret the meaning of a text properly. Recognizing this, the first (and primary) step in a solid interpretive methodology is an exercise in humility. C. S. Lewis’ description of this essential posture is notable:


We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interests, and associations . . . We must look, and go on looking till we have certainly seen exactly what is there. We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.4


This is no more true than in our relationship with Scripture. It is easy for us to assume the original audience was just like us, with the same history, cultural norms, and presuppositions, yet just a simple cursory glance at the world of the ancient Near East (ANE) quickly reveals this is not the case.5 In fact, the evidence left us from this strange world clearly shows the basic assumption about their world “was just as intrinsic to their thinking, just as fundamental to their worldview, just as influential in every aspect of their lives, and just as true in their minds. And it differs from ours at every point.”6

Against a popular held belief, I must unequivocally state that people in the ancient world were not stupid.7 We are talking about people who were engaged in highly philosophical and speculative thinking, who generated law codes which formed the foundation of ethical and legal practice, and produced literary masterpieces unparalleled today. Too often our assumption is that the ancients were like cavemen, mindlessly worshiping a rock or piece of wood. But just a cursory understanding of how they viewed the world, the gods, and their relation to the gods clearly reveals they knew a stone or wooden idol was not an actual deity,8 just like we know there’s nothing particularly special about two pieces of wood tied and nailed together. Except those pieces of wood held the tortured body of a dying man, and now you find them everywhere you go. For our ancestors, the wood and stone were believed to be consecrated by the deity’s presence, just as we believe the cross was consecrated by the presence of Jesus. Instead of being dismissive because something doesn’t immediately make sense to us, let’s assume the authors of the Scriptures are attempting to communicate a substantive message, then seek to understand.

So why take the time and space to gain insight into ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Levant (the ancient Near East)? The answer should be obvious: this was the world the actual people of the Bible lived in. Abram was a chieftain born in Sumer and raised in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria). When he took his family to Canaan they settled among the people the Ugaritic myth came out of. When a famine hit the land his grandson took the family to Egypt where they stayed for 430 years (Ex 12:40). The man who led them from Egypt back to Canaan, who was the source of the Pentateuch and some of the Psalms, was an adopted prince of Egypt. It does not go far enough to claim the Israelites were simply influenced by this world, or their worldview was somehow separate . . . the basic structure of the ancient Near East (ANE) was their worldview.

It is to be expected that the Israelites held many concepts and perspectives in common with the rest of the ancient world . . . This is not even a case of Israel being influenced by the people around them. Rather we simply recognize the common conceptual worldview that existed in ancient times. We should therefore not speak of Israel being influenced by that world – they were part of that world.9

The ANE had what is known as a general “cultural script,” or a way of interacting based on basic assumptions, religious practices, values, and concerns which formed a cultural milieu, or environment.10 Stories told in a certain cultural script do not attempt to give background and context . . . as part of the culture the audience did not require explanation. So it was with the Hebrew stories in the ancient world. They don’t establish for us the foundational cultural assumptions the story is built on. That is assumed. But they are communicating a profound theological message that gets to the very heart of who we are as humans related to God, and we can receive that message if we only slow down and pay attention. 

So peruse the Edenverse resources, and prepare to enter a very different kind of world, one that will unlock the beauty and depth of understanding who God is and what he is doing in his Eden Project.

Share On:

Notes

  1. “It is now well known and widely accepted in biblical scholarship that the Hebrew Bible cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration both the broader traditions of the ancient Near East and the specific historical contexts within which the Bible was composed.” Catherine L. McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden: The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:5-3:24 in Light of mīs pî pīt pî and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 5.
  2. John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2009), 7.
  3. Scott Booth, guest, “Learning to Read Scripture Like the Ancients Did,” The Equipping Podcast (MP3 podcast), September 24, 2018,
    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-equipping-podcast/id1437331176.
  4. C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 18-19.
  5. E. Randolph Richards, and Brandon J. O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders To Better Understand the Bible (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 11-22.
  6. John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018), 132. Emphasis mine.
  7. There’s a sense of irony here, this statement coming from a people who have access to information unparalleled in the history of mankind yet can’t see beyond the smartphone just past the tip of the nose. Recent anthropological studies have shown the generations of the information age are literally getting dumber.
  8. “Ancient people did not believe that their gods were actually images of stone or wood . . . What ancient idol worshippers believed was that the objects they made were inhabited by their gods.” Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 35; McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden, 114.
  9. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One, 11-12. Emphasis mine.
  10. Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, “Cultural Scripts: What Are They and What Are They Good For?” Intercultural Pragmatics 1, no. 2 (2004): 153–166.

About the Author

Nathan Wagnon is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eden Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to retraining people to connect deeply with God, self, and others. Nathan received his BA in Biblical Studies from Ouachita Baptist University (2001), and his ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary in New Testament Studies (2006).


Following seminary, he joined the U.S. Army as an infantryman and deployed twice to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF X, XII). During his time in the military, he co-authored a mentoring book for young men titled Checkpoints: A Tactical Guide to Manhood (NavPress).

In 2013 Nathan moved his growing family back to Dallas and joined the staff of Watermark Community Church as the Director of Equipping & Apologetics. During his time at Watermark, Nathan earned his Doctor of Ministry (Discipleship) degree from Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, focusing on how people emotionally experience God, and how that unique relational dynamic either encourages or suppresses spiritual formation. After 9 years of vocational ministry, he transitioned off Watermark’s staff to start Eden Project in 2022.

Nathan is married to his wife, Margaret. They have four children: Nate, Miles, Jules, and Joy.
Read More

Related Articles

The Wrath of God

As we bring this series to a close, it is imperative we address what is for many the elephant in the room, so to speak. . . .

The Controlling Center of All True Theology

As we’ve seen in this series, love as the controlling center of theology traditionally has either been neglected or ignored.1 But it hasn’t always been . . .

The Essence of God

I have had twelve years of formal theological training. For the vast majority of those years, I considered the love of God as a moral . . .

Eden 'e' sticker

Subscribe to the Eden Resources Newsletter

Every month I send out our best new resources, what I’m learning, and quotes to ponder. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you want.

The Essence of God

I have had twelve years of formal theological training. For the vast majority of those years, I considered the love of God as a moral characteristic, or attribute that God possessed, which meant my starting point was elsewhere, typically within the Greek categories of omnipotence or omniscience. As time went on, I increasingly felt the tension of something being not quite right, like a hand going numb, or a dull, persistent pain. As I moved deeper into an understanding of God’s love, both cognitively and experientially, I began to recognize that placing the love of God anywhere other than the center resulted in skewed views of God, myself, others, and the world we live in.

Yet, regardless of how often or creatively we try, the love of God cannot be reduced down to a secondary attribute, or characteristic he possesses. That would be like trying to take the wetness out of water, or to have air without nitrogen and oxygen. Good luck with that. “Agape [love] does not refer to some supererogatory (more than what is required) ethical ‘extra’ attributed either to the humanity of Christ or to the divinity of God. It constitutes an ontological category . . . the argument of John is that it denotes the being, the ousia, the essentia (essence) of God . . .”1 In fact, the self-giving, others-focused essence of God is what allows us to refer to God at all, for if God’s ousia was not love we would not even exist and the deity would be stuck in a self-focused narcissism capable only of destruction, not creation (C. S. Lewis’s Jadis, the last Queen of Charn in The Magician’s Nephew is a good example of this). God’s essence is what enables us not only to exist in the first place, but also to know (ginosko) the love of God.2

Not only are we able to know the love of God, Scripture also makes it clear how we can recognize the real thing in a world of counterfeits. First John 3:16 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” If we are to know what real love is, we must begin with the cross, for there is found the fullest demonstration of love. Jesus’ crucifixion stands as the greatest example of love not because he is a martyr for a cause or a stand-in for a family member or friend. He is giving his life for his enemies. As the Roman executioners drove the spikes into his flesh he cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). The quality and type of love that is God’s looks like Jesus laying down his very life for the people who would steal it from him, not just the Jewish leaders or the Roman prefect but all of humanity. Paul argues in Romans 5 that Jesus died for us “while we were enemies” as an ongoing demonstration of the love of God in the present (Rom 5:8,10). I often hear people translate Romans 5:8: “God demonstrated (past tense) his love . . .” This is wrong. Sunistemi (to demonstrate, or “to provide evidence of a personal characteristic or claim through action” BDAG) in Romans 5:8 is a present tense verb that refers to a past event . . . this past event is a constant demonstration in the present. As my friend Dan Wallace said, “We can know that God loves us now because of what Christ did for us then . . . the notion that we need to sense God’s love demonstrated to us every day or we should begin to doubt it is utterly annihilated by Romans 5:8. God’s love is demonstrated now by what Christ did then . . .”3 

God did not just love us in one moment in the past. To borrow language from The Jesus Storybook Bible: God’s persistent, “never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love” was not accomplished on the cross, it accomplished the cross. The infinite love of God is the ontological reality that motivated Jesus to “set his face toward Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51, ESV).4 Indeed, it was the very reason Jesus was born, something the Chalcedonian Creed gives us a glimpse into: “for us and for our salvation.” Jesus’ sacrifice was a totally unique expression of God’s eternally constant love, one the specific historical situation required, and one that continues to demonstrate God’s love for us every day.

God’s love, which is so far removed from today’s completely bankrupt prevailing opinions on the subject, cannot be relegated down to preference or opinion, and it definitely can’t be reduced to mere sentimentality. While emotions can and should flow from love, love is not primarily an emotion. Interestingly, when emotion drives love instead of the other way around, it destroys love and then destroys itself. Emotion serves us well as an indicator of our interior lives, but it is a horrible master. On the contrary, real love is persistent, others-focused selflessness born out of the desire for the greatest good of the object.5 God is love, the real kind of love. The selfless kind of love revealed in Jesus, which “constitutes the essential ground of our affirming agape of God. This means that to affirm that God is agape is to affirm that God is what God is toward us in Christ . . .”6

The self-giving essence of God is seen in the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father hands over “all things” (Matt 11:27, 28:18, Lk 10:22, Jn 5:22, 13:3, Eph 1:22, Heb 1:2) to the Son, who reconciles “all things” (Col 1:20), then gives the kingdom back to the Father, having subjected “every rule and every authority and power” (1 Cor 15:24, ESV).7 This love between Father and Son is so dynamic it cannot help but proceed from the selfless bond they share, and there has never been a time it has not proceeded from the Father and the Son.

This all-embracing love, which epitomizes the relationship between the Father and the Son, is a divine person, coequal with the Father and the Son. It has a personal name. It is called the Holy Spirit. The Father loves the Son and pours himself out in the Son. The Son is loved by the Father and returns all he is to the Father. The Spirit is love itself, eternally embracing the Father and the Son.8 If we are to understand not only who God is but what he is like, we must begin with the essence and nature of the triune Godhead, and before all communicable and incommunicable attributes of God we must affirm first and foremost the love between the Father and Son, who embraces and proceeds from them.9 If God has always been a loving Father begetting the Son, and if the Son has always loved the Father in joyful obedience, and if the Spirit has always proceeded from the unity of the Father and Son, energizing and binding together, then we must affirm this flawless, others-focused, self-giving unity is the essence of God. “God is love” is the sine qua non (lit. “without which, not,” or essence) of all true theology.10

Notes

  1. Alan J. Torrence, “Is Love the Essence of God?” in Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 114-137 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 131. Aquinas wrote: “The being of God in his will by way of love is not an accidental one–as it is in us–but is essential being.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 4: Salvation, translated by Charles J. O’Neil (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 118 (emphasis mine). See also Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 23, 41.
  2. Torrence, “Is Love the Essence of God?”, 137.
  3. Daniel B. Wallace, “An Excruciating Gift,” DTS Chapel Podcast (MP3 podcast), February 14, 2019, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-excruciating-gift/id90696516?i=1000430207573.
  4. Steridzo (to be inwardly firm or committed) here has a sense of purpose or determination. It paints the image of someone clenching his jaw and narrowing his eyes, focused on accomplishing something difficult. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick Danker, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 768.
  5. Paul describes love as patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not dishonoring, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeping no record of wrongs, not delighting in evil, rejoicing with the truth, protecting, trusting, hoping, persevering. 1 Cor 13:4-7. This is what God’s love looks like.
  6. Torrence, “Is Love the Essence of God?”, 131; Daniel D. Williams, The Spirit and Forms of Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 155; Gerald Bray, God Is Love, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 107.
  7. J. Scott Horrell, “Persons’ Divine and Human: The Concept of Person in and Beyond Nicaea for Today” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Denver, CO, November 14, 2018), 16.
  8. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1981), 49 (emphasis mine). “Necessarily, therefore, does the love by which God is in the divine will as a beloved in a lover proceed both from the Word of God and from the God whose Word He is.” Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 118.
  9. “If the fundamental principle of our theology is that God is love, then we must start with the divine persons and not with the unity of God’s being. The concept of love implies that there must be someone or something to be loved.” Bray, God Is Love, 107.
  10. “John’s declaration, when all is said and done, is the most fundamental of all ‘articles of faith.’” Anthony J. Kelly, God Is Love: The Heart of the Christian Faith (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 1.

About the Author

Nathan Wagnon is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eden Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to retraining people to connect deeply with God, self, and others. Nathan received his BA in Biblical Studies from Ouachita Baptist University (2001), and his ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary in New Testament Studies (2006).

Following seminary, he joined the U.S. Army as an infantryman and deployed twice to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF X, XII). During his time in the military, he co-authored a mentoring book for young men titled Checkpoints: A Tactical Guide to Manhood (NavPress).

In 2013 Nathan moved his growing family back to Dallas and joined the staff of Watermark Community Church as the Director of Equipping & Apologetics. During his time at Watermark, Nathan earned his Doctor of Ministry (Discipleship) degree from Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, focusing on how people emotionally experience God, and how that unique relational dynamic either encourages or suppresses spiritual formation. After 9 years of vocational ministry, he transitioned off Watermark’s staff to start Eden Project in 2022.

Nathan is married to his wife, Margaret. They have four children: Nate, Miles, Jules, and Joy.
Read More

Related

The Wrath of God

As we bring this series to a close, it is imperative we address what is for many the elephant in the room, so to speak. . . .

The Controlling Center of All True Theology

As we’ve seen in this series, love as the controlling center of theology traditionally has either been neglected or ignored.1 But it hasn’t always been . . .

It Matters Where We Begin

As we saw in part one of this series, not every theologian begins from the same theological starting point.1 Different historical and cultural contexts have . . .

Relational Depth

Because we are loved by God, we cultivate environments conducive to deep and meaningful relationships.

 

“Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.” 

 

We have been created as embodied beings with an innate capacity for relationship. Because emotion is the language of relationship, we champion the courage required to examine our emotion and the honesty and vulnerability necessary to admit what is true about ourselves in the presence of God and others. As our emotional quotient grows, our capacity for relationship deepens and enables us to create spacious environments for others to experience deeper relationships themselves. The more we have of ourselves, the more we are able to give to others, and vice versa. This relational flourishing bears witness of the reality of the kingdom of God in a relationally fractured, isolated world. We reject any desire or attempt to live out of an artificial, false self, and work hard to maintain and grow authentic environments with meaningful relationships.

Holy Restraint

Because we are loved by God, we sit in unresolved tension with others, curious about how God is at work for our good in his time and his way.

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Because we are settled in the joy that comes from experiencing an identity as God’s beloved with an integrous life, we are naturally able to sit with others in the unresolved tensions of their lives. We reject any attempt to fix others apart from the leading and empowerment of the Spirit. Rather, we patiently wait with others, continually pointing them to the presence and work of God in their lives. This allows us to be relationally present, instead of pushing an agenda on God and others to behave in ways we assume is right. We reject any attempt to coerce transformation or “hurry” someone along in their journey toward maturity, instead holding a posture of dependence on God in the lives of others.