North, Gary.
This is his commentary on Genesis. It’s not a textual commentary. It’s more of worldview analysis.
Cosmic Personalism: our universe is created and governed by a speaking God.
Purpose, Order, and Sovereignty
Gen. 1:14-18 is more offensive than Gen. 1:1 simply because it can’t be allegorized and it ruins any attempt to harmonize creation with evolution.
The Dominion Covenant
Man is God’s image bearer and so has limited sovereignty over creation (North 29).
Economic Value: Objective and Subjective
“The doctrine of imputation lies at the heart of creation” (37). It is objectively good because it conforms to God’s decree. It is subjectively good because God, the speaking subject, announced it as good.
Marginalist revolution in economics: acting men impute value to scarce economic resources. See diamond-water paradox. We never buy “water in general” or “diamonds in general.” Men do not trade indeterminate aggregates (North 40).
The value of the marginal unit determines the exchange value. However, marginal utility cannot be applied among two or more individuals.
Subordination and Fulfillment
Man and nature–thesis: dominion requires a division of labor (85). Adam receives a helpmeet.
God-designed Harmony of interests
Thesis: the heart of man’s being is not his sexuality, but his calling before God (90). The marriage-sexual covenant is subordinate to the dominion covenant. If Eve is a help-meet, then we already see a division of labor.
Contra Marx, on class warfare. The history of all societies is not class warfare, but ethical warfare against a sovereign God (98).
Costs, Choices, and Tests
Value is subjective because man is a personal being. God, also, is a personal being. He imputes value to His creation. Man imputes value to creation within a hierarchy of values (101). Is it worth giving up x to get y? Choice requires preference, and preference requires standards, and standards require an authority structure.
Scarcity: Curse and Blessing
Common Grace, Common Curse
Linear growth overcomes cyclical stagnation. Because the ground is cursed, men must allocate resources and divide their labor.
The Burden of Time
The meaning of life forces us to consider the meaning of time (118-119). Time is the god of paganism and chance is its throne. Time is “dead necessity.” For biblical man time is opportunity (120).
Godly Deception
Everyone gives Rahab trouble for her lie (even though James says she was justified for that very act). But as North points out, her lie is irrelevant, analytically speaking. She committed high treason and no one bats an eye at that (184-185).
Jael lies, too. In fact, she violated her husband’s international treaty with Sisera. She lied to him and drove a spike through his head. Rather than anguishing over the “Nazis at the door question,” the Holy Spirit, speaking through Deborah, says “Most blessed of women is Jael” (Judg. 5.24).
Towards a review
Do not approach this book as an exegetical commentary. It’s nothing of the kind. North begins with the presupposition that all ancient (and modern gnostic) cosmologies die upon the rock of the speaking, self-contained God. From there he shows that such disciplines as economics can’t consistently exist in a random universe which worships the chaos gods.
Nuggets
*Any serious claim to godhead must maintain the unity of the Godhead. Since man is god, he must be made to unite. We see this with covenant-breaking man and the United Nations. Man, collective man with the scientific elite at the top, must be unified.
* Pagan cosmology, both ancient and modern, is committed to the chain of being. God is part of this chain.
*Evolution requires several leaps in being. One, to get the process of life started. And another leap to develop consciousness distinct from the atoms bumping into each other.
*Cyclical views of time are connected with ancient chaos rituals. In doing so, the participants engage in a drama of the creation of the world from the unformed (and hence chaotic) hyle. It is a demonic power from below.
Scholastic Tory 