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All articles in category Personal view

By Nick Needham
February 2018
Articles > Personal view

PERSONAL VIEW: Was Eden a Garden Temple? (2)

The fate of the earthly creation is bound up with the life of Adam. As long as Adam stands, the world stands; when Adam falls, the world falls. It’s therefore not incredible or fantastic to see Adam as the priestly mediator between God and his earthly creation. The world has its relationship with God in and through Adam. Consequently, when Adam disobeys, the whole world is defiled by human sin and human death. Sin ravages the earth (environmental exploitation, abuse of animals, wars, etc.) and the soil is desecrated by millions of dead human bodies. The world is transformed into one vast, stinking, planetary graveyard...

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By Nick Needham
January 2018
Articles > Personal view

Personal View: Was Eden a Garden Temple? (1)

In ET August 2017, Paul Smith argued his personal view against this scriptural interpretation. Here, Nick Needham presents an alternative point of view. There’s good evidence in Scripture that the Garden of Eden was the first temple and Adam the first priest. The New Bible Dictionary defines a temple (using general theory derived from comparative religion) as a place where a human being meets with and worships his god. Bearing this in mind, the Garden of Eden is clearly a temple. It’s the place chosen and set apart by the Creator, where Adam and Eve meet with and worship him as their God. Sanctuary Consider...

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By Paul Smith
August 2017
Articles > Personal view

Personal View: Was Eden a garden-temple?

Few passages in the Bible provide a richer seam of truth than Genesis 1-3. As with any familiar passage, we delight to find new and fresh insights in it. In the last 20 years, Greg Beale has popularised one such potentially enriching idea: that Eden was a garden-temple. Beale puts forward the temple idea as one of the Bible’s big stories. He presents the whole cosmos as ultimately intended to be God’s temple. He maintains that God placed Adam in a garden-temple and Adam’s job was to expand that temple from Eden across the whole earth by subduing it. Adam was a priest, responsible for...

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