Creation and Preservation as Distinquishing Marks of Biblical and Unbiblical Ethical Paradigms

I have attempted to argue over the past twenty years that biblical ethics are creational ethics. They are rooted in the creation mandate of Genesis 1, and that this distinguishes biblical ethics from those around the world.

One sees this in the modern world as well. The push in our culture toward birth control and abortion is a sure sign that we have adopted an unbiblical ethical paradigm that runs counter to that of the Bible.

In the Babylonian creation-flood story Atra-Hasis, the author argues that preservation is primary by placing the lives of those who are already alive and well over the lives of future persons. The way to preserve life and flourishing is at the expense of future people, and thus, population must be controlled by limiting one's children in one way or another.

In Genesis, this is the mark of the seed of the serpent displayed in the genealogy of Cain. In Cain's genealogy, preservation is prioritized in the activity of those mentioned. The building of cities, the accumulation of wealth through livestock and trade, the construction of instruments for relaxation and leisure and the forging of weapons for war that both defends from attack and preserves life through plunder. Cain's line, however, is portrayed as anticreational in that he himself is a murderer of his brother and the last man mentioned in his line shares his anticreational activity in that he kills a young boy as well.

It should be understood that by "anticreational" I do not mean to suggest that one ethic has within it a creational aspect and the other a preservational aspect. Both ethics have both creation and preservation as a part of their ethic. It is a matter of what takes priority over the other in ethical conduct and reasoning. Obviously, each person in Cain's line has at least one or two children and part of the creation mandate in Genesis 1 and 2 is to subdue and cultivate the earth as a liveable place that preserves covenant human life. The issue is one of priority, then, so that when confronted with the option, the seed of the woman, the image of God, is focused on the creation of life over its focus on the preservation of life, which is viewed as an issue of trusting in God when such dilemmas arise.

Hence, Seth's genealogy only mentions the one trait of each person as having multiple children, not because they were unconcerned about preservation, but in order to show the focus of the one group over the other as prioritizing creation over preservation.

Hence, in the biblical flood narrative, it is not the population of mankind that is a threat to its existence but hamas "chaos," i.e., the activity of violence toward the creation mandate, which is a lack of prioritizing creational living itself. Hence, the flood narrative ends with a charge to keep creation as a priority as the work of the image.

Likewise, when conflict arises between creation and preservation, the answer is to find preservational solutions that do not interfere with the creation mandate but rather would fulfill it. Hence, when the population of Abraham's and Lot's tribes become too large, the solution is not population control but to spread out. When men come together in large populations and have a preservational focus, they tend toward the original sin of thinking they have the divine right to control order and chaos in the world through their own means of preservation, as evidenced in the incident at Babel. God's solution is to spread them out rather than to limit their numbers.

What we have today is the same problem. The existence of birth control and abortion in our culture is due to one thing and one thing only, a prioritization of preservation over creation, and thus, our culture, both secular and sacred, have turned from the biblical creational ethic and have instead adopted the ethics of Cain, the serpent's seed, and not that of the image. The remedy of this is to put our full faith in God in obedience to the creation ethic and seek to find solutions of preservation that do not interfere with the creation of covenant human life.