• Week 1: Genesis Chapters 1-3
• Creation
• Adam & Eve
• Fall of Man
• Key Verses and Themes
• Genesis 1
• Baptism
• Gen: 1:2
• “God’s spirit on waters”

St. Ephraim the Syrian

writes that " like a hen on its eggs, making them fertile through the warmth of incubation, [so too the] Holy Spirit foreshadows the sacrament of holy baptism prefiguring its arrival, so that the waters made fertile by the hovering of that same divine Spirit might give birth to the children of God".

• Holy Trinity
• Gen 1:26
• “Let
• Us

make…”

God is speaking in the plural form, "us". Who can be equal to God in that man is made in their image and likeness too? It can only be the three person of the Holy Trinity, that is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

• 2 Genders
• Gen 1:27
• “male and female He created them…”

There are only 2 genders, male and female. This is how God created nature.

• Marriage
• Gen 1:28

“God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply;”

God, like how a priest blesses a man and a woman to be married, which allows them to come together and start a family (thus being fruitful and multplying) blessed Adam and Eve.

• Life-Giving Spirit
• Gen 2:7

“breathed into his nostrils breath of life... became living soul”

Adam had no life until God breathed into his nostrils, which is why, in the Nicene Creed, we say that we believe "in one Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, the

• Life-giving Spirit
• ",
• Genesis

• God gave mankind the
• option

to choose what they wanted to do.

• No Sin
• Gen 2:25
• “Both naked, not ashamed”

— Only once Adam and Eve sinned did they recognize they were naked.

• Genesis

— See the nature of the devil? He is cunning, a liar and twister of words, and wishes that all are miserable like him, that is, wholly away from God.

• Messianic Prophecy

Gen 3:15

— Jesus, who would eventually be born to the Virgin Mary, and so be Eve's offspring/descendant, crushed the serpent's (Satan's) head by his life, death, and resurrection. The bruised heal is referencing that Christ would indeed taste death, but as a bruise is temporary, so too was Christ's death. Also, know that you can cut a snake in half and it will still live for a short time, but crushing its head will immediately kill it.

• “for dust you are and to dust you will return”

— Remember that this is God speaking.

• “Behold, the man has become like one of
• Us
• ”—
• God again speaking in the plural form "Us"

Discussion Questions

Did God create evil/sin? (By letting man sin or putting the Tree of knowledge of good and evil?)

No, God did not create evil. God is only good, and evil does not exist within Him not in His presence.

See Psalm 5:4–5, 1 John 1:5

Rather, God is fully Good, and His laws, commandments, and creation is such as well. Thus, evil exists when the opposite of God’s perfect and good Will is carried out/done. So, Adam sinned and brought evil and sin into the world by not following God’s command, a.k.a. doing the opposite.

A good analogy is that of the knife. The knife was designed to make it easier for humans to cut things, like bread, meat, cloth, etc. But man decided to take the very same object and use it for evil, to stab and kill his fellow man. That does not make the creator of the knife evil, nor his intentions such.

So too does Christ command us in good, and the opposite of His commandments and statutes, by nature of being in opposition to God, become evil and sin. For example, Christ teaches us to let our light shine before others in

Matthew 5:16

, a.k.a. to practice our virtue for the glory of God. If we do not reflect Christ in our deeds, but rather the opposite, we become a stumbling block for others (

• Luke 17:1-2

), especially since we proclaim ourselves as Christian.

If God loved us, and did not want us to sin, why did He give us free-will?

You cannot have genuine love and affection between two parties if both parties are not choosing to love via their own free-will. This is why God does not rain down fire and brimstone on every sinner; people would see that, recognize that there is a god, and then worship that god out of FEAR. Rather, with our own free-will, we worship God out of love, affection, and reverence, etc. This is why Jesus Christ never forces anyone to come to Him, and even offered the disciples (St. Peter) a chance to leave Him in

• John 6:60
• -70

Why did God make man if he knew he was to sin?

Church Fathers:

God wanted to share His immense love with mankind, and despite knowing that they would sin, He knew He would redeem them through Jesus Christ, Who would elevate the race of man after His passion and resurrection. Man has a great place in God’s eyes, being made in His Image and Likeness,

(Gen 1:26, & man is rational, and man is a creator),

• so much so that ⇒

John 3:16.

Some church fathers simply respond with something along the lines of it being a divine mystery and something that is not fully comprehensible to mankind.

How do we relate to Adam and Eve in our everyday life?

Each time we sin, we mirror Adam reaching forward and grabbing the fruit (fig) from the tree and eating it, because we use our own free will to go against God’s commandments and perfect will, as we are taught in the Holy Gospel and Scriptures, to do our own will, which is often evil and in complete opposition to that of God’s.

• New Testament/Church References
• Holy Trinity
• John 1:1-3
• In the beginning…

• Christ
• Gen 1:1-3
• God
• “created” in Gen, but “
• Word”

created in John 1:1-3, meaning Christ=God!

Look at the parallels between the verses!

• 2 Genders & Marriage
• Mark 10:6-8
• “male and female he created”

“God has joined together”

We can see that Christ says that marriage is God joining a man and a woman together, just as he blessed Adam and Eve in

• Genesis 1:28
• Nicene Creed
• Life Giving Spirit

“Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father,

• the life-giving Spirit”
• This Week's Study
• —Update the "Group

Bible study Form" sent out on remind.