Article November 9, 1929 Issue

In reply to an archdeacon's letter in your issue of January 26,...

Charles W. J. Tennant, District Manager of Committees on Publication for Great Britain and Ireland,—Ireland

Newry Reporter

In reply to an archdeacon's letter in your issue of January 26, let me point out the differences in the first and second chapters of Genesis.

In the first chapter it is God that creates; and He pronounced His creation finished and very good. No record of matter, sin, disease, or death enters into this account; and since like produces like, and God is infinite Spirit, His creation must be and ever has been spiritual.

The second chapter, beginning at the sixth verse, is the account of a material formation. The word "create" does not enter it. This account is the history of error, finite, material, mortal, and temporal. Everything said to exist in this formation contains the elements of original sin, and is capable of disease, discord, decay, and death. It is unscientific from start to finish, and imputes the knowledge of good and evil to God. It states that "the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed." It also relates that in this garden the Lord God made "to grow ... the tree of knowledge of good and evil." We are further told that the Lord God "took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it," at the same time telling him that he was not to eat "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Is not this putting temptation before man? Could man die from partaking of anything that God had made, and which was the outcome of Mind?

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