In the context of handling the sticky wicket of divorce and marriage, as was his custom, Jesus taught them. But he taught more than they asked for, and indeed he offers to us today teaching on contemporary debates beyond the context of his original discussion.
Mark 10.1-9 And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “But from the beginning of the creation of mankind…” “but from the beginning of creation…” The former qualifier is actually nonsensical and not to be assumed unless one has an agenda for desiring it to be placed there. Apparently, for Jesus, the Adam and Woman account happened “in the beginning of creation.”
Where does that leave the young earth / old earth / evolutionary discussion and the authority of Scripture? It seems that if you affirm the later, it will lead you to more of young earth position. Just a thought.
