CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A NARRATIVE EXPERIMENT
EVOLUTION FRACTURED THE ORIGIN STORY of Adam and Eve, but we can recover it now. From a scientific point of view, all that is required is people outside the Garden, with whom Adam and Eve’s offspring eventually interbreed. Perhaps science merely expands and expounds the ancient mystery outside the Garden, leaving the traditional account intact.
We enter a mystery. My thesis is that evolutionary science presents no more a challenge to theology than other understandings of human origins that do not include evolutionary science. I want to explore this with a thought experiment, a speculative narrative of human origins that contains within it the traditional account of Adam and Eve, alongside evolutionary science.
■ One speculative history of humankind envisions how Genesis can be understood alongside the findings of evolutionary science. Evolution outside the Garden; Adam and Eve outside the streetlight.
■ This brings us to a paradoxical understanding of human, holding two definitions in tension, workable for both vocationalists and structuralists.
■ In a tight parallel with Jesus, Adam ends one era and begins another.
■ How do we understand death and wrongdoing in the era before Adam?
As we embark on this experiment, remember C. S. Lewis’s essay “Religion and Rocketry,” a similar theological experiment.1 The possibility of life on other planets was thought to be a threat to Christian doctrine. Lewis responded with creative and speculative theology, imagining how he would make theological sense of intelligent aliens. He expands this experiment in the Space Trilogy novels. Just like the people outside the Garden, these aliens did not descend from Adam and Eve. He playfully speculated about what we might expect and how to make sense of them.
This is the imaginative play into which we are invited now. In the same way Lewis speculated about rational souls on other planets, we are wondering now about the people outside the Garden. Science, even when correct, gives us only part of the story. Scripture is bound to Adam, Eve, and their descendants. The aim of theology, however, is to take hold of both together. Science is a dream, but theology is the waking world.2
Figure 14.1. The speculative narrative contains both the scientific account and the traditional de novo account of Adam and Eve. The narrative itself is not these accounts, but it contains them both alongside one another as different periscopes on the same events unfolding in the same physical world. The scientific account of evolutionary science plays out in the mystery outside the Garden of the traditional account. With evidence neither for nor against them, Adam and Eve are in a blind spot of the scientific account.
GROUND RULES FOR SPECULATION
I aim to speculate about our origins, in a recovery of the traditional account of Adam and Eve. Mystery is embraced with speculation, following a multimillennia tradition among readers of Genesis. The ground rules here are simple:
■ The narrative must be assessed on its own terms. For example, objections must use the definition of human put forward here.
■ It may appear that parts of the narrative do not appear in Scripture or the traditional account, but this is not a valid objection. There is mystery outside the Garden.
■ It may appear that parts of the narrative are not demonstrated with scientific evidence, but this isn’t valid either. Adam and Eve are outside the streetlight.
■ It may appear that parts of the narrative are not demonstrated by Scripture or by science. But in every narrative, details are inferred, based on evidence, logic, or theological coherence.
■ Some will disagree with easily adjusted components of the narrative. Disagreement on details is encouraged, and the invitation is to vary this starting point as needed. This is, in fact, precisely the point of the exercise.
■ Some will object to tensions in the narrative, but many of these tensions apply to other narratives too. For example, “Why would God create Adam if he knew that Adam would fall?” This objection applies to every understanding of Genesis, and it need not be answered here.
This speculative narrative is no more a challenge to theology than several creationist accounts that do not include evolution. It is no more challenging than angels interbreeding with humans to have Nephilim offspring. It is no more challenging than “human” Homo sapiens interbreeding with “nonhuman” Neanderthals.
I do not presume to resolve every theological mystery or disagreement. I only hope to test this thesis, perhaps recovering a common starting point for many perspectives.
THE SPECULATIVE HISTORY OF HUMANKIND
In the beginning, Elohim creates biological humans in the image of God, through a providentially governed process of common descent. Elohim grants this people an irrevocable gift of freedom.3 Elohim calls forth all humankind, male and female, created in his image and commissioned to multiply and spread across the Earth (Gen 1:26-27). Biological humans, the people outside the Garden, arise long before Adam and Eve.
Science legitimately tells us the story of how they arose and who they are. These people are much like us. They have minds and souls. Just like us, they are all biological humans. They are not subhuman, to be clear. They are not, however, the humans as we encounter them today. Unlike us, they are not yet affected by Adam’s fall. They have a sense of right and wrong, written on their hearts (Rom 2:15), but they are not morally perfect. They do wrong at times. They are subject to physical death, which prevents their wrongdoing from growing into true evil (Gen 6:3). In this way, death is part of creation, with a role to play, but the gift God plans to give is better.
These people, our ancestors, are the pinnacle of creation, exceptional creatures with a vocation. They are called to spread across the earth. They are given dominion over the beasts of the field, but not over one another.4 Living in small groups, without nations or written language. From archaeological and anthropological data, it seems that war is unknown to them. Slavery and racism are unknown to them. Their world is not defined by dominion of humans over one another.5 They come to rule the world. They live under a different dispensation, a different era than ours. This era continues for a time. God declares this era “good.”
After many thousands of years, civilization begins to rise.6 Agriculture is becoming more common. After eons of humans ruling the earth as hunters and gatherers, several new innovations are brought together. People start to build permanent settlements supported by agriculture. Soon there will be cities, written language, an explosion of new sorts of knowledge, and new sorts of evil. Civilization is the power to amplify both good and evil. Entering this era, our future is uncertain. Our ancestors sit at a crossroads.
The next act of the story begins (Gen 2). Perhaps Genesis 1 and 2 are sequential, taking place one after the other. Alternatively, Genesis 2 is a zoomed-in account of what happens in one area, within the geographically and temporally broader account of Genesis 1.7 Whichever way we read it, Elohim governs the creation of many people like Adam and Eve across the earth, but Yahweh Elohim directly forms the Adam and Eve in the defined location of the Garden.
Yahweh is a covenantal name, a personal name. Yahweh Elohim intends to make himself known in a new way, and to influence the destiny of everyone through Adam and Eve.8 The world is good, but Yahweh Elohim offers a choice for something better. There is an opportunity for immortality. Which type of power will they choose? The power of immortality or of knowledge? Yahweh Elohim wants to give our ancestors the best opportunity possible to choose wisely, yet there is no one suitable to make this choice (Gen 2:5). With this choice in mind, Yahweh Elohim forms Adam with a clean slate, de novo from the dust.9 Placing Adam in a specially prepared Garden,10 he creates Eve from Adam’s side. They are sinless, in an environment free of death. They are made righteous. Adam and Eve are to work as priestly rulers alongside Yahweh Elohim, to expand the Garden across the earth. Civilization is rising, and a new era is coming. Their purpose is to welcome everyone into their family, in a new kingdom of God.
Adam and Eve, nonetheless, must make a choice between two trees: the power of immortality or the power of knowledge (Gen 2:8-9). The knowledge of the tree is not inherently evil or good, but it can be used for either. Knowledge often works this way, giving us power that can be used for good or for evil. Will they choose to live obediently in service of a good God? Or do they want to rule the world on their own?
Was the forbidden tree of knowledge just a test? Perhaps it had a good purpose too. Perhaps God intended for Adam or Eve to eat of it eventually, in the right time and way, when they were ready. Or, perhaps, the tree was meant for Eve, and not for Adam.
Whatever the case, Adam makes our choice.
He chooses knowledge over immortality, independence over goodness. In Adam’s choice the whole world falls. Rather than executing Adam and Eve, Yahweh Elohim shows them mercy. They fall into exile.
The Fall is disastrous. Access to the Garden is immediately closed off, and everyone loses this chance at immortality. Adam and Eve’s descendants infect the rise of civilization, corrupting it with injustice and abuse of power. The good dominion of the prior era becomes a ferocious struggle where everyone attempts to dominate one another. Everyone outside the Garden is destroyed or corrupted by Adam and Eve’s lineage; those who are left all inherit the debt of Yahweh Elohim’s unjustified mercy on Adam. It did not have to be this way. We could have had the good of civilization without the bad. Instead, we inherit a world corrupted by Adam’s original act of sin.
Adam ends an era. Adam is not the first in the image of God, but he is the first one fallen. Yahweh renews the covenant with Adam and Eve’s lineage (Gen 3:15). They nonetheless become the villains of the story, powerful and corrupt, spreading across the earth like an evil empire. Yahweh regrets that he made Adam and destroys or displaces all but a few of his lineage in a large regional flood (Gen 6:1-8). Yahweh renews his covenant with Adam and Eve’s lineage again (Gen 9:1-11), this time ensuring their spread across the earth (Gen 11:1-9).11 The rise of their lineage, nonetheless, brings a permanent and tragic end to the “mighty men of old” as they are destroyed by or fall into the corrupted lineage (Gen 6:4). In time, everyone descends from Adam and Eve. All are born into exile, into his fallen kingdom.
Yahweh continues to work out his plan to redeem us. He calls Abraham, promising to bless the entire world through him. Through Abraham’s lineage, at the right time, God sends his only begotten Son, Jesus of Nazareth. Adam is the first, but Jesus is the last Adam; both were brought into the world in a special way to influence the course of history (1 Cor 15:22, 45). As an act of grace, God justifies his ancient mercy to Adam our ancestor, paying our debt by giving his only Son to suffer and die for our sins (Jn 3:16). Jesus substitutes for us. God offers proof of this by raising Jesus from the dead, so we might know in our exile that God exists, is good, and wants to be known (1 Cor 15:3-7).12 We are bought back, adopted into a new family, a new covenantal community. God’s mercy is justified. In this redeemed community, we seek to build and expand a new kingdom within Adam’s world. We look forward to the new creation, when we will dwell in the city of God (Rev 20–21).
In our exile, we forgot our origin. We all inherited the debt of God’s unjustified mercy to our ancestors. This is our new destiny, to be separated from God and our history, lost in a world that has great good, but also has great evil. As the early Church forms its theology in the coming centuries, looking backward, it understands human as the descendants of Adam, and only occasionally wonders about the people outside the Garden. Nearly two thousand years after Jesus, we discover DNA and fossils. As we learn to read genomes, we begin to understand the mysteries of our deeper past. We often wondered about people outside the Garden, but we have never been sure they existed till now. Historical theology was not wrong. Instead, it sensibly focused on our current condition. Science, however, tells the story of ancient ancestors no longer with us, the people outside the Garden.
As the larger story is revealed by science, we wonder about our past. We remember our humble origins: from the dust of the earth, and in the image of God. We are more than just apes, but still fallen creatures of the dust. Jesus still comes to us. What are humans that God is mindful of us?
Table 14.1. Two Meanings of Human in Tension
THE MANY-COLORED TENSION OF HUMAN
This narrative is speculative, but it is informed by science, theology, and Scripture. Anthropology, genetics, and archaeology could guide the details even more. What is human? There are two periscopes on this narrative. Each periscope brings into focus a different understanding of human, and these two definitions are in tension. This is the paradox of the narrative.
First, the “looking forward” periscope, informed by science and theology, expounds the mystery of the biological humans in the image of God outside the Garden (table 14.1). It is the story of how they all become corrupted by the rise of Adam’s lineage. This narrative brings into focus the definition: human consists of everyone in the image of God.
Second, the textual “looking backward” periscope, the story of Scripture, is bound to Adam and Eve’s descendants (table 14.1). This is, unmodified, the traditional de novo account of human origins, with the people outside the Garden in peripheral vision. This narrative brings into focus a different definition: humans are everyone (with the exception of Jesus) that is in the image of God and fallen.
These two periscopes on human are different, held together in tension. The tension of this paradox, moreover, offers resolution to the three dilemmas of evolutionary science, even offering a reconciliation of deeper disagreements in the Church.
Who are we and who we have become? Ontology and ontogeny, narrative and metaphysics. They are all held together. The first periscope’s definition (the image of God) might be our essential nature, and the second definition (the image of God and fallen) might be what we have become in our current predicament, as we find ourselves exiled in the kingdom of Adam. In this narrative, both definitions are legitimate, and both definitions are geographically and temporally universal within their respective periscopes.
The tension of this paradox reflects our current point in the story. The world as we find it is filled exclusively with people who are in the image of God and fallen. This is the only sort of human we see. The Fall grows into us; without clarifying what is essential and nonessential to our nature, we struggle to define who we are apart from the Fall. Into this context comes Jesus, a man in the image of God, but uncorrupted by the Fall and morally perfect. He unsettles our understanding of the meaning of being human. The essential nature of humanity, our destiny, is not an inescapable battle between good and evil. To be human is to return from exile, with the sin of Adam undone. Our destiny is to be redeemed in the image of God, not to be fallen forever.
Common descent and de novo creation are held together, in the first and second periscope, respectively. All our ancestors are of the dust, one way or another. Science and Scripture are held together, essentially without modification.
Mythology and literalism are held together. The first periscope might be seen archetypically in Genesis 1, with resonance to the story of evolutionary science. The narrative of Genesis 2 might recount a real Adam and Eve in a real past in the second periscope, but it also enacts a typological echo of the first periscope. Mythology and literalism might combine in the historical reality of Adam and Eve, which unfolds as prophetic reenactment of our deep history.
The structuralists and the vocationalists are held together too. Within the first periscope, for the strict structuralist, the biological humans, the people outside the Garden have the physical form of a human, bundled with human dignity, rational souls, and so on. Within the first periscope too, Genesis 1 grants all the people outside the Garden (and all of us) a specific vocation, the good dominion over all of creation, but not over one another. Yes, Adam has a calling, but his calling is special, analogous to Jesus’ redemptive calling, not to the general Genesis 1 vocation to a good dominion. Alternatively, the vocational image of God might arise specifically with Adam and Eve’s lineage in the second periscope, while the structural image of God arises long before. Or perhaps the relational image of God is visible long before Adam and Eve in our ancestors’ relationships with one another, then opportunity for it to be realized in our relationship directly with God becomes possible first through Adam and Eve. This narrative can be understood, then, from a structural, vocational, and relational point of view. With the disagreements between and within these camps, we can expect many other reconciliations to arise. This diversity is encouraged. The strength of this narrative is that it holds many understandings of the image of God together.
Monogenesis and monophylogeny are also held together. The periscope of Scripture is contextually bound to Adam, Eve, and their descendants. From this point of view, Adam and Eve are the first textual humans on the earth, and no textual humans lived before them. Every textual human in all of history is a direct genealogical descendent of Adam and Eve. Monogenesis is true, and so is monophylogeny; both science and theology are correct in rejecting polygenesis.
The two periscopes on this narrative reflect the difference between the theological and scientific accounts. First, the speculative “looking forward” periscope tells the larger narrative about the people outside the Garden who, eventually, become the lineage of Adam and Eve. We are learning about this ancient story through the work of scientists, from ancient bones, artifacts, and genomes. Second, there is the textual “looking backward” periscope, which is telling only the story of Adam and Eve’s lineage. The larger theological narrative contains the textual account. Historical theology and Scripture are bound to the smaller periscope of the text. The traditional account was not incorrect, just part of a more ancient story.
Even “death” and “no death” before the Fall, old and young creation, are held together. In the first periscope, Adam’s world is in fact created very recently, free of death, even though the world outside the Garden is ancient and also with death.
In these tensions, in fact, I see the recovery of the many-colored wisdom of the Church, in both its orthodox and heterodox traditions. With dilemma put away, we can return into a common conversation. Far from an exclusionary tradition, it welcomes us all. My feeble attempt is certainly not the final answer. I see, nonetheless, through the haze of the mystery the infallible work of God, making our true nature known to all of us, but each of us seeing only in part.
ADAM STANDS BETWEEN ERAS
Adam ends one era and begins another. According to Scripture, Adam is the first, but Jesus is the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45). They both come with the intended purpose of blessing all humankind by ending death. They both must make a choice that affects us all. Adam and Jesus, respectively, are the first and the last federal heads of humanity. They both enter the world in a special way, free of sin of any sort; the de novo creation of Adam is like the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Adam enters with a clean slate, sinless in a sinless environment, entirely safe, in the direct presence of a good God, given a choice to obey. Jesus enters the world perfect too, but into a fallen world, and he also is given a choice to obey. They both are meant to put an end to death. Jesus succeeds where Adam fails.
Jesus ends one era and begins another too. With far higher stakes and urgency, the early Church grappled with the transition from the era before the incarnation into the era after. This narrative grappled with an easier transition: from before to after Adam. How do we think backward, into the era before Adam? The image of God might arise long before Adam and Eve and may have nothing to do with this transition. Instead, there might be more salience found in contemplating the Fall. What are the relationships between corruption, dominion, wrongdoing, death, and civilization? How might the Fall have disordered the era before it? How might it have spawned the world in which we find ourselves? These sorts of question may be fertile ground.
The Fall may be the key to understanding the transition between two eras that Adam stands between. I will expand on this in much more detail in the coming chapters.
DEATH, WRONGDOING, AND TRANSGRESSION
The two puzzles of death and wrongdoing before the Fall might be interrelated, easier to solve together. Death outside the Garden might have had a purpose: to prevent wrongdoing from growing into evil (Gen 6:3). Some have understood this as spiritual death or separation from God, but I understand it as physical death to be reversed by Jesus (1 Cor 15:20-22, 42-49; Rev 20–21). God’s intention is to provide a better way, free of death, without unleashing evil from the restraint of death. Outside the Garden, death had a purpose in a good creation, but God’s intention was always to bring death to a final end.
The death outside the Garden challenges those who insist there was no death in all creation before Adam’s sin. Such theology is already in conflict with both Scripture and historical theology.13 The view that there was no death before the Fall misquotes Romans 5:12-14, deleting the qualifier “to all people.” Genesis itself teaches that the Garden was localized to a small area (Gen 2:5-14) and that there was death outside the Garden, away from the tree of life (Gen 3:22-24). Perhaps there was no animal death inside the Garden, but most of the Church before 1517 believed that there was death outside the Garden, and there was also a good purpose for it.14 Perhaps the era before Adam will be better understood from these deeper traditions of the Church.
At the same time, “no death” theology is fully accommodated within the Garden. The periscope of Scripture is contextually bound to Adam, Eve, and their descendants, which includes all of us. Through this periscope, matching a “no death before the Fall” doctrine, physical death enters our world when Adam sins, and we are all exiled from the Garden. I understand that some will still object, insisting on universalizing the “no death” doctrine across the earth. It is up to them, however, to demonstrate the grounding for such a grand theological innovation.
Was there wrongdoing in the world before Adam’s transgression? The Genesis narrative itself tells us yes. Eve and the serpent are doing wrong, but their error is not as consequential as Adam’s sin. They tempt him into error, and are punished for it, but Adam is the one who directly violates a divine edict. This demonstrates that there was wrongdoing in the world before Adam’s transgression. Consistent with Romans 5:12-14, Genesis seems to teach that there was a different sort of sin in the world before the Adamic law was given, and this sin was not held against anyone’s account.
What made Adam’s transgression different from everyone else’s wrongdoing? Adam was biologically like us, but different in important ways. First, Adam was created originally righteous, free of sin, placed in a sinless environment, and this made him more culpable. Second, Adam also had a special calling not given to other people, and his failure frustrated this calling. Third, Adam (not Eve) was given a direct command from God (Gen 2:17). Others violated their conscience when they did wrong (Rom 2:15), but only Adam directly transgressed a good God’s direct edict. Fourth, Adam’s sin leads to a corrupted dominion over the earth, in a way that had never happened before. For all these reasons, Adam’s sin was a distinct transgression that altered the course of history for everyone. His purpose was to put an end to death, without unleashing evil. Instead, in his fall, he unleashed a corrupted dominion that twisted the rise of civilization.
A LIMITED GOAL
These moves resolve some theological questions, but they raise new ones. The genealogical hypothesis probes scientific understanding. In a similar way, speculation probes our theological understanding.
Just like the traditional account, this experiment does not aim for airtight coherency, such that all the details fit perfectly.15 The traditional account comes with lacunae, and this narrative seeks to fill in the places of silence with reasonable inferences. This narrative is not the traditional account, per se, but it contains the traditional account through one of its periscopes. In this way, the narrative accounts for something that other traditional accounts do not: evolutionary science, and, with it, the people outside the Garden. Most of historical theology is not concerned with people outside the Garden, and their existence is not a major factor in any other texts of Scripture. Without this larger narrative, however, traditional accounts struggle to engage what scientists are discovering about our deep past, and this is a major challenge.
I am not claiming airtight coherence, and neither does the Genesis account itself. Instead this experiment is a narrative framework within which we can think through other theological questions. There are still questions that arise about the people outside the Garden. For example, did they go to heaven when they died? Hell? Or nonexistence? These are interesting questions, but Scripture and historical theology do not tell us one way or another. This narrative experiment nonetheless gives us a starting point from which to engage these questions together.