ADAM TODAY: NINE THESES
How are Christians—those who value Scripture as God’s Word and who also accept evolution as the correct model for human origins—to think of Adam today? That is the question we began with at the beginning of the book, and the question for everyone to work through on their own. I hope the thoughts I have outlined thus far may be of some help. Toward that end, I think it is appropriate to conclude this book by outlining in nine theses the core issues before us, retracing some of the steps we have taken throughout this book while also adding a point or two.
Thesis 1: Literalism is not an option.
Much of part 1 addresses this issue in one way or another. One cannot read Genesis literally—meaning as a literally accurate description of physical, historical reality—in view of the state of scientific knowledge today and our knowledge of ancient Near Eastern stories of origins. Those who read Genesis literally must either ignore evidence completely or present alternate “theories” in order to maintain spiritual stability. Unfortunately, advocates of alternate scientific theories sometimes keep themselves free of the burden of tainted peer review. Such professional isolation can encourage casually sweeping aside generations and even centuries of accumulated knowledge.
Literalism is designed to protect the Bible but in reality subjects the Bible and its literalist interpreters to ridicule. As we saw in chapter 2, Augustine made this point more than one and a half millennia ago concerning the cosmology of Genesis 1:
It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these [cosmological] topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.[102]
As this quote indicates, literalism can lead thoughtful, informed people to reject any semblance of the Christian faith. This is more my concern than anything else. Literalism is not just an outdated curiosity or an object of jesting. It can be dangerous. A responsible view of the biblical stories must account for the scientific and archaeological facts, not dismiss them, ignore them, or—as in some cases—manipulate them.
Thesis 2: Scientific and biblical models of human origins are, strictly speaking, incompatible because they speak a different “language.” They cannot be reconciled, and there is no “Adam” to be found in an evolutionary scheme.
Although we should not take the Genesis creation accounts literally, Adam is nevertheless a key theological figure. Hence, some understandably seek to merge evolution with Adam in an attempt to preserve what they perceive as the heart of Paul’s teaching on Adam, yet without dismissing natural science. In other words, evolution is fine so long as an “Adam” can be identified somehow, somewhere. So, for example, it is sometimes argued that Adam and Eve were two hominids or symbolic of a group of hominids with whom, at some point in evolutionary development, God entered into a relationship. At this point God endowed them with his image, thus making them conscious of God and thereby entering into a covenant relationship with them. Such a scenario is thought to preserve at least the general story of Genesis.
I support the effort to take seriously both the theological heart of the Adam story and natural science, and to be willing to rethink the biblical Adam in the process. But as well intentioned as this approach is—and many thoughtful people envision such a scenario—I see several problems.
First and foremost, it is ironic that in trying to hold on to biblical teaching a scenario is proposed that the Bible does not recognize: gradual evolution over millions of years rather than the sudden and recent creation of humanity as the Bible has it. Now I will say it is possible that, tens of thousands of years ago, God took two hominid representatives (or a group of hominids) and with them began the human story where creatures could have a consciousness of God, learn to be moral, and so forth. But that is an alternate and wholly ad hoc account of the first humans, not the biblical one. One cannot pose such a scenario and say, “Here is your Adam and Eve; the Bible and science are thus reconciled.” Whatever those creatures were, they were not what the biblical authors presumed to be true. They may have been the first beings somehow conscious of God, but we overstep our bounds if we claim that these creatures satisfy the requirements of being “Adam and Eve.”
Second, another problem with this scenario, though not as central, is that it presses “image of God” (Gen. 1:26) into service beyond its limits. In the Old Testament “image of God” refers to humanity’s role as ruler over creation, as God’s earthly representatives. Ancient kings were considered to be living images of the gods, ruling on the gods’ behalf. Ancient kings also placed statues (images) of themselves in the far corners of their kingdom to proclaim, “This is mine.” Humans were God’s images to represent to all creatures God’s rule over the earth. Consciousness of God, heightened moral sense, and so forth are not the topic. Again, it is possible that at some point in the evolutionary process, God endowed hominids with an awareness of himself, and so began the human religious drama; but “image of God” cannot be appealed to, for it gives the false impression that this ad hoc scenario is biblically grounded.
Third, searching for ways to align modern-scientific and ancient-biblical models of creation—no matter how minimal—runs the risk of obscuring the theology of the biblical texts in question. The creation stories are ancient and should be understood on that level. Rather than merge the two creation stories—the scientific and the biblical—we should respect that they each speak a different language. The fact that Paul considered Adam to be the progenitor of the human race does not mean that we need to find some way to maintain his view within an evolutionary scheme. Rather, we should gladly acknowledge his ancient view of cosmic and human origins and see in that very scenario the face of a God who seems far less reluctant to accommodate to ancient points of view than we are sometimes comfortable with.
Thesis 3: The Adam story in Genesis reflects its ancient Near Eastern setting and should be read that way.
Following on the previous thesis, the Adam story must be understood first and foremost as an ancient story that addresses ancient Israelite questions in ancient ways. This is hardly a radical statement but simply asserts a principle of biblical interpretation that would be readily acknowledged if it were not for the controversial nature of this topic. This principle is often referred to as grammatical-historical interpretation, which stresses that the Bible’s meaning is rooted somehow in what would have been understood at the time.
Personally, I think a grammatical-historical approach to reading Scripture has its limits, partly because it does not account for how Paul handled his own Bible (see chap. 6 above). But when we are asking what Genesis meant to those who wrote it, this principle is our first order of business. We do not approach these texts properly by assuming that embedded therein is some secret knowledge that corresponds to modern science, which could not have been understood until recently. Further, following on thesis 1 above, I don’t think we can proceed in isolation from the comparative literary evidence we have from the ancient Near East.
A grammatical-historical approach has always fed off of our growing knowledge of the biblical world, the result being a clearer understanding of what the text is trying to get across. Placing the Bible in its historical contexts is the principle that lies behind every commentary on our shelves and the notes and maps that make up our study Bibles. The fact that the scientific and archaeological evidence concerning Genesis can be somewhat challenging does not permit us to abandon this principle.
Thesis 4: There are two creation stories in Genesis; the Adam story is probably the older and was subsumed under Genesis 1 after the exile in order to tell Israel’s story.
What follows is speculative but hardly random. Here is how I see the relationship between the two creation stories, Genesis 1:1–2:3, and Genesis 2:4–3:24. The second of these is older, perhaps stemming from the first quarter of the first millennium BC (early in Israel’s existence as a nation). The story may have originated orally and remained so for generations before being written down, or it may have originated in written form and was handed down that way, or perhaps some combination of both processes. I am not concerned to settle the matter. But the Adam story was the older of the two stories and, together with the flood story,[103] reflects common ancient Near Eastern themes and may be modeled after the Atrahasis Epic.
The Adam story functioned as Israel’s creation story and was probably rethought and retold along the way as Israel grew and developed in its self-understanding. In exile, faced with this national crisis and asking themselves basic questions of self-definition, their relationship with God, and so forth, Israel’s theologians added another creation story, Genesis 1, modeled more along the lines of the stories of their captors, the Babylonians, with perhaps Enuma Elish exerting an indirect influence. I am not suggesting that Genesis 1 was “written” at this point out of whole cloth, especially since the themes are not necessarily strictly Babylonian, and Israel was hardly immune to Babylonian influence before the exile. But what became Genesis 1:1–2:3 seems to fit best in the context of national struggle. The story stresses the sovereignty of Israel’s God over all of creation, who alone made all that is, and this set Israel’s God apart from the gods of Israel’s captors and of every other nation. Hence, what we call Genesis 1 was put at the head of Israel’s national story, a collection of writings either composed or brought together in what eventually came to be called the Bible.
What had earlier been Israel’s sole creation story, the Adam story, was now subsumed under this newer story. I am noncommittal as to whether the Adam story ever functioned for Israel as a story of universal human origins, although referring to Eve as “the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20) suggests as much. Perhaps the Adam story always functioned primarily as a story of Israel, with the world stage as the backdrop. But however it functioned originally, when it was subsumed under the universal story of origins in Genesis 1, the Adam story took on, it seems to me, a clearer Israelite-centered focus. As we saw in chapter 4, the Adam story seems to be a preview of Israel’s history, from exodus to exile. Genesis 1 tells the story of the sovereign God over all of creation, but from the outset Genesis 2 focuses on what for Israel was the heart of the matter, that this universal sovereign God is also their God, and that they had been his elect people, among all other peoples, since the very beginning.
This same idea seems to be at work in the only other mention of Adam in the entire Old Testament, 1 Chronicles 1:1: Adam is the first name in the nine-chapter genealogy that establishes Israel’s unwavering status as God’s people from the very beginning. The postexilic community, wishing to affirm its national and religious identity, traced its lineage back to Adam—not the universal first man, but the first man in the chosen line, the first Israelite.
In my view, reading the Adam story as it was intended to be understood by those who shaped the Bible—primarily as a story of Israel within the larger stage of universal world history—is the most fruitful approach. The Adam story is not an obligatory nod on the part of ancient Israelites to account for how humanity came to be. The primary question Israel was asking was not, “Where do people come from?” (a scientific curiosity), but “Where do we come from?” (a matter of national identity).
Thesis 5: The Israel-centered focus of the Adam story can also be seen in its similarity to Proverbs: the story of Adam is about failure to fear God and attain wise maturity.
When read in light of Proverbs, the Adam story is about failing to follow the path of wisdom and reach maturity and not about a fall from perfection. Adam and Eve were innocent, childlike creatures in need of maturation. When naive Adam and Eve chose to listen to the cunning (the opposite of naive) serpent and follow another path to wisdom, they veered off God’s path. The tree that they had had access to, the tree of life, was now off limits. As Proverbs puts it, in a clear echo of the garden story, “She [Wisdom] is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her” (Prov. 3:18).
When read as a wisdom story, the story of Adam becomes a story for “every Israelite,” those who are daily in a position of having to choose which path they will take: the path of wisdom or the path of foolishness. Paul himself does not develop this metaphor in his proclamation of the good news in Romans 5. As we have seen, he presents Adam as the first human who introduced sin and death to all. Nevertheless, there is a way in which Paul’s reading of the Adam story and the wisdom reading may inform each other. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30, part of the redemption in Christ is that Christ “became for us wisdom from God.” In other words, the wisdom that Adam and Eve lacked and that sent them veering off course is restored, like everything else, by an act of God (cf. Col. 2:3, which says that “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are hidden in Christ). A wisdom reading of Adam does not diminish Paul’s gospel but complements it by means of a different metaphor.
Thesis 6: God’s solution through the resurrection of Christ reveals the deep, foundational plight of the human condition, and Paul expresses that fact in the biblical idiom available to him.
As discussed in chapter 7, Paul’s reading of the Adam story was conditioned by his experience of the risen Christ. As Paul does so often in his use of the Old Testament in general, he interprets it in such a way as to highlight the work of Christ and the equality of Jew and gentile.
The death and resurrection of the Son of God was a surprise ending to Israel’s story. No one familiar with the Old Testament messianic hope was prepared for a crucified—and risen!—messiah. This jarring climax to Israel’s story, according to Paul, served to relativize Israel’s story: faithful Torah obedience was no longer the necessary preparation to usher in the messianic age (understood as Jewish political and religious freedom). Torah was actually part of the problem: it merely exacerbated and made plain a much deeper truth about the human condition—that we are broken and alienated people, in need of rescue (Rom. 5:20).
The solution that God gave in the death and resurrection of Christ served not only to show the depth of God’s love for his creation but also revealed—for the first time clearly—the extent to which that creation was in need of deliverance (Rom. 8:19–23). Paul, as a first-century Jew, bore witness to God’s act in Christ in the only way that he could have been expected to do so, through ancient idioms and categories known to him and his religious tradition for century upon century. One can believe that Paul is correct theologically and historically about the problem of sin and death and the solution that God provides in Christ without also needing to believe that his assumptions about human origins are accurate. The need for a savior does not require a historical Adam.
Thesis 7: A proper view of inspiration will embrace the fact that God speaks by means of the cultural idiom of the authors—whether it be the author of Genesis in describing origins or how Paul would later come to understand Genesis. Both reflect the setting and limitations of the cultural moment.
Following on thesis 6, even the expression of deep and ultimate truth does not escape the limitations of the cultures in which that truth is expressed. Unfortunately, this is not always fully appreciated. A barrier to the evolution-Christianity discussion is a view of the Bible where God’s accommodating himself to the views of the time—whether in Genesis or Romans—is assumed to be somewhat unworthy of God. Some seem to expect the Bible to be a document that fundamentally transcends its setting. It is true that the Bible tells a grand narrative that is not merely restricted to its cultural moments, but we do the Bible a great disservice when we minimize the settings in which the texts were written, as if they are an unfortunate impediment of some sort.
A central tenet of Christianity is the mystery summarized in Philippians 2:6–8, that although Christ “was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” This is a fitting metaphor for the Bible, where God condescends to speak, empty of all beauty and perfection, more like a humble servant subject to the lowest status.
Understanding the nature of the Bible as analogous to the mystery of the incarnation helps us to adjust our expectations of what the Bible is prepared to deliver. The entire matter is beautifully put by the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), and I cannot resist quoting him at length:
Scripture . . . is the working out and application of the central fact of revelation: the incarnation of the Word. The Word (logos) has become flesh (sarx), and the word has become Scripture; these two facts do not only run parallel but are most intimately connected. Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or comeliness, the most despised of human beings; he descended to the nethermost parts of the earth and became obedient even to death on the cross. So also the word, the revelation of God, entered the world of creatureliness, the life and history of humanity, in all the human forms of dream and vision, of investigation and reflection, right down into that which is humanly weak and despised and ignoble. . . . All this took place in order that the excellency of the power . . . of Scripture may be God’s and not ours.[104]
There is a reason why Scripture looks the way it does, so human, so much a part of its world: it looks this way to exalt God’s power, not our power, according to Bavinck. The Bible reflects the ancient contexts in which it was written, and this very fact proclaims the glory of God. The “creatureliness” of Scripture is not an obstacle to be overcome so that God may finally be seen. Rather, just as Christians proclaim concerning Christ, it is through creatureliness that God can be seen. We can only see God truly because of the limited, human form he has chosen as a means of revelation, and if we try to look past it, we will miss everything. And this humanity, as Bavinck puts it, whether of Christ or of Scripture, is “weak and despised and ignoble.” We see God through the humiliation. To marginalize, minimize, or somehow get behind the Bible’s “creatureliness” to the “real” Word of God is, for Bavinck, to strip God of his glory (not to mention being quasi gnostic).
When we read the Bible, whether the creation accounts of Genesis or Paul’s reading of them, we are not to look past the “unfortunate” human encumbrances to catch a glimpse of the divine. We are to see the divine in and through the human words of the writers. When we read Genesis and see the clear and undeniable overlap with Mesopotamian myths, that is not a reason for offense—as if God would not do such a thing. This actually is the only thing he does do: take on humanity when he speaks. And when we see Paul rereading the Adam story from the vantage point of his Second Temple and postresurrection setting, thereby engaging the text creatively and not being bound to the original authors’ intentions, we do not conclude that this “ignominy” is somehow unworthy of God. Quite the opposite: incarnation is God’s business.
For many, it is important for the future viability of faith, let alone the evolution-Christianity discussion, that we recognize and embrace the fact that the Bible is a thoroughly enculturated product. But it is not enough merely to say so and press on, with a quaint nod or an embarrassed shuffling of the feet. It is important for future generations of Christians to have a view of the Bible where its rootedness in ancient ways of thinking is embraced as a theological positive, not a problem to be overcome.[105] At present there is a lot of fear about the implications of bringing evolution and Christianity together, and this fear needs to be addressed head-on. Many fear that we are on a slippery slope, to use the hackneyed expression. Perhaps the way forward is not to resist the slide so much as to stop struggling, look around, and realize that we may have been on the wrong hill altogether.
What makes some uncomfortable is that such a view of the Bible can open the door for all sorts of uncertainty, and most of all to questioning familiar ways of talking about God, the Bible, and much else. And with this we get to a key and even central barrier to the debate.
Thesis 8: The root of the conflict for many Christians is not scientific or even theological, but group identity and fear of losing what it offers.
The Christian faith is invariably tied to its sacred book, where God speaks. Any challenge to how that book has been understood—and evolution requires some significant adjustment for many—is bound to be threatening and so elicit strong reactions. Saying that the Adam story in Genesis is not a historical account, even though it seems to be understood that way by Paul—no matter how gently one puts it—presents a real threat to some because it is believed to undermine the trustworthiness of the Bible.
The reason why this tension is felt so acutely—particularly among evangelicals and fundamentalists—is because of the central role that the Bible plays in those traditions. Although they express their commitments differently, both of these groups share a commitment to the supreme authority of the Bible in all theological matters, which typically (or at least historically) has included a commitment to the historical accuracy of the Bible. When challenges to this “boundary marker” arise, tensions naturally increase.
The roots of this commitment to the Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist consciousness are varied, but certainly one significant historical factor is the Reformation concept of sola Scriptura: the Bible alone is the church’s final authority on all matters pertaining to faith and life. Though by no means a necessary conclusion, sola Scriptura—according to some in our present moment—does not leave much room for reinterpreting the Bible in view of extrabiblical information, be it science or Mesopotamian creation texts. These external forces introduce ambiguity into the otherwise clear meaning of the Bible and are seen to relativize its teachings as cultural expressions. Evolution requires Christians to rethink theology, yet some believe accepting this challenge calls into question their core Protestant identity. For some Christians, therefore, evidence from natural science or archaeology, no matter how compelling, is simply inadmissible. Too much is at stake.
As sociologists will be quick to tell us, movement from one’s social group takes tremendous effort and often occurs only at the prompting of some significant personal crisis or upheaval. We all tend to resist having our life narrative rewritten, particularly when those narratives include familiar notions of ultimate significance, such as the nature of the universe and our place in it, God, eternal life, and so forth. For some, that personal narrative also includes a denominational history of strong resistance toward perceived “attacks” on the gospel by such “modernist” forces as natural science or biblical scholarship. Adopting a more conversational posture toward new ideas can be seen as an act of infidelity toward the tradition, and therefore toward God himself.
Rewriting one’s narrative is always a threat, but until new narratives are written, where openness to change when warranted is valued as part of the journey of faith rather than feared, conflict will continue. Creating ecclesiastical and academic cultures where at the very least the nature of biblical authority can be seriously discussed, if not conceived of differently, is central to moving beyond the uneasy and hostile relationship between evolution and some examples of Christianity.
Thesis 9: A true rapprochement between evolution and Christianity requires a synthesis, not simply adding evolution to existing theological formulations.
Evolution is a serious challenge to how Christians have traditionally understood at least three central issues of the faith: the origin of humanity, of sin, and of death. Although, as we saw in chapter 7, sin and death are universal realities, the Christian tradition has generally attributed the cause to Adam. But evolution removes that cause as Paul understood it and thus leaves open the questions of where sin and death have come from. More than that, the very nature of what sin is and why people die is turned on its head. Some characteristics that Christians have thought of as sinful—for example, in an evolutionary scheme the aggression and dominance associated with “survival of the fittest” and sexual promiscuity to perpetuate one’s gene pool—are understood as means of ensuring survival. Likewise, death is not the enemy to be defeated. It may be feared, it may be ritualized, it may be addressed in epic myths and sagas; but death is not the unnatural state introduced by a disobedient couple in a primordial garden. Actually, it is the means that promotes the continued evolution of life on this planet and even ensures workable population numbers. Death may hurt, but it is evolution’s ally.
Evolution, therefore, cannot simply be grafted onto evangelical Christian faith. As similar as Galileo’s moment might be to the present paradigm shift, it is much easier to adapt a vast, heliocentric cosmos to traditional Christian theology than to adapt evolution to Christian thought. (At least this is true in retrospect, since Galileo’s telescope revealed an unimaginable expanse of outer space that relegated the earth to relatively unimportant status and raised the question of where, exactly, God resides in the heavens.) Evolution is not an add-on to Christianity: it demands synthesis because it forces serious intellectual engagement with some important issues. Such a synthesis requires a willingness to rethink one’s own convictions in light of new data, and that is typically a very hard thing to do (thesis 8). The cognitive dissonance created by evolution is considerable, and I understand why a piecemeal approach to bringing it and Christianity together might be attractive. But in the long run, the price we pay for not doing the hard and necessary synthetic work is high indeed.
Often Christians focus on the need to be faithful to the past, to make sure that present belief matches that of previous generations. I support the sentiment in general, but we must be just as burdened to be faithful to the future, to ensure that we are doing all we can to deliver a viable faith to future generations. That too is a high calling—even if it is unsettling, destabilizing, perhaps frightening. Nevertheless, it is a journey that must be taken, for the alternatives are not pleasant. Christians can turn away, but the current scientific explanation of cosmic and biological origins is not going away, nor is our growing understanding of the nature of Israelite faith in its ancient Near Eastern context. I do not believe that God means for his children to live in a state of denial or hand-wringing.
Likewise, abandoning all faith in view of our current state of knowledge is hardly an attractive—or compelling—option. Despite the New Atheist protestations of the bankruptcy of any faith in God in the face of science, most world citizens are not ready to toss away what has been the central element of the human drama since the beginning of recorded civilization. Neither am I, not because I refuse to see the light, but because the light of science does not shine with equal brightness in every corner. There is mystery. There is transcendence. By faith I believe that the Christian story has deep access to a reality that materialism cannot provide and cannot be expected to know. That is a confession of faith, I readily admit, but when it comes to accessing ultimate reality, we are all in the same boat, materialistic atheists included: at some point we must trust in something or someone beyond logic and evidence, even if it is to declare that there is nothing beyond what we see.
As for Christians, perhaps evolution will eventually wind up being more of a help than a hindrance. Perhaps it will lead Christians to see that our theologies are provisional; when we forget that fact, we run the risk of equating what we think of God with God himself. That is a recurring danger, and the history of Christianity is replete with sad and horrific stories of how theology is used to grasp at and maintain power over others. It may be that evolution, and the challenges it presents, will remind us that we are called to trust God, which means we need to restructure and even abandon the “god” that we have created in our own image. Working through the implications of evolution may remind Christians that trusting God’s goodness is a daily decision, a spiritually fulfilling act of recommitment to surrender to God no matter what. That is not easy. But if we have learned anything from the saints of the past, it is that surrendering to God each day, whatever we are facing, is not meant to be easy. Taking up that same journey now will add our witness for the benefit of future generations.