Follow Up on Evangelicals, the Historical Adam, Evolution, and NPR

Last updated on: August 11, 2011 at 4:01 pm by Amy Julia Becker

Follow Up on Evangelicals, the Historical Adam, Evolution, and NPR 2011-08-11T16:01:45-04:00 Amy Julia Becker

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Yesterday morning, I wrote a response to an NPR report about evangelicals disparate beliefs about whether or not Adam was an historical figure. Many of you weighed in with comments and questions, both here and on Facebook, and I’d like to address a few of them now.

First, I’ve written before about my view of Scripture (“What is the Bible?”). I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that it is God’s authoritative word for Christians. And therefore I believe that we need to submit to the truth contained within the Bible. Of course, figuring out that truth is the tricky part, and that’s where the community of faith comes in. So thank you to those of you who both challenged and supported my point of view. Hopefully together we can learn and grow and better understand who God is.

Second, as I mentioned in response to one comment, just because I am willing to read one part of the Bible as an allegory does not mean I am willing to read all of the Bible as such. I’m not picking and choosing what to believe. Rather, I’m trying to respect the fact that various ways of writing about the same thing can give us a fuller picture. For instance, I learn one thing about a flower by picking up a biology textbook and another thing entirely by reading Wordsworth’s poem about daffodils. If I tried to learn about pollination from Wordsworth or mortality from the textbook, I wouldn’t be respecting each text on their own terms. Reading Genesis 1 and 2 as poetry and story does not mean I read all of Scripture that way. In particular, I do not read the Gospel narratives that way. As I wrote in a comment yesterday:

. . . while I believe a literal or true reading of Genesis allows room to understand Adam and Eve as figurative types, I don’t think the same is true for all of Scripture. In the Gospels, for example, the writers go to great lengths to make sure their readers understand that they aren’t writing in allegory. Luke, for instance, begins his Gospel with the words, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” As with Genesis, if we are to give respect to this text, we need to acknowledge that Luke is not writing an allegory but a history. Yes, the “rules” of history might be different now than then, but Luke intends his reader to believe the facts as he records them. John 20 makes a similar statement as to the veracity of the stories within, and Paul points out the eyewitness accounts to the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Richard Bauckham has a helpful book on this topic, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

In conclusion, for believers, each book of Scripture needs to be understood as a part of the larger whole and of a grand narrative of God’s redemption of the world. But each book also needs to be taken on its own terms in understanding what it means to read it literally.

Third, a few people mentioned the theological problems that arise if Adam wasn’t an individual human being. From a Facebook comment, “Without a first Adam, there is no need for a second Adam, the need for redemption is gone, the death of Christ is in vain.” Another person asked about Romans 5, in which Paul refers to Christ as the second Adam, and in which Paul writes, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned . . .” Again, my understanding of Genesis 2 is that Adam represents all of us. Maybe there was an individual man and/or woman who first rebelled against God. By calling that individual “Adam” the writer of Genesis helps us understand that we are all that individual man and/or woman. All of us have rebelled against God. All of us have chosen our own wisdom instead of God’s. All of us are fallen and in need of redemption. Christ remains very much the second Adam. As such, he is both an individual and a representative. Christ stands in for every one of us. As such he is the second Adam. Orthodox Christian theology holds regardless of whether you read Adam as a representative of all humans or as an individual human.

Finally, wiser minds than mine have written about this debate recently. Christianity Today discussed this topic in a cover article not long ago in “The Search for the Historical Adam” and “No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel.”

Again, thanks for your comments and particularly for the respect and civility they contained. I hope we can continue the conversation together.

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