and purposeful dwelling place for God—a cosmic temple, if you will. Furthermore, his reading actually accentuated mankind’s role as representative “image-bearers” of God, as wielders of his authority on Earth. I learned that the symbolism and literary structure of Genesis 1, including the 7-day structure of the creation week, had its roots in an ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cognitive environment that held the concepts of function and purpose to be more important than (but not entirely exclusive of) material origins, the latter of which currently guides our modern, scientific way of thinking. It even reconciled the seemingly contradictory accounts of a week long series of creative acts and a 13.8-billion-year-old universe.11
With these interpretive tools in hand, I was able to successfully assuage my fear of losing biblical authority insofar as Genesis 1 was concerned, and my openness to evolutionary theory came quite naturally. If the preponderance of scientific evidence adequately explained the existence of all biological organisms, past and present, by evolutionary means, I could accept mainstream evolutionary theory12 while maintaining the theological authority of the Bible’s opening chapter. As long as I took pains to bridge the vast cultural gap when attempting to determine the theological message of the text—which God accommodated for the Hebrew culture and chose to express in a culturally bound literary form—I wouldn’t need to fear abandoning the Bible as a source of theological truth and spiritual authority. As long as I aimed to let the Bible to speak for itself, using the best biblical scholarship available to determine who wrote the various books of the Bible, to whom they were written, and when they were written, I could have confidence that the end result would be a more faithful pronouncement of what the Bible is actually telling us, millennia later, through ancient voices.
Of course, things are never that easy when it comes to biblical authority. The functional ontology and temple imagery of Genesis 1, as well as its parallels with other ANE creation myths and temple dedication texts, carry over into the next two chapters of Genesis, which feature the creation of Adam and Eve and the entrance of sin and death into the world of mankind. What was I to do with the historicity of Adam and Eve?
If the Hebrew Scriptures stood alone as a source of spiritual authority in my life as a Christian, it wouldn’t be much of an issue. I could accept a mythological Adam and Eve within the framework of an etiological account13 of human origins, but there is this second corpus of literature held sacred by Christians commonly known as the New Testament. As a Christian, I now had an issue with Paul and his clear treatment of Adam as a real person rooted in human history. If that wasn’t enough, I was also confronted by the salvific role of Jesus himself. How could an historical, literal Jesus solve the very real problem of sin that resulted from the rebellious act of a mythical, literary Adam?
Confronting Our Fears, Part 3: Losing Our Savior
For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Rom 5:17-19, ESV)
As Christians, we have to take seriously Paul’s clear treatment of Adam as a real person rooted in human history. Furthermore, Paul seems to have thought that an historical Adam was important not for its own sake, but for the logic of salvation through Christ Jesus. How could an historical, literal Jesus solve the very real problem of sin that resulted from the rebellious act of a mythical, literary Adam? While that question makes a lot of sense on the surface, are these two figures as closely linked as I, and many others, think they are? Before I address whether the connection between Adam and Jesus is iron-clad or tenuous, though, I need to briefly address a different common objection heard by evolutionary creationists: If we accept that the cosmology and anthropology of Genesis 1-3 isn’t accurate from a modern scientific perspective, then we can’t trust the remainder of Scripture. Are we truly on a slippery slope toward rejecting everything else in Scripture, to include the necessity of Jesus’ role as humanity’s redeemer? I don’t believe so, and here’s why.
As an evolutionary creationist and a Christian, I hold the Bible to be sacred literature, and I identify fully with the faith community that the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures not only shaped, but which also shaped the content of Scripture. As a truth-seeker, I desire to understand what the text is truly saying as much as any other member of our shared faith. I want to read the Bible for all it is worth, and that requires taking the time to determine the author’s original intent for every passage of Scripture, including various passages within the same book that were written utilizing different genres. In doing so, we discover that the literary manner in which the life of Jesus is presented in the four Gospels is nothing like the etiological myths encountered in Genesis 1-11; we can safely treat the Gospels as a reliable source for knowing how the early Church viewed the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth, whose very existence is also documented in extra-biblical literature.
Skeptics of evolutionary creationism may accept that the faith-filled life of a theistic evolutionist is evidence that the Bible still wields moral authority in his or her life, and even that he or she affirms the historicity of the God-man Jesus. But there is often still considerable concern over how evolutionary creationists can affirm the historical assertion that Jesus’ death upon the Roman cross was necessary if Adam truly never lived and breathed. If Adam never lived (so the argument goes), sin is illusory, atonement for mankind’s sin unnecessary, and Jesus’ death all the more tragic. Because the person of Jesus and His sacrifice is so central to the Christian faith, this is a valid fear. However, I believe this fear can be dissected carefully and ultimately overcome once one acknowledges that, even without an original source and propagator of sin (i.e., Adam), the sinfulness of mankind (1) remains universally observable and repeatable, (2) can be explained as a result of our status as a created species with free will and a genetic predisposition to sin inherited from our ancestors, and (3) is still recognized as an inherent moral weakness that needs correction and redemption (if a divine lawgiver is presumed). All this, even if Adam and Eve were not historical persons co-complicit in an historical “fall.” In fact, one could argue that evolutionary biology provides an even more powerful paradigm for explaining the source of mankind’s sinful nature in our day than the biblical text does.
Many evolutionary creationists are convinced that our inherited evolutionary baggage—borne of an instinctual (and once necessary) need to preserve one’s self by means of selfish acts—still requires divine intervention in order to allow us to altruistically transcend what Paul calls the “flesh” (Rom 7:18; 8:5-9). We still need the work of the Holy Spirit to lead us on a sanctifying path to make us more than merely human and increasingly like the Logos of whom John the Baptist testified (John 1:6-8).14
An historical Adam
One can certainly argue that Paul treated Adam as an historical person. Yes, I believe Paul certainly did; but this is to be expected and readily admitted.15 To believe that God created Adam approximately 4,000 years before Paul’s day was an integral part of the Jews’ religious heritage. Paul’s belief that Adam actually existed is a natural extension of his rigid upbringing in the Pharisaical tradition. Nevertheless, Paul was not attempting to make an anthropological point and arguing for the necessity of a literal Adam; he was making a soteriological one and defending the necessity for a literal Savior. Even if Paul knew better by exclusive revelation from the Holy Spirit, Paul’s appropriation of Adam’s original act of rebellion is, of course, perfectly acceptable since, regardless of sin’s “material” origin, the solution to mankind’s sin problem remains Jesus’ sacrificial act—an act of love that requires a particular context for it to “make sense” to those to whom Paul preached.
Anticipating the claim that Paul, an inspired apostle, would not have used the rebellious act of a mythical person to justify the loving act of an historical one, I can only appeal to the argument that theological truths need not be couched in the dry, straightforward manner of modern journalism. God can (and did!)
