The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns, a review (part 1 of 2)

When I was growing up, I listened to a lot of James Dobson broadcasts. Now, Dobson isn’t known for expressing his views with a great deal of ambiguity. He tends to see most issues in black and white, and he expresses himself clearly.

But I remember one broadcast 20 years ago, where he moderated a debate between a theistic evolutionist and a young-earth creationist. At the end, Dobson declined to render a verdict. He said we ought to leave room for both views.

At the time, I was convinced that creation had taken place over six literal days, roughly 6,000 years ago. For some reason, though, I was glad to hear someone say that how you interpret Genesis shouldn’t be a litmus test for orthodoxy. To this day, I’m still grateful to Dobson for that broadcast.

Since then, I’ve met a number of people whose scientific credentials are far more impressive than mine (which is to say they have some), who accept the theory of evolution, and who are every bit as devoted to Christ as I am.

Like Peter Enns, author of The Evolution of Adam, I’m no scientist. I’ll let others debate the scientific particulars of the universe. I’m more interested the theological or biblical merits of young-earth, six-day creationism. And I’ve come to opinion that there aren’t that many.

Peter Enns approaches the issue of human origins — specifically, the question of Adam’s historicity — from a biblical/theological point of view, rather than a scientific one. Along the way, he questions many widely held assumptions.

Summing up Enns

The Evolution of Adam highlights some of the major problems with a literal reading of Genesis. For example, the fact that it contains two creation accounts which aren’t easily harmonized. Or the fact that Genesis 1 speaks of “days” well before the sun and moon are created on day 4 — which should be a strong hint that the writer is making a theological point rather than a scientific one. And the list goes on.

Again and again, Enns takes us back to the issue of context. Most Christians today accept the Bible has to be read in context, even if we’re not always very good at doing this. But Enns raises the stakes. He wants us to revisit the theological and cultural context of Genesis 1-2. He wants us to think about how these stories came into being — and why.

Enns notes the many parallels between Genesis 1-2 and other creation stories, like the Enuma Elish (Assyrian) and Atrahasis (Babylonian). He argues that these myths predate the Genesis narrative, though the relationship between them is complex — not a simple matter of drawing a causal line from one to the other.  If he’s right, this has profound implications for how we understand the theologicalpurpose of Genesis 1-2. The biblical creation stories may be, in part, a polemical response to Israel’s conquerors (Assyria and Babylon). In their final form, they are Israel’s attempt to make sense of its own story, in light of the exile. Enns writes:

The Genesis creation narrative we have in our Bibles today, although surely rooted in much older material, was shaped as a theological response to Israel’s national crisis of exile. These stories were not written to speak of ‘origins’ as we might think of them today (in a natural-science sense). They were written to say something of God and Israel’s place in the world as God’s chosen people.

But Enns has bigger primordial fish to fry. Namely, what do we do about Adam? This might not be much of an issue, if it weren’t for Paul. After Genesis 1-4, Adam disappears from the Old Testament record almost entirely. The idea of Adam as the originator of universal sin and death is nowhere to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures.

So why does Paul say in Romans 5, “Just as sin entered through one man [Adam], and death through sin”? Enns devotes the entire second half of The Evolution of Adam to this question.

Enns’ argument rests, in part, on Paul’s use of the Old Testament — which is creative to say the least. If you have a reference Bible, try looking up some of the Old Testament passages mentioned in the New Testament. You’ll notice how time and again, Paul radically reinterprets the Old Testament to suit his purpose.

It’s often argued this was Paul’s prerogative, since he was writing inspired scripture. But this doesn’t take into account the fact that Paul wasn’t the only one to use the Old Testament this way. He is part of a much larger rabbinic tradition that did this sort of thing all the time.

According to Enns, Paul’s just doing what his people have always done: “reworking the past to speak to the present.” This is what the authors/editors/compilers of 1-2 Chronicles did, for example, retelling Israel’s story from a post-exilic vantage point. It’s what rabbinic scholars started doing with the rest of the Old Testament in the period leading up to Christ.

What makes Paul unique is that he reinterprets everything in light of Jesus’ resurrection — which (unlike Adam) was recent history for Paul, having occurred just 25 years before he wrote Romans.

For Enns, the loss of a historical Adam doesn’t in any way diminish the truth of Paul’s main point in Romans 5:

Even without a first man, death and sin are still the universal realities that mark the human condition… The need for a savior does not require a historical Adam.

Enns also warns that by getting hung up on one detail of Paul’s argument (Adam), we risk losing sight of Paul’s larger purpose for writing his letter to the Romans:

Paul’s goal is to show that what binds these two utterly distinct groups [Jew and Gentile] together is their equal participation in a universal humanity marked by sin and death and their shared need of the same universally offered redemption.

For Enns, then, the fact that we are in this plight of universal sin and death is more important than how we got there. And Jesus as the answer to our plight is far more important than the idea of Adam as the literal, historical originator of our plight. Jesus and Adam, Enns writes, are not “characters of equal historical standing.” Christ is the one through whom all of history must be reinterpreted and reimagined.

Or as C.S. Lewis once wrote, Christ is the one through whom “this great myth became Fact.”

Science vs. Scripture (or, history repeats itself)

There was a time when scientists made a series of discoveries that revolutionized our understanding of the world around us. They began proposing new theories to explain these groundbreaking observations.

Not everyone was happy about it.

Many in the church felt threatened by the new scientific consensus, which undermined confidence in Scripture (so it was thought), because it contradicted some of what Scripture seemed to say about the universe.

So the church rejected these new theories as “godless,” even though many scientists (though by no means all) professed a deep and abiding faith in God.

Church leaders expended vast resources trying to discredit the new science. They accused scientists of being hostile toward religion and discouraged the faithful from reading any of their books.

“Science or Scripture,” the church seemed to say. “You have to choose.”

For some, this might sum up the present-day creation-versus-evolution debate. But it also describes a scene from our more distant past.

Over 500 years ago, science began questioning the geocentric view of the universe, which said the earth is fixed and everything else revolves around it.

Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo. These were the scientific trailblazers who brought geocentrism crashing down. The church fought them tooth and nail because it feared that without a geocentric universe, the Bible would come crashing down as well.

After all, Joshua 10 described the sun, not the earth, standing still during a battle between Israel and the Amorites. 1 Chronicles 16:30 said the earth “cannot be moved.” (And the list goes on.)

Galileo Before the Holy Office

The new science, heliocentrism, was regarded as a threat to faith. It had to be stopped.

In fact, opposition to it was one of relatively few areas of common ground between Catholics and Protestants (who, generally, were still trying to kill one another).

On one side, Rome forced Galileo to recant his scientific theories (under threat of torture) and sentenced him to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Books by Galileo and Kepler were banned by the pope — for over 200 years in some cases.

Sixteenth-century Protestants took by and large the same view as their Catholic counterparts. John Calvin wrote that “the earth… is placed in the center [of the universe].” It is “unmoved,” because God himself made it that way.

Calvin may not have been acquainted with Copernicus’ theory, but Martin Luther was. And he didn’t like it any better. In a conversation with a student of Copernicus, Luther reportedly said:

But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must agree with nothing else others esteem. He must invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! That fellow [Copernicus] wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.

Luther’s disciple Philip Melanchthon went even further, suggesting governments should punish anyone who advocated the new science.

It took many years for the church to come to terms with heliocentrism. But eventually it did, largely because it had no other choice in the face of overwhelming evidence.

None of the contentious passages in Scripture (Joshua 10, Psalm 104:5, 1 Chronicles 16:30, etc.) disappeared from the Bible. But they came to be read in a new light — not as scientific or literal descriptions of reality, but as something else.

Some would argue that we find ourselves in a similar situation today. Only now with evolution as the church’s Waterloo moment instead of geocentrism.

But we don’t have to fight this battle.

Science can’t answer questions of ultimate origin (i.e. God), and the Bible doesn’t seek to answer questions of science. To make it do so is to turn it into something it’s not. It’s making the Bible what we want it to be, rather than letting it speak for itself.

Five hundred years from now, I wonder if our descendants will look back on the Al Mohlers and Ken Hams of our world in the same way that most of us look back on the 16th-century church’s opposition to heliocentrism.

By waging a battle with science, Ken Ham and others are taking a page from a very old script. They are repeating history. (You might even say they’re refusing to evolve.)

Worse, by forcing people to make a false choice between science and faith, they’re inadvertently pushing people away from faith — people who conclude that science and faith are irreconcilable, that the evidence for evolution (for example, the Human Genome Project) is compelling, and that Christianity therefore is not.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The church came out its last tiff with science a bit bruised, but otherwise intact. Faith didn’t come crashing down. The Bible didn’t stop being God’s inspired word just because people realized it may not be an inspired word about science.

If the church continues to pick an unnecessary fight with science, it will end as the last one did. And it will be a self-inflicted wound.

Rethinking Adam? (part 2)

I’m sure Pete Enns knew what he was getting into when he published The Evolution of Adam last month. As Scot McKnight said in his endorsement, this is a guy who’s earned his “battle scars.” (Enns was let go from Westminster Theological Seminary for his previous book, Inspiration and Incarnation.) 

Southern Baptist theologian Al Mohler has already promised a response to Enns’ book. (I gather there’s not much chance of him endorsing it.) Ken Ham, president of the young-earth advocacy group Answers in Genesis, beat Mohler to the punch with a scathing review in which he accuses Enns (and his publisher) of heresy. Citing 2 Peter 3:5, Ham charges that Enns is “willfully ignorant.” (Though speaking of willful ignorance, it should be noted that 2 Peter 3:5 is a rebuke to those who deny the second coming of Christ, not those who question how God brought the universe into being. Context matters.)

There’s a reason The Evolution of Adam is generating a lot of heat. It’s not so much a book about evolution and creation, or science and the Bible, as it is about this foundational question:

What kind of book do we think the Bible is?

For many believers, questioning the “traditional” view of creation (Enns will argue it’s not as traditional as we think) is to question our view of the whole Bible, its divine inspiration, and its very reliability.

A friend of mine framed the discussion like this: do we let the “science story” drive our reading of the Bible, or the other way around?

It’s a fair question. But is it the right one?

Most evangelicals accept the Bible is not a scientific textbook. Still, it’s commonly argued that Scripture, to the extent it addresses natural phenomena, is scientifically accurate.

But what if the Bible depicts a flat, motionless earth? What if its human writers held pretty much the same cosmology as everyone else in the ancient Near East — namely, that the earth is a flat, circular disc covered by a dome of sky, the whole thing surrounded by water? What if the Bible assumes the sun rotates around the earth?

In fact, this is precisely how the biblical writers understood the cosmos. Exhibit A: two articles by Paul Seely, published in the Westminster Theological Journal (hardly a bastion of liberalism). One is The Geographical Meaning of “Earth” and “Seas” in Genesis 1:10, and the other is The Firmament and the Water Above.

Or you could just read passages like Daniel 4:10, which describe a large tree that is “visible to the ends of the earth.” Even as hyperbole, this statement doesn’t make any sense if the author understood the earth is a sphere. Or how about Psalm 104:5, which speaks of an immovable earth?

Or what about the day “the sun stood still” in Joshua 10?

Galileo Before the Holy Office (Robert-Fleury)

When science began to question geocentric cosmology in the 16th century, the Church saw it as an assault on the integrity of the Bible. Galileo was put under house arrest. Kepler’s books were banned.

Even today, you can find flat-earthers and fixed-earthers who say they’re just being faithful to the Bible — to a literal reading of the Bible, that is. They maintain we shouldn’t let science (“so-called science,” they might say) shape our reading of holy Scripture.

Following a period of painful adjustment, however, the vast majority of Christians came to accept what science was telling us — namely, the earth is a sphere that rotates around the sun, not the other way around.

Ask a believer today how they reconcile Joshua’s claim that “the sun stood still” with scientific fact, and they might tell you the Bible is speaking idiomatically about God’s intervention on Israel’s behalf. Or that it was simply putting things in language that made sense to an ancient audience. Most would accept that whatever else Joshua 10 means, it’s not trying to make a scientific point.

To which I say: EXACTLY.

Given that the biblical writers held the same cosmology as everyone else in the ancient world, if we were to submit their descriptions of the earth to scientific scrutiny, we would be forced to conclude they got some things wrong.

But if they weren’t trying to make a scientific point, then it’s no use judging the merit or the inspiration of what they wrote on the basis of its scientific accuracy.

To ask which story — science or the Bible’s — ought to drive our worldview is asking the wrong question, because they are two different stories about two different things.

So as we turn to the issue of Adam and the origins of the universe, the million-dollar question is this: if we accept that passages like Joshua 10 and Psalm 104 should not be read scientifically (even though it took a couple hundred years for us to get there), why should we insist on a scientific reading of Genesis 1?