The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel A. B. Caneday

Introduction first glimpse of our own instruction book, previ- rawing upon the prestige and influence ously known only to God.”4 He refers to what he Dhe acquired as longtime head of the Human calls “The Language of God” decoded within the Genome Project, Francis Collins established The human genome. Collins is confident that, given the BioLogos Foundation with a com- uncertainty raised by multiple interpretations of A. B. Caneday is Professor of mitment to theistic evolution.1 His the Genesis account of creation and “the obvious New Testament Studies and Biblical foundation sustains the endeavor truths of the natural world that science has revealed Theology at Northwestern College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. of The Language of God, his book, to us” in that context: that attempts to synthesize evolu- He has written many scholarly tion with Christianity.2 Collins I find theistic evolution, or BioLogos, to be by articles, including contributions believes the language of God in far the most scientifically consistent and spiritu- to two recent edited volumes: The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Scripture is not as clear as “the lan- ally satisfying of the alternatives. This position Biblical, and Theological Studies guage in which God created life,” will not go out of style or be disproven by future (Paternoster, 2009) and A Cloud of borrowing President Bill Clinton’s scientific discoveries. It is intellectually rigorous, Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in its Ancient Context (T. & T. Clark, remarks during the unveiling of the it provides answers to many otherwise puzzling 2008). Dr. Caneday is co-author completion of the mapping of the questions, and it allows science and faith to (with Thomas R. Schreiner) of human genome.3 It is understand- fortify each other like two unshakable pillars, The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical able, then, that Collins extended holding up a building called Truth.5 Theology of Perseverance and Assurance (InterVarsity, 2001). the imagery of divine revelation with vaunted confidence: “It’s a Perhaps this bravado explains the stained glass happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and image of the DNA double helix on the book’s dust awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the jacket.6

26 SBJT 15.1 (2011): 26-59. With the founding of The BioLogos Founda- associating Jesus’ temptation with Adam’s. Track- tion Collins has launched a major campaign to ing the genealogy back to Adam without stopping challenge evangelicals to abandon belief that the at Abraham, as Matthew does, draws attention to Genesis account of creation and of Adam’s origin Luke’s accent upon the universal aspect of Christ’s requires belief in Adam’s historicity. Collins asks, mission, for humanity, not for Jews alone. Finally, tracing the lineage back to tou theou (3:37) rein- But what about the Garden of Eden? Is the forces the linkage between Jesus’ baptism and description of Adam’s creation from the dust of temptation. Luke links the designation, ho uios the earth, and the subsequent creation of Eve mou, announced by the voice from heaven, with ōn from one of Adam’s ribs, so powerfully described uios … tou theou (3:23, 37). By doing so, Luke does in Genesis 2, a symbolic allegory of the entrance not simply bring the reader back to creation but of the human soul into a previously soulless draws tight association between Jesus and Adam, animal kingdom, or is this intended as literal both designated “son of God,” but in such a man- history?7 ner that by divine design Jesus reenacts Adam’s role.9 Without a doubt, Luke regards Adam to be His answers are evident. After evolutionists the real first human ancestor of the Christ.10 have waged war against Christian faith for gen- What Luke’s Gospel forthrightly asserts, Paul erations, Collins stakes his claim with evolution, accepts as unequivocally factual. On the basis establishes his outpost, issues his battle cry, and of the genealogical continuum between Adam then calls out to extremists (on “both sides” of and Christ, he proceeds to draw out the divinely course): “It is time to call a truce in the escalating invested theological significance concerning war between science and spirit. The war was never this relationship with regard to essential Chris- really necessary.”8 tian beliefs bound up in the gospel. So, whenever This bold endeavor to reorient evangelical occasion arises within his letters to refer to Adam, Christian beliefs concerning the origins of the his argument invariably regards both Adam and universe and of Adam especially holds ramifica- Eve, his wife, as the historic first humans, directly tions that extend far beyond calling into question formed by the Creator. For example, Paul asserts, the historicity of Adam. If Adam was not the first “But death reigned from Adam until Moses, human and progenitor of all humanity, as Gen- even over those who did not sin in the likeness esis and the apostle Paul affirm, then the gospel of of Adam’s transgression, who is a type of the one Jesus Christ inescapably falls suspect—because to come” (Rom 5:14). Accordingly, the apostle the Gospel of Luke unambiguously traces the affirms Adam’s historicity and Adam’s symbolic genealogy of Jesus Christ back through Joseph, and typological function. He does not separate who was thought to be his father, all the way back Adam’s historicity from his symbolic function as through Enos, to Seth, then to Adam, and finally though to insist upon his representative role nulli- to God (Luke 3:18). Several features call atten- fies his factual existence or vice versa. Christians tion to this genealogy. Luke does not place it at have universally believed rightly that Adam’s the beginning of the Gospel, as Matthew does, but divinely appointed roles as humanity’s seminal inserts it between Jesus’ baptism and his temp- head and covenantal representative, through tation. Use of ho uios mou (3:22) followed by ōn whom sin and death came, and as Jesus Christ’s uios (3:23) prepares for the descending order of foreshadow, whose disobedience finds contras- the genealogy. So, unlike Matthew, Luke traces tive consummation in Christ’s obedience, are the lineage from Jesus back to Adam, thus placing grounded in his own historicity as the first human. Adam’s name closer to the temptation account, However, with renewed intensity the siren song of

27 evolution rivals Scripture’s prima facie portrayal of the Adam story.”16 Because he accepts evolution of humanity’s progenitor, even more, Christ’s as the only viable explanation for human origins progenitor. available to modern Christians, Enns proposes that “Adam is the beginning of Israel, not humanity.”17 BioLogos Deconstructs Adam He rightly observes parallels between Adam’s and to Fit Evolution Israel’s stories.18 That large numbers of Christians persist in However, even though he acknowledges that their belief that Adam was the actual first human in the Bible’s narrative because the Adam story and progenitor of the human race embarrasses precedes the story of Israel it sets the pattern that many of the church’s intelligentsia.11 These theis- Israel follows, he chooses to reverse the order tic evolutionists complain that fellow Christians historically. Enns does not accept the history of are obscurants.12 Pointing to competing interpre- the biblical storyline beginning with Adam and tations of Genesis 1-3, one prejudices his ques- progressing toward Israel as Paul does in Romans tion against these poor benighted souls when he 4:14—“death reigned from Adam to Moses.” asks, is it “sensible for sincere believers to rest Instead, Enns believes that the parallels call for the entirety of their position in the evolutionary a “symbolic reading” of the Adam story because, debate, their views on the trustworthiness of sci- he claims, “Israel’s history happened first, and the ence, and the very foundation of their religious Adam story was written to reflect that history. In faith on a literalist interpretation, even if other other words, the Adam story is really an Israel equally sincere believers disagree, and have dis- story placed in primeval time. It is not a story of agreed even long before Darwin and his Origins human origins but of Israel’s origins.”19 of Species first appeared?”13 Francis Collins takes To support this conclusion, Enns points to the umbrage at non-scientists who reject evolution episode in Genesis concerning Cain after he mur- and BioLogos, his version of theistic evolution. dered Abel, his brother.20 Enns reasons, “If the Yet, far from being a biblical scholar, he utters Adam story is about the first humans, the pres- remarkably bold, if not audacious, hermeneutical, ence of other humans [in Nod] outside of Eden is exegetical, and theological assertions unbecom- out of place. We are quite justified in concluding ing adult Christians.14 Because he thinks that he that the Adam story is not about absolute human has harmonized evolutionary origins of humanity origins but the beginning of one smaller subset, with Scripture’s account of humanity’s origin, by one particular people … that particular people in subjecting the latter to the former, he expects that mind are Israel. Adam is ‘proto-Israel.’”21 Accord- other Christians should drop their resistance to ingly, Adam is not a real person who existed in his- evolution and join him. tory. Rather, Adam is a literary creation, a mythic, Collins recruited Peter Enns to serve as Senior a symbolic, an archetypal fiction to represent Fellow in Biblical Studies on the BioLogos team. Israel.22 Enns concludes, then, that the “‘Adam is Among his numerous articles addressing how belief Israel’ angle is at the very least a very good one— in theistic evolution correlates with Scripture’s and in my opinion a much better angle than see- account of creation, Enns published a sequence ing Adam as the first human and all humans are of articles that challenges Adam’s historicity. He descended from him. Genesis does not support acknowledges, “The biblical description of human that reading.”23 The advantage Enns finds in this origins, if taken literally, presents Adam as the very reading of Genesis 1 and 2 is that “if the Adam first human being ever created.”15 Yet, he postulates story is not about absolute human origins, then that the text of Genesis calls for “reading the Adam the conflict between the Bible and evolution can- story symbolically” over against “a literal reading not be found there.”24

28 Israel25 Adam Israel “created” by God at the exodus through a Adam is created in Genesis 2 after the taming of cosmic battle (gods are defeated and the Red chaos in Genesis 1; Sea is “divided”); The Israelites are given Canaan to inhabit, a lush Adam is placed in a lush garden; land flowing with milk and honey; They remain in the land as long as they obey the Law (not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Mosaic law; Good and Evil) is given as a stipulation for remaining in the garden; They persist in a pattern of disobedience and are Adam and Eve disobey and are exiled. exiled to Babylon.

So, according to Enns, because the narrative urrected Christ, and now his creative imaginative of Genesis 1-3 is not about origins of the universe training was geared toward drawing out Chris- and of humanity, the Book of Genesis poses no tological connections to the Old Testament.”29 restraint to embracing evolution as the factual Thus, the “Adam” in Paul’s letters is the result of accounting of origins, including human origin. “a creative handling of the story to serve a larger Two letters by Paul, however, do pose a dilemma. theological purpose.”30 Enns would have Chris- He acknowledges, “For people who take the Bible tians believe that those who wish “to maintain seriously, Paul’s understanding of Adam can be an a biblical faith in a modern world” have “all left insuperable obstacle to accepting what we know ‘Paul’s Adam’” and “are all ‘creating Adam,’ as about the past from other sources.”26 How does it were, in an effort to reconcile Scripture and Paul read the Adam narrative? Is what Paul has the modern understanding of human origins.”31 written reliable? “Does Paul’s use of the Adam Archaeological and scientific evidence for evo- story actually depend on him not reading it lit- lution render it untenable for any Christian to erally?”27 Enns frames what he calls the modern “allow Paul (and other biblical writers) to settle Christian’s dilemma. for us the question of human origins.”32 Enns sums up the alleged dilemma Paul’s use There is really little doubt that Paul understood of Adam poses for modern Christians: Adam to be a real person, the first created human from whom all humans descended. And for (1) that there is indeed a problem with seeing many Christians, this settles the issue of whether Adam as the progenitor of all human beings who there was a historical Adam. That is what Paul lived a few thousand years before Jesus in that it is believed, and for his argument to have any mean- incompatible with what we know of the past, sci- ing, both Adam and Jesus have to be real people. If entifically and archaeologically; (2) Paul seems there was no Adam, there was no fall. If there was to share such a view of Adam when he says “sin no fall, there was no need for a savior. If Adam is entered the world through one man, and death a fantasy, so is the Gospel.28 through sin, and in this way death came to all people” (Romans 5:12); (3) Paul’s view of Adam Enns suggests that at least two factors deter- is of non-negotiable theological importance and mine how Paul reads Genesis: (1) his training in so must be addressed.33 “Jewish interpretive techniques, which were charac- terized by creative and imaginative engagement How does Enns respond to this dilemma? He with the Hebrew Bible,” and (2) he “met the res- wants to reassure evangelical Christians con-

29 cerning the trustworthiness of the Scriptures Paul read for themselves in their own language, takes both used and wrote as he explains, “Paul certainly precedence over God’s deeds-revelation in nature assumed that Adam was a person and the progeni- and in the human genome interpreted for them by tor … of the human race. I would expect nothing scientists who alone can access and decode what less from Paul, being a first-century man.”34 He Collins calls the “most remarkable of all texts,” the explains that Paul’s writings are to be received as human genome.38 Does Paul’s belief that Adam is Scripture, but God accommodated the “categories the progenitor of all humanity, Enns asks, “violate … available to human beings at that time.”35 In the theological point that Paul is making of con- other words, as God reveals himself and his deeds necting Adam and Jesus, and more importantly, through Scriptures inscribed by humans with does, let’s say, the non-literalness of Adam affect faith in him, he conforms his word-revelation to the non-literalness of Jesus?” He answers, “Abso- their ignorance of the facts concerning the origins lutely not! The two are not connected in that way. of the earth and of humanity concealed in fossil In Paul’s mind there may be a more organic con- records and in the human genome for long ages nection. But talking about … the non-historicity but now revealed to humans who can affirm with of Adam, a person of antiquity, a story of antiquity confidence, unlike Paul, that God did not directly … and Jesus staring you right in the face, how you form Adam from the dust of the earth or breathe handle this [Adam] does not determine how you life into him. handle this [Jesus].”39 Accordingly, Paul’s witness So, because Enns offers faint praise for Paul’s concerning Jesus is reliable even if flawed by false beliefs concerning Adam, without openly sneer- belief that Adam is the progenitor of the Christ. ing at Paul, he teaches others to sneer. For, no In the end, even though Paul agrees with one would reasonably expect historically disad- Luke that Adam, presented in Genesis as directly vantaged Paul to know that the Human Genome formed from the ground by God, is a real historic Project would yield “essentially assured” scientific person who is also the progenitor of the human evidence concerning common human origins, not race and of Jesus Christ, according to Enns this from one pair of humans but from thousands of has no impact upon how Christians should ancestors.36 Paul can hardly be blamed for hold- respond to the claims scientists make concern- ing a “first-century” benighted belief that God ing the evolutionary origins of humanity, “essen- directly formed Adam from the soil several mil- tially assured scientifically.” Modern Christians lennia past instead of holding the enlightened should know better than to believe as Paul falsely twenty-first century assured scientific knowledge believed in the historicity of Adam. Because that Adam evolved from as many as ten thousand “Paul is a first-century man” with no access to the ancestors around a hundred thousand years ago.37 assured scientific conclusions modern scientists If Paul unwittingly believed falsely that Adam possess, “what he says about Jesus and Adam has was the progenitor of the incarnate Son of God to be understood in that context.”40 Given archae- and passed this false information on as truth in ological and scientific evidence available today, his letters, accepted as the church’s Scriptures, “any version of #1 above [the view that allows what about the theological connection he draws ‘Paul (and other biblical writers) to settle for us between Adam and Jesus? Enns is confident in the question of human origins’] is, at the end of his ability to recognize in which situations moder- the day, or even the beginning for that matter, nity’s severance of Christian faith from history is unrealistic and wrong.”41 Though Enns softens the both right and necessary. So, he attempts to reas- harshness of his statement by not expressly reiter- sure Christians who still believe that God’s word- ating his antecedent, as indicated with brackets, revelation in Scripture, which they access and he means that archaeologists and scientists have

30 proved that Paul was wrong about Adam’s origin whether from Genesis itself or from Scripture’s and historicity. Nevertheless, Enns wants read- uses of Genesis as in Paul’s letters?44 If Paul holds ers to understand that even though Paul’s beliefs and advocates wrong beliefs concerning Adam’s about Adam, restricted by virtue of being a “first- origin and historicity, how is he to be trusted doc- century man,” have been proved false by modern trinally, since the doctrines he affirms and teaches historians and scientists, this does not at all jeop- are entirely inseparable from biblically stated ori- ardize the trustworthiness of Paul’s doctrinal use gins and historicity? of Adam in relation to Christ. God’s Revelatory “Lisping” And Is the Historicity of Adam Inescapable Knowledge of the Essential to Paul’s Gospel? Creator It is difficult to comprehend how BioLogos’s To synthesize evolution with Christianity advocates for evolution, who dispute the reliability BioLogos advocates depend heavily upon the of Scripture’s plainspoken narrative concerning Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment miscon- God’s creation of the universe and his formation strual of the classic “doctrine of divine accom- of all earthly life, especially human life, and who modation” to explain inclusion of error and of subject the authority of Scripture’s testimony to myth in Scripture, particularly in the creation the self-proclaimed authority modern archaeolo- account of Genesis, which Paul reads and believes gists and evolutionary scientists assert concerning depicts Adam as both historical and as progenitor origins, can with sincerity claim that they affirm of all humanity and the Christ. Peter Enns and either Scripture’s authority or inerrancy as his- Kenton Sparks wrongly appeal to John Calvin as torically confessed by Christians. Nevertheless, though he supports their historical-critical view Giberson and Collins announce, of Scripture.45

[W]e do not believe that God would provide For who even of slight intelligence does not two contradictory revelations. God’s revelation understand that, as nurses commonly do with in nature, studied by science, should agree with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in God’s revelation in Scripture, studied by theol- speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do ogy. Since the revelation from science is so crystal not so much express clearly what God is like as clear about the age of the earth, we believe we should accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight think twice before embracing an approach to the capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath Bible that contradicts this revelation.42 his loftiness.46

Is it not evident that this disputes Scripture’s With Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, Enns and reliability and authority concerning the begin- Sparks claim that their view of God’s lisping is in nings? Is this not sufficiently egregious to give concert with that of early church fathers and Cal- pause to everyone tempted by the lure of both vin but is lost on recent evangelicals.47 their scientific and theological claims?43 Have they not put their confidence in creaturely interpre- In order to communicate effectively with human tations and declarations made by evolutionists beings, God condescended, humbled, and about the origins of the universe and of human- accommodated himself to human categories ity that at minimum succumbs to the age-old of thought and speech. This was not a matter of question, “Yea, hath God said?” concerning the deception, but of necessary adaptation on God’s authoritative claims of God’s Word on origins, part if humans were to be able to understand His

31 will for them. In the incarnation, God humbled ing the Christ, is a tolerable error committed by himself and became a weak and helpless baby in a “first century man.” Modern readers, however, order to identify with and communicate with but especially theologians who follow Paul’s lead, human beings. This incarnational principle had are guilty of an insufferable error and need to be always been God’s style according to the early schooled concerning how John Calvin accounted Christian theologians. In revealing himself God for God’s accommodation of error in Scripture. had always accommodated himself to humans’ limited and sinful capacities.48 God speaks to his people in ways they are able to understand. He “comes down to their level,” or Enns defends the idea that Scripture’s inclusion of as John Calvin put it, God “lisps” so that humans factually wrong ancient myth concerning creation can understand. This, it seems to me, is the best and of Paul’s erroneous beliefs, as a “first-century way to show respect for Scripture. So, again, what man,” concerning origins are positive not negative objection do you have to reading Genesis 1 this elements that exhibit “what it means for God to way? Does it not show respect for God while also speak to his people.”49 Sparks agrees, “Scripture is avoiding the unnecessary conflict between sci- a casualty of the fallen cosmos.”50 Consequently, ence and the Bible that a literal reading creates?54 “God does not err in Scripture … but Scripture does reflect the errant views of the ancient biblical This appeal to Calvin’s doctrine of “God’s lisp- audience.”51 ing” exposes an erroneous foundational supposi- tion that Enns and Sparks share with others who The accommodation theology of the Church precede them when they assume that God occa- Fathers and Calvin holds that Scripture is God’s sionally uses accommodative language because word expressed by human beings and that, where of human sinfulness and that this requires the errors exist, these are not God’s but rather his corollary that the biblical text entails errors.55 accommodation or condescension to the finite, Consequently, they stand in agreement with Faus- fallen human condition. If we then set to one tus Socinus and Hugo Grotius (and later Johann side these instances of accommodation, we can Salomo Semler) who “began to fashion a doc- embrace the rest of Scripture as truth that leads trine of accommodation different from the one to a coherent understanding of God and God’s proposed by Augustine and Calvin” in an attempt voice. This is the accommodationist approach, to account for what they believed were genuine in a nutshell.52 discrepancies between what Scripture affirms and what scientists accept as true.56 It is hardly Sparks fails to realize that when Calvin says that surprising that in their effort to synthesize evolu- God “accommodates knowledge of him to our tion and Christianity, Sparks and Enns advocate a slight capacity” he refers to the whole of God’s doctrine of divine accommodation that finds less revelation, not just to portions corrupted by the in harmony with the classical doctrine of accom- “fallen human condition” to be “set to one side” modation than with that of historical-criticism, if so that we can embrace “the rest of Scripture as not the “history of religions” approach to Scrip- truth.”53 ture, which views the Old and New Testaments as Given this construal of divine accommoda- the evolving record of human religious experience tion as including accommodation of error, Paul’s entailing long and often complex development “direct reading of the text” of Genesis, which led within their cultural milieu including interfac- him incorrectly to believe that Adam was a real ing with other religions of the time and region.57 person and the progenitor of all humanity includ- Their approach regards Paul’s beliefs concerning

32 the origins of the earth and of Adam as deriving fallen humans. from culturally evolved and conditioned religious Ascendency of Enlightenment skeptics trans- beliefs, a view of Scripture that accepts scientific muted the classical doctrine of analogy because evolution and is not in agreement with biblical they believed that all language concerning God revelation that the Creator directly formed the and his works is either univocal or equivocal but real man, Adam, from the dust of the ground. not analogical.63 They abandoned the substance Many have shown that the classical doctrine of the doctrine of analogy which Herman Bavinck of divine accommodation refers to the man- succinctly expresses: ner of communication, using human words and concepts, not to the integrity or quality of revela- It follows that Scripture does not merely contain tion itself.58 Accuracy does not require precision. a few anthropomorphisms; on the contrary, all Imprecision is not to be confused with inaccuracy Scripture is anthropomorphic. From begin- or error. Scripture’s account of creation which is ning to end Scripture testifies a condescending geocentrically referential is not accommodative approach of God to man. The entire revelation of ancient erroneous cosmology nor contrary of God becomes concentrated in the Logos, who to science’s heliocentricity.59 Phenomenologi- became “flesh.” It is as it wereone humanization, cal description hardly betrays myth.60 Rather, it one incarnation of God. If God were to speak to accents the Creator’s revelatory condescension to us in divine language, no one would be able to the realm of reference his creatures inhabit. Thus, understand him; but ever since creation, he, in to distinguish the classical doctrine of accommo- condescending grace, speaks to us and manifests dation from that of Socinus, Grotius, and Semler, himself to us in human fashion.64 many Christian theologians have devoted careful attention to “divine accommodation” because,61 in Those who transmogrify the classical doctrine reality, of course, that God accommodates his rev- shift its use from accounting for all of God’s elation to humans in human terms and concepts is communication to humanity, given the gulf that essential to Christian belief in and understanding distinguishes the Creator from the creature, to of the Creator, a thesis essential to Calvin’s theol- salvaging Scripture as divine revelation for reli- ogy as demonstrated in Book One of the Institute gious use despite its alleged numerous fallen of the Christian Religion.62 human defects which God accommodates and The doctrine of analogy that flows from which modern historians, archaeologists, and Augustine, through Calvin, Turretin, and the scientists have supposedly exposed as errone- Princetonians, now articulated by many con- ous. Consequently, when Enns, Sparks, and other temporary theologians, derives from the biblical BioLogos advocates appeal to “God’s lisping,” doctrine of creation entailing proper distinction their interest is not a thoroughly integrated doc- between Creator and creature. Advocates of mod- trine of God’s analogical communication to humans ern historical-criticism have tried to divert the through human writers in Scripture. They have flow of this doctrine by cutting a channel to the neither the fullness of Scripture nor the incarna- Reformers in an effort to claim historical viabil- tion of God’s Son in view. Instead, their concern ity for their version. Their endeavor constrains is to account for those portions of Scripture such Christian theologians to rearticulate the doctrine as the creation and flood accounts of Genesis, because the modern rival doctrine is inseparably among others, that cause embarrassment because enmeshed with its concomitant doctrine of Scrip- they do not conform to modern scientific belief in ture that entails factual errors on that claim that the generative forces of extensive ages of time to Scripture is the product not only of finite but of explain the beginnings as well as the geologic and

33 fossil records. Because they invest heavily in evo- means, including the incarnation of God’s Son, is lution, they apply their historical-critical method inseparable from how we believe we acquire true to Genesis and to Paul’s letters in their effort to knowledge. Earthly analogical correspondence to synthesize evolution with Christianity. Thus, they things heavenly is the inescapable means by which identify in Scripture what is of fallen human ori- the Creator reveals himself and his deeds to his gin and what is of God, segregating what ought to creatures, not because we are fallen but because be accepted as true for theological and religious we are creatures. Thus, knowledge of God and purposes from what has been discredited by mod- relationship with him through Jesus Christ, the ern scholarship. incarnate Son of God, “are ours only in terms of Contrary to theistic evolution’s proposal that analogies that derive from the fact that God made God invested already existing humanoids, who man in his own image.”69 evolved from thousands of ancestors around a Far from accounting for the inclusion of hundred thousand years ago, with his image and alleged human errors in Scripture, “God’s lisp- likeness, Scripture affirms and Paul believes that ing” accommodation to creaturely frailty renders when God formed Adam he made humans to every human without excuse for their sinful rebel- be his earthly analogues.65 This means that Paul lion against the Creator (Rom 1:18ff).70 From the believes that the Creator analogously reveals him- beginning of creation (apo ktisōs kosmou; Rom self and his deeds to us because we are his analo- 1:20), through all his revelation, including show- gous creatures, not because we are fallen. God ing himself and his invisible attributes—his eter- reveals himself anthropomorphically, which is to nal power and divine nature—in the things he say, “Because God formed Adam from the ‘dust of has made, universal knowledge of our Creator has the earth’ and breathed into his nostrils the breath been instinctive because God indelibly imprinted of life, making him in his own image and likeness, his image upon everyone, shutting our mouths God makes himself known to his creatures in their as condemned before him without any excuse. likeness, as if he wears both their form and qualities, Through the aperture of God’s likeness “an when in fact they wear his likeness.”66 immediate awareness of the fact that God is the Divine revelation to humans is made possible creator and sustainer of this world” arises within because God made us in his likeness. Hence, our human consciousness.71 Yet, in every human apart knowledge of the Creator and of his works is pos- from Christ Jesus, concurrent with this inborn sible, is true, but is always analogical.67 “Man was knowledge of God is the sinful inversion of the created as an analogue of God; his thinking, his Creator-creature distinction, denying the undeni- willing, and his doing is therefore properly con- able, suppressing the irrepressible truth of God’s ceived as at every point analogical to the think- revelation, and deluding themselves that their rea- ing, willing, and doing of God.”68 Because we are soning is the ultimate not the proximate point of ectypes of God, who is the Archetype or Original, reference (Rom 1:18ff).72 This rebellious effort to we are both similar and dissimilar to him. So, as enthrone self as the referential starting point of all the image is not an exact reflection of the Cre- reasoning and to suppress God’s plainly revealed ator, our analogically acquired knowledge of God truth that is both within them and round about and of his creation, though true and asymptotic them exposes their greatest folly. Refusal to glo- or approximate, is never exhaustive nor univocal rify the Creator betrays the fact that they know knowledge, which means that our knowledge is him but will not live in keeping with their inher- not identical to God’s knowledge. ent knowledge. Thus, how we understand God’s revelation, Against this foolishness, Paul says, God reveals whether given through Scripture or any other his wrath. Despite sinful humanity’s efforts

34 to suppress this innate knowledge of God, the or attempt to synthesize his gospel with their invisible qualities of God, his eternal power and belief system. Instead, he unabashedly proclaims: divine nature, incessantly display themselves in and round about every human, within their own The God who made the world and everything self-conscious thoughts, even in their instinctive in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not discontentment with their exclusion of God from live in temples made by man, nor is he served by their varied explanations of the origins of the human hands, as though he needed anything, world and of themselves. Nevertheless, humans since he himself gives to all mankind life and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what they breath and everything. And he made from one innately know to be true concerning the origin man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the world and of themselves. So, against inborn of the earth, having determined allotted periods knowledge atheists daily disaffirm God’s exis- and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that tence while he gives them breath. To suppress this they should seek God, in the hope that they instinctive knowledge that rebukes, evolutionists might feel their way to him and find him (Acts reassert Creator-denying assumptions. Likewise, 17:24-27a). evolutionists in the church exhibit innate knowl- edge of creation’s origins in their attempts to syn- Paul recognizes that even though these pagan thesize Christianity with evolution. philosophers do not know the Genesis account of creation, they bear inborn knowledge of God Creation Ex Nihilo, Resurrection and of creation’s origins that the Genesis account from the Dead, and Justification portrays. Paul exploits their altar inscribed “To by Faith the unknown god” as a point of contact for the Indeed, Paul was a first-century man, but this gospel because while they possess knowledge of hardly means that he was ignorant of beliefs akin God they suppress it. Thus, he says, “What there- to modern evolution that foment diminution fore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to of the Creator and elevation of the creature. As you” (17:23). He does not hesitate to point them shown above, Paul understood that God plainly to the Creator of all things but particularly of all reveals himself through the things he has made so mankind, who formed one man and from him he that everyone has intrinsic knowledge of God and brought forth all humans in all nations. Foolish that he created all things. Paul knew that the Cre- and offensive as Paul’s teaching of creation ex ator endowed humans with imagination capable of nihilo and of the formation of one man as the pro- grasping the fact that their thoughts cannot grasp genitor of all humanity surely was to the philoso- or apprehend God, for they intuitively know that phers, it was his preaching of imminent judgment they derive from God who made them. Paul also by a God-appointed man whom he approved by knew that apart from the saving power of God in raising him from the dead that incited their scorn. the gospel every human invariably suppresses the Luke states, “Now when they heard of the resur- truthfulness of this inborn knowledge. Therefore, rection of the dead, some mocked” (17:34). Paul was keenly aware that unbelief is rebellion With their response, these ancient philoso- against the Creator entailing rejection of creation phers in Athens rebuke modern philosophers, ex nihilo and God’s formation of the one man from those who embrace evolution as fact but who also the ground. Such a belief system of unbelief did profess faith in the resurrected Christ. Though not intimidate him nor embarrass him. these ancient philosophers had their belief sys- As he spoke to the Athenian philosophers, for- tem concerning “beginnings,” they had no direct midable as they may have been, Paul did not cower observation or experience by which they could

35 dispute Paul’s claims with regard to beginnings. surely could deliver on his promise: “I have made So, they fastened their scorn upon what their own you the father of many nations” (4:17). Thus, Paul direct observation and experience convinced affirms and teaches that the faith by which Abra- them never happens, namely, resurrection from ham was justified before God was faith in God the dead. These ancients responded with more “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence consistent logic to Paul’s sermon than do evo- the things that do not exist” (4:17). Therefore, lutionists in the church today. For, if BioLogos everyone “who shares the faith of Abraham, who evolutionists insist that Paul begins his procla- is the father of us all” (4:16), also believes as he mation of the gospel with a myth from Genesis, did, which is why Paul argues that Abraham is the one man formed directly by God, why do they not alone, for “the words ‘it was counted to him’ believe Paul when he culminates his preaching of were not written for his sake alone, but for ours the gospel with the one man God raised from the also. ‘It will be counted to’ us who believe in him dead? After all, what Paul claims concerning the who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was beginnings, which they cannot test scientifically delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our by direct observation or experience, they nonethe- justification” (4:23-25). less reject because they suppose that their pres- Paul recognizes that Abraham, the man in his- ent focused study delineates laws by which they tory, and the domestic affairs within his household can deduce how the present emerged from the bear representational functions. They symboli- past. Yet, what Paul claims concerning resurrec- cally represent things to come, things that, though tion from the dead, which they also cannot access rooted in Abraham’s experiences, are far greater to assess scientifically by direct observation and and much vaster because they foreshadow corre- experience, they nonetheless do not reject.73 sponding features that come to pass only in Abra- That the scorn for resurrection by the philoso- ham’s singular seed, Jesus Christ who is raised phers of Athens entails more consistent reason- from the dead, and in his vast seed who are united ing than engaged by modern evolutionists in the with this Christ. church is confirmed by the inseparability Paul Here, in his letter, Paul is expounding for insists upon, in his gospel, between creation ex Roman Christians the same good news from God nihilo and resurrection from the dead. In his let- he proclaimed at the Areopagus in Athens. Belief ter to the Romans, Paul reminds believers that in the good news that God raised his Son from God’s promise of a son to Abraham met at least the dead is inseparable from belief in the creation two humanly insurmountable obstacles: (1) Abra- account of Genesis that God created the heavens ham’s body “was as good as dead (since he was and the earth ex nihilo and formed Adam, a liv- about a hundred years old)” and (2) “the barren- ing creature, from the ground. Paul’s gospel, then, ness of Sarah’s womb” at ninety years old (Rom inextricably entangles his teachings concerning 4:19). Paul accepts the account from Genesis and creation, resurrection, and justification. Therefore, explains that Abraham reasoned that God, who is if Paul’s teachings concerning creation ex nihilo known as the one who gives life creates ex nihilo, and the formation of Adam as the first human are Abraham As Type “But the words ‘it was reckoned to him’ were not written for him alone but also for us” (Rom 4:23-24a). Abraham Abraham’s Seed God promised a son to a husband and wife who God promised to raise his Son from the dead. were as good as dead. Abraham believes God’s promise. Abraham’s seed believe God’s promise. God justifies Abraham. God justifies believers.

36 wrong, then his teachings concerning resurrection Furthermore, both sides of this antithesis sup- and justification are equally unreliable. press the fact that all of God’s revelation is analogi- cal in character.76 They incline to think that God’s Reality and Symbolism: Adam in revelation is either univocal (God shows himself Paul’s Letters as he is in himself) or equivocal (God is ineffable True as it is that no single understanding of because he is only dissimilar from his creatures). the whole creation account of Genesis has gained The error is to exclude the fact that God’s revela- dominant ascendancy among Christians, some tion is analogical. Scripture’s first statement begins necessary foundational beliefs concerning the the telling of history—“In the beginning God cre- account have, namely, God created the heavens ated”—by revealing God analogically, neither as and the earth ex nihilo and God formed the man he is in himself (univocally) nor wholly unlike his from the ground and the woman from the man. creatures (equivocally). It is analogical in that it Since Charles Darwin, however, Christians have is anthropomorphic because the text represents faltered in these agreements while many individu- God’s acting in history in human terms. As dem- als have gained notoriety, whether fame or infamy, onstrated above, because God bequeaths his like- either by embracing evolution or by opposing it. ness to us, all of God’s revelation comes to us with Since Darwin, the Genesis creation account has reference to his likeness in us. Thus, God spans the become, lamentably, an apologetics battleground. Creator-creature chasm of distinction to disclose A significant downside to this is the tendency himself and his deeds anthropomorphically in among evangelicals to use the narrative for apolo- foreshadowing the consummation of his revela- getic purposes, some arguing for a so-called “lit- tion in the flesh through the incarnation of the Son. eral interpretation” as they contend that creation occurred over six twenty-four hour days, and oth- Distinguishing Symbolism and History ers contending for a so-called “symbolic interpre- in Scripture tation” as they attempt to account for extensive Theistic evolutionists would have modern eons of time needed to accommodate evolution- Christians believe that because Paul was a first- ists’s claims concerning the age of the earth and century man who had no access to knowledge that of humanity.74 only modern people possess, he understandably Lost in this debate is the fact that both appel- but wrongly accepted the historicity of the Gen- lations—“literal interpretation” and “symbolic esis account concerning God’s direct formation interpretation”—are, at best, misnomers, but of the real man, Adam, in his image and after his even worse, they pose a false polarity. This antith- likeness. Against this misconstrual, Paul, the first- esis entails the tendency to suppose, speciously, century man, just as Jesus, another first-century that things portrayed in the creation-fall narra- man, understood the difference between symbol- tives cannot be simultaneously corporeal and ism embedded in narratives that entail historical symbolic.75 People often proceed on the incorrect things and symbolism embedded in narratives assumption that if narrative features bear repre- that are fictional creations designed to instruct sentational significance, those features should be but not intended to represent the factual, corpo- understood not as actually existing but simply as real world. literary devices. If held consistently, this flawed In Scripture, fictional stories that are laden polarity would render nearly all in Scripture, cer- with features invested with symbolism regu- tainly the Old Testament given its typological or larly instruct readers concerning great spiritual foreshadowing nature, little more than literary realities.77 Such is the nature of Jesus’ parables. symbolism without real existence. To claim that the master of the house, in the Par-

37 able of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1- identifies Adam as “a type of the one who was to 16), symbolically represents the Spirit of God is come” (Rom 5:14). It is vital to understand that to impose symbolic representation extraneous Scripture is replete with “types,” one form of sym- to the fictional story. Nothing within the par- bolic representation in the Bible. able suggests such a representation and to do so is to engage in a flawed interpretation of the text Interpreters of the Bible do not cast biblical types. called “allegorical interpretation,” a variation on God, who reveals himself and his deeds in Scrip- “symbolic interpretation.”78 On the other hand, ture, casts the Bible’s types. God invested things no one demands that the master of the house has with foreshadowing significance—institutions to be a known, real, historic individual in order (e.g., the Levitical priesthood), places (e.g., Eden, to accept the spiritual teachings Jesus invests in the tabernacle), things (e.g., the ark, sacrifices, the story. Though it offers a credible portrayal of kingship), events (e.g., creation, the flood, the life and events in first-century Israel, the story is exodus, events in the wilderness, entry into the fictional, featuring actions designed to surprise land), and individuals (e.g., Adam, Abraham, because they are unlikely to occur in the real Melchizedek, Moses, David). God invested these world. Though fictional, it teaches great truths with significance to prefigure corresponding concerning the kingdom of God.79 features of the coming age.81 The creation-fall episodes in Genesis are not like Jesus’ fictional stories nor like any other para- Additionally, it is important to recognize that ble in Scripture. Parables are fairly brief analogical Scripture invariably presents all these “types” as stories that cohere around recognizable unifying corporeally existing as they foreshadow greater features, are punctuated with symbolic representa- things to come. Furthermore, it is crucial to com- tion, and are designed to disclose instruction with prehend that Paul recognizes but does not cast frugality.80 The creation-fall narratives of Genesis, Adam as a type of the Christ. Adam’s role as “a though punctuated with symbolic representation, type of the one who was to come” in the divine hardly bear the other characteristics of parables. drama of redemption was cast by the Creator, the The narratives are extensive, and the instruction is story’s author, not by Paul, the story’s expounder. variegated. Everything about these narratives dis- Paul’s explicit use of Adam as type in his argu- tinguishes them as realistically portraying God’s ment in Romans 5:12-19 but also in 1 Corinthians actual creation of the actual world which consists 15:20-28 and 15:45-49 makes clear that the apos- of actual things, real places, significant individual tle understands Adam just as Genesis presents persons, and historic events that God invests with him, as the first human, formed from the dust of symbolic representations made apparent within the ground by the direct act of God, yet disobedi- the narrative itself. ent to God. Paul understands this and develops his Chief among the narrative’s symbolism satu- argument by citing Genesis 2:7 with two clarifying rated features is man—male and female—made interpolations, (1) “the first man, Adam, became a as God’s analogues, imbued with God’s image living being” (egeneto ho protos anthrōpos Adam and likeness (Gen 1:26-27). From the biblical eis psychēn zōsan, 1 Cor 15:45) in contrast to stat- portrayal of Adam, the first human, head of all ing, (2) “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit humanity, formed from the ground but whose wife (ho eschatos Adam eis pneuma zōopoioun, 15:45b). was formed from his side not the ground, whose So essential is this distinction between “Living act with regard to the Tree of the Knowledge of being” and “Life-giving spirit” (earthly-heavenly) Good and Evil, Paul recognizes that Adam bears to the Adam-Christ typology that Paul reinforces symbolic significance. This is why he expressly it by stating, “The first man was from the earth, a

38 man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As 10:1-12)? Paul states, “Now these things happened was the man of dust, so also are those who are of typologically to them, but they were written down for the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the come” (tauta typikōs synebainen, 10:11). As under image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the the controlling providence of the Lord, Israel’s image of the man of heaven” (15:47-49). experiences were divinely imbued with figurative This makes it clear that Paul takes Scripture’s significances to foreshadow things to come, so it genealogies to be historically truthful just as when is with Adam. The Creator imbued Adam with he states, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, unique figurative significance that foreshadows even over those whose sinning was not like the his unique son, God’s Son, who would come in transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one the last days to set right everything that Adam who was to come” (Rom 5:14). Paul is in full agree- would corrupt. Likewise, as Israel’s symbolically ment with the history of redemption presented suffused experiences were written down in Scrip- from Genesis 1:1 and throughout Scripture which ture for our instruction, so also, Adam’s typologi- treats the portrayal of God’s creation of the actual cally endued role in the garden with reference to a world in the early chapters of Genesis as integral tree and his act of disobedience is written in Scrip- to Scripture’s unfolding drama of redemption ture for our instruction concerning Christ’s role in that climaxes in Christ, Adam’s eschatological the end of the ages in another garden leading to a son. Thus, while it seems indisputable that bib- different tree where his act of obedience delivers lical genealogies are abbreviated, what is also many from death and sin into which the first man incontestable is the fact that the Bible’s genealo- plunged them (Rom 5:15-17).82 gies, which Paul accepts as authentic, treat all who Therefore, Paul understands that Adam was are listed as real historical people including the a historical man formed from the earth, the first first man, Adam (cf. Gen 5:1-5; 1 Chron 1:1; Luke human character in God’s great drama leading to 3:38). Adam’s presence at the head of the biblical new creation, a man whom God endowed with genealogy distinguishes him as a type of the com- symbolic significance that prefigures one greater ing Christ just as the absence of any mention of than himself, the man from heaven (ho prōtos genealogy with the introduction of Melchizedek anthrōpos ek gēs choikos; hō deuteros anthrōpos es marks him as “resembling the Son of God” and ouranou, 1 Cor 15:47). For Paul believes Adam was distinguishes him as a type of Christ (Gen 14:18- a historic person just as Abraham was. And, just as 20; Heb 7:1-10). Adam, the first man, appearing Paul recognizes that Scripture invests Abraham at the beginning of creation, foreshadows Christ and historical events within his household with Jesus, the second man, appearing at the beginning allegorical significance that finds its fulfillment of new creation to bring the first creation to its in Christ Jesus, so Paul understands that God consummation. invested Adam, as the first man, and his disobe- dience with symbolic import that contrastively Historical Typology prefigures the last Adam, Jesus Christ, the obedi- By analogy, is it not reasonable to infer that ent man.83 Paul recognized that what is narrated in Genesis How did Paul come to understand Adam’s 1-3 took place typologically but were written down typological function? Surely, the grace of God for our instruction just as he states concerning through the revelation of Christ Jesus to Paul on Israel’s passing through the sea, being guided by the road to Damascus banished his suppression the cloud, eating manna and drinking water from of the truth as it is in Jesus and put him into his the rock, and rebelling numerous times (1 Cor right mind with right reasoning (cf. Gal 1:13-17;

39 1 Cor 2:11-16). Redemptive revelation of Christ darkness cannot overcome (cf. John 1:4-5; 2 Cor Jesus put an end to Paul’s suppression of innate 6:1-2). knowledge of the Creator, of creation’s and Adam’s According to Paul, just as the heavenly light divine origin, and of creation’s teleological design. called forth on the first day of creation, invested as He came to acknowledge and to proclaim Christ it was with teleological foreshadowing, attains its Jesus as God’s creating agent, providential sus- designed fulfillment in Christ Jesus, so also Adam, tainer, and eschatological redeemer of creation who was made in “the image of God” (Gen 1:27), (Col 1:15-20). finds his symbolic realization in Christ “who is the God’s acts to create and his explanatory word- image of God” (2 Cor 4:4).87 In fact, 2 Corinthians revelation in Genesis concerning his creative 4:4-6, coming at the climax of Paul’s argument deeds are teleological, pointing forward to the last begun in 3:1, is pregnant with Old Testament allu- days and finding consummation in Christ Jesus. sions: light, image of God, the glory of God, and That Paul believes and teaches that God’s creative the face of Christ. Mention of “the face of Christ” acts are teleological saturates his teaching and is (4:6) recalls the glory of Moses’ face veiled and the evident throughout his letters. For example, Paul “unveiled face” of the Christian (2 Cor 3:7-18).88 seems to form a composite citation consisting of “As the resurrected ‘Lord’ (4:5) encountered by Genesis 1:3 and Isaiah 9:2, with allusions to the believers with ‘unveiled faces,’ Christ is not merely light of Christ he saw on the road to Damascus reflecting the glory of God as Moses did, he is the (Acts 26:13), as he links God’s command on the glory of God.”89 first day of creation, “Let there be light!” (Gen Paul’s use of Scripture throughout his argu- 1:3,) with God’s command in the dawn of his new ment in 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:6, particularly his creation in Christ, “Let light shine out of dark- use of literary elements from the Pentateuch— ness.” Paul explains: “For God, who said, ‘Let light God’s calling forth light, the image of God, and shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to the contrastive connection between Christ and give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God Moses—depends upon the reality of each. That in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6; cf. John 1:4- they are real, however, does not strip them of sym- 5).84 Paul’s use of Genesis requires us to recognize bolic significance as literary features so imbued that he understands God’s creative commands to by the Creator. Rather, each one bears symbolic be speech-acts, performative utterances, by which significance precisely because each is real. God, God imprinted significance upon all creation in the Creator and Revealer, assigns his creative such a manner that things created point away speech-acts and the things he creates with sym- from themselves as earthly symbols analogically bolic representation.90 point to heavenly realities. Creation reflects the What has been presented above concerning Creator’s glory. the Creator’s design of humanity from Genesis Thus, light as a universal symbol bears abiding 1:26-27 as his earthly analogue should invite keen testimony to everyone concerning the Creator of attention to the Genesis narrative to recognize its light, exposing humanity’s sinful corruption (cf. literary and symbolic richness without a hint of John 3:20).85 This universal symbolism derives suppressing or dismissing its historicity. Besides from God’s performative utterance when he said, the calling forth of light on the first day, other fea- “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).86 At God’s word tures of the creation-fall accounts that entail obvi- light shined out of original darkness, distinguish- ous symbolic significance are the garden, the Tree ing day from night. Now the light of God’s Incar- of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and nate Word shines forth out of spiritual darkness Evil, Adam’s formation from the ground, Adam’s bringing the dawn of the Day of Salvation which naming of the animals, God’s direct formation

40 of woman from a portion of the man’s side, the adaptation of all living species. Consequently, couple’s nakedness without shame, the talking every evolutionist who, for whatever reasons serpent, eating of the forbidden fruit, the couple’s wants to retain a reasonably credible profession hiding their nakedness, God’s reference to the of faith in Christ, finds it necessary to account for seed of the woman, his cursing of the serpent, and Scripture’s testimony that death entered through God’s cursing of the ground, the earth. Nothing in Adam’s sin.92 In their effort to harmonize death as or about the Genesis narrative suggests that these necessary to the theory of evolution with Scrip- are either mythical or fictional literary devices. ture’s presentation of death as unnatural intruder The account forthrightly presents a cohesive nar- and enemy by way of God’s curse upon his cre- rative that treats the whole and individual parts it ation on account Adam’s disobedience, it is not portrays as corporeal and as historical.91 unusual to find mischief. So, BioLogos advocates attempt a clever Corollary Teachings within maneuver to take possession of biblical Christian- Paul’s Gospel ity’s “concursive theory of inspiration” articulated Paul’s belief that Genesis portrays the actual by the best evangelical theologians and scholars progression of God’s creative activity including to validate their exegetical legerdemain.93 They do the formation of Adam on the sixth day is essential an end run by associating belief that Adam’s dis- to the gospel of Jesus Christ which he proclaims. obedience brought about the curse of death upon The one man, Adam, as a historic person is integral all living creatures, whether animals or human, both to humanity’s impaired dominion and sub- with belief in the divine dictation theory of Scrip- jection to death and sin bound up in his disobedi- ture’s inspiration, a fringe belief even to funda- ence and to the proclamation of God’s gracious mentalism. Thus, with doctrinaire cleverness they gift of righteousness that restores dominion in life dictate: through the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 5:17). All that has been stated already In this discussion, we emphasize that many bears significance upon various corollary teach- Christians believe the Bible is God inspired and ings within Paul’s gospel including but not limited thus contains a meaningful human dimension. to (1) the relationship between the curse of death The belief that the Bible is God dictated—which and creation’s groaning, (2) the organic continuity reduces the human contribution to insignifi- between creation and new creation (the heavens cance—is popularly known as fundamentalism and the earth and the new heavens and new earth), or biblical literalism. In articulating the impli- and (3) the sequence of creation: Adam first, then cations of the former view, where the biblical Eve. Each of these warrants full individual treat- authors play a meaningful role, we note the ment but space permits only brief comments. apostle Paul, although inspired by God, wrote his letters within the context of his own time and Adam’s Sin, Death’s Entrance, and Creation’s culture…. If Paul, along with his original audi- Groaning ence, knew nothing of the scientific evidence for According to evolutionists, life needs death, human death before the Fall, it stands to reason for without death there would be no evolution- that Paul would believe likewise. If human death ary progression over time that would involve did precede the Fall, Paul’s use of Adam’s curse in upward adaptations. The only way this could hap- first Corinthians 15 is still perfectly understand- pen would be through many generations of dying. able given his cultural context.94 Death, then, has been and remains an essential ingredient to evolutionary theory concerning the

41 George Murphy ipso facto asserts that there relationship between Adam’s sin, the entrance of is “no scriptural warrant” to believe that “there death, and creation’s groaning. could have been no ‘death before the fall’” because Because God’s threat—“but of the tree of the there “is overwhelming scientific evidence against knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for such a view.”95 As though his next assertion effec- in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”— tively severs the curse of death upon all creation seems not to have had any immediate physical from Adam’s disobedience, with equal factual effect upon Adam and Eve, it may be tempting certainty he adds, “Texts to which appeal is some- to take it to refer to “spiritual death” exclusively. times made—Genesis 3:19, Romans 5:12, and 1 Consequently, many not only distinguish between Corinthians 15:21-22—have only humanity in “spiritual death” and “physical death” but separate view.”96 Yet, he concedes that the real dilemma them, as though this were possible. Certainly, the concerns human death, “For Paul did indeed Scriptures distinguish the two and may accent say that ‘all die in Adam’ (1 Cor 15:22).”97 So, he one or the other in various contexts, but they asks, “How are we to understand this in connec- never treat them as divisible but always as two tion with the fossil evidence that our pre-human aspects of a whole.102 With many uses of “die” and ancestors and early humans were, like other ani- “death” it is impossible to discern with confidence mals, mortal?”98 Murphy concedes, “When Paul that the words refer to one or the other. Such is speaks of death coming through Adam, it seems the case when Paul states, “Though they know clear that he meant physical as well as spiritual God’s decree that those who practice such things death.”99 Consequently, “From a scientific per- are worthy of death, they not only do them but spective, he was wrong about physical death itself give approval to those who practice them” (Rom having originated with the first humans, just as 1:32). Mention of death as warranted divine pun- the writer of Genesis 1 was wrong about the dome ishment alludes to Genesis 2:17 and 3:19 but also of the sky, but the Holy Spirit accommodated rev- to knowledge everyone has in the constitution of elation to Paul’s culturally conditioned idea.”100 their nature.103 God instituted death as punish- The BioLogos staff agrees with Murphy, “There ment, executed by governing officials (cf. Gen 9:5- are no scriptural reasons to deny the presence 6; Rom 13:3-5), as an earthly shadow of the far of animal death before humans appear. And the greater punishment, eternal death, which invari- most reasonable interpretation of Scripture is that ably entails both physical and spiritual death (Gen the death referred to in Romans and first Corin- 2:17; Matt 25:46). It is as unwise to try to separate thians is spiritual death, not physical death.”101 “physical death” from “spiritual death” as it is to This, of course, means that they agree that Paul divide “physical life” from “spiritual life” or “eter- was wrong to believe and to preach that physi- nal life.” cal death originated with Adam, the first man, In Paul’s reasoning concerning Adam’s typo- formed from the ground. logical role in relation to Christ, it would be a mis- Their admission that Paul was wrong, in a take to restrict his multiple references to death sense, renders what follows somewhat superflu- (thanatos) either to spiritual or physical death, ous, because they have already judged the apostle’s for “the context clarifies that death is both.”104 In doctrine concerning the entrance of death and Paul’s argument, “condemnation” substitutes for sin through Adam’s disobedience to be wrong. the “death” Adam’s disobedience brought (Rom Hence, their quarrel is with the authority and 5:16, 18), “”were made sinners” also substitutes veracity of Scripture, God’s revelation. Neverthe- for this “death” (5:19), and “eternal life” contrasts less, a few comments are warranted on two issues: with “death” (5:21). Even when Paul states, “death (1) entrance of death through Adam; and (2) the reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those

42 whose sinning was not like the transgression of For the creation waits with eager longing for the Adam” (5:14), it is unwise to emphasize one aspect revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was of death to the exclusion of the other, as some do, subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of as though Paul were referring only to “the physi- him who subjected it, in hope that the creation cal death of Adam’s descendants.”105 This is so itself will be set free from its bondage to corrup- because through “Adam’s sin death entered the tion and obtain the freedom of the glory of the world and engulfed all people; all people enter the children of God. For we know that the whole world alienated from God and spiritually dead by creation has been groaning together in the pains virtue of Adam’s sin.”106 Consequently, when Paul of childbirth until now (Rom 8:19-22). states that “death reigned from Adam to Moses,” he means that death reigned in the fullest sense, It is wholly inadequate to explain these statements for he refers to death as a whole, with both physi- by claiming that from the beginning, when God cal and spiritual aspects. created the heavens and the earth, he designed True as it is that Genesis 2:17; 3:19; Romans creation to work just as it does so that only: 5:12; and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 all refer spe- cifically only to human death, it would be a grave we humans are out of kilter, and unable prop- mistake to reason that Scripture says nothing erly to perform our function of ruling on that links creation’s subjection to frustration and behalf of God (all our leadership is defiled; death with Adam’s disobedience. Christians have and sometimes we express our sinfulness more biblical warrant for drawing such a connection specifically by exploiting and abusing the between Adam’s sin and death of animals, animals creation). In that respect the creation groans preying upon one another, earthquakes, tsuna- with us as it awaits the glorification of believ- mis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and all other kinds ers, who will then rule it properly and purely.110 of natural calamities that inflict great loss, dire distress, and suffering.107 When God, who creates, Paul is not neo-Platonic, for indeed, creation, announces to Adam the punishment for his dis- though cursed, has never forfeited God’s benedic- obedience, he does not isolate upon Adam alone tory approval—“very good” (Gen 1:31, cf. vv. 10, by saying that he will “return to the ground, for out 12, 18, 21, 25). Paul affirms this, “For everything of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust created by God is good” (1 Tim 4:4). Neverthe- you shall return” (Gen 3:19). God also declares, less, Paul’s statements in Romans 8:19-22 exempt “cursed is the ground because of you” (3:17).108 nothing in the entirety of creation—the heav- It is hardly insignificant that Genesis narrates ens and the earth and all non-human creatures that Lamech “fathered a son and called his name that inhabit them—from subjection to futility Noah, saying, ‘Out of the ground that the Lord (mataiotēs), which involves bondage to corruption has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our (ē douleia tēs phthoras). The Creator’s teleologi- work and from the painful toil of our hands’” (Gen cal design for creation is evident in the way Paul 5:28-29). This passage, which speaks of a mitiga- indicates that God subjected creation to futility tion of the curse, seems to make it clear that God in hope (eph elpidi, 8:20), hope of liberation from actually cursed the ground, not just a curse upon bondage to corruption.111 humans resulting in poorly exercising dominion over the earth, as some claim.109 Likewise, Paul Continuity between Creation and seems to draw a connection between Adam’s sin New Creation and the curse upon the natural world, both the Just as in several other portions of his letters, earth and animal life, when he states: in Romans 8:19-21, Paul is manifestly drawing

43 out implications from the creation-fall narratives believers to rise from their tombs (8:23). of Genesis and subsequent portions of the Old The play on words in Genesis correlates Testament Scriptures. He believes and accepts the the ground to Adam, for Paul believes that creation accounts of Genesis 1-2. Thus, when God Adam(ha’adam), who was formed from the created all things, first he formed the heavens, the ground (min-ha’adamah; Gen 2:7) is accountable earth, and all that fills the earth, then last of all he for God’s curse upon the ground (ha’adamah; formed Adam on the sixth day (Gen 1:26-31). How- 3:19). So, this relationship between Adam’s sin ever, with his new creation, God reverses the order. and creation’s curse is integral to Paul’s whole doc- He begins with the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45), also trine concerning new creation for it correlates to called the Second Man who is not from the earth Christ’s obedience and the creation’s liberation but from heaven (15:47), who is a life-giving spirit from the corruption of bondage. So, Paul teaches (15:45). As God brought forth humanity from the that obedient Christ, from heaven, as “last Adam” first man Adam, so God is creating a new humanity and “second man” (1 Cor 15:45) will redeem “cre- in Christ (Eph 2:10) who will “reign in life through ation” from its being subjected to futility by the the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:17). Creator which came about by the disobedience In Christ, God is already forming a new human- of Adam, the “first man” who was from the earth ity to inhabit his new creation which is not yet (15:47). Paul affirms real continuity between the renewed as it awaits the regeneration of all things creation Genesis 1 portrays and the new creation (Matt 19:28). God’s new creation is already under- redeemed by Christ. way, for “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” The Sequence of Creation: Adam First, (2 Cor 5:17). The cross of Christ marks the end of Then Eve the old era and the dawn of the new creation (Gal These few comments are wholly inadequate.112 6:14-15). So, all who are in Christ find themselves Nevertheless, it is proper to accent a few matters crucified to the world and the world crucified to concerning Paul’s appeals to the first woman as them so that, while dwelling in the first creation, as a historical person alongside Adam, which evolu- Adam’s descendants, they are already transformed tionists reject. by God’s creative powers of the coming age. Genesis 1-3 provides Paul with the necessary God’s crowning act of his new creation is already foundation in revealed reality for his teaching con- commenced for believers are new creatures in cerning the complementary role relationships for Christ. Yet, God’s new creation is incomplete, made males and females. Thus, whenever Paul has occa- evident by Paul’s admonition “to be renewed in the sion to recall the formation of the first woman, her spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self divinely appointed role, or her seduction to sin, [man], created after the likeness of God in true righ- he presupposes her real, historic existence (e.g., teousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). New 1 Cor 11:2-16; 14:34-35; 2 Cor 11:1-3; 1 Tim 2:8- creation will come to completion only when the 15). Thus, not only does Paul regard the whole entire creation which “has been groaning together narrative of creation but also of human rebellion in the pains of childbirth until now” as it eagerly against God to entail historical events, he takes longs “for the revealing of the sons of God” when seriously the historical sequence within the Gen- it “will be set free from its bondage to corruption” esis account when he states, “For man was not and will share in “the freedom of the glory of the made from woman, but woman from man. Nei- children of God” (Rom 8:18-22). Creation’s groans ther was man created for woman, but woman will cease only when Christ, the last Adam, returns for man” (1 Cor 11:8-9). Paul derives significant to bring full redemption of our bodies when he calls Christian teaching from historical sequence in

44 the Pentateuch, the time span between Abraham’s ity, including the last Adam, the Christ. BioLogos sojourns and the giving of the law of Moses to advocates want to embrace the Scriptures as the Israel (Gal 3:17), and historical sequence within authority for their faith and practice, but they also Genesis itself, that Abraham’s being justified by want it known that what the Scriptures affirm con- faith precedes his being circumcised (Rom 4:10- cerning origins of the universe and of humanity 11). Just as Paul’s attention to these details con- are, simply stated, wrong. Of course, they are not cerning historical sequence is crucial to establish content to hold these gravely qualified affirma- the truthfulness of the gospel, so, with attention tions alone. Hence, they established the BioLogos to details within the creation-fall narratives, Foundation to propagate their message. Paul bases his teaching concerning relationships Christians need to examine carefully the between males and females in the church on Gen- BioLogos Foundation’s effort to make it safe for esis. From the sequence of creation, Adam first evangelicals to embrace evolution, to affirm faith then Eve, Paul derives instructions concerning in Christ, and to avow confidence in Scripture as how males and females should conduct them- “inerrant.” Is belief in evolution compatible with selves in public worship.113 Likewise, to instruct the Christian faith? Is evidence documented men and women concerning who should teach in from various sources and interpreted by mod- the church, Paul states, “For Adam was formed ern scientists so crystal clear that contrary evi- first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but dence documented in Scripture and interpreted the woman was deceived and became a transgres- by Christians throughout the centuries should be sor” (1 Tim 2:13-14). Again, Paul’s appeal to such rejected as wrong by Christ’s followers? Should fine detail as historical sequence reinforces the lowly and unschooled Christians, who read and fact that he believed in the historicity of the per- interpret the Scriptures for daily spiritual sus- sons and events of Genesis 1-3. If Paul believed tenance, trust expert geneticists and their semi- wrongly that Genesis 1-3 portray real people and nary-trained expert apologists who claim, with places, actual events, and historical sequences, vaunted confidence, that both the writer of Gen- then his gospel and his teaching concerning how esis and Paul wrongly believed that Adam was men and women ought to conduct themselves in the first human, that God did not directly form relation to one another in the church is dubious him from the ground, and that God also did not and should be rejected. For Paul roots his beliefs form the woman from a portion of Adam’s side? Is and his teachings in history, written in Scripture. the so-called “language of God” decoded within the human genome by these expert geneticists so Conclusion unambiguous that the “language of God” through This essay has shown that BioLogos advocates which the Creator reveals himself and his deeds of want to accept the God to which the creation and creation in the Scriptures yield to the evolution- fall accounts of Genesis 1-3 bear witness, but they ist’s explanation of origins? do not want to accept what those accounts testify Whose word should be received as “the lan- concerning God’s creative acts, his formation of guage of God”? Shall Christians receive as truth Adam, and on account of Adam’s rebellion God’s the Scriptures that came by way of Paul who pro- curse of death, physical and spiritual, for humans claims the gospel of Jesus Christ, “according to the and for the creation subjection to frustration and revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for bondage to corruption. They want to accept the long ages but has now been disclosed and through last Adam whom Paul preaches, but they do not the prophetic writings has been made known to all want the first Adam whom Paul, without ques- nations, according to the command of the eternal tion, takes to be the first ancestor to all human- God, to bring about the obedience of faith” (Rom

45 16:25-26)? Or, should Christians embrace the Endnotes Scriptures as true only to the degree that they do 1See online: http://www.biologos.org [cited 11 April not conflict with the revelation that comes through 2011]. BioLogos evolutionists to whom “the language 2Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Pres- of God” concerning the origins of the earth and ents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006). humanity which were kept secret in fossil records 3Collins cites President Bill Clinton’s comments and in the human genome for long ages but now upon the completed mapping of the human genome, have been revealed and through highly educated “Today, we are learning the language in which God experts have been made known to all, according created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the to their self-assured confidence, that God did not complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most directly form Adam from the dust of the earth or divine and sacred gift” (June 26, 2000). See Collins, breathe life into him? The Language of God, 2. “The language of God” is clear concerning ori- 4Ibid., 3. gins and destinies. God’s revelation is clear. Chris- 5Collins, The Language of God, 209-10. He is fully con- tians need no highly educated experts to access fident that the “scientific construct” called evolution Scripture’s evidence for the historicity of the Gene- is so factually proved that, unlike numerous other sis accounts of creation and the fall or for the histo- “scientific constructs” that have been proved false, ricity of Adam and Eve essential to the incarnation no future scientific discoveries will ever be able to of the Christ. No doubt lingers long in the heart of prove evolution false. On the distinction between the believer whether Paul is correct concerning the and limitations of science as “technique” and science origin of Adam, formed by the hand of God from as “construct,” see James B. Jordan, Creation in Six the ground, or whether Adam acted as human- Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis ity’s representative when he sinned by disobeying One (Moscow, ID: Canon, 1999), 119ff. God’s command. Christians who believe in God 6Despite the image of the double helix stained glass who raised his Son from the dead also believe that window on the book’s dust jacket, Collins wonders, this same God called into existence things that did “Will we turn our backs on science because it is per- not exist and that the Creator formed Christ’s pro- ceived as a threat to God, abandoning all of the prom- genitor, Adam, from the dust of the earth. Believers ise of advancing our understanding of nature and realize that in order to receive grace and the gift applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the of righteousness through union with the one man betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn Jesus Christ, they must acknowledge that through our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered real union with the one man Adam, they entered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional this world engulfed by sin and death and in dire religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of need of salvation because of the first man’s trespass. the double helix on our altars?” (Collins, The Language They know that they cannot believe in the historic- of God, 210-11; emphasis added). ity of Christ Jesus without also believing in the his- 7Ibid., 206-207. toricity of Adam. God’s work of new creation in and 8Ibid., 233. through the last Adam is inextricably linked with 9See also, Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50, (Baker Exe- his creation ex nihilo, when he called into existence getical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand the heavens and the earth and with his formation of Rapids: Baker, 1994), 349. Adam from the ground. This is what Paul believed. 10“Clearly Luke’s universalistic perspective must be This is what everyone must believe who embraces seen here. Jesus is the fulfillment not just of Jewish the Christ preached by Paul. hopes but of the hopes of all people, both Jew and Gentile. For out of Adam the whole human family has

46 come (cf. Acts 17:26), and Jesus is the son of Adam. riential grounds, “prayer and spiritual insight,” rather Luke (like Paul in Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15:22, 45-49) than on God’s special revelation that discloses his obviously thought of Adam as a historical person” direct acts of creation. Notice how Collins expresses (Robert H. Stein, Luke [New American Commen- the rationale for his belief in theistic evolution. He tary; Nashville: Broadman, 1992], 142). does not say, “I find theistic evolution … to be by far 11“Deconstructs,” in the division head, applies the the most scientifically consistent and scripturally sat- meaning that arises from the theory of literary criti- isfying of the alternatives.” cism to question traditional presuppositions and Exclusion of Scripture’s authority shows up again, beliefs concerning truth and seeks to deconstruct for example, when Collins proposes his term, BioLo- so-called “virtual texts,” in this case, allegedly con- gos, to “rename theistic evolution” (203). He states, structed by Christians who, according to BioLogos “Unlike Intelligent Design, BioLogos is not intended advocates and sympathizers, in their quest for mean- as a scientific theory. Its truth can be tested only by ing and certainty have re-created the biblical Adam of the spiritual logic of the heart, the mind, and the Genesis to conform to an anti-evolutionary creation soul” (204). model. Thus, from their own evolution-based presup- 14For example, Collins reasons, “There are AREs positions and beliefs, BioLogos advocates endeavor [ancient receptor elements] throughout the human to discredit and to dismantle what they believe is and mouse genomes that were truncated when they a modern creation by Christian fundamentalists landed, removing any possibility of their function- within that past fifty years, a belief system called ing. In many instances, one can identify a decapitated Young Earth Creationism, which is an anti-science and utterly defunct ARE in parallel positions in the and anti-intellectual movement that has usurped human and the mouse genome. domination over evangelicals. See, for example, Col- Unless one is willing to take the position that God lins, The Language of God, 171-79. has placed these decapitated AREs in these precise 12See, for example, the earlier complaint by Hugh Ross: positions to confuse and mislead us, the conclusion “Nearly half the adults in the United States believe of a common ancestor for humans and mice is vir- that God created the universe within the last 10,000 tually inescapable. This kind of recent genome data years. What reason to they give? ‘The Bible says so.’” thus presents an overwhelming challenge to those (Hugh Ross, Creation and Time: Biblical and Scientific who hold to the idea that all species were created ex Perspective on the Creation-Debate Controversy [Colo- nihilo” (Ibid., 136-37). rado Springs: NavPress, 1994], 7). That Collins would offer such an argument seems 13Francis Collins, The Language of God, 209-10. That he to betray how little he understands what Christians resorts to caricature tends to obscure the fact that his believe concerning God’s formation of the various complaint is that Christians take Scripture seriously animal species and of humanity. What child, reared and embrace the authority of God’s Word over that in a Christian home and receiving regular Bible of scientists. Collins further states, “I do not believe instruction in Sunday School, could not embarrass that the God who created all the universe, and who Francis Collins by explaining that Scripture does not communicates with His people through prayer and teach that God created Adam or Eve out of nothing spiritual insight, would expect us to deny the obvious (ex nihilo) but that God directly formed Adam from truths of the natural world that science has revealed the ground, from already existing material, and that to us, in order to prove our love for Him.” he directly formed Eve from a portion taken from Collins brackets out the role and authority of Adam’s side while he was in a deep sleep? No repu- Scripture from these statements, as though Chris- table Christian who believes, on the basis of Scrip- tians who reject the scientific construct called ture, that God directly formed Adam would ever evolution as the explanation of origins do so on expe- contend that God created Adam and all the animal

47 species ex nihilo. If God formed Adam from the dust of Adam’s representative role and failing as he did. See, the ground, does one not properly infer that God did the for example, A. B. Caneday, “‘They Exchanged the same for the animal species? Indeed, the physical bodies Glory of God for the Likeness of an Image’: Idolatrous of Adam and of animals have a common designer, God, Adam and Israel as Representatives in Paul’s Letter to and a common source, the ground (Gen 1:24; 2:7). the Romans,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15Peter Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 1)” [cited 12 April 11 (2007): 34-45 (hereafterSBJT ). 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam- 19Enns, “Adam is Israel,” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: part-i/. Though BioLogos hosts videos and a written http://biologos.org/blog/adam-is-israel/ (emphasis exchange between John Walton and Vern Poythress, original). Enns argues too much from the order of this essay does not engage Walton’s, The Lost World of event and its being written. Is he prepared to con- Genesis One (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2009). His clude that Abraham was not an individual, historic attempt to synthesize evolution with Christianity is man because significant events in Israel’s history hap- distinctively nuanced, calling for its discrete response. pened before the Abraham story was written? Nevertheless, to the degree that Walton seems moti- Given his commitment, Enns reasons in the same vated to find a way to make it “safe” for evangelical article, “Every commentator notes that sometimes Christians to embrace evolution, exegetical and theo- ‘adam’ represents humanity (so I will use the lower logical arguments in this essay apply to his efforts also. case); other times it is the name ‘Adam’ (upper case) 16Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 1)” [cited 12 April 2011]. representing one man. What does this back and forth Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam-part-i/. mean? It means that Adam is a special subset of adam. 17Peter Enns, “Adam is Israel” [cited 13 May 2010]. The character ‘Adam’ is the focus of the story Online: http://biologos.org/blog/adam-is-israel/. because he is the part of ‘adam’ that God is really 18That Enns points to correlations between Adam and interested in. There is ‘adam’ outside of Eden (in Israel is not at all objectionable, for after all, the apos- Nod), but inside of Eden, which is God’s focus, there tle Paul draws upon these connections. For example, is only ‘Adam’—the one with which he has a unique concerning the distinctiveness of Adam’s and Israel’s relationship. trespass, see Romans 5:14, 22-23—“Yet death reigned The question in Genesis is whether “Adam” will be from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning obedient to ‘the law’ and stay in Eden, thus continu- was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type ing this special relationship, or join the other ‘adam’ of the one who was to come…. Now the law came in to outside in ‘exile.’ This is the same question with increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace Israel: after being ‘created’ by God, will they obey abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, and remain in the land, or disobey and be exiled?” grace also might reign through righteousness leading Giberson and Collins use this affirmativelyThe ( to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Language of Science and Faith, 211-212). It is mislead- C. John Collins observes, “The way that Genesis ing for Enns to claim, “There is ‘adam’ outside of Eden presents the call of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3) indicates (in Nod)…. ” The text of Genesis 4, the only biblical that God’s intention was that through this man and reference to Nod, uses ’adam only in 4:1 and 4:25, his family, the rest of humankind was to find blessing. both times with reference to the first man, Adam, Genesis presents Adam in such a way that we can see never with reference to other humans “outside of Abraham, and Israel, as a ‘new Adam’” (C. John Col- Eden (in Nod)” as Enns states. He inverts the Bible’s lins, “Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It history by arguing that the Adam narrative is really Matters,” Perspectives in Science and Christian Faith 63 an Israel narrative “placed in primeval time” so that [2010]: 153). it is actually a story of Israel’s origins and not human Without expressly stating so, Paul and other New origins. Testament writers understand Israel as reenacting 20Enns, “Adam is Israel” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online:

48 http://biologos.org/blog/adam-is-israel/. Enns actu- 4. That his interpretation of the text undergoes transi- ally embellishes the biblical text: “If we see Adam as a tion from “symbolic” to “literal” is evident because he story of Israelite origins, it will help us make sense of refuses to accept the Adam narrative as the account at least one nagging question that begins in Genesis of the first real humans but he accepts the Cain nar- 4:13—one that readers of Genesis, past and present, rative as entailing “the existence of other people,” have picked up on. After Cain kills Abel, he is afraid evidently real humans, which he exploits to prove of a posse coming after him, which casually presumes that Adam was not the progenitor of all humans. the existence of other people. So God puts a mark There is a chasm of difference between interpo- on Cain and exiles him to Nod, a populated city to lation and inference. To interpolate is to introduce the east. There he takes a wife and they have a child, elements that are neither present nor implied in the Enoch, and Cain proceeds to build a city, named after text. To infer is to draw reasonable and warranted his son, in which others can live.” By interpolating conclusions based upon what the text states. Yet, elements into the biblical text that are not actually where Genesis is silent Enns happily interpolates ele- there, Enns creates and solves the problem that he ments into the text when it advantages his own argu- thinks eliminates taking the narrative as the account ment concerning the non-historicity of Adam, but he of human origins. Genesis neither states nor implies begrudges others who draw inferences from Genesis that Nod was “a populated city,” nor does the text unless the text states the matter explicitly. state or imply that Cain found his wife in Nod. It is This approach, however, poses problems for entirely warranted to turn Enns’s own words back his understanding of Paul who, according to Enns, upon his solution of his own interpolated problem: wrongly reads the Genesis account to mean that “this explanation is completely made up,” for Genesis Adam is humanity’s progenitor but still correctly neither says nor hints that there were any residents in interpolates theological correspondence between the place called Nod before Cain settled there, and Adam and Jesus. “Paul’s Jesus/Adam parallel does Genesis implies and readers properly infer that Cain not stem from a ‘plain reading’ of Genesis. It is selec- married his sister. tive and theologically driven. Paul is not simply ‘read- Cf. Collins, The Language of God, 207. Collins ing Genesis’ or his Old Testament. He focuses on one adds, “Some biblical literalists insist that the wives aspect of the Adam story—disobedience leads to of Cain and Seth must have been their own sisters, death. Death is the problem that grabs Paul’s atten- but that is both in serious conflict with subsequent tion” (see, for example, Pete Enns, “Paul’s Adam [Part prohibitions against incest, and incompatible with 3]” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: http://biologos.org/ a straightforward reading of the text.” It is curious blog/pauls-adam-part-3/). to claim that “a straightforward reading of the text” 22Enns uses these terms positively to characterize the would lead one to conclude that Cain and Seth found Genesis account in the comments segment at “Adam their wives among “other humans present at the same is Israel” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: http://biolo- time” who had not descended from Adam and Eve as gos.org/blog/adam-is-israel/. Cain and Seth had. The so-called “biblical literalists” 23Ibid. actually read the text in a “straightforward” manner, 24Ibid. which leads them to their conclusions. 25The tabular rearrangement is for ease of reading, but 21Enns, “Adam is Israel” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: the wording in this table belongs to Enns, “Adam is http://biologos.org/blog/adam-is-israel/. Enns does Israel” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: http://biologos. not explain where in the biblical text he discerns org/blog/adam-is-israel/. indicators that he should transition from his “sym- 26Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 1)” [cited 13 May 2010]. bolic reading” of the Adam story in Genesis 1-3 to Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam- his “literalistic reading” of the Cain story in Genesis part-i/.

49 27Peter Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 2)” [cited 13 sil record, all point to an origin of modern humans May 2010]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/ approximately a hundred thousand years ago, most pauls-adam-part-2/. likely in East Africa. Genetic analyses suggest that 28Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 1)” [cited 13 May 2010]. approximately ten thousand ancestors gave rise to the Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam-part- entire population of 6 billion humans on the planet” i/ (emphasis original). (The Language of God, 209). 29Peter Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 4)” [cited 13 May 37Here, to resist temptation to cite C. S. Lewis is futile: 2010]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls- “Chronological snobbery is the uncritical acceptance adam-part-4/ (emphasis original). See also idem, “A of the intellectual climate common to your own age Christotelic Approach to the New Testament Use of and the assumption that whatever has gone out of the Old in Its First-Century Interpretive Environ- date is on that account discredited. You must find ment,” in Three Views on the New Testament Use of the why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if Old Testament (ed. Kenneth Berding; Grand Rapids: so by whom, where and how conclusively) or did it Zondervan, 2008), 167-217. See also, idem, Inspira- merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells tion and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From see- the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005). For ing this, one passes to the realization that our own an extensive critique of Enns’s Inspiration and Incar- age is also a ‘period,’ and certainly has, like all peri- nation, see D. A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scrip- ods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest ture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 255-283. to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are 30Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 4)” [cited 13 May 2010]. so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam- or feels it necessary to defend them.” (Surprised by part-4/ (emphasis original). Joy: The Shape of my Early Life, [San Diego: Harcourt 31Enns, “Creating Adam” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: Brace, 1955], 207-208). http://biologos.org/blog/creating-adam/. 38On the requirement of specialists to interpret evo- 32Ibid. Enns adds, as will be addressed below, that lutionary evidence for commoners, see Karl Gib- Paul’s acceptance of Adam as a historic person and erson, “Would You Like Fries With That Theory?” as the progenitor of all humans is “unrealistic and [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: http://biologos.org/ wrong.” blog/would-you-like-fries-with-that-theory. “Unfor- 33Enns, “Paul’s Adam (Part 2)” [cited 13 May 2010]. tunately, only trained specialists can be familiar with Online: http://biologos.org/blog/pauls-adam- scientific data…. To suggest that this ‘data’ can be part-2/. simply handed over to non-specialists so they can 34Transcription of the video at Peter Enns, “The Apos- make up their own minds is profoundly [sic] miss the tle Paul and Adam” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: point of science.” Elsewhere, Giberson, who is not a http://biologos.org/blog/the-apostle-paul-and- biblical scholar, nonetheless exploits the same kind of adam/. Elsewhere Enns explains, “This is what it argument in the opposite direction as he claims that means for God to speak to a certain time and place— it takes specialists to be able to expound the creation he enters their world. He speaks and acts in ways that account of Genesis properly. He joins Francis Collins make sense to them. This is surely what it means for to claim that the leading proponents of Young Earth God to reveal himself to people—he accommodates, Creationism “are not, in fact, biblical scholars and condescends, meets them where they are” (Inspira- have limited training in the relevant biblical scholar- tion and Incarnation, 56). ship. Their expositions of Genesis are almost entirely 35Ibid. based on English translations of Genesis with little 36Ibid. Enns cites Francis Collins who claims that consideration of what the words and concepts meant “studies of human variation, together with the fos- in the original Hebrew” (Karl Giberson and Francis

50 Collins, The Language of Science and Faith [Downers Day Creation Debate (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, Grove: InterVarsity, 2011], 69). 2002). 39Transcription of the video at Enns, “The Apostle Paul 45The expression belongs to Enns, “Synthesizing evo- and Adam” [cited May 13, 2010]. Online: http:// lution and Christianity is not a matter of starting biologos.org/blog/the-apostle-paul-and-adam/. with what Paul is ‘obviously’ saying. Paul’s Adam is 40Ibid. challenging, and was so long before evolution ever 41Enns, “Creating Adam,” [cited 13 May 2010]. Online: entered the mix” (Enns “Paul’s Adam, [Part 3]” [cited http://biologos.org/blog/creating-adam/ 13 May 2010]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/ 42Giberson and Collins, The Language of Science and pauls-adam-part-3/. Faith, 69-70; (emphasis added). Giberson and Collins 46John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (trans. are fond of citing C. S. Lewis (e.g., pp. 91, 213), who Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, is popular among evangelicals, to enhance their sci- 1960), 1.13.1. entific claims with greater credibility (see also, Col- 47Cf. Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The lins, The Language of God, 208-209). Yet, they seem Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical to have neglected what Lewis has to say concerning Approach (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), how Christians need to be prepared to address sci- 9-11, 53-54, 77-79, 169-71, etc. entists’s posture toward Christianity: “If you know 48Ibid., 10. Take note of two things. First, Rogers any science it is very desirable that you should keep it and McKim add “sinful capacities” which betrays up. We have to answer the current scientific attitude their misunderstanding of Calvin’s argument. Sec- towards Christianity, not the attitude which scien- ond, even though Enns does not credit Rogers and tists adopted one hundred years ago. Science is in McKim, it seems evident that he derives his dominant continual change and we must try to keep abreast imagery of “incarnation,” his preferred expression for of it. For the same reason, we must be very cautious divine accommodation, from Rogers and McKim of snatching at any scientific theory which, for the when he claims that “as Christ is both God and human, moment, seems to be in our favour. We may mention so is the Bible” in which God accommodates ancient such things; but we must mention them lightly and myth and factual error (Inspiration and Incarnation, without claiming that they are more than ‘interest- 17; [emphasis original]). Concerning continuity ing’. Sentences beginning ‘Science has now proved’ between Enns and Rogers & McKim, see G. K. Beale, should be avoided. If we try to base our apologetic The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding on some recent development in science, we shall usu- to New Challenges to Biblical Authority (Wheaton: ally find that just as we have put the finishing touches Crossway, 2008), 46ff. John Woodbridge’s devastat- to our argument science has changed its mind and ing critique of the Rogers/McKim appeal to divine quietly withdrawn the theory we have been using as accommodation has yet to be overturned (Biblical our foundation stone. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal [“I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts,” Virgil, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982]). See pages 21-23 Aeneid, II.49] is a sound principle” (C. S. Lewis, God for his concise summary of the Rogers/McKim pro- in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics [Grand Rap- posal. Enns and others seem to step over Woodbridge ids: Eerdmans, 1995], 92). without acknowledgment to embrace the Rogers/ 43Cf. Noel Weeks, The Sufficiency of Scripture (Edin- McKim accommodation theory in their effort to burgh: Banner of Truth, 1988), 85-118. lay claim to the church fathers and the Reformers 44The suitability of drawing analogy to the serpent’s to authorize their beliefs that the Scriptures include question (Gen 3:1) is prompted by its use in a similar factual errors. Another who joins Enns in this already debate by Kenneth L. Gentry and Michael R. Butler, discredited pursuit is Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Yea, Hath God Said? The Framework Hypothesis/Six- Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Criti-

51 cal Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008). is treated here except the visible form of the world,” 49When he argues that Genesis shares the ancient anyone willing to read the larger context from which mythic context with Israel’s Mesopotamian neigh- Sparks pulls the selection out of Calvin’s commentary bors, Enns states, “The biblical account, along with on Genesis will readily recognize that Sparks incor- its ancient Near Eastern counterparts, assumes the rectly claims that Calvin was willing “to admit that factual nature of what it reports. They did not think, the biblical cosmology was wrong.” No, Calvin states ‘We know this is all “myth” but it will have to do until only that God reveals his creative works in keeping science is invented to give us better answers.’ We do with how things appear to humans upon the earth. not protect the Bible or render it more believable Every day meteorologists indicate when the sun will to modern people by trying to demonstrate that it set and rise the next morning. It would be impudent is consistent with modern science” (Inspiration and to assert they are wrong. Cf. Sparks, God’s Word in Incarnation, 55). Human Words, 231, 241, 256. He confidently asserts, “To argue … that such biblical stories as creation “The voices of accommodationists from the first cen- and the flood must be understood first and foremost tury to the present are on this point unanimous: God in the ancient contexts, is nothing new. The point I does not err in the Bible when he accommodates the would like to emphasize, however, is that such a firm errant views of Scripture’s human audiences” (255ff). grounding in ancient myth does not make Genesis Sparks seems to think that he has recovered this doc- less inspired; it is not a concession that we must put trine lost to evangelicals until recently (258). For up with or an embarrassment to a sound doctrine of recent rebuttal of the resuscitation of the Rogers/ Scripture. Quite to the contrary, such rootedness in McKim proposal by Enns and Sparks, see Mark Rog- the culture of the time is precisely what it means for ers, “Charles Hodge and the Doctrine of Accommo- God to speak to his people…. This is what it means dation,” Trinity Journal 31 (2010): 225-42. for God to speak at a certain time and place—he 52Sparks, “After Inerrancy, (Part 5)” [cited 13 March enters their world. He speaks and acts in ways that 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/after-iner- make sense to them. This is surely what it means for rancy-evangelicals-and-the-bible-in-a-postmodern- God to reveal himself to people—he accommodates, age-part-5/. Sparks observes, “recent developments ­condescends, meets them where they are…. And if in the ‘open theism’ debate have brought accommoda- God was willing and ready to adopt an ancient way tion yet again to the fore of evangelical interpretation” of thinking, we truly hold a very low view of Scrip- (God’s Word in Human Words, 231). He continues, ture indeed if we make that into a point of embar- “In light of these theological developments, which rassment” (56). presume the larger problem of Scripture’s theological 50Kenton Sparks, “After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and diversity, I would suggest with Donald A. Carson that the Bible in a Postmodern Age, (Part 5)” [cited 13 a restatement of accommodation ‘would be salutary March 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/ today’” (231). Nowhere in his book does Sparks indi- after-inerrancy-evangelicals-and-the-bible-in-a-post- cate awareness of two significant essays that do what modern-age-part-5/. D. A. Carson called for in The Gagging of God: Christi- 51Kenton Sparks, “Scripture, Evolution and the Prob- anity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, lem of Science, (Part 1)” [cited 13 March 2011]. 1996), 130. See the two essays that predate Sparks’s Online: http://biologos.org/blog/scripture-evo- book by five years: Caneday, “Veiled Glory: God’s lution-and-the-problem-of-science-pt-1/. Sparks Self-Revelation in Human Likeness—A Biblical The- manifestly fails to understand John Calvin’s con- ology of God’s Anthropomorphic Self-Disclosure,” cept of divine accommodation in the example he in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Under- cites. Despite the fact that Calvin contends, “For, standing of Biblical Christianity (ed. John Piper, Justin to my mind, this is a certain principle: that nothing Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth; Wheaton: Crossway,

52 2003), 149-199; and Michael Horton, “Hellenistic Accommodation,” 234-38. He convincingly demon- or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theologi- strates that Charles Hodge was keenly aware of two cal Method,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and competing doctrines of accommodation, one flowing the Understanding of Biblical Christianity, (ed. John from early church fathers through Calvin and its rival Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth; Whea- which is what “Rogers, McKim, and Sparks present ton: Crossway, 2003), 201-234. See also Horton, Cov- as the historic understanding of accommodation, enant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Hodge and others have criticized as an innovation Westminster John Knox, 2002) which also predates introduced in the modern era by Socinus, Semler, Sparks’s book and which extensively addresses the and others” (238). issue of accommodation as essential to all of God’s The notion that divine accommodation neces- revelation. sitated use of time-bound and erroneous assertions 53This is the same distortion of Calvin’s understand- has “no relation to the position of the Reformers” but ing of God’s accommodation that Sparks indulges came about through thinkers like Johann Salomo in God’s Word in Human Words, 235. Because Sparks Semler and his contemporaries during the eighteenth draws incorrect conclusions from his appeals to Cal- century. See Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin vin, he claims “Calvin believed that the cosmology and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, of Genesis was accommodated to the errant views 1985), 19. See also idem, Post-Reformation Reformed of its ancient and uneducated audience, but Cal- Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed vin certainly did not believe that all Scripture was Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1775 (Grand Rapids: Baker, accommodated to humanity in this way. Instead, he 2003), 2:187, 301, 305. believed that accommodation applied only in certain 57“At the turn of the century the problem of myth in discrete cases, where it was difficult to avoid the con- Christianity was posed in a new form by the History clusion that Scripture seemed to speak falsely. More- of Religions School. Already at the time of [David] over, in such instances Calvin did not believe that Strauss the growing awareness of other religions accommodation was the work of God alone” (245). had brought home the significance of the fact that 54Enns, “How Should BioLogos Respond to Dr. in laying claim to various miracle stories Christi- Albert Mohler’s Critique: Pete’s Response” [cited anity was not at all unique. Even before Straus the 5 March 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/ conclusion had been drawn that if these other stories how-should-biologos-respond-to-dr-albert-mohlers- are to be judged unhistorical myths, the same ver- critique-petes-response/. Albert Mohler’s brief criti- dict cannot be withheld from the biblical accounts cal reference to the BioLogos Foundation prompted of creation, virgin birth, etc. But in the latter part of Enns to instruct Mohler concerning divine accom- the nineteenth and early twentieth century various modation of error and to reject his appeal to a “direct influential scholars came to the conclusion that not reading of the text” which Enns disparages as “a lit- only did Christianity have its own myths, but in fact eral reading of Genesis 1.” Christianity had been significantly influenced at its 55On exposure of this fallacy, see John D. Woodbridge, formative stage by particular myths of other reli- “Some Misconceptions of the Impact of the ‘Enlight- gions; indeed, the plainly mythical thinking of other enment’ on the Doctrine of Scripture,” in Hermeneu- systems had decisively shaped Christian faith and tics, Authority, and Canon (ed. D. A. Carson and John worship at key points” (James D. G. Dunn, Demy- D. Woodbridge; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), thologizing—The Problem of Myth in the New Tes- 241-70. tament,” in New Testament Interpretation: Essay on 56Woodbridge, Biblical Authority, 193, n. 53. See also p. Principles and Methods [Exeter, England: Paternoster; 189, n.1. See also the careful historical research done Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977], 292). by Mark Rogers, “Charles Hodge and the Doctrine of 58For example, Patrick Fairbairn distinguished

53 between true and false accommodation. The church gulf’ separating creatures from the Creator” (186). fathers held to true accommodation “as an adaptation 63Could it be that the reason many evangelicals agree in the form of Divine communications … while the with Enns and Sparks is that “Many conservatives like matter not the less remained true and divine” (Herme- Carl Henry apparently share with liberal theology the neutical Manual: Introduction to the Exegetical Study of assumption that language must be either univocal Scripture of the New Testament [Philadelphia: Smith, or equivocal, setting the bar of ‘truth’ so high that at English, 1859], 107). some point a crisis must inevitably arrive in interpre- 59Cf. Jordan, Creation in Six Days, 194. tation?” Henry sets the bar: “The key question is: are 60D. A. Carson aptly recounts a newspaper column in human concepts and words capable of conveying the which the “writer was inveighing against all those literal truth about God?’ If so, these words and con- stupid Christians who believe the Bible is the word of cepts must directly mirror the divine being, or they God, when it speaks so ignorantly of the sun ‘rising’ in represent untruth.” Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, the east: any schoolboy knows that the sun does not 189. He cites Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and rise, but that the earth rotates on its axis. My father Authority (6 vols.; Waco, TX.: Word, 1979), 4:119. asked me what I thought of the argument. I looked at Earlier, in the context, Henry notes, “The main logical him rather nonplused. He grinned, and calmly turned difficulty with the doctrine of analogy lies in its fail- to the front page of the paper, and drew my attention ure to recognize that only univocal assertions protect to the line, ‘Sunrise: 6:36 am’” (Carson, Collected Writ- us from equivocation: the very possibility of analogy ings on Scripture, 272). founders unless something is truly known about both 61See, e.g., Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 7-9, 75-76, analogates” (God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:118). 183-191. See also idem, “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open On the negative influence of Enlightenment and Theism and Reformed Theological Method,” inBeyond post-Enlightenment philosophers on the necessity of the Bounds, 201-234. In the same volume, see Caneday, anthropomorphism or analogy to human knowledge “Veiled Glory” 149-199. of God, see Caneday, “Veiled Glory,” 155ff. 62Martin Klauber demonstrates that the same is true for 64Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God (trans. and Francis Turretin: the “concept of biblical accommoda- ed. William Hendriksen; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, tion served as a basis for his entire theological system 1951; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 85-86. and explained the very nature of God’s communica- Cornelius Van Til says that all revelation is not tion to man” and that his concept was in “essential only analogical but anthropomorphic: “It is an adap- continuity with Calvin” (“Francis Turretin on Biblical tation by God to the limitations of the human crea- Accommodation: Loyal Calvinist or Reformed Scho- ture. Man’s systematic interpretation of the revelation lastic?” Westminster Theological Journal 55 [1993]: 86). of God is never more than an approximation of the Also see Richard A. Muller, “Scholasticism Protes- system of truth revealed in Scripture, and this system tant and Catholic: Francis Turretin and the Object of truth as revealed in Scripture is itself anthropo- and Principle of Theology,” Church History 55 (1986): morphic. But being anthropomorphic does not make 193-205. it untrue. The Confessions of the Church pretend to See also Paul Kjoss Helseth, “Right Reason” and the be nothing more than frankly approximated state- Princeton Mind: An Unorthodox Proposal (Phillipsburg, ments of the inherently anthropomorphic revelation NJ: P&R, 2010), 186-187, who shows that “the Princ- of God” (A Christian Theory of Knowledge [Phillips- etonians were convinced that although ‘true human burg, NJ: P&R, 1969], 41). theology’ is possible, it is never more than what Rich- Cf. A. Berkeley Mickelsen, Interpreting the Bible, ard Muller calls ‘an ectype or reflection resting on but 307-308. “To say that certain language is figura- not commensurate with the divine self-knowledge [or tive does not mean that the event is unreal. In fact, archetype],’ for they acknowledged a vast ‘epistemic when the language of the earthly realm … is used

54 to describe the beginnings of all that exists and the the way the Creator does, Giberson and Collins state climax of all that exists, the figurative language best that God’s relationship with and activity in the world conveys that which is most real, abiding, and certain. is analogous to how humans relate to the world: “We Earthly language from a known sphere of existence make plans every day: we choose clothes to wear, is used to describe what took place or will take place food for breakfast, a route to work and the first task in a sphere of existence that no mere human creature of the day. These human intentions emerge in our has ever entered. God must attest to that which took minds, somehow, via processes that we don’t under- place in creation and that which will take place in stand, and then we rearrange the world around us the climax…. God disclosed his truths in language to make these intentions a reality; we make things taken from the life experiences of the Hebrews and happen that would not otherwise occur, but we do the early Christians to describe for them that which this without ‘breaking the laws of nature.’ … We sug- far transcended all that they ever knew…. When we gest therefore that God’s interactions with the world consider the materials in the light of all that the Scrip- might be analogous to our own, just more substan- tures have revealed about God, we are impressed even tial. Christians have always affirmed that God has more with the use of figurative language. Without it, intentions and that the providential course of history little or nothing could have been disclosed. With it is influenced by God realizing these intentions. We God was able to indicate how much more there is yet thus suggest that God’s interaction with the world, in to be known. Man now knows in part.” analogy with ours, need not require that the laws of 65See John Stott, Understanding the Bible (London: nature be constantly ‘broken’” (119-20). Scripture Union, 1972), 238, who coins the expres- Giberson and Collins apply these affirmations sion, homo divines, to describe the first evolved by stating, “We can speculate, for example, that God humans God invests with his image. creates a world where certain free things happen, but 66Caneday, “Veiled Glory,” 161; (emphasis original). happen along channels that have a high degree of pre- See that essay for fuller explanation concerning the dictability. By analogy, the water in the Niagara River significance of how God reveals himself and his words definitely goes over the Falls, but we cannot chart its to humans to work out its implications concerning path accurately. Perhaps God creates a world where appeal to divine accommodation by BioLogos advo- his foreknowledge allows him to see unfolding chan- cates. Besides adopting the modern historical-criti- nels of history without needing to control or even cal doctrine of accommodation under the mistaken know certain small details. Or perhaps God knows all notion that it is the classical doctrine, BioLogos advo- the details without actually determining them. We all cates engage the same fallacy Open Theists commit: have foreknowledge of what will happen to a brick if “The fallacy is to forget that we are analogues of God we drop it on our toe, but this foreknowledge hardly and to regard ourselves as the fundamental reference causes the brick to fall or the pain to appear” (120- point for ascriptions concerning God. The error is to 21). After they reduce acceptable “models for how project back upon God our creaturely restrictions of God interacts with the physical world” to those com- qualities received from him who made us in his image patible with the evolutionary model they embrace, and likeness” (“Veiled Glory,” 153). Giberson and Collins want to close off further discus- Giberson and Collins borrow significantly from sion or disagreement: “Our goal should be to avoid John Polkinghorne, a British Open Theist, and show narrowing down the range of possibilities by putting his influence when they invert the analogical order God in boxes of our own devising” (122-23). God established by creating Adam in his own image 67“Scripture … has no hesitation in speaking anthropo- and after his likeness (The Language of Science and morphically of God. It ascribes all manner of activity Faith, 116-23). Instead of correctly observing that to him. Of this activity we cannot think otherwise humans relate to and engage the world analogous to than spatially and temporally. So we are face to face

55 with the choice either of thinking of God as alto- even such as the New Testament expects” (“New Tes- gether like unto ourselves, or of thinking ourselves tament and Mythology: The Mythological Element the finite analogues of the fullness of his being. As in the Message of the New Testament and the Prob- we cannot do the first without wiping out the differ- lem of Its Reinterpretation,” in Kerygma and Myth: A ence between Creator and creature, we are compelled Theological Debate [ed. Hans Werner Barstch; trans. to do the latter” (Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction Reginald H. Fuller; London: SPCK, 1953], 5). What to Systematic Theology, [Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & lies behind Bultmann’s denial of the New Testament Reformed, 1976], 212). eschatology is his denial of a real physical incarnation 68Cornelius Van Til, “Nature of Scripture,” in The Infal- and a real physical resurrection. For Bultmann, the lible Word (ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley; resurrection is a myth. “The real purpose of myth is Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1947), 273. not to present an objective picture of the world as it is, 69Caneday, “Veiled Glory,” 163. “Here is the essence but to express man’s understanding of himself in the of anthropomorphism. God reveals himself to us in world in which he lives. Myth should be interpreted human terms, yet we must not compare God to us as not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better if we were the ultimate reference point. God organi- still, existentially” (10-11). cally and indelibly impressed his image upon man 74Enns indulges in this confusion of “literal reading” so that our relationships to one another reflect his versus “symbolic reading” in several of his BioLo- relationships with us. We do not come to know God gos essays. See, e.g., “Paul’s Adam (Part 1)” [cited as creator ex nihilo because we know ourselves to be 13 May 2010]. Online: http://biologos.org/blog/ creative and imagine him to be greater. Instead, man pauls-adam-part-i/. creates because we are like God. God is the original; 75On the one hand, those who advocate “literal inter- we are the organic image, the living copy.” pretation” of the creation account for apologetic 70Despite Carl Henry’s insistence that revelation is uni- purposes tend to emphasize its correspondence to vocal (see also note 63 above), he is correct to say, the reality of the things, places, persons, and events “When Calvin goes further, and declares the bibli- throughout the narrative and simultaneously they cal forms of speaking to ‘not so much express what tend to mute without completely effacing the sym- God is like, as accommodate the knowledge of him to bolic significances the biblical text assigns to all these our slight capacity’ (Institutes, I, xiii, 1) or that God’s features of the actual world created. Many who advo- method was ‘to represent himself to us, not as he is in cate for “literal interpretation” do so with fear akin himself but as he seems to us’ (Institutes, I, xvii, 13), to that which resided with the Antiochenes against we should carefully note that Calvin is here dealing the Alexandrian school of interpretation, namely, the with anthropomorphic representations, and that in notion that if an Old Testament narrative entails alle- no case does Calvin imply that scripture teaching is gory then it is not historical (Cf. A. B. Caneday, “Cove- fallacious” (God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:376). nant Lineage Allegorically Prefigured: ‘Which Things 71Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 90. Are Written Allegorically’ [Galatians 4:21-31],”SBJT 72Cf. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.1.1-2. 14 [2010]: 53.). Thus, advocacy of “literal interpreta- 73Cf. Rudolph Bultmann who states, “The mythical tion” of the creation narrative does some injury to eschatology is untenable for the simple reason that the Christian faith with its tendency, particularly in its parousia of Christ never took place as the New Testa- popular forms, to suppose that if the creation account ment expected. History did not come to an end, and is laden with symbolic design by the Creator, then it as every schoolboy knows, it will continue to run its does not present the corporeal world. They wrongly course. Even if we believe that the world as we know it tend to dichotomize symbolic representation from will come to an end in time, we expect the end to take reality. To do so actually concedes ground to those the form of a natural catastrophe, not of a mythical they oppose apologetically. On the other hand, those

56 who advocate “symbolic interpretation” of the cre- 80See, for example, Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting ation account tend to minimize, even dismiss, the the Parables (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1990), creation account’s correspondence to the actual cor- 171-288. poreal world as though the biblical text were portray- 81A. B. Caneday, “Can you Discuss the Significance ing beginnings symbolically. Despite protests to the of Typology to Biblical Theology?” in “The SBJT contrary, the “symbolic interpretation” approach, Forum: Biblical Theology for the Church,” SBJT 10 poses threats to Christian faith with its tendency to (2006): 96-97. suppose that if the creation-fall accounts are laden 82For further discussion concerning the import of 1 with symbolic design by Scripture, then they portray Corinthians 10:11, see Caneday, “Covenant Lineage the world symbolically with literary devices so that it Allegorically Prefigured,” 61, 66, 72. would be a mistake to understand the things, places, 83Concerning Abraham and allegory, see ibid., 50-77. persons, and events presented as corresponding to 84Cf. J. Paul Sampley, “The Second Letter to the Corin- the actual world. After all, the claim is, everyone thians” in The New Interpreter’s Bible(12 vols.; Nash- knows that snakes don’t talk. ville: Abingdon, 2000), 11:75. 76As argued above, it is correct to say that God’s revela- 85Light also testifies by positive disclosure: “But who- tion is analogical, but to speak of “analogical interpre- ever does what is true comes to the light, so that it tation,” as with “literal or symbolic interpretation,” may be clearly seen that his works have been carried is to confuse the reader’s role with the author’s role. out in God” (John 3:21). For example, Sparks confuses these when he asserts, 86The relationship between light as symbol and that “For these kinds of difficulties, Calvin tells us that which it signifies is organic and natural, not capri- whenever it appears that the Bible speaks ‘falsely,’ cious nor arbitrary, precisely because the Creator this reflects an accommodation to the false views invested his created things with significance and he of humanity. In this sense accommodation was for formed us in his own image so that we have instinc- Calvin what allegory was for the church fathers: a tive sense that a pattern exists between the sign and ready-made hermeneutical tool for solving the prob- the thing signified. lem of diversity in the Scriptures. If Calvin’s prin- 87See Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Tübin- ciple of accommodation is a legitimate and important gen: Mohr (Siebeck); Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, aspect of Scripture’s divine speech, we should antici- 1981), 137-268 for development of Paul’s Christol- pate that it was not some kind of radical theological ogy, summarized, “Paul saw the exalted Christ as the innovation but a long-standing assumption about the eikōn tou theou and as the Son of God on the Damascus nature of Scripture” (God’s Word in Human Words, road. This perception led him to conceive of Christ in 236; emphasis added). The level and magnitude of terms of the personified, hypostatized Wisdom of God Sparks’s misunderstanding of Calvin’s teaching con- … on the one hand, and in terms of Adam, on the other. cerning accommodation requires far more attention Thus, both Paul’s Wisdom-Christology and Adam- and space than this essay can provide. Christology are grounded in the Damascus Christoph- 77See, for example, Jotham’s Parable of the Trees (Judg any” (267; emphasis original). 9:7-20). 88“Paul’s reference in 2 Cor 4:6 to the ‘glory of God 78On the early church fathers’s “allegorical interpreta- on the face of Christ’ indicates that, as the ‘image of tion” of this parable, see Robert H. Stein, The Method God,’ Christ is the very embodiment and revelation and Message of Jesus’ Teachings (rev. ed.; Louisville: of God himself, even as Phil 2:6 can speak of Christ Westminster John Knox, 1994), 44-45. as existing ‘in the form of God’ (en morphē theou) 79See also A. B. Caneday, “The Parable of the Gener- and Col 1:15 can speak of Christ as the ‘image of the ous Vineyard Owner (Matthew 20:1-16),” SBJT 13 invisible God, the first born of all creation’ eikōn( tou (2009): 34-45. theou tou aopatou prōtotokos pasēs ktisōs)” (Scott J.

57 Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel: The 96Ibid. Letter/Spirit Contrast and the Argument from Scrip- 97Ibid. ture in 2 Corinthians 3 [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 98Ibid. 1995], 416). 99Ibid., 6. 89Ibid. Hafemann explains, “The comparison through- 100Ibid. out 2 Cor 3:7-18 is not between Moses and Christ as 101BioLogos Staff with Enns & Schloss, “Was there mediators of the glory of God, but between Moses Death Before the Fall?” [cited 20 March 2011]. and Paul, with Christ equated with YHWH himself Online: http://biologos.org/questions/death- as the glory of God.” before-the-fall/. The BioLogos staff agrees with 90Cf. Caneday, “Covenant Lineage Allegorically Prefig- George Murphy’s view cited above. However, for ured, 50-77. “Paul reads Scripture’s story of Abraham as people who cannot find a way to disconnect physi- historical narrative invested with symbolic representa- cal death from the fall, they offer another sce- tions embedded within the characters and the two con- nario in their effort to synthesize evolution with trasting births of two sons—one by natural order, the Christianity: other by divine promise. Hence, the Genesis text itself, “To connect human physical death to the Fall, we not Paul’s interpretation of the text, is allegorical while must be clear about what it means to be human. It is simultaneously upholding the historical authenticity of argued that bearing God’s image is not a matter of those characters and events” (51; emphasis original). our physical appearance but a matter of our capac- 91For greater elaboration concerning symbolic sig- ity to love both God and others, to have dominion nificances in the creation-fall account, see Caneday, over the Earth and to have moral consciousness. In “Veiled Glory,” 161-67. this way we might distinguish between Homo sapi- 92For example, see George Murphy, “Evolution, Sin, ens and the image-bearing creatures that we might and Death” [cited 12 April 2011]. Online: http:// call Homo divinus. While Homo sapiens might have biologos.org/blog/evolution-sin-and-death/; idem, a similar body structure or physical capabilities of “Human Evolution in Theological Context” [cited Homo divinus, the latter exists in God’s image. 23 March 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/ With this critically important distinction, BioLo- uploads/projects/murphy_scholarly_essay.pdf; gos is thus compatible with the belief that part of BioLogos Staff with Peter Enns and Jeff Schloss, Adam’s curse was the onset of physical death for “Was there Death Before the Fall?” [cited 23 March the human race, because the human race in the full 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/questions/death- Imago Dei really began with Adam. Although many before-the-fall/. human-like creatures lived and died before the Fall, 93For an excellent articulation of the concursive theory these Homo sapiens did not yet bear the image of of inspiration, see Stephen J. Wellum, “The Inerrancy God. After the bestowal of God’s image, there was of Scripture, in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and no death of Homo divinus until after the Fall. As soon the Understanding of Biblical Christianity (ed. John as image-bearing humanity fully emerged through Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth; Whea- God’s creative process of evolution, no member of ton: Crossway, 2003), 237-74. that species experienced death until after the Fall.” 94BioLogos Staff with Peter Enns & Jeff Schloss, 102For example, Paul uses the verbs, “I die” (apothnēskō) “Was there Death Before the Fall?” [cited 20 March and “I cause to die” (thanatoō), as well as the noun, 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/questions/ “death” (thanatos), for the sacrificial death of Jesus death-before-the-fall/. Christ (e.g., Rom 5:6-8, 10; 6:3-5, 8-10; 8:34) but 95Murphy, “Human Evolution in Theological Context” also for death of ordinary humans (e.g., 7:2-3; 8:36, [cited 23 March 2011]. Online: http://biologos.org/ 38; 14:7-9). With reference to Jesus’ sacrificial death, blog/evolution-sin-and-death/; 5. apart from effacing his sacrifice, it is impossible to

58 separate the physical and spiritual aspects of his point out that the Genesis passage nowhere suggests death. Other passages accent spiritual death (e.g., that animal death (or carnivorous behavior) is in 6:16, 21, 23, 7:5, 9-11, 13, 24; 8:2, 6). any way a consequence of the ‘curse’” (37, n. 80). It 103Cf. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (New is curious that one who takes a “literary-theological International Commentary on the New Testament; approach to Genesis 3” seems to read the text rather Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 121-22. woodenly. 104Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (Baker Exegetical Surely, Paul’s affirmations concerning creation’s Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: groaning, subjection to frustration, and liberation Baker, 1998), 272. from bondage to corruption, in Romans 8:19-22, has 105C. John Collins, “What Happened to Adam and Eve? in view Isaiah’s vision (Isa 11:6-9). Adam’s rebellion A Literary-Theological Approach to Genesis 3,”Pres - against the Creator invoked the cures, including, byterion, 27 (2001), 42. animal predation, which will end with the redemp- 106Schreiner, Romans, 272. tion of God’s sons. Christians, who understand this 107If one fails to take note of earlier comments in the and see a wolf prey upon a lamb, tearing and devour- essay, it is not entirely clear what Collins means by ing its flesh, cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev “the will of God” when he states, “[W]e must make a 22:20). Ponder the even clearer allusion to the ser- careful definition of ‘evil.’ The Bible would not sup- pent of Genesis 3 in this portrayal of the new earth: port the contention that the natural processes of the “‘For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, creation themselves—including animal predation, and the former things shall not be remembered or and natural phenomena such as earthquakes and come into mind. The wolf and the lamb shall graze hurricanes—are contrary to the will of God” (“What together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust Happened to Adam and Eve?,” 41; emphasis added). shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or However, clarity comes by way of two earlier state- destroy in all my holy mountain,’ says the Lord” (Isa ments in the text and one in a footnote. First, Col- 65:17, 25). lins’s only other mention of the “will of God” in the 108Ibid., 36. Collins’s explanation of the curse of the essay is as follows: “The condition for its [covenant’s] ground is quite inadequate. See the previous note, continuation is stated clearly in 2:16-17, obedience to 107. the divine will. The punishment for breaking the com- 109Ibid., 37. mand is ‘death’” (21; emphasis added). It seems that 110Ibid., 43. Collins equivocates with his uses of “the will of God” 111Cf. Schreiner, Romans, 435f. and “the divine will,” the former referring to God’s 112For greater elaboration, especially on the signifi- decretive will and the latter to God’s statedmoral will. cance of the text, see Ray Ortlund, Jr., “Male-Female Second, Collins makes clear that he rejects any link- Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1-3,” in Recov- age between Adam’s disobedience and natural disas- ering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, (ed. John ters and does not accept any causative connection Piper and Wayne Grudem; Wheaton: Crossway, between Adam’s sin and death coming to animals. 1991), 95-112. Concerning Genesis 3:17—“cursed is the ground 113Doubtless, Paul’s observations bear out other impli- because of you”—Collins asks: “Does this lead to cations also. For example, the woman was not made the doctrine of a ‘fallen’ natural realm? ... In no case from the ground as was Adam, for she is not another does this imply that somehow the actual functioning species. She was formed from a portion of Adam’s of the natural elements is distorted due to human side, so dignity is hers intrinsically. sin: rather, it emphasizes that agricultural produc- tion is to be the arena of God’s chastisement” (36- 37). To this he adds in a footnote, “It is necessary to

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