Australian eJournal of 19.1 (April 2012)

Covenant and Myth: Can Reformed Theology Survive without and

Karl Hand Charles Sturt University

Abstract: Reformed theology is a diverse movement, and has found many ways to interact with the presence of mythical stories in scripture. There is a strong tendency, however, to draw a ‘line in the sand’ at the historical existence of Adam because of the function that he plays in the of the covenants – particularly the ‘ of works’. This article problematises that line by suggesting that it is possible to build an authentically Reformed and covenantal theology without a historical Adam.

Key Words: Adam and Christ; ; ; Federalism; Genesis; Myth; Neo-Calvinism; Reformed Theology; Romans

The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey. "For then alone do we know truly," writes Saint Thomas Aquinas, "when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God."1

he June 2011 editorial of Today (June 2011, 55/6, 61) was titled ‘No Adam, No Eve, No .’ With this provocative title, the editorial goes on to firmly reiterate, with some warmth toward the possibility of scientific understandings of the origin of the universe and the human species, and in contemporary language, the necessity of a real and ‘historical’ Adam and Eve. The article expresses the basic Reformed teaching about Adam’s headship over humankind. This doctrine, a central tenet of covenant theology, has traditionally been referred to by Reformed theologians as Adam’s ‘federal’ headship in the ‘covenant of works’. The basic idea of this doctrine is expressed in the Westminster Confession of VII.2 “The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”

Whatever Christians may believe about the origins of the universe and biological life, a growing accord among young and thriving Christian communities draws a line in the sand at this classical doctrine of Adam. If they compromise this doctrine, then they have reason to think they have lost the gospel, the heart of the Christian faith.

This belief in an historical Adam is hardly standing in the way of Reformed theology growing in the western world. In American , traditional Reformed ideas have new life in the rise of a new abundance of Reformed ministries, including such tremendously influential leaders such as , Don Carson and . In

1 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), 219.

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Britain, the Evangelical Alliance and the spiritual successors of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and in Australia, the Presbyterian Church and the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church have all kept the flame of Reformed Theology burning before a vibrant and ever youthful multitude. This movement is sometimes being referred to as ‘neo-Calvinism’.

Neo-Calvinism’s growth has been attributed by journalist Collin Hansen to a growing discontent among young people with the self-indulgent, moralistic and therapeutic religion of the Baby-Boomers’ era. Calvinism’s emphasis on God’s glory and human weakness has spoken powerfully to such a generation, and the skill of the neo- Calvinist leaders in has enabled them to present this view as a tightly integrated and logical world-view, which makes sense of every aspect of human life. Hansen shows how the world-view of Calvinism has become a lifeboat of sanity in a chaotic and unstable postmodern world. The atonement of is the centrepiece of this system, and the original of a real Adam is the necessary presumption of the atonement of Jesus.

The overwhelming theme of the neo-Calvinist theology is its distinctively predestinarian and monergistic2 soteriology, but for others, the Reformed teaching about history and the covenant has been the draw card. Hansen tells the story of Clay Daniels, a Yale graduate who was converted to the neo-Calvinist movement while attending Dallas Theological Seminary, a school which is confessionally opposed to covenant theology. He considered the Calvinists he knew to be “a little whacky” for pushing what he considered to be minor theological points. The Reformed perspective no longer seemed so minor when he began to understand covenant theology, how God’s story of redemption unfolds across the Old and New Testaments in the covenants of works, redemption and grace.3

As Reformed theology finds a younger audience, it must negotiate its place within a more scientific landscape than it has in previous generations. One example is a theological trend within the Sydney Evangelical movement to take an open-minded stance towards theistic evolution. John Dickson, who is an influential historian and ordained minister in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, has recently published an article articulating an interpretation of Genesis 1 which has been taught to the students of Sydney’s Moore College for a generation now. Dickson presents the Genesis creation account as a theologically and existentially confronting, and intentionally subversive alternative to the ideology of Imperial Babylon’s creation myths. This subversive theology, however, is uninformative about the material origins of the world.4 After receiving some considerable criticism from Creationist theologian Benno Zuiddam, Dickson clarified that his position

2 ‘Monergism’ is the Reformed doctrine that regeneration is a work of the that occurs without human co-operation, as opposed to ‘synergism’, the doctrine that the human will co-operates with the Holy Spirit before regeneration occurs. 3 Collin Hansen, Young Restless and Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 65. 4 John P Dickson, “The Genesis of Everything: An historical account of the ’s opening chapter” ISCAST Online Journal 4 (2008), 1-18. Available online at: http://www.iscast.org/journal/articlespage/Dickson_J_2008-03_Genesis_Of_Everything (accessed March 22, 2012).

59 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth on Genesis 1 should be understood within the context of his affirmation of a historical Adam.5

This mediating position is becoming increasingly popular within the broader neo- Calvinist movement. If there is any one person who can be identified as the foremost leader of the neo-Calvinist movement, it is John Piper, the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. In a podcast of his Ask Pastor John program on 27th May 2010, Piper explains why there are certain points about creation that all Bethlehem elders are required to hold, and other points on which they have freedom. He uses the covenant headship of Adam as his criterion. I think we should preach that he created Adam and Eve directly, that he made them of the dust of the ground, and he took out of man a woman. I think we should teach that. I know there are people who don't, who think it's all imagery for evolution or whatever. And we should teach that man had his beginning not millions of years ago but within the scope of the biblical genealogies. Those genealogies are tight at about six thousand years and loose at maybe ten or fifteen thousand. So I think we should honor those genealogies and not say that you can play fast and loose with the origin of man. 6

Within the scope of the historicity of the creation of human beings in the Genesis accounts, Piper allows as much freedom as possible, including both , theistic evolution or his own view which he draws from John Sailhamer’s recent book, Genesis Unbound,7 which allows science full scope regarding natural history, but not with regards to human history. As Piper says, this view has the advantage of saying that the earth is billions of years old if it wants to be— whatever science says it is, it is—but man is young, and he was good and he sinned. [Adam] was a real historical person, because Romans 5 says so, and so does the rest of the Bible.

In contrast to this broad, popular consensus, Hans Frei has read between the lines of covenant theology and pointed out that its connection to an historical Adam might not be so unambiguous. There is a connection between Calvinist (even scholastic Calvinist) theology and the post-Enlightenment separation of world-history and sacred-history. By comparing the of two such dissimilar contemporaries as the founder of covenant theology, , and the founder of the historical critical method, Benedict de Spinoza, Frei shows that these “two very dissimilar views of the Bible”8 had something in common.

According to Frei, in the work of these men one can observe the phenomenon of literary or theological sense and historical reference beginning to separate out, in a way in which they had not been separable in the sixteenth century. According to Frei, “Cocceius obviously did not realize that he was on his way to a separation of fact and story,” but Cocceius’ spiritualisation the to fit Scholastic Reformed dogmatics provided

5 “Genesis 1 and theories of origin.” http://creation.com/genesis-dickson-zuiddam (accessed March 22, 2012). 6 “What should we teach about creation?”, http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/ask-pastor- john/what-should-we-teach-about-creation (accessed December 30, 2011). 7 John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 1996). 8 Hans Wilhelm Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 42.

60 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth the grounds for the concept of Heilsgeschichte, with its clear delineation from Historie in the work of Rudolf Bultmann, and the movement.

Speaking as a person of Reformed and Evangelical conviction, although an outsider to the ‘neo-Calvinist’ movement itself, I feel at liberty to offer a candid critique of the way that the movement’s growth is taking place. My criticism is illustrated by the attitude towards theology which could result in a simplistic formula like ‘No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel.’ The literalism of Piper is not doing justice to the potential that Frei noticed in covenant theology to connect with the storied nature of the biblical revelation. Rather than a dynamic conversation, it is a wildly successful formula, and the formula is so tight that it is unable to adapt. The real threat to Reformed theology is not that it might dry up but that its life-blood might flow inorganically; the theology might be propagated widely but without developing as it spreads.

This criticism is not idiosyncratic to my own point of view. It has been pointed out by a number of theologians within the Reformed tradition. For instance, Brevard Childs has referred to Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology (then the standard Reformed text in English) as a “repristination of seventeenth century dogmatics.”9 More recently, Brian Gerrish has asked whether Reformed Theology is “obsolete”.10 The emotive effect of his question is not mitigated by his conclusion. He proposes that Reformed preachers must cease to “take their stand” on predestination.11 Not only is this unacceptable, it raises the question how we have come to point where we need to throw away cherished distinctive beliefs overboard like luggage to keep the ship afloat. A better question is, why are we sinking? Can we plug the leak and keep our treasure?

Of course, the task of developing a theology is monumental. In this paper, I want to suggest one direction. I would suggest that to maintain contemporary integrity in what is a mainly antithetical philosophical milieu, Reformed theology must begin to theologize upon mythological readings of the opening chapters of Genesis.

I want to approach this task holistically and thoroughly, because this theology is a holistic and thorough theology, so I will start with a summary of the historical Reformed doctrine of Adam’s , and an assessment of the gravity of the argument that mythical readings cannot be grafted into the Reformed system. I then move to of specific passages which critical scholarship has shown to be mythical (such as Genesis 1; 2-3 and Romans 5). During this comparison the problems and tensions within the Reformed system in the contemporary world become quite clear. has pled that evangelicals recognize the “sovereignty of the text”, and “let the chips fall where they may.”12 I mean to respond to Pinnock’s call by seeing ‘where the chips fall’ for the ‘federal headship’ of Adam.

9 Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 20. 10 Brian A. Gerrish, “Sovereign grace: is Reformed theology obsolete?” Interpretation 57 (2003): 45-57. 11 Ibid., 57. 12 Clark H. Pinnock “Climbing out of a swamp : the Evangelical struggle to understand the creation texts.” Interpretation 43 (1989): 143-155, at 155

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COVENANT THEOLOGY

If it is even possible, removing the historical Adam from Reformed theology is the most invasive kind of surgery that can be imagined; it cuts into the nerve endings of the world- view. In many cases of post-Enlightenment theology, such as Panentheism and Process Theology, the result of demythologisation has been nothing less than an abandonment of classical theism. The surgery, then, will necessarily be intricate. It must begin in the realm of theological prolegomenon. Covenant theology itself is the most extensively and historically used theological method for Reformed theologians. Its roots origins go back as far as Zwingli and Bullinger.13 I would argue against historical revisionists14 that Calvin also stands tentatively in the tradition of covenant theologians.15 In the 20th century also, covenant theology has been the standard Reformed model, used by the Princeton Theologians and Louis Berkhof, and more recently espoused by Robert Reymond.16 It seems reasonable, then, to begin the task with an analysis of the Reformed understanding of the covenant.

Covenant theology classically formulated The essential idea of covenant theology is that it arranges theology around the heads of the covenants in salvation history. The early covenant theologian defined covenant theology as the belief that “nothing else was handed down to the saints of all ages throughout the entire scripture, other than what is included in the main points of the covenant.”17 This makes the starting point of theology a synthesis of biblical material, around the central theme of the one eternal covenant of grace, rather than organizing it around systematic, logical inquiry, according to the Aristotelian-Scholastic method. A further assumption is that there are not two covenants (the ‘old’ and ‘new’) but only one covenant of grace.

The covenant of grace is defined by the Westminster Confession of Faith as that covenant in which God “freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe” (VII:2). However, the covenant of grace is not the logical starting point of covenant theology. It is (according to Johannes Cocceius) an ‘abrogation’ of a prior covenant: the covenant of works.18 This covenant promised eternal life to Adam on the condition of perfect obedience to the moral law. When Adam broke this covenant by partaking of the forbidden tree, both he and his posterity were subjected to death.

13 Lyle D. Bierma, German Calvinism in the Confessional Age (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 31-39. 14 For instance, McCoy and Baker state: that there are “two alternative, yet related strands within the Reformed tradition – Federalism and Calvinism.” C. S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition (Louisville, Kentucky:Westminster/, 1991), 24. 15 Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker/Paternoster, 2001). 16 Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 4- 10, 404-7, 503-545. 17 Heinrich Bullinger “The One and eternal Testament or Covenant of God” tr. C.S. McCoy & J. W. Baker in Fountainhead of Federalism (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 99-138, at 112. 18 Johannes Cocceius, Summa theologia ex Scripturis Repetita, 1662, Locus 13, cap. 31.

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The Westminster Confession VII:3 makes the logical connection between the covenants of works and grace clear: “Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace.” In other words, the covenant of grace is only possible because of the breach in the covenant of works. This then is the basic problem of the integrative task: if we allow any non-literal readings of the creation account, thus eliminating any real covenant of works, there remains no basis for the covenant of grace.

Covenant theology without Adam In the late nineteenth-century, Reformed theology was first forced to deal with the issue of non-literal readings of the Genesis account, when it was confronted with the issue of Darwinism. This became a scandal during the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy. As I will show, while this problem was essentially a different kind of problem than that offered by mythical readings, it provides a powerful analogy of how Reformed theologians may respond to the problem of Adam’s historicity and federal headship.

The question that the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy forced Reformed theologians to ask was not whether the Genesis account was a myth, but rather, whether there was a way to negotiate a compromise between natural history and the scriptural record conceived of as an alternative history. The project of Reformed theologians was to construct a sequence of events which could satisfy both accounts. Mythical readings of Genesis 1-3 demand more of theology than mere Darwinism does, because interpreting the Creation account as a myth does not allow such a negotiation to take place. It rather implies that none of these events took place in the world of human sensory experience and that the natural history of the world must be determined entirely by science.

The situation of late nineteenth century Reformed theology does overlap with the current situation on the issue an historical Adam. However, what is fascinating about the responses of Reformed theologians of the time was their lack of concern about the implications for covenant theology. They were more concerned with the doctrine of God proper, and with the potential consequences for a theistic world-view if God were seen as a shaper of matter, rather than a creator.

An orthodox Reformed theologian like Benjamin B. Warfield was able to take a progressive and scientific stance on the question of creation unimpeded by either problem. Warfield held that evolution was easily integrated into Reformed theology, such as Calvin’s commentary on Genesis 1, and his Institutes of the Christian Religion. By distinguishing between the primary act of creatio ex nihilo on the first day, and the process of formation ex materia, by divine providence, on the remaining five days, Calvin gives “a very pure evolutionary scheme.”19 Warfield’s optimism thus opened the way for Reformed theology to cope with the development of Darwinism.

But Reformed thinkers of the twentieth century did not follow Warfield’s lead. For instance, Louis Berkhof took issue with problems that evolution posed to classical theism. Berkhof points out several areas of tension between theism and evolution. One tension is

19 Benjamin Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Creation” in eds. M.A. Noll and D. N. Livingstone, Evolution, Science and Scripture: Selected Writings (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 287-349, at 309.

63 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth between the conflicting presupposition of theism and naturalism, “The evolutionist must either resort to the theory that matter is eternal, or accept the doctrine of creation.”20 Thus, he decried theistic evolution as a “dangerous hybrid”, and a “contradiction in terms”, because it denies the place of miracles in history and consigns the origin of both sin and religious affection to the psychological results of the natural evolutionary process.21

Berkhof’s argument is helpful because it carefully delineates the problems the Reformed world-view faces in the loss of a literal Adam. Howard J. Van Till, an evangelical evolutionist, admits as much when he asks, If we human beings are genealogically related to other life forms, what happens to our concept of uniqueness as morally responsible beings? Was the appearance of our species intended? Is there any purpose to our existence?22

This concern is not only present in the Reformed academy. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of the most popular Reformed preachers of the 20th century also expresses concern, The Bible does not merely make statements about salvation. It is a complete whole: it tells you about the origin of the world and of man … how he fell and the need of salvation arose, and then it tells you how God provided salvation … Therefore these early chapters of Genesis with their history play a vital part in the whole doctrine of salvation … our gospel, our faith, is not a teaching; it is not a philosophy; it is primarily a history.23

Lloyd-Jones is right – not that Genesis 1-3 is a ‘history’ – but that this issue has consequences for our whole system of theology. In this quote, he broadens out the narrow theological concern from the interface between scientific and religious of the world to the nature of God and the nature of revelation.

Cornelius van Til has pointed out what is perhaps the most disturbing implication of evolutionary theory for the Reformed system. An altered view of the creation, the human person and salvation history – because these things are a revelation of God – will ultimately lead to an altered view of God.24 Within the classical theism of the Reformed system, God’s nature has a direct relation to all entities and facts because God is the ultimate and immediate basis of existence. As Van Til states, "God is free not in spite of but because of the necessity of his nature."25 Here we are treading on dangerous ground! Every action of God is necessary and demonstrates who and what God is. For this reason, truncating salvation-history by removing an historical Adam will (and it has done in twentieth-century theology) call into question everything from the nature of God as to the sovereignty of God in creation and salvation. A God who creates a complex universe by a long process of second causes is, in fact, a different God to the God who creates a simple paradise under a firmament by sudden and spontaneous decree. All those who depart from this most simplistic of creation models must then rethink their theology with careful, exegetically grounded theological method.

20 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of truth, 1941), 160. 21 Ibid., 162. 22 Howard J. Van Till, “The Fully-Gifted Creation (‘Theistic Evolution’)” in J. P. Moreland et al Three Views of Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 161-218, at 176. 23 D. M. Lloyd-Jones, What is an Evangelical? (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992), 75. 24 , Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1974), 29. 25 Ibid., 177.

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Covenant theology as myth A different approach to reading Genesis in the modern world is to recognise that it is myth and to think of this sacred history as something different to the history of the empirical world. This approach has the advantage of not needing to create dubious negotiations between whether the biblical record or the scientific account should be preferenced.

By referring to ‘mythical readings’, I do not mean to invoke the kind of post- Enlightenment thought which would say that modern science has disproved ancient, mythic understandings of the world as factually impossible. To do so would be to confuse the categories of myth and history, and judge myth by the criteria of historical enquiry. I am also not interested in removing the mythical content from the Bible in order to create some kind of scientifically sterile account which would be factually acceptable to modern people. Rather, I am interested in anthropological understandings of myth, which observe that there are deep structures in mythology across all human cultures, and which see this as an expression of truths about humanity. These truths do not relate to the empirical world with which history deals in a direct way. I am therefore proposing that the mythological content of the scriptures is divine revelation to us about the human condition, and that when we understand it as such, we are interpreting the text correctly.

It is now well known, and recognized in most critical commentaries, that the opening chapters of Genesis are written in a genre which is at home in the context of all Mesopotamian creation myths. Genesis 1 bears a striking similarity to the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish, Genesis 2-3 to the Mesopotamian legend of Adapa, and the story of to the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, and many other parallels can be drawn to similar stories. However, there are also many parallels that can be drawn between these myths and myths from around the world with which there could be no direct literary relationship. The great mythologist Joseph Campbell compares creation epics such as these to similar tales from Indian, Chinese, Siberian Tatar and Maori culture. Take, for example, this metaphysical Maori genealogy, which also bears a striking similarity to Genesis 1 and even to John 1, The word became fruitful; It dwelt with the feeble glimmering; It brought forth night…

It dwelt with the empty space, and produced the atmosphere which is above us. The atmosphere which floats above the earth, The great firmament above us, dwelt with the earthly dawn, And the moon sprang forth; The atmosphere above us, dwelt with the glowing sky, And thence proceeded the sun; Sun and moon were thrown up above, as then chief eyes of : Then the became light: the early dawn, the early day, The mid-day: the blaze of day from the sky. The sky above dwelt with Hawaiki, and produced land.26

26 Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, 254.

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The purpose of such myths cannot be understood only in a culturally specific way. They express something universal about the human condition. Campbell suggests that this purpose is to mediate between the perfection and unity of the transcendent realm, and the manifold and imperfect nature of life – the point at which emanations of the deity break up into manifold spatial forms.

We are therefore not dealing with detailed or empirically factual accounts of the past. Rather, myths represent a truth about the way that the whole empirical world relates to the world beyond the five senses. The date of creation (say, six thousand years ago) is an arbitrary point chosen to represent the relationship between these two worlds. The genealogies of Genesis show a gradual process of decay, and sin entering the world, which separates our world from the world beyond. Placing the account of creation within the empirical world itself, by dating it at 4004 BCE is a categorical error which negates the possibility of the text mediating that transcendent world which does not occur within the confines of our world-calendar. As Campbell explains, Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilisation begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.27

The Genesis account provides a unique understanding of this relationship between the transcendent and empirical worlds, which is useful to the project of Reformed theology. That God relates to humanity by means of God’s word and covenant, and that God is both totally good and totally sovereign over that creation are decisive theological values of the Reformed tradition and clearly seen in the Genesis account when it is read as myth. The insistence on keeping the account literal distorts the function of this rich theological text. Therefore I now turn to the text itself to give such a reading in more detail.

THE BIBLICAL DATA

The logical starting place to approach the biblical material on the covenant of works is in the . However, this immediately brings us to a problem. Is the biblical story which begins in the opening chapters of Genesis something that actually happened in time and space, or is it a story told for the purpose of communicating theological truth? The genre of the Genesis 2-3 would seem to indicate neither, since this passage is clearly a construction of etiological myths which explain the reason for the snake's lack of legs and the origin of gender, marriage, suffering etc. These myths bear considerable similarities to the creation myths of other contemporary middle-eastern myths, such as the creation of the first humans from the earth, a great flood, the presence of exaggerated genealogies, etc. Therefore, rather than functioning to transmit historical or theological data, we should understand them as myths, functioning within a culture to inspire spiritual growth and depth, to help people understand their life as part of a greater reality. As I survey now the

27 Ibid., 230-31.

66 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth biblical data about Adam, I will read the material according to this understanding of the genre and social function of such stories. The Adamic covenant of works Evangelical scholarship as a whole has been reticent to accept Genesis 1-11’s mythical genre. For instance, a standard Evangelical critical commentary on Genesis is by G. J. Wenham, who like Warfield before him, engages in the task of negotiating between theology and science. He proposes that Genesis 1-11 may be an "inspired re-telling of ancient oriental traditions",28 and that this mitigates the clash between it and our scientific world-view,29 and he proposes that the author of the creation account in Genesis 2-3 has written "a fresh and original story of his own" on the basis of other mythical traditions.30 However, this "in no way impairs the inspired truth of the… narrative".31 Wenham now places the locus of the “inspired truth” in the space-time details of the story, so that Adam and Eve are "as real as the patriarchs,"32 and it is worth searching for a literal location for the Garden of Eden.33 Wenham has come to the very brink of demythologizing the creation account, only to insist in the historical truth of details, which contradicts his previous admission that this narrative is constructed from mythical material rather than historical sources.

By acknowledging the materials of the text without following through to the conclusions of such an admission, Wenham has subordinated exegesis to the theological presupposition of Adam's historicity. Furthermore, he has made the inspiration of the Bible artificial, as though what the author is saying (re-telling mythical stories) is a different thing than what God is saying (a factual account of events). It is self-defeating to depart from evangelical hermeneutical convictions (that the voice of the scripture is the very voice of God) in order to maintain an evangelical reading of the text. If, on the other hand, the stories of Genesis 1-11 are indeed mythical, then we may not (as Wenham does) interpret the rivers flowing out of Eden as "symbolism"34 while selectively retaining the historicity of Adam and Eve.

Henri Blocher takes a different approach. He also argues for a historical Adam and Eve. However, he dates them some forty millennia ago, and affirms they had “an initial period of fellowship with God in their lives before they apostatized.”35 This is possible because he conceives of the narrative as being a “well-crafted, childlike drawing of the far- distant past, with illustrative and typological interests uppermost.”36

Blocher has admitted already that he is trying to reconcile Genesis to scientific theory. Because he is approaching the text seeking a specific outcome, he adopts a position which assigns to the text a genre (‘childlike’ history), not because the text seems to

28 Gordon J. Wenham Genesis (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), liii. 29 Ibid., xlvi. 30 Ibid., 53. 31 Ibid., 55. 32 Ibid., 54. 33 Ibid., 66-67. 34 Ibid., 64. 35 Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), 42. 36 Ibid., 41.

67 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth demand it, but in order to reach his preferred outcome. His position, I would argue, thus violates the principle of sola scriptura by putting scientific concerns (married to a systematic-theological preference for an historical Adam) over the scriptural consideration of genre. He has forgotten that natural revelation is subordinate to special revelation.

The cases of Wenham and Blocher are warnings that selective exegesis does no justice to the text. It is better to interpret Adam as being a symbol of humanity with a view to its origins, just as the very name Adam (human), and the context (a primeval history) imply. In Genesis 2:15-17, a theological truth about Adam (qua ‘humanity’s origins’) is revealed, The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

The function of the myth is to resolve the tension of God’s perfection and the existence of sin. God’s providence presents us with paradise if only we would obey the covenant of works. This is just as true in our fallen world of space and time. For instance, there is more than enough food and water and resources for all humanity to live abundantly. Only our greedy hoarding of resources (or more broadly our sin) destroys this paradise. Every verse of chapter 2 speaks on the theme of God's abundance. Gerhard von Rad has even argued that the prohibition to eat of one of the trees is indicative of God's "fatherly care."37 However, the prohibition is clear: obedience will lead to life, and disobedience to death. The obstacle to paradise and divine fellowship is sin, and this sin is not directly created by the one who nevertheless created everything.

Looking beyond the literalism of detail, this mythology teaches us about the human condition. Humans all originate from a common ancestry, and embedded in that heritage is a covenant. That this is a covenant is clear from Hosea 6:7 (ESV) "But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me."

That all of humanity is bound under such a covenant is further clear from Romans 2:14, "When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves", and Romans 5:13-14, "Sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to , even over those whose were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come."

The Abrahamic covenant of works The revelation of God to in Genesis 12, 15 and 17 is a revelation of the covenant of grace. However, in Galatians 4:21-26, Paul points out that Hagar's children were born unto slavery, while Sarah's children (the church) are born under a different covenant that promises freedom. Dispensational and other non-covenantal hermeneutics would naturally think of these two covenants as being the 'old' Jewish covenant and the ''. However, Paul's choice of Hagar as a foil to Sarah seems to indicate that the

37 Gerhard von Rad Genesis (London: SCM, 1961), 82.

68 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth covenants he has in mind are concurrent, that Hagar and all humankind is under the one covenant (the covenant of works) while Sarah and Abraham were especially chosen to life through the covenant of grace.

The of works The covenant of works is expounded most clearly under the , showing that the covenant of works is still a reality for God's people Israel. Leviticus 18:5 (quoted by Paul in Romans 10:5 and Galatians 3:11-12) makes an excellent summary statement of this covenant. "You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live: I am the LORD." In Romans 7:10, Paul shows the effect that this covenant has upon those of God's people who seek to be justified under it, "…the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me."

The covenant of works in the If the covenant of works was preached by Moses, then it ought to come as no surprise to anyone who believes in a unified revelation that Jesus preaches this same covenant. In Matthew 19:16-17 we read, Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’

So far, none of this biblical material presents a difficulty for a mythological reading of the covenant of works in Genesis. However, a major problem is presented in Romans 5:12-21 (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:42-49). In this passage, Adam is assigned a role in salvation- history that is typological of the work of Christ. Indeed, Adam is the one through whom “sin exercised dominion in death”, while through Jesus Christ, grace “might also exercise dominion through leading to eternal life.” To express this in other terms, Adam is the federal head of one covenant (the covenant of works) which brings death, and Christ is similarly head of the covenant (or ‘reign’) of grace which brings life through righteousness.

There seem to be two implications of Romans 5:12-21 that we cannot avoid. Firstly, humankind is connected to Adam ontologically. Romans 5:12-21 explains Adam’s federal headship in such a way as requires an ontological connection between himself and humankind. The Pelagian view that “death spread to all because all have sinned” (NRSV), meaning that all have, in time, followed the example of Adam and sinned, fails as a reading of this text on several levels, (1) “All have sinned” is in the aorist tense (pantes hēmarton), which usually tends to indicate singular actions rather than continuous. There is no reason in the context to take this as anything but a punctilliar aorist. It would be better translated ‘all sinned’ than ‘all have sinned’. (2) Verse 18 (which picks up the argument of the anacolouthon verse 12) speaks of the one sin which brought (not just corruption but) condemnation to all people. (3) The whole purpose of the argument is to contrast the sin of Adam with the act of righteousness by Christ. It is granted that the two acts need not be identical in order for there to be a comparison; however, a comparison must indicate some degree of similarity. According to Paul, Christ’s act is appropriated, not by following his example, but by imputation of righteousness (4:24-25), and (in chapter 8, which forms an inclusio

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with 5:12-21) by being (ontologically) “in Christ” (8:1-2). It would seem better, then, to take Adam’s act as bringing death by imputation of guilt.

The second implication of Romans 5:12-21 is that, on the basis of our ontological connection to Adam, Adam must exist. This raises a major problem for a mythological reading of Genesis 2-3, as seen in the next implication The unavoidable implication of Romans 5:12-21 is that humankind is in some sense “in Adam”, in a strong solidarity with his sinning that leads to our being guilty of his trespass. This is a point not lost on proponents of the historical Adam. For instance, Lloyd-Jones has argued, ...these early chapters of Genesis with their history play a vital role in the whole doctrine of salvation. Take for instance the argument of the apostle Paul in the 5:12-21. Paul’s case is based upon that one man Adam and his one sin, and the contrast with the other one man Adam and His one great act. You have exactly the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15; the apostle’s whole argument rests upon historicity.38

In order to find a resolution to this discrepancy, Genesis 2-3 and Romans 5 must be looked at together alongside the other relevant texts.

Synthesis of the biblical material The problem with Lloyd-Jones’ argument is that it blurs the distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘historicity’. Paul’s argument, Lloyd-Jones claims, rests on the historicity of Adam and the historicity of Christ. But Lloyd-Jones is claiming too much here. Nothing in Romans 5 requires our concept of Adam and Christ to be specifically historical concepts. The argument rests on a contrast between Adam’s sin and Christ’s righteous act. Reality, however, is broader than mere historicity – a thing may be real and not historical. For instance, history deals with the empirical world alone, and the empirical world only to the extent that it helps explain the story of humanity in terms of causality. Adam’s ‘reality’ (which is rightly inferred from Romans 5) is a spiritual not an empirical reality, and might not bear any specifically interesting relation to the chain of causation which is human history.

The view that Adam’s work is specifically an historical reality might be based on the unspoken assumption that Adam’s sin was the first human sin, and that all other sins in human history issue from that first historical sin. However, Paul’s argument cannot logically depend on that. The first human sin in history was the sin of Eve, who first took the fruit. However, even though Eve’s sin was first, Eve’s sin is not used by Paul as the archetypal human sin. Rather, Paul argues that we sin ‘in Adam’.

As Reformed scholar Douglas Moo points out, the historical placement of Adam’s sin is not that which makes it universal and archetypal. Adam’s second sin brought condemnation to all because he has “a status in salvation history that is not tied only to temporal priority.”39 Adam’s sinful act was the cause of the expulsion from paradise, not only of Adam, but of all humankind for all of history. But there is no historical Adam. I would argue that the implication of what Moo says here is the reality of Adam’s sin is not contingent upon historicity at all.

38 Lloyd-Jones, What is an Evangelical?, 75. 39 Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 319.

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If there is no Adam, then what and where is the locus of the human race’s solidarity in our rebellion against the Creator? What proto-historical act has led to the world of sin and suffering in which humanity lives under the broken Covenant of Works? Perhaps this question will cause us to look deeper into ourselves for answers. Blocher has already begun to do this, suggesting that, The fact of unconscious influences and reactions among humankind probably hints at the reality of mysterious bonds of a psycho-spiritual nature in the community of Adam ... I propose that the decisive consideration ... remains the Headship, or capitate, structure – the organic solidarity of the race, the spiritual dimension of humanity’s oneness.40

Carl Gustav Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin have both suggested that there is a greater mind than the individual human, a ‘universal subconscious’, or ‘sphere of consciousness’. The scriptures have shown us that there is a reality (so Paul makes clear in Romans 5) which unites humanity under the reign of death. But (to whatever extent Paul was aware of this) ‘Adam’ is not an historical person. Rather, Adam, as head, stands for the body of which all men and women are members, and it is together that this body has taken of the ‘forbidden fruit’ and expressed our freedom by seeking independent wisdom and choice in matters of ‘the knowledge of good and evil’. Adam, however, is not any one of us. He (now safely referred to as an ‘it’) is instead to be understood as the transcendence of humankind, the collective sum which is greater than the parts.

SYSTEMATIC-THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Where does this lead us? At the beginning of this paper, I noted that mythical readings of Genesis pose some major problems to the Reformed world-view. Indeed, my reasons for adopting a mythological interpretation of Adam remain primarily exegetical, not pragmatic, scientific or theological. However, it seems appropriate to point out now that a mythological reading of Genesis 1-3 is able to intersect with the Reformed system of theology in some useful ways.

Firstly, a mythic view of Adam clearly favours a supralapsarian (or ‘high Calvinist’) view of the decrees of election and reprobation over an infralapsarian view. The infralapsarian holds that God’s decree of election was made after the decree to permit the fall. This may be argued from the plotline of Genesis, because salvation begins historically after the fall. The argument is already weak since there is no reason to suppose God’s decrees are given to match the chronological order of their fulfilment. Indeed, Reymond has pointed out that rational planning usually occurs in reverse historical order, starting with the desired outcome and then working through the steps necessary to arrive at the outcome.41 Mythical readings of Genesis rule out the infralapsarian argument altogether, because the fall is no longer conceived of as a single moment, but as an aspect of human experience, as old as the emergence of human consciousness. Sin, then, like grace and salvation, must have come into being gradually, as the human person with a ‘knowledge of good and evil’ came to exist. It is impossible to argue that this process was historically prior to grace. The decision of God to extend grace to humanity cannot be described as

40 Blocher, Original Sin, 124, 129. 41 Reymond, Theology, 485-488.

71 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth happening before itself. This excludes the infralapsarian argument and confirms the supralapsarian view espoused so clearly by Paul who states in Romans 9:11a that election and reprobation occurred logically “before they had been born or had done anything good or bad.” The association of mythical readings with the supralapsarian view should pre- emptively satisfy anyone who is concerned that mythic readings represent a weak or revisionist Calvinism.

Secondly, the dialectic between the twin concerns of the progressiveness of revelation in biblical theology and the analogy of scripture in systematic theology is mollified. A considerable portion of revelation is taken out of ‘historical time’ per se, and viewed as an eternal, ‘mythical’ truth. This advantage may seem very theoretical, but I can already think of one major advantage, ’s objection to covenant theology is solved by it. Barth claimed that viewing the covenants as a history of revelation is antithetical to a Christological view of revelation, so that “the atonement accomplished in Christ ceases to be the history of the covenant.”42 However, Barth’s objection assumes that the covenant of works is an historical reality, making God’s graciousness logically posterior to a temporal reality. Barth asks why God is “righteous in abstractio and not free to be gracious from the very first.”43 Clearly, if the covenant of works is an eternal – rather than an historical – reality, Barth’s objection dissolves. I would suggest that, over time, many similar tensions might be resolved by a mythical view of Genesis 1-11.

CONCLUSION

I hope to have shown that Reformed theologians and Evangelicals no longer need to object to the mythological understandings of Genesis on systematic theological grounds – No Adam and no Eve need not mean no gospel – at least not with reference to covenant theology. In fact, as soon as we admit that the genre of Genesis 1-11 is mythological, and then follow that admission to its (seemingly daunting) conclusions, we find that the Reformed theological tradition is enriched! By following through the systematic reverberations of the myth of Adam, we find that in spite of the pessimistic prognoses of theologians such as Berkhof and Schaeffer, and even in the face of criticisms by Childs, Gerrish and others, the theory can be integrated into our system.

Author: Karl Hand is a sessional lecturer in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, where he is also a PhD candidate in New Testament Studies. He is an ordained minister in Metropolitan Community Church, and is engaged in pastoral ministry at CRAVE MCC .

Email: [email protected]

42 Karl Barth Church Dogmatics, Trans G.T. Thomson. Eds. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas Forsyth Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1969), vol. 4, 56. 43 Ibid., 64.

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