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Covenant and Myth: Can Reformed Theology Survive Without Adam and Eve

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Covenant and Myth: Can Reformed Theology Survive Without Adam and Eve Australian eJournal of Theology 19.1 (April 2012) Covenant and Myth: Can Reformed Theology Survive without Adam and Eve 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 history of the covenants – particularly the ‘covenant 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; Calvinism; Covenant Theology; 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 God 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 Christianity Today (June 2011, 55/6, 61) was titled ‘No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel.’ 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 faith 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 Evangelicalism, traditional Reformed ideas have new life in the rise of a new abundance of Reformed ministries, including such tremendously influential leaders such as John Piper, Don Carson and Mark Driscoll. In 1 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), 219. 58 AEJT 19.1 (April 2012) Hand / Covenant and Myth 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 systematic theology 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 Jesus is the centrepiece of this system, and the original sin 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 salvation 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 Holy Spirit 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 Bible’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 Creationism, 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 theologies of two such dissimilar contemporaries as the founder of covenant theology, Johannes Cocceius, 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 Old Testament 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.
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