by Angus Harley

I had the grave misfortune, recently, of reading a book on theology by Evangelical scholars. It was about the question of the existence and purpose of the historical Adam. As it stands, Four Views on the Historical Adam (hereafter, Four Views), even though written over ten years ago, is arguably the state of play of Evangelical scholarship on the subject of the historical Adam. Only one scholar, a professor Barrick, holds to the traditional understanding of Adam, as we will see, and the other three contributors do not. 75% of the book is therefore committed to diminishing a traditional approach. The idea of of ‘four views’ of Adam is, from the point of view of what was a standard position, really two views, with one hermeneutical perspective dominating the book.

What this is and is not

Before unpacking my critique of the book, let me underscore what I am not saying. I am not slavishly tied to tradition. Even tradition must bow to the Scripture and exegesis. I am not suggesting for a moment that the three non-traditionalists have no right to question, or disagree with, tradition. Nor am I suggesting that the genres of Scripture be effectively muted in favor of pursuing what is called a ‘literal’ hermeneutic. I do not subscribe to a literal hermeneutic. We must appreciate the genres of Scriptures, as well as observe the various rules of exegesis.

What I am arguing, however, is that the now majority view in scholarship of the historical Adam places science and ANE sources above a prima facie reading of Scripture that does use the rules of hermeneutics and exegesis. Scripture’s authority, to some degree, has been replaced by the authorities of science and extra-biblical sources. I am just as bothered with scholarship’s inability to self-reflect and ask hard questions of its own position.

Evolution and science dominate

It really does not matter to a reasonably high percentage in Evangelical scholarship if Adam was real. In the book, a professor Lamoureux was happy to throw away any idea of a historical Adam, due in great measure to the belief that scientific evolutionary theory precludes it.

A professor Collins informs us that, Adam was real and was the “headwaters” of mankind, meaning that he was not ‘the’ head of humanity, but a leader of some part of it, like a tribal chief, for example. Dr. Walton’s view is that the historical Adam as a real person was an archetype, a model representing his kind- man. He was not necessarily the first man. Both Walton and Collins also take the position that Genesis 1-2 leaves the door wide open for an evolutionary model of mankind that, nevertheless, permits a historical Adam to exist. The bible does not get into the science of Adam’s material creation, we are told, nor does it address if he was, scientifically speaking, the actual first man.

To Barrick, the only traditionalist, Adam was a real figure, the first man created, and the head of mankind. He is contrasted to Christ in the NT, as the head of fallen humanity contrasted to the head of new-creation humanity.

Using Four Views as a crude measuring stick, we can guestimate that 3/4 of Evangelical scholarship is pro-evolution, or open to it, and 25% doesn’t care for a historical Adam.

I had naively hoped, coming into reading the book, that I would not have to endure yet another version of a pro-evolution, pro-science, ‘interpretation’ of Genesis. I was genuinely looking forward to a good old ‘meaty’ exegetical/theological debate. For, it was enough for me that I had to endure the pro-evolution, pro-science, exegetically impoverished, Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design. I did not wish to go through that again! Sadly, even predictably, Four Views carried forward the same model set out in the other book, one short on exegesis and theology. The irony is so thick for those two books, because in asserting that Genesis is not a textbook on science, so much time is spent on defending scientific views that undermine a prima facie reading of Genesis 1-2!

In saying these things, I’m not rejecting those Christians who do think that the bible gives us some ‘scientific’ knowledge. For example, we are given some info in Genesis 1-2 on the material origins of mankind (see ahead). Nor am I forgetting that some scientists are Christian, and that some of those do believe in a literal six days to create all things.

Even so, It is quite bewildering that many Evangelical scholars commit so heavily to a scientific approach that is secular in nature. Modern science is merciless. It does not by its nature allow for the Christian faith as a form of science. Miracles are spurned, the divine existence excluded, and salvation mocked, as anti-science. What is truly exasperating is Evangelical scholarship’s inability to ask of itself some hard questions about its reliance on science. At the very least, Evangelical scholarship that relies on science should strongly caution itself as to the blatantly anti-supernatural nature of modern science. Nor is it enough, here and there, to concede that science must not control Scripture. Because although the book does make that concession here and there, it is smothered, and overtaken by, a reliance on modern scientific presuppositions. I do believe this is called ‘lip service.’

ANE dominance

The dominance of science as a hermeneutic in the book is complemented with its B-side of reliance upon ANE sources. The standard view of scholarship- outside of the traditional model- is that the OT, and especially for our purposes, the book of Genesis, comes in a ANE milieu. As such, Genesis 1-2 as a writing reflects the ANE practice of combining historical fact with myth.

This matter of discerning interpretation of the biblical text would have been a tad less bothersome if scholarship had actually done its job properly. Even us plebs have enough intelligence to ask the question, how do scholars, in reading Genesis 1-2, manage to determine what is, and what is not, historical fact or myth? The lauded OT scholar, Walton, I thought, would surely have proposed a hermeneutical ‘key’ to aid us Joe Blo Christians. None was proffered. The general M.O. of the majority of the writers was, in demonstrating the mythical side of things, to jump straight to ANE sources that had parallel accounts or similar ideas to those in Genesis 1-2. There was no serious attempt to take the Genesis text at face value and to measure ANE sources against it.

The hermeneutical implication of this approach is seismic, for the Scripture’s own testimony is subordinated to ANE sources. The latter are the hermeneutical key to the former! Moreover, as before, scholars are failing to ask themselves hard questions about their reliance on ANE sources, refusing to self-reflect on their own models. Why have Evangelical scholars forgotten that ANE sources are the fruit of ungodly, wicked nations that rejected God’s revelation within their hearts and in creation? Why is actual divine revelation- the OT- playing second fiddle to ANE sources that come from rebellious creatures? I am not being bitter or contrarian. Look at the OT’s history: it is replete with examples of pagan nations who follow false gods based on false revelations; the Jews are regularly scolded for abandoning God’s true revelation for idols and false prophets. Surely these things must have a major impact on the value of ANE and Judaistic sources!

To be pointed, has it ever occurred to ‘scientifically sensitive’ scholarship that ANE sources pervert the events recorded in Genesis 1-2? We are told, indeed, it is insisted, that Genesis 1:2 must involve some sort of ‘chaos’, for that is what we find in ANE sources. What if- and I know I am crazy for saying this- we simply take the text at face value? What if there was no chaos, but that we are being told, in a very simple manner, that the ‘material’ of creation was, to begin with, unshapely, unformed? What if this is the true record of creation’s account, and the ANE idea of chaos is what is being, by implication, rejected by Genesis 1:2?

Rejecting a prima facie reading 

As that last example shows, these scholars subordinate an on the surface (prima facie) reading of the text of Genesis 1-2 to ANE sources and to science. The perfect example of this negligence, in the book, is Walton’s insistence that Genesis 2 does not present a record of the material creation of Adam and Eve. What does the text of Genesis 2:21-23 say?

21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,

“This one at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one will be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.” (Gen.2:21-23)

How much more ‘material’ could this account be? Surely Walton, being so committed to the ‘primitive’ nature of the text, must at least allow the possibility that this ‘simplistic’ text wants to be read as a true history of man’s material creation by God!

Expounding the charge

I will expound the charge against the majority view. If the interpretive key for discerning what is myth and what is true history is to measure the biblical text in the light of science and ANE sources, then Scripture will always be a servant to those sources as its masters. If Genesis 1-2 and its ‘history’ is actually a combination of history and myth (which one has to archeologically dig out!), what do we do we do with Genesis 1-11, which OT scholars acknowledge as a literary unit? Why accept the content of Genesis 3-11 as real history? Aren’t these chapters the fruit of the same ANE influence, and under the same scientific scrutiny? Do we really need to concede that death entered in through Adam’s sin? Was there in reality a serpent that talked? Was there even a serpent? What’s the point of an original sin, when there was not one man leading the whole of humanity? And, of course, why accept any of the OT as history? Isn’t it all a compendium of myth and some fact? Then, why stop there? The NT, too, is riddled with a mixture myth and history.

Walton’s protestations to the contrary, the contrast between Adam and Christ is an absolute one in Paul’s writings, which if not followed through on properly leads to heresy. Adam is not merely an archetype. Paul, like Moses, writes in such a manner that the ordinary believer can immediately see that Adam represents the entire human race. Or, will there be multiple resurrection events and Judgment Days? After all, if Adam merely represents part of the human race, what about the other part? And how big is that part? Is it the majority or a minority? How many more archetypical Adams are out there? One, ten, a million? How many? And how many resurrections of God’s people? How many Christs? So, is there a Third Man and the Last, Last Adam? And then a Fourth Man and the Last, Last, Last Adam? How can the Christian be sure that he is following the right archetypical Christ? Should there now be a quest for the true archetypical-historical Christ?

As before, why doesn’t Walton ask himself hard questions? If Adam is historical, but only an archetype, and the days of Genesis are not actual 24 hour days, is it not possible that Christ himself is, according to the ANE text of the NT, a historical figure, yet his resurrection day is a myth? Who’s to know? Evangelical scholars point us to the other NT witnesses as proof of Jesus’ resurrection. But these comments are surely the product, too, of an ANE milieu, and, their confessions must be weighed in the light of science- a science that repudiates the resurrection from the dead! Just ask my Liberal prof. Didn’t the Greeks, and others of the ANE, reject a resurrection? Wasn’t half of Judaism against it? Another hard question is, what about the NT’s own understanding of ANE times and sources? Doesn’t the NT destroy any attempt to rely on the ANE’s wisdom, revelations, and holy writings? How often does the NT and its writers rely on a ANE sources? And if and when it does, are these sources mere aids, or do they function as some kind of interpretive guide overseeing the biblical text?

‘That’s not cricket, old chap!’

The three pro-evolution writers complain that Barrick is being too narrow and literalistic. Walton in particular takes aim at Barrick’s perspective and his rhetoric. How dare he accuse all of them as accommodating evolutionary theory! These writers, in their own minds, are putting the bible’s authority first. They are, in the light of the Scripture’s ‘obvious’ ANE features, merely allowing that science’s perspective on the origins of creation is not entirely wrong. Barrick’s approach is a scientific model; there’s isn’t; it is Scriptural!

I will say that, I was disappointed at Barrick’s willingness to engage on the level of modern science. And, if Barrick believes in a literal hermeneutic, I strongly disagree with this, too. Yet, I know quite a few ‘traditionalists’ who neither espouse mere tradition as a thing in itself, nor do they adhere to a ‘literal’ hermeneutic such as found in Dispensationalism. The text of Genesis 1-2 is expecting to be read as real history. Having taken into consideration the various genres of Scripture and in following exegetical procedure, many non-literalist Evangelicals still believe that Genesis 1-2 is real history.

Perhaps bizarrely to traditionalists, Barrick goes on to make a somewhat muted apology. But why kind of apologize for your beliefs? Evangelical scholarship may be, to some of us redneck Evangelicals, a society unto itself, an ivory tower, yet it does not have the luxury of operating on its own terms within wider scholarship. It is this scholarly world, operating according to secular, ‘scientific’, principles that allows for someone who denies the historical Adam to be just one scholarly view among many. This process is normal to academia. Along with it comes a commitment to the mores of scholarship, which forbid personal attacks. You can’t say in scholarship, ‘Get wrecked!’ Sadly, this ‘neutral’, ‘can’t be harsh’, scholarly mentality dominates much that is written by theologians of the assembly. Ordinary Christians read the bible and intuitively know that the bible creates sides, even divisions. If someone denies that Adam was historical, this is not just an academic opinion, for it is a flat-out denial of Scripture. This cannot be a nothing-burger, for goodness sake, a mere difference of academic opinion because, ‘I believe in the historical Jesus’! What it is, however, is yet another example of scholarship’s inability to ask hard questions of their own views and attitudes.

Even so, Barrick was right to call out the other three theologians as accommodating evolution. I only wish that Walton et. al. would be man enough to own this. One cannot by a wave of the hand, by an academic scolding, remove the blatantly obvious, Dr. Walton!

The ‘pastoral’ approach

The book closes with two pastoral views. One saying that it is detrimental to our faith to deny the historical Adam, the other that it is not. These chapters are added, no doubt, as a form of balancing things out, since the book is top heavy with pro-evolution views, and many ordinary Christians, used to reading the bible ‘as is’, will not understand this pro-evolution/ANE model.

It would seem that ordinary Evangelicals  can’t really know the bible properly unless it relies on scholarship. It alone has a firm grasp on Hebrew, Greek, the Jewish setting, and the ANE milieu. We need them; they don’t need us! Certainly, we can allow for the obvious advantages of knowing Hebrew and Greek, and we can also speak of some advantages to possessing knowledge of both ANE and Judaistic sources and history. Yet, what chance does the ordinary Christian stand who reads Genesis 1-2? Genesis 1-2, it is conceded by most scholars, presents itself as history- real history- but in actual fact, according to these writers, it isn’t fully real history; it is a mixture of myth and history, according to the ANE model. We need the scholars to tell us, and guide us, in all these things.

Without a doubt, our faith is assailed when the historical Adam is rejected, and our faith is severely undermined when we play loose and easy with the clear doctrines of Scripture that promote Adam as the head of the entire human race, and Christ as the head of the entire new-creation humanity.

Liberalism’s hermeneutic revisited

Indeed, my old Liberal professor would gleefully agree that Genesis 1-2, as a piece of literature, conveyed ‘real history’, and so, for that matter, did 1 Corinthians 15. However, these texts are real history only according to the primitive minds of the early believers who wrote these ANE texts and followed them, said my old prof. In reality, science removes any form of supernaturalism as exemplified on the text of Scripture, and, likewise, the milieu and culture surrounding the biblical text precludes any attempt to take its history and doctrine at face value. Myth is everywhere. So, my Liberal professor was more than happy to accept the biblical account at face value, but he rejected its relevance as actual divine truth or as true history. What I should add, too, is that my old professor was willing to concede some actual history in the bible. After all, it was a mixture of mainly myth with some fact. Consequently, the Liberal scholar must de-mythologize the text to get to its true meaning.

I see no difference whatever between this general mode of interpretation by theological Liberalism and that offered up by the majority of Evangelical scholars in Four Views. Theological Liberalism is, however, a more negative version of the dominant Evangelical model. The major difference is that the Evangelicals do not deny the supernatural nature of salvation from sin by the historical death of Christ, and they accept most of the supernaturalism of the bible. But the general pro-science, de-mythologizing, approach is the same.

It is, therefore, a case of deja vu all over again. At the height of theological Liberalism of the Enlightenment, it repudiated the case for the bible’s historical Adam, and began a process for a quest to discover who this Adam really was, or whom he represented. Of course, science and the mythology of the ANE setting were the two main aspects of Liberalism’s hermeneutic. Many Evangelicals have revived that quest today. Just as theological Liberalism of the past permeated Evangelical centers of thinking, so the quest for the historical Adam now dominates Evangelical scholarship. It was not long before German, then British, and afterward American, seminaries and universities succumbed to Liberal theology and its presuppositions; but it didn’t happen all at once. Some top Evangelical theologians reinterpreted a doctrine here, introduced a presupposition there, until at last the theological rot was all pervasive. Princeton Seminary, once a bastion of Evangelical doctrine, became a repository for the dead bones of theological Liberalism!

The only shred of hope that I see for Evangelical scholarship is that it start asking hard questions of its own procedure and its own theology. Us redneck, lower-caste, Evangelicals are never going to be persuaded by scholarship denying and dismissing the obvious. It is time for Evangelical scholarship to take itself in hand, ask those hard questions, or it will lose access to a multitude of Christians.