Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Search for the Historical Adam 6


We have been working through the recent book by C. John Collins entitled Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care. This book looks at the question of Adam and Eve from a relatively conservative perspective but with some nuance and analysis. The questions he poses and the answers he gives provide a good touchstone for interacting with the key issues. Later this fall we will look at the question of Adam from an equally faithful, but less conservative, perspective in the context of a new book coming out by Peter Enns entitled The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins.

Chapter 3 of Dr. Collins’s book looks at the biblical and extra-biblical texts concerning Adam. In the last two posts we looked specifically at Dr. Collins’s discussion of Gen 1-5 and at the OT and the extra-canonical literature. These sections are not the ones that cause most Christians difficulty though – the New Testament references, and especially the relationship of the creation story to the theology taught by Paul – these are the big issues.

I have received several e-mails while working through this series, and the big questions in all of them are theological, not scientific or even biblical (i.e. arising from biblicism). These people are willing to accept the conclusions of science (with some reservations), and have a nuanced view of the authority of scripture (again with some variance). But still, there are serious issues here. The issues begin, but do not end, with the theology surrounding the concept of sin.

This is not a topic easily dealt with in one, or even a dozen, blog posts (or sermons, or academic monographs). There are no quick, pithy answers or rejoinders.

What NT texts cause the most concern for an evolutionary view of human origins?

Where does this impact our theology?

NT references to Gen 1-5 apart from Paul. Dr. Collins breaks his consideration of the NT texts into three categories – the Gospels, Paul, and the rest of the NT. The first and third don’t provide much guidance on the question of Adam. The references to Gen 1-5 in the gospels are passing references, we should not put too much emphasis on them. Dr. Collins suggests that the Gospel writers portray Jesus as one who believed that Adam and Eve were historical and that their disobedience changed things for us (p. 78). I think that the Gospel writers portray Jesus as a biblically literate Jewish male who was steeped in the scripture and the culture – he was localized in a time and place. What he thought about historicity can’t be discerned, and our opinion of this rests in part on what we take as the consequences of incarnation.

The references in the rest of the NT outside of the writings of Paul are likewise incidental, and the truth claims of the passages do not depend on the historicity of Gen 1-5 or Gen 1-11. The references in Revelation are, by the very nature of the book, clothed in figurative language. The writer of Hebrews (11:4-7) may assume historicity, but it is of no real import to our discussion or his truth claim.

The Teachings of Paul. The references to Adam and to Gen 1-3 in the writings of Paul are more substantive and require much more care and thought. Some of the references are incidental and subject to the same kinds of caveats above. Dr. Collins points to 1 Cor. 11:7-12, 2 Cor. 11:3 and 1 Tim 2:13-14 as examples of incidental references. The arguments in these passages do not depend on the historicity of Adam. Thus they are only compelling for our view of Adam in the context of some assumption of what scripture must be (what we might class as a biblicist view).

There are three passages, however, that Dr. Collins points to as foundational – where Paul’s understanding of Adam is not incidental to his point. In these cases an argument can be made that the historicity of Adam in some sense is essential to the truth claims made by Paul. Dr. Collins sees this in three passages – 1 Cor. 15:20-23, 42-49, Romans 5:12-19, and Acts 17:26. Thus he spends most of the chapter discussing these three passages.

1 Cor. 15: Today I would like to consider 1 Cor. 15, where Paul begins with his statement of the gospel.
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4)
Paul lays out his view of the gospel here – Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day, all according to the Scriptures, the plan and prophecy of the OT. This is our creed. In this passage Paul argues that the resurrection of Jesus is real and is essential to the Christian gospel.
and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. … If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15: 14,19)
For a more complete discussion of resurrection Dr. Collins refers the reader to NT Wright’s book The Resurrection of the Son of God.

1 Cor. 15:20-23. So far we have no reference to Gen 1-5, but this changes when Paul expounds on the importance of the resurrection. The issue for our topic here is v. 21,22:
For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
The expressions “in Adam” and “in Christ” are covenantal language.
… to be “in Adam” means to be a member of the people for which Adam serves as the covenantal representative. This membership sets up a kind of solidarity, where what happens to the representative affects all members of the group, and vice versa. One prominent Pauline scholar has used the term “interchange” to describe the notion of mutual participation in a common life. (p. 79)
The prominent scholar referred to here is Morna Hooker, specifically her book From Adam to Christ: Essays on Paul. Dr. Collins continues:
The person Adam is an individual who serves a public role as a representative, and there is no evidence that one can be covenantally “in” someone who had no historical existence. Indeed Paul seems to take for granted that something happened to “all” as a result of Adam’s deeds as a representative, just as something will happen to “all” as a result of Christ’s representative deeds. (pp. 79-80)
But Dr. Collins goes a bit further than this covenant relationship – he sees Paul’s claim as requiring a historical event as well. Adam is not merely representative, but is also a cause – he did something that has consequences for those he represents just as Jesus did something to correct the problem for those he represents.

1 Cor. 15: 45-49. Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 15 returns to Adam a little further on in his discussion of resurrection.
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. (I’ve quoted the NASB – Collins uses the ESV)
This text is dense and difficult to interpret. Dr. Collins refers to NT Wright’s discussion of the text in The Resurrection of the Son of God, which he cites and quotes, “with approval” (p. 81-82). The resurrection of Jesus is embedded in a theology that views embodied humanity as a feature of God’s good creation. The resurrection of Jesus is the starting point for God’s rescue and renewal of his people – as embodied beings. We are not rescued from our embodied nature but rescued to “go on to the promised final state of the final Adam, in which this physical body will not be abandoned, but will be given new animation by the creator’s own Spirit.” (p. 353 RSOG)

From all I’ve read and heard from Dr. Wright on this topic I would venture to suggest that he does not take the position that we must have a historical Adam, nor does he consider Adam and the fall someone or something to dispensed with lightly. Rather we need to hold parts of the story with an open hand and do some serious theological, biblical, and scientific work.

[Additionally], Dr. Wright and Dr. Collins both reject a strictly typological interpretation of Adam in this narrative. Dr. Collins quotes Wright:
This [argument from Gen 2:7] is not typological (two events related in pattern but not necessarily in narrative sequence), but narratival: Gen 2:7 begins a story which, in the light of vv. 20-28, and the analogies of vv. 35-41, Paul is now in a position to compete. (p. 82 quoting p. 354 n. 128 RSOG)
Dr. Collins concludes that Paul’s argument “presupposes Adam as an actual character in the narrative” (p. 82). Adam and the reference to the events of Genesis 2-3 are not incidental to the message of Paul but is an important part of his truth claim. This does not necessarily mean that Adam and Eve are the unique progenitors of the human race (two people from whom alone all subsequent people descend), but that the existence of a real person and a real fall is, according to Dr. Collins, an integral part of the gospel of 1 Cor. 15.

This post is already long – I will return to consider the other two passages, Romans 5 and Acts 17, in the next post. For now we can consider the significance of the 1 Cor. 15 reference to Adam.

Do you think that Paul’s argument here rests on the historicity of Adam and the fall?

Could the argument rest on the empirical observation of human falleness rather than a person and an act?

On what do you base your argument for your position?


If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
If you have comments please visit The Search for the Historical Adam 6 at Jesus Creed.




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