Were Adam and Eve Real People?

By on June 14, 2011 in Creation, Theology

The last month or so has been rich with conversation about the legitimacy of a historical Adam and Eve. This certainly is no new debate nor is it even coming to the surface afresh, since Peter Enns and others have been writing vigorously against a historical Adam and Eve for some time now over at Biologos.

In the last month though Crossway released John Collins book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? (you can read my review of this here) and Christianity Today ran their cover story in the June magazine on a historical Adam and Eve as well.

This is an important topic that we all should be able to speak intelligently on. This is not a conversation for only scholars, but instead is one for the church. In the next week or so I’ll try to write some things on how I am personally applying this and why I believe in a literal Adam and Eve. If you have any questions you would like me to address post them as comments below.

  • C A Watson

    Greg,

    I’ll be doing my dissertation from Central on this very concept. There are so many issues that central within this very discussion:

    1. Hermeneutics
    2. Science and the Bible
    3. ANE comparative literature
    4. Form Criticism
    5. Mythological studies
    6. Soteriology

    • http://gadietrich.com G. A. Dietrich

      That sounds like a great and timely topic…I’ll be doing a dissertation along the lines of using a christotelic hermeneutic to understand Gen 1:1-2:4 with a practical application of how it relates to preaching…something like that.

  • http://www.craighurst.wordpress.com Craig Hurst

    I will be reading this book next week and then follow with a review. Genesis is probably my favorite book and the first 12 chapters are so theologically rich and set the foundation for the rest of the Bible. I would love to see a series of books under the series title of “Biblical Theological Foundations in Genesis 1-12″ where the foundation in Genesis for every major doctrine is discussed and then it is traced to the end of the NT and Jesus.

  • http://littlegreenfootballs.com/pages/freetoken freetoken

    Since CT published their June issue I’ve been following up on how it is being received in different quarters of the greater online society.

    If you’re going to tackle this question I encourage you to not do what most commenters (that I’ve discovered) so far have done: avoid the issue at hand – genetics.

    The folk at BioLogos are being driven to their conclusion by modern genetics. It’s an overwhelmingly large field of study; in population genomics alone trying to determine ancestry of various groups of people is highly involved and many layered.

    Bottom line: modern genetics shows that you and me and the other 7 billion people on this planet did not come from a single couple. Period.

    You seem to be a thoughtful person but I suspect you’ve avoided the multitude of discoveries in contemporary science that has led to the conclusions about subjects such as the age of the Earth, the development of life, and genetics. While the first two subjects can be avoided in modern life (if one really desires so), the latter probably can’t be. Everything from medicine to food is being changed by genetics and as an application of science it is starting to become the dominant driver in modern economies, especially as the requirement for global food production becomes so great.

    So, beware – you’ll likely be troubled by what you find as you dig in to the story of why there never was a single original couple (i.e., the classical Adam and Eve.)

    • http://gadietrich.com G. A. Dietrich

      Thanks for your comments on this. I am committed to biblical authority and biblical inerrancy so I need to make sure that I don’t interpret the Bible with science. You have brought many good points to the surface that need to be considered though. Thank you again for thoughts on this.

  • C A Watson

    Freetoken,

    The problem that I have with the contemporary six-day creationist movement is that it is largely populated by scientists, and not theologians. Thus, while I agree that ICR does excellent work, they are lacking in a biblical studies faculty (although they do use Barrick from TMS among a few others) for their research. Answers in Genesis has several scientists who speak, but not one OT exegete on full-time. Much the same can be said about CRS and other organizations. In fact, the only two OT scholars that I am aware of who are dealing with this issue extensively are Barrick and McCabe. Whitcomb is essentially retired. The men who did “Coming to Grips” have not made the subject of Creation the center of their academic work.

    Thus, the kind of arguments that are coming out of Biologos (not just Genetics) are currently unanswerable (in the academic/scholarly sense) by creationists, simply because no one is tackling the problem from a conservative perspective.

    D-Train, you need to come to Central (Or BBC, or even elsewhere) to do PhD work to tackle this problem. We need as many men as we can get on this one.

  • Andrew Hughes

    Chris,
    It seems to me that Waltke is walking alongside Biologs these days and trying to give the exegetical side you’re looking for.

    Greg,
    I agree that we must not interpret the Bible with science… to a degree. I think though freektoken would say you must also not do the reverse, interpret science fully with the Bible, because they are not exact equals. I say that because Scripture is not mainly written for the purpose of proposing scientific thought, much less to the degree of scientific discovery we have come to today. By not asking Scripture to detail matters “scientifically,” I believe this keeps the authority and inerrancy of Scripture from seemingly being undermined by every new scienctific discovery. That is, I don’t have to come up with a solution every time if I’m focusing more on genre and theological intent.

    The overall thing that stands out to me in this debate lately and even with those referenced in the Christianity Today article that reject a historical individual named Adam is that everyone ultimately seems to embrace something historical that is the basis for the mythological Adam. That is, for those that say Adam and Eve weren’t the start of humanity or even the pinnacle of years of evolving, they still at least seem to see them as representing the human race in a “coporate” sense. But since that corporate group is a historical one, they don’t lose the “historical” piece fully in my mind. Thus the overall Chrisitan worldview, though possibly with some differences, is held in tact for them I believe. It would seem to me that the Christian worldview of the beginning of world is kept in tact by first saying that God is the originator of life (whether natural selection is inolved or not) and that the Genesis narrative is “based on” historical events (whether very tightly or loosely). If God is not the origin of life (and ‘randomness’ is) and the Gen narrative is straight myth (in the sense of having no historical rooting at all), then you do have a different story, one that could never be rooted in Jesus. But I haven’t seen anyone saying that other than those that reject Christianity period.

  • C A Watson

    Andrew,

    I don’t know if you heard of the controversy of Waltke’s involvement with Biologos – but he had originally posted a video there stating that evangelicals who reject evolution are in danger of being considered a cult. For clear clarification of his positions – read this article: http://www.biologos.org/blog/why-must-the-church-come-to-accept-evolution-an-update/. What I asked for was a conservative perspective. Waltke, in this matter, is not a conservative. He is not attempting to conserve the historic position of either a clear reading of Scripture or the position of the church throughout history before 1800.

    For your second paragraph to Greg – if Adam and Eve were the process of time and evolution, and at some point became the corporate representatives of humanity – at what point did “man” (or pre-man) receive his soul? At what point was he made in the image of God? Did pre-man die? If he died, and had no spirit – was he no more than an animal? This position is tenuous at best and extremely dangerous – because it ends up leaving the atonement of Christ itself in a very precarious position.

    • http://gadietrich.com G. A. Dietrich

      The video that Waltke did for Biologos is on my vimeo site, http://vimeo.com/19439700.

  • Andrew Hughes

    Thanks Chris. I am familiar with the controversy and was able to hear Waltke at ETS speak directly towards some of his critics. While I don’t currently embrace everything Waltke says, it doesn’t bother me that he isn’t conserving a historical position. Walke would argue that conserving a position is only as good (accurate/true) as the position is. Thus, conservatism itself (in any matter) should not be the end game, but rather truth/reality. Waltke particuarly sees this current debarte as potentially being in the category of the heliocentric controvsery, thus he doesn’t want to be dogmatic against scientific data that he perceives to be harder and harder to reject. I also would be careful of saying he does not embrace a clear reading of Scripture. He argumentations are based fully on the veracity of genre, not the words of the text isolated from its genre. Now, you and I might disagree with him on how he identifies a genre or exegetes that given genre at times, but I have never read anything where he didn’t aim for clarity according to the original (and divine) author’s intent (which often has mutiple layers and isn’t always “straightfoward”).

  • C A Watson

    Much work still needs to be done on the concept of “genre.” It is my personal opinion that far too much is made of “genre” in biblical studies today. For instance, In C. John Collins’ commentary on Gen 1-3, he argues that Gen 2-3 is “historic prose narrative” (I would agree), but argues that Gen 1 is “heightened prose narrative,” a genre (which he admits that he creates) that allows him to reject a straight-forward reading of the text for something that reads much like the framework argument (see McCabe’s 2 articles on the topic, shortened in CGWG).

    Much of the problem of the whole debate is wrapped up in an improper understanding of speech-act. Within speech-act theory, texts have locution (what the text actually propositionally states), illocution (how the author intends for the proposition to be understood), and perlocution (how the recipient understood the proposition). Waltke, Collins, and Enns essentially argue that the illocution of the early chapters of Genesis is to demonstrate the monotheism/sovereignty of God to his people (whether those people are early or late – depending on their view of the Pentateuch – Enns late dates it, but that’s a discussion for a different time) over the polytheism of the surrounding nations. This position is not incorrect, but it is, in fact, incomplete. The text of Genesis says much more in actual proposition than what these men argues – it actually gives a historical cosmology – that is either true or false. Either the biblical metanarrative is true, or the evolutionary metanarrative is true. I would, in fact, find Hugh Ross’ position much more solid than that of the current OT scholars (due to the fact that Ross is simply late-dating the earth, while still rejecting the evolutionary metanarrative – I think that his exegesis is absolutely flawed in doing so).

  • Tim Barker

    Greg, looks like some interesting discussion; good job bringing this to the surface and in the context of the church. That heart is always appreciated.

    Thanks, Andrew, for your cautioning the easy renditions of Waltke’s views. I would add in the same line with you that posing questions (e.g. the origin of the soul ) for which a position does not have ready-made answers is not a death-blow to a position. The questions that Chris poses are difficult to fully answer from any position.

    Chris, I look forward to learning from your research on the topic. I hope it is made available in some format. I am most interested in what you conclude regarding genre. I am puzzled by your desire for less genre in biblical studies. I find the opposite to be needed, with the exception of the forcing of modern genre categories on ancient texts (e.g. novella). I do think closer examination is still needed for ANE genres to be ascertained from cognate works that match in propinquity the relevant biblical texts. I don’t care what term we gives these genres as the ancients apparently didn’t term many of them. I do think further understanding Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian genres will shed light on the manners in which biblical texts have been divinely intended.