The Mind of Brian

Adam and Eve January 27, 2012

Having co-led a Sunday School class on faith and science to supplement the Genesis series that our church did this Fall and hearing about the upcoming (and now recent) release of Peter Enns’ The Evolution of Adam (and the controversial work of Daniel Harlow), I wanted to read C. John Collins’ Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care. Collins is a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary, the seminary of the PCA (my denomination), so I also wanted to see what thinkers in my circle were saying. In some ways, I feel like Collins is doing something somewhat similar to what another Collins–Francis–did e a few years back, though with a significant difference. You see, Francis Collins was the leader of the Human Genome project and a Christian, one who is still a Christian but is trying to reconcile science and Christian faith, as seen in The Language of God. My problem with Francis Collins (see my comments in http://bdennert.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/the-language-of-god/) was that he seemed to dive into biblical interpretation without acknowledging enough that he is out of his realm and I think missing the point on some important biblical issues (perhaps that is why Pete Enns is now involved with BioLogos). On the other hand, C. John Collins is a biblical scholar, one who is trying to figure out how to engage scientific findings and biblical interpretation thoughtfully; he acknowledges where his science knowledge is lacking but also importantly reminds us that scientific findings are often provisional and that scientific claims may be overstated and often do not take into account non-scientific data (e.g., the dissonance we feel between the way the world is and the way it should be). He seeks to walk the fine line between trying to reconcile science and the Bible too quickly but also dismissing whether the two can or should ever be brought into dialogue. I appreciate his approach.

Above all, Collins (henceforth I am refering to John) affirms the need to see Adam and Eve as historical, though recognizing that Genesis 1-3 might be more of an artistic depiction of the initial events of humanity rather than a documentary capturing it “exactly as it is.” This is because of the literary style of the book and its historical context. In light of the biblical storyline and the treatment of Adam in the Bible, he would see the need for Adam to be historical, not just a symbolic story of human experience. An important point that Collins states that is overlooked is that if there is no unified beginning for humanity, then we may wonder why we have univeral instincts/feelings in humanity (sense of lost with death, etc.) and whether this would actually call into question all humans being equal. I thought that was interesting and surprisingly overlooked in discussions. It goes back to the opposition to evolution of William Jennings Bryan stemming in part because of the use of “social Darwinism.”

One may be able to nuance a historical Adam in a number of ways (was he the leader of a tribe or was there a more complex process of creation), but Collins gives a fourfold criteria all explanations need to affirm to reflect the biblical data and show sound thinking:

1.  The human race was made in a supernatural process, causing humans to have the image of God
2. Adam and Eve are the beginning of the human race, as all have God’s image.
3. The “fall” was historical and moral and leads to the universal sense that death is wrong; sin and death were not original in creation
4. If there were more than 2 humans at the beginning, then they all must be seen as one tribe, with Adam as the head of this tribe causing the fall to affect them all.

What I like about Collins’ book is that he is advocating for considering the scientific and biblical data and trying to find out what is essential and what is not as important; he may disagree with the ideas of others but recognizes that, while he does not find an idea as probable, it is not heretical. That being said, it is not true that anything goes, hence the criteria. If only we had more people discussing things this way rather than pushing a certain ideology. It’s a book I would recommend to those interested in the issue.