GENESIS THREE, ADAM, THE FALL, AND THEISTIC EVOLUTIONISTS

How should we regard Genesis 3, which describes the Fall of humanity into sin and death? Is it historical or non-historical, as the theistic evolutionists (TEs) maintain?

You might find it strange that TEs are passing judgment on the Bible. However, they have a vested interest in claiming that all the chapters that might contradict evolution as non-historical. For one thing, they believe that death and the survival-of-the-fittest was God’s original plan for evolving us, but this contradicts the plain historical account of not only Genesis 3 but also of Genesis 1-11.

However, does the Bible provide any basis to regard Genesis 3 as non-historical and mythological as the TE claims?

Genesis 3 claims that there was no sin and death until Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit. This is consistent with the creation account in which God states that everything He had created was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Did this estimation preclude sin and death? Evidently! The creation account is explicit that animals were not intended to eat other animals (1:29-30), and that there had been such a state of comfort and peace that Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed (2:25), because they had not yet sinned.

Meanwhile, God had warned His first human creation against one thing – eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

·       And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

After their sin, God gave further details of what this death entailed:

·       “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

According to the Biblical account, God’s creation had been “very good,” but we brought sin and death, not God. Sin and death entered the world together, in contrast to the evolutionary account. The NT also affirms its historicity:

·       For the creation was subjected to futility [corruption – the Fall] not willingly, but because of him [God], who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8:20-22)

The “groaning” hadn’t been according to God’s design, but He allowed the Fall “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption.”

Instead, had sin and death been part of God’s glorious plan involving the survival-of-the-fittest, the rest of the Biblical account would have opposed it. For instance, if death had been part of God’s “very good” creation, then He couldn’t blame Cain for killing his brother Abel. After all, it could have been justified by God’s own tool – the survival-of-the-fittest. Cain was simply the fitter one. In fact, any murderer or rapist would have been able to justify his behavior with such a perverse rationale.

There are many reasons that we regard the Genesis accounts as historical. For one thing, the genealogies which include Abraham and even Jesus argue for the historicity of Genesis. If Adam and Eve weren’t historical, then there would be no reason that the rest of the people in his genealogy should be regarded as historical.

Besides, all of the later Biblical commentary also regard these chapters of Genesis as historical. Here is a sampling from the NT affirming the historical creation order we find in Genesis:

·       When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” (Acts 4:24)

·       He also says, "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” (Hebrews 1:10)

·       By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3)

·       Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3)

Adam as the first man:

·       For Adam was formed first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:13)

·       So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)

·       [Jesus] the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. (Luke 3:38)

·       Enoch, the seventh from Adam. (Jude 1:14)

·       Jesus replied, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Mark 10:5-9)

·       “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. (Acts 17:26)

·       For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 11:8-9)

Adam as the original sinner and the cause of the Fall:

·       For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)

·       Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:14)

If Adam’s work had merely been a matter of myth or parable, then too should we regard the work of Jesus.

Other verses regard even the serpent/Satan as historical :

• And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. (Romans 16:20; Compare with Gen. 3:15)

·       And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:9)

• He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; (Rev. 20:2)

To deny that Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve were historical is to undermine the integrity of the entire Bible. It is to disregard the Bible’s own commentary in favor of an alien worldview that is being imposed on the text. It is also to add and to subtract from God’s Word:

·       You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19)

When the TE denies the historicity of Genesis 1-11, he takes away from God’s Word. When he imposes evolution upon it, he adds to God’s Word.

While the TE claims that he is salvaging the Christian faith for the educated who find themselves in conflict once introduced to the theory of evolution, even atheist Dale McGowan, Managing Editor of the Atheist Channel at Patheos, and author of Atheism For Dummies, is not so sure about this. He quotes Tullio Gregory who expresses his concern:

• Once you cast doubt on man’s place in creation, the entire Biblical story of salvation history, from original sin to Christ’s incarnation, is also threatened.

Even though he is a strong advocate for evolution, McGowan confesses that he is “conflicted” and troubled by message of BioLogos, a TE organization peddling evolution to the church:

• In a BioLogos video titled, “Adam and Eve: Engaging the Tough Questions,” an advisor notes that there are “a lot of proposals out there of when the first sin might have happened, what it might have looked like… we don’t have a simple answer on the question of the historical Adam…who were Adam and Eve, when did they live?”

• This is always the first step in a crumbling theology – the suggestion that the answer is out there, it’s just very, very complicated. The problem is our ability to grasp the answer. But no worries, there are a lot of proposals. It all makes for an impressive simulacrum of rigor, an army of question marks in search of meaningful questions.

As McGowen points out, Biologos has undermined both the clarity of the biblical message and the church’s assurance about it.

However, TEs have often counseled me “to be humble about our interpretations of Scripture.” However, they are not at all humble about their dismissal of the first eleven chapters of Genesis as history. Nor are they humble about dismissing the NT’s clear assertions that Genesis is history.

HOW THEISTIC EVOLUTIONIST PETER ENNS UNDERSTANDS THE BIBLE

The Bible is both a human and a Divine set of documents. While it often reflects the vocabulary, situations, and interests of its individual authors, the Bible uniformly insists that it is also fully God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) so that even the slightest markings are of God and, therefore, must all be fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-19).

However, many scholars, even Evangelical scholars, only interpret the Bible from a human perspective - from the perspective of the “culture context” of the author and his audience, as if God played no part in Scripture’s authorship.

Theistic evolutionist and former Professor at the Westminster Theological Seminary, Peter Enns, does this very thing to discredit the historical content of the first several chapters of Genesis:

·       Is it not likely that God would have allowed his word to come to the ancient Israelites according to the standards they understood, or are modern standards of truth and error so universal that we should expect premodern cultures to have understood them? The former position [of understanding the Bible in terms of their cultural setting] is, I feel, better suited for solving the problem. The latter is often an implicit assumption of modern thinkingers, both conservative and liberal Christians, but it is somewhat myopic and should be called into question. What the Bible is must be understood in light of the culture context in which it was given." (Enns, Peter. Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. 41)

Enns is correct in trying to understand the Bible in terms of how the original readers would have understood it. However, Enns assumes that it is myopic to disregard the cultural context, and that, since the Bible’s creation account was based on the faulty cosmological understanding of the Ancient Near East (ANE), it is not historically accurate.

However, since the Bible is more than a collection of human documents, it must also be understood as the Word of God, which transcended the understanding of the original audience. Peter warned us of this reality:

·       Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. (1 Peter 1:10-12)

Even angels didn’t entirely get it! Peter claimed that it was revealed to the Prophets that they were not always writing for their original audience but to those who would hear the Gospel hundreds of years later. Besides, the Prophets were not writing a message that always had been adapted to the culture. Instead, God is the primary Author of Scripture. Therefore, their prophecies represented a timeless message from God Himself (2 Peter 1:19-21; Daniel 9:24; 12:9, 13).

This is damning to Enns’ assumption that God’s Word came “to the ancient Israelites according to the standards [concepts] they understood,” embedded in the unscientific ANE cosmology. Sometimes, it didn’t!

Why does he make such a mistake? Enns limits his understanding of the Bible to the assumption that it is just the word of man and can be understood solely from this limited perspective.

Heaven Knows Nothing of Darwin

Marrying Darwin to Scripture is to promote an extra-marital affirm. Both entail unfaithfulness and the destruction of any harmony. For example, when Jesus returns, He will restore the earth to how it had been before the Fall, just as the Apostle Peter had preached:

• He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. (Acts 3:21)

Jesus’ return is the object of great hope. Therefore, His “restoration” will not involve a return to the initiation of the Darwinian life and death struggle of the survival-of-the-fittest. Instead, it will be a glorious restoration to a world where there had been no sin and death – to the way God had always intended things to be, in which all God’s “very good” creatures had been herbivores:

• I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree that has fruit-yielding seed; it shall be food for you…and to everything that moves…I have given every green plant for food. (Rev. 1:29-30)

The theory of evolution presents an entirely different worldview, in which God’s “very good” creation (Gen. 1:31) depended on sin and death to evolve us from single-celled life-forms.  From this perspective, death isn’t the result of sin and the Fall but of God’s Darwinian plan. Therefore, death isn’t a curse but God’s chosen instrument to guarantee the survival of the fittest genes.

Such a worldview turns morality on its head. If death and the Darwinian competition for life is a good thing, then who can blame Adam and Eve for attempting to gain a competitive edge by eating the forbidden fruit? Who can blame Cain for killing his naïve, unsuspecting, and less fit brother, Abel?

The biblical teachings of heaven are equally opposed to Darwin’s marriage to the Bible. The last chapters of the Book of Revelation contain the most thorough portrait of heaven – a portrait that fails to extend even the slightest invitation to Darwin. Instead, these chapters serve to bring closure to the first three chapters of Genesis.

Genesis commences with the creation of “heaven and earth” (Gen. 1:1). Revelation addresses this beginning with its own “beginning” – a new (or renewed) “heaven and earth” (Rev. 21:1). It also addresses other teachings of the creation account. While God creates night and day in Genesis 1:5, in Revelation, He dispenses with both the night (Rev. 2:25) and the objects God had created for light (Gen. 1:16) – the sun and the moon (21:25).

Genesis 3:1 identifies the “serpent” as the agent of sin and deception, not God’s for natural selection, while Revelation brings closure to this subject. God will bring an end to this serpent – a Devil surrogate (Rev. 20:2,10).

Revelation also addresses the effects of the Fall. Instead of the flimsy fig leaves that Adam and Eve used to cover their sin (Gen. 3:7), God will clothe His people most exquisitely. An angel informed John that he would show him “the wife of the lamb” – the people of God. However, in doing this, the angel showed John the city of Jerusalem coming down from God, clothed in the most costly stones (Rev. 21:9-10) instead of fig leaves and even skins.

Heaven does not represent a remedy to natural selection, but to the effects of the Fall! Once Adam and Eve sinned, they no longer could endure the light of the presence of God (John 3:19-20) and therefore hid from His presence (Gen. 3:8). In Revelation we are shown that this condition would be reversed. Whereas before, humanity attempted to escape the light, they would now come to the light: “The nations will walk by its [Christ’s] light” (Rev. 21:24).

Because of their disobedience and failure to confess their sin, Adam and Eve were cursed along with the rest of creation (Gen. 3:17). However, in heaven, the curse will be banished (Rev. 22:3).

However, according to evolution, the problem hadn’t been a curse, but the death and suffering, which had always been a part of life. But, according to the Bible, the problem hadn’t been instituted by God; it was of our own doing! We would die because of our sin: “for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

Because of their sin, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden (Gen. 3:23), from the presence of God, where they had enjoyed unbroken fellowship with their Maker. However, Revelation promises that this fellowship will be restored: The dwelling of God would again be with humankind (Rev. 21:3) and:

• He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Rev. 21:4)
  
  

The effects of sin and the Fall will become history. Clearly, the focus of the Book of Revelation and of heaven isn’t upon undoing God’s evil plan of natural selection but our evil! It also regards the Fall as historical unlike Christian evolutionists.

Lest humanity would try to undo the effects of the Fall by sneaking back into the Garden to eat from the Tree of Life, God blocked their way with angelic sentries (Gen. 3:24). However, God will re-introduce this Tree (Rev. 22:2-5) for the healing of the nations and return to His original plan of immortality.

Where is Darwin in this heavenly portrait? He is entirely absent, even worse, he is entirely unwelcome. He doesn’t belong. He has no eyes for the mysteries of our God or His divine harmonies. Darwin is an intruder who breaks the theological flow of Genesis through Revelation. Instead, by the grace of our God, those who have eyes to see will reign with Christ (Rev. 22:5) and render judgments over the nations (1 Cor. 6:2-3; Jer. 3:16-17; Isaiah 2:2-4).