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.

The Impact of the Christian Evolutionist on the Church

Jesus criticized the religious leadership for slamming shut the door of salvation:

• "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13) 

How did they close salvation’s door?

• "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." (Luke 11:52)

They took away the “key of knowledge” which was intended to open the door to salvation. How did they do this? Did they destroy the Scriptures? They didn’t need to do that. They merely perverted its teachings, obscuring the beauty and clarity of the Word.

Today, we have a new crop of Pharisees and “teachers of the law.” These too are part of the educated elite, who “have taken away the key to knowledge.” Who are they and how have they done this? These are the theistic or “Christian” evolutionists (CEs). They have perverted Scripture by claiming that the first few chapters of Genesis are merely allegory and not creation history. Why do they take this position? Well, if Genesis is not really an account about how God created the physical world, but rather a spiritual allegory, then this allegory cannot contradict the claims of evolution! Therefore, we can live together happily ever after with both Darwin and the Bible.

You might think that this is only a trivial compromise, but it is not. The Jesus/Darwin marriage is a transaction that affects the entire body of Scripture. How? For one thing, the writers of the New Testament and Jesus regarded these early accounts as genuine history and not mere allegory. For example:

• 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)

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

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

• 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)

• 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)

• In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. (Hebrews 1:2)

• God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4:17) 

• 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)

• But there is a place where someone has testified: "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?  You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet." (Hebrews 2:6-8)

All of these verses regard to the first three chapters of Genesis as historical! (And we haven’t even examined the OT commentary on Genesis 1-3!) How does the CE respond? The CE often claims that the NT authors didn’t really regard the Genesis account as historical. Instead, they were merely using language – pious distortions - that they knew would be acceptable to their audience.

However, by resorting to such an interpretation, the CEs turn the NT into an absolute mystery. Everything written becomes suspect. Perhaps everything in the NT is not a matter of truth but pious manipulation. Perhaps Jesus really didn’t rise from the dead, as the Apostles had claimed. Perhaps the Apostles reported this so that the believer might have hope? The Bible then becomes a closed book, useless for little more than entertainment. However, the Bible consistently claims to be “God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16) and fully the product of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 2:20-21).

The CE has “taken away the key of knowledge.” They have closed the Bible, and they seem to be undaunted by this.

Do they understand what they are doing? Perhaps not! Jesus called the Pharisees “blind guides”:

• Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?" He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit." (Matthew 15:12-14)

The Pharisees might have genuinely but blindly believed in what they were doing. Perhaps also the CE! In any event, they have done considerable damage to the church. Even Dale McGowan, Ph.D, Managing Editor of the Atheist Channel at Patheos, and author of Atheism For Dummies, acknowledges this, quoting Tullio Gregory:

• 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 CE 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.

The CE has often counseled me that we “have to be humble about our interpretations of Scripture.” However, they are not at all humble about their dismissal of the first three chapters of Genesis as history. Nor are they humble about dismissing the NT’s clear assertions that Genesis is history. It would therefore seem reasonable to apply Paul’s invective to the CE:

• I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! (Galatians 1:6-8) 

Let us pray that they will no longer hide behind mystery or “that the answer is out there, [but] it’s just very, very complicated,” but would repent!