The Historical Adam and the Saving Christ
Cross-post by Brian LePort – Near Emmaus
I just finished reading through Daniel Kirk’s three part series for The Biologos Forum on “The Historical Adam and the Saving Christ”. It is a stimulating engagement with the question of the historicity of the biblical Adam. This discussion is applied most directly to the role of Adam in the writings of the Apostle Paul.
In part one Kirk argues that the historicity of Adam is not essential for Israel’s reading of a text that is dealing primarily with Israel’s role to restore creation as the descendents of Abraham. Israel is to be the new humanity. In part two he understands the Apostle Paul to be adopting this same theme while applying it to Jesus as the one who adopts the vocation of Israel to become the new human, especially as this relates to Rom. 5. In part three he continues this discussion while focusing on Christ as the new human animated by the Spirit who provides humanity with the opportunity to follow him in this.
While I agree with Kirk that the historicity of Adam does not determine the theological validity of Paul’s statements regarding Jesus, I do wonder about other Pauline passages such as 1 Cor. 11.9, which implies the Adam-Eve creation order is real history with a moral point for modern male-female relationships, should cause us to proceed with more caution. It seems that Paul did think of Adam as a historical man and Eve as a historical woman. If his presuppositions are incorrect does this challenge the rest of his argument?
Likewise, I wonder why it is so important to deny, as N.T. Wright has said, that “something like a primaral pair getting it wrong did happen”. At some point our relatives arrived a place where there was a man and a woman very much like we see today. Why can’t these people be the one’s who are Adam and Eve? Cannot the evolution from dust (the man) and from the “side of a man” (the woman) be some sort of poetic description of unknown origins while retaining that humanity did arrive at the point that reflect what we see today and that those two failed to care for creation (i.e. “the garden”)?
While Kirk’s articles leave questions like these unanswered they are very valuable for understanding Paul’s view of the new humanity in Christ becoming the ideal humanity which is Paul’s primarily theological point afterall. I recommmend reading them!
May 16th, 2010 at 11:32 am
This covers some of the same ground of the debate which first interested me in this blog. 1 Corinthians, 11.9 is Paul’s opinion and because it’s precisely what one would expect from a man of his time and culture it fails the test of time. Formalised misogyny has a long and uninspiring history, largely based in biological observation. Ironically it’s a bit of an evolutionary issue. Yewtree could explain it better than I.
I sometimes try to imagine analogies for the process by which religious leaders reach out to commune with and transmit the sense of God’s love. The divine is unfathomably huge and human beings, however saintly, are so tiny and incompetent. It’s inevitable that the brief insights that rock our world are mixed up with the all too human prejudices of the conduit. Trying to force peanut butter through our capilliary system is one of my comparisons. It’s not pretty but it conveys the idea.
May 16th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Sophie,
You say:
Any examples in mind?
May 16th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
@ Douglas Clark: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
That was revolutionary then. Just imagine how astonishing and outrageous it must have seemed. We’re still working on it nearly 2,000 years later.
This is one of the gazillion reasons I can’t be doing with literalists. They’d say something like “Ah, well, it doesn’t mention Canadians, so they don’t count.”
May 16th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
@Sophie,
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
The misrepresentation of this text is the terrestrial communist manifesto of the false witness christain, they are indeed still working on it nearly 2,000 years later – they are the literalists, this is the world of the tyranny of equality.