Adam’s Evolutionary Journey, Pt. 1

Given the fact of evolution, was there a historical “fall”? Without a literal Adam and Eve and a literal command to break, was the biblical “fall” even possible?

Listen or Read. Your Choice

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In the last decade, genetics effectively ruled out an original “first pair” as the origin of our species, and 10 million Millennials transferred their allegiance from Jesus to “none of the above.” [1] Those two facts are related. When asked about their loss of faith, many young people explained that the literal interpretation of Genesis 1–3 forced them into a dilemma—either evolution, or the Bible.

While the evidence for evolution continues to mount, some Christians remain uncomfortable with its implications for human origins. If God did not “specially create” Adam and Eve as the first of our species, what makes us special? Anything? Many conservative theologians believe God had to intervene in human evolution because they understand it as a “purely natural” process, which removes God from the frame. Reformed theologian C. John Collins, for instance, insists that a natural process could not have produced the human linguistic or creative capacities.[2]

But do Christians have to choose between special creation or a “purely natural” process? Thankfully, no. Evolutionary creation understands God’s involvement as a “both-and” proposition – just like the weather, and just like every individual person’s physical origin. Christ said the Father “sends his rain on the good and evil alike,” but that knowledge didn’t prevent Jesus from understanding the “purely natural” explanation that clouds produce rain (Matt. 16:2-3). The Psalmist can praise the Lord for forming him in the womb (139:13-16), but the author knew the “purely natural” role that his parents played in that process. Accepting the scientific narrative of evolution doesn’t require rejecting God’s authorship of the story. Both can be true.

Still, the question remains: Are humans unique? What, if anything, sets us apart from other creatures? The long and varied history of answers testify to the difficulty of the subject. Reason. Consciousness. Moral duty. Free will. Is there an answer? How should we proceed?

In The Seven Pillars of Creation, William Brown urges Christians to move beyond the old thinking that science and faith are at war with one another. He advocates a three-step process to create a “cross-disciplinary conversation” between science and the Bible:

1. Elucidate the biblical text in its context.
2. Associate the text’s perspective with the scientific perspective.
3. Appropriate both insights to “live out” the text in a scientific world. [3]

I will roughly follow Brown’s advice to attempt to locate the “fall” within the flow of history. The goal of this quest is not to allow science to dictate the interpretation of the Bible, nor is it to naively overlay the ancient text onto contemporary science. Such attempts have been termed “concordism,” which in its worst manifestations either extracts science from the Bible (the earth must be young) or injects science into the Bible (Genesis 1 teaches the Big Bang). Seeking to avoid those mistakes, many took shelter in Stephen Jay Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” [4] which erected a wall between science and Scripture. Science, Gould reasoned, speaks to facts about nature, while religion addresses the human need for meaning and provides a moral basis for our actions. As separate disciplines, they answer different questions, so their work is entirely unrelated. In principle, Gould’s idea rings true, but it’s not without limitations. Certainly, the Bible wasn’t written to teach facts about the physical universe, just as facts alone can’t solve the problems of social or individual existence. Yet, in life as actual people live it, science and religion are in constant dialogue. Moral reasoning places limits on certain scientific experiments, such gene editing and human cloning, while science places limits on certain religious beliefs, such as human origins, the age of our planet, and its place in the solar system. Some form of concordism is inevitable for the Christian. Knowledge is not so easily compartmentalized. Human beings “crave generality,” as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein put it. [5] We cannot help but seek a unified understanding of our existence, however imperfect the resulting worldview might be. Gould’s barrier between science and religion resembles a “semipermeable membrane” more than a solid wall. [6]

If we say that science and Scripture both speak truth, however, a second crucial fact intrudes: They speak different languages, and each requires interpretation.

If we say that science and Scripture both speak truth, however, a second crucial fact intrudes: They speak different languages, and each requires interpretation. Facts and data don’t stand alone. They must be understood within a hypothesis that itself fits within a more general theory, and this information is related to knowledge produced by other scientific disciplines. [7] Likewise, biblical texts don’t stand alone. They must be interpreted as an example of a genre that fits within a larger corpus of literature, which is itself the product of an even larger cultural milieu. But once the scientist and biblical scholar have completed their tasks, they can’t ignore one another’s results.

Following Brown’s advice, then, I’ll consider a few of the correlations between Genesis 1–3 and science. What distinguishes this approach from concordism? J. Richard Middleton explains two key differences in his essay “Reading Genesis 3 Attentive to Human Evolution.” [8] First, the connections are “virtual parallels” or “analogous points of contact,” which entails a bit of interpretive subjectivity. Second, the interpreter must assume the ancient author had no knowledge of current science, which requires paying attention to the discords between science and Scripture as well as the harmonies. The goal, as previously stated, is not to allow science to dictate interpretation of the Bible. Instead, the hope is that dialogue with science will open new vistas for biblical theologians to explore.

Human Origins in Scripture

In Genesis 1, the author uses the metaphor of temple construction as a conceptual framework to communicate God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. [9] The climax arrives in Gen. 1:26–28, which begins, “Let us create adam in our image …” This is a statement of purpose, of telos. Coming at the end of God’s creative activities, the creation of humanity in his image was the goal of his labor. There is something special, something unique, about humanity in the biblical perspective.

After Genesis 9:6, the image of God disappears from the Hebrew Bible before being resurrected in the New Testament. This paucity of information has left interpreters divided on the meaning of the image of God (or imago Dei, in Latin). [10] Traditionally, Christians considered it the human mind, although other aspects such as free will, conscience, or an ethical component might be added to the formula. In the 20^th century, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth offered a new conception of the image of God as placing humanity in a three-fold relationship – to God, to other humans, and to the creation. The majority of systematic theologians now favor Barth’s “relational” model, while most biblical scholars prefer to understand the image as a “functional” calling or vocation. In the ancient Near East, the statues of gods in temples served as visible representations of divine power and presence, and the king was considered their living representative on Earth, exercising their authority. In Genesis, all human beings – not just the king – are intended to serve this role as God’s authorized representatives in his cosmic temple. By its nature, understanding the image of God as a vocation implies an extended period of apprenticeship. Toddlers don’t suddenly begin to practice carpentry. Likewise, if God intended humanity to serve as his image, we could not perform that task until we acquired the necessary knowledge and experience.

Whichever interpretation of the image one favors, the “cultural mandate” of verse 28 grants humanity the authority to subdue and rule the earth as God’s representatives. Since any attempt to represent God must reflect his goodness, justice, and mercy, we may confidently infer that humanity could not perform its God-ordained task without mature moral knowledge. For our purposes, then, the historical marker associated with the imago Dei is the least common denominator of morality.

An overview of Genesis 2–3 starts with the generic first humans: “the man” and “the woman.” Contrary to popular opinion, “Adam” does not appear as a proper name until Gen. 5:1. [11] Why would the author use a de facto title, ha’adam, in the garden narrative rather than the man’s presumed name, Adam? The answer is found in the trajectory of the story. It begins with the man and the woman’s creation, naked and unashamed, and by the end of the tale, they have acquired the knowledge of good and evil and been barred from God’s presence. Symbolically, the child has been sent from home and become an adult—complete with spouse, offspring, toil, tears, sweat, pain, and, of course, guilt. Interpreters since Irenaeus in the 2^nd century have remarked upon the journey from childhood to maturity represented in the story. All of us have taken that journey. We immediately recognize ourselves in “the man” and “the woman.” The genius of Genesis 2–3 is that the fall of the first humans mirrors the “coming of age” not just of them, but of every individual human being. Ha’adam thus functions as an archetype—the “original pattern” that all have followed. [12]

John Walton reaches a similar conclusion in The Lost World of Adam and Eve, but he defines an archetype as “a representative of a group in whom all others in the group are embodied.” [13] With respect, Walton’s definition seems to owe more to Federal Theology than literary analysis. Within a text, an archetype is a character or situation that represents a universal pattern in human experience. “The man” doesn’t function as an archetype because God chose him to represent a particular group of people; ha’adam serves as an archetype because his experience personifies universal human experience. The man and the woman simultaneously represent the collective and individual human journey from childhood to maturity.

“The man” doesn’t function as an archetype because God chose him to represent a particular group of people; ha’adam serves as an archetype because his experience personifies universal human experience. 

Turning to specifics, in Gen. 2:7 God creates “the man” (ha’adam) from “the ground” (adamah) and breathes “the breath of life” into him. The majority of Christians believe human beings have a dual nature – body and soul. Traditional interpretations of Gen. 2:7 usually view it as God breathing a soul into the first man. If that’s the proper reading, God’s intervention obviously would be required. No natural process can create a human spirit, but the same holds true for every child born into this world. At what point between conception and birth does God “breath a soul” into a person? No one knows. The Scripture doesn’t say. But God’s intervention in that natural process doesn’t cause anyone to doubt the scientific explanation of conception and fetal development. In any case, the possession of a soul obviously would be a human distinctive, but is the traditional reading of this verse the best reading? The phrases translated as “breath of life” and “living soul” in English are applied to both animals and humanity in the Hebrew Bible. [14] In the Old Testament, life is manifested in the breath, which comes from the Spirit of God. This is true of both people and animals, since both come from the ground (Gen. 1:24, 2:7) and both owe their lives to the spirit/breath of God (Gen. 7:21-22). On this reading, Gen. 2:7 does not teach that “the man” was “ensouled” or “enlightened” at his creation. It simply teaches that humanity, like the animals, was made from the ground and given life (breath) by God, our common Creator. On either interpretation, science has little to offer on this verse.

Immediately after the man’s creation, he gives names to the animals (2:19–20). The passage obviously serves to highlight the man’s need for a companion, not to explain the origins of human language. Nevertheless, ha’adam’s first act is undeniably linguistic.

The “fall” occurs in Gen. 3:1-7 when the man and woman eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and become “like God.” What does the tree represent? Interpreters fall into four main categories on the question:

1. The tree confers moral discrimination.
2. The tree is a merism – a pair of opposites meaning “everything” – for advanced knowledge only true of deity.
3. The tree bestows a form of divine wisdom.
4. The tree awakens sexual awareness. [15]

Although all four of these views in some way associate the knowledge gained from the tree with maturity, interpreting it as sexual awareness ignores the most obvious aspect of the tree, which is its name, and the most obvious consequence of eating its fruit, which is shame. And since Adam and Eve were essentially “married” at the end of Genesis 2, the sexual awareness interpretation must overcome this objection too. For these reasons, this view is a minority position.

By inference from Gen. 3:22, the second and third options both emphasize the fact that the knowledge Adam and Eve obtain is a form of divine wisdom usually attributed to kings, priests, or God alone. One example would be the judicial wisdom of David (2 Sam. 14:17, 20) or Solomon (1 Kings 3:9), while the merism interpretation draws upon the wisdom literature of the Bible (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs) for its understanding of the tree. Rather than pushing back against these opinions, both of which are reasonable, I’ll simply note that “knowing right from wrong” must precede these higher forms of moral knowledge, both for humanity and for the individual. Whether one considers the tree to represent the kingly wisdom of David or the godly wisdom of Proverbs, both categories subsume the narrower concept of moral discrimination, which is foundational for mature, wise judgment. Societies begin to hold children morally and legally responsible for their actions between the ages of 10-13, but they don’t acquire practical experience or mature wisdom until much later. In fact, the prefrontal cortex—the center of decision-making—continues to develop until the age of 25. [16]

As well, prior to humanity’s acquisition of moral knowledge, of course it was the sole province of deity. We did not yet possess it, and animals never will. Next, the interpreter must consider the ingenious simplicity of the narrative. The author has represented humanity’s “fall” in the most straightforward way possible—disobedience to a single command (simultaneously alluding to the Decalogue). Moreover, the command does not take the form of a test, as it’s often misconstrued. Instead, God states it matter-of-factly, like a parent warning a child: Don’t play in the street or you’ll get run over. The innocence of the man and woman was the innocence of a child, which, as any parent can testify, is not a state of sinless perfection. In The Concept of Anxiety, Soren Kierkegaard rightly observed that “Innocence is ignorance…. The fact that ignorance regarded from without seems as though designed to become knowledge is entirely irrelevant to ignorance.” God did not prohibit humanity from moral knowledge; he warned of the inevitable consequence should we obtain it in the wrong manner.

In the end, the obvious interpretation that the tree confers moral discernment seems best. Both Deut. 1:39 and Is. 7:15-16 explicitly state that a child lacks the “knowledge of good and evil,” and Isaiah especially emphasizes that mature judgment involves knowing “to reject evil and choose what is good.”

The innocence of the man and woman was the innocence of a child, which, as any parent can testify, is not a state of sinless perfection.

Finally, Genesis 2 ends with the marriage of the first couple, and God’s investigation of their “crime” in the next chapter (3:8–13) implies some sort of relationship with him. Adding the category of “relationship” to our list of possibilities therefore seems justified, particularly since so many interpret the image of God in a “relational” sense.

This brief survey of Genesis 1–3 has yielded two controlling metaphors and three “points of contact” for exploration. The controlling metaphors are ha’adam as archetype and the human journey from childhood to maturity, and the themes for possible dialogue with science are language, morality, and relationship.

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In Part 2 of Adam’s Evolutionary Journey, we’ll explore what science has to say about those themes.

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[1] “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, October 17, 2019. https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/.

[2] C. John Collins, “A Historical Adam: Old-Earth Creation View,” in Four Views on the Historical Adam, eds. Ardel Caneday and Matthew Barrett (Counterpoints: Zondervan Academic, 2013), 143-175.

[3] William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 14-17.

[4] Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (1997): 16–22.

[5] Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), 17.

[6] Ursula Goodenough, “The Holes in Gould’s Semipermeable Membrane Between Science and Religion,” America Scientist 87, no. 3 (1999): 264-268.

[7] The principle of “consilience”—converging lines of evidence from numerous disciplines—provides a great deal of support for evolution.

[8] J. Richard Middleton, “Reading Genesis 3 Attentive to Human Evolution,” in Evolution and the Fall, eds. William Cavanaugh and James K. A. Smith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 71.

[9] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2010). See also Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies 9 (1986): 19-25; Gregory K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology 17 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004); J. Richard Middleton, “The Role of Human Beings in the Cosmic Temple: The Intersection of Worldviews in Psalms 8 and 104,” Canadian Theological Review 2, no. 1 (2013): 44-58.

[10] The summary follows J. Richard Middleton, “Image of God” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology, vol. 2, ed. Samuel E. Ballentine et al. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 516-523.

[11] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2015), 61. Richard S. Hess argues for Gen. 4:25 in “Genesis 1-2 and Recent Studies of Ancient Texts,” Science and Christian Belief 7, no. 2 (1995), 147.

[12] Original pattern is a literal rendering of the Greek arche-original/-typos pattern. This simple translation does not confuse an archetype with a prototype, as the subsequent discussion should make clear.

[13] Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, 240.

[14] Although nishmah (breath) is used only for humans in Genesis, ruah (spirit/breath) is applied to both humans and animals elsewhere. Besides Gen 6:10 and 17, see Psalm 104:29-30.

[15] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, The New American Commentary 1A (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1996).

[16] Kate Teffer and Katerina Semendeferi, “Human prefrontal cortex: evolution, development, and pathology,” Progress in Brain Research 195, (2012): 191-218. Along those lines, Irenaeus reasoned that Adam and Eve were easily deceived by the Devil because of their inexperience and immaturity.

Tagged as: Historical Adam, Human Uniqueness, Adam as Archetype.