I have had my own views about the story of Adam and Eve and evolution, and I have experienced backlash from christians in my church.

I believe (from my passionate whole-hearted belief in God, Jesus and the gospel accounts), that the Genesis account of Creation is true, but only from the angle of relating the true position of the relationship between God and man.

i have referred to sagas myths etc written before the OT version was written, as have many before, and deduct that the Genesis account is not to be taken as historical evidence, but as metaphorical/historical account.

I listened to Mr Spong on 2UE today speaking to known non-christian Mike Carlton, and he associated all Evangelical christians as being interpreters of the Bible literal. I think him wrong.

I do not translate the Genesis account literally, I do not discount dinosaurs and the evolutionery process, but I do believe the Bible from the point of view that it can be translated in the way the original writers intended it to be.

I once spoke to an eminent preacher within the St Matthias group, and I informed him of my beliefs as above. He said to me that both views were equally relevant, depending on christian maturity. (Not conveying that either view was wrong - that to believe literally was not a sign of any error or immaturity) He said my views were not incorrect. A child accepts the Genesis account of Adam and Eve literally (naturally) but scientific evidence adds more for educated.

Now this church, is branded with “FUNDAMENTAL” tag, and is a target of Spong freaks. But the position of the fundamental churches is not as Spong depicts. Fundamentalists do not to a person have the identical beliefs. His depiction of his objection is based on his personal experience related to historical times. It does not relate to present times and present beliefs.

Ken

If you accept evolution as Darwin presents it then not only is their no place for Genesis, there is no place for an interventionist God.  God does not guide evolution in the Darwinian conception; life adapts spontaneously, chaotically, forever.  The fittest survive.

You don’t have to accept ‘evolution as darwin presents it’ to find the Genesis account to not be an attempt to answer scientific questions.

Regardless of the scientific reality, the bible does not purport to be a document that answers scientific questions. It answers theological questions while assuming the ‘scientific’ worldview (in so far as such a thing existed) of each authors’ time.

And even whether I am right or wrong about that, Ken’s point stands, if Spong has indeed labelled all evangelicals as literalistic in their bible reading (I did not hear the broadcast, so am going on Ken’s assertion), he would be wrong, because rightly or wrongly, we are not.

I do think a distinction should be made (which I think Ken points to?) between Christian maturity and biblical education, though they can’t be strictly divorced and do impact on one another, they do not necessarily go hand in hand either. Very mature and godly Christians can still maintain simplistic readings of scripture (possibly just because of educational disadvantage); and educated knowledge of the scriptures can have the opposite of the intended effect, fuelling a hubris that has the capacity to be right and ungodly at the same time.

And we must be careful not to imagine that the more fundamentalist doctrines we discard, the more mature we are.

None of my comments are supposed to implicate anyone, they were just thoughts spawned by Ken’s post. Do you want this thread to address a particular issue, Ken, or just to outlet those thoughts in the post above?

What you heard of Spong ("associating all Evangelical christians as being interpreters of the Bible literal") is something that irretates about Spong. He generalises too much. He seems to like to place people in a nice little box. Yet this is also typical of his friends of the Jesus Seminar.

Having said that, here is an intresting quote from Spong from his book “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalists” (p.233) which I do agree with to some extent.

My quarrel with fundamentalism and conservative Christians is not their right to believe as literally as they wish to believe. It is rather with their attempts to define Christianity so narrowly that only fundamentalists or conservatives can be included within the definition. It is their need to impose their truth on all Christians as the only truth that I resent.

What wise Matthew said.

As well Ken, we need to distinguish between “literal” and “literalistic” readings of the Bible.  I would take myself to be fairly literal [and if Mr Spong has a problem with that, bah!], which I take to mean we take into consideration the purpose of the narrative, its context etc.  A “literalistic” reading would mean all happened as it was written [e.g. if Jesus said in a parable there was a farmer with 3 servants, there was; “the eye of the needle” refers to (a non-existent from my readings) gate rather than being a metaphor] - literalistic-ism (!!!) seems to get one in a bit of a bother.

Matthew’s comment:

Very mature and godly Christians can still maintain simplistic readings of scripture (possibly just because of educational disadvantage); and educated knowledge of the scriptures can have the opposite of the intended effect, fuelling a hubris that has the capacity to be right and ungodly at the same time.

gets the 100% agreement from me.  We need to go by the light God has given us.  In terms of my reading of Genesis, I believe I think similarly to you Ken.  I do not believe God will judge us by whether we take it to be literal or not - I concede it could be literalistic, but with the little brain power I have been given I bow to scientists and geologists and find no conflict with Genesis as Matthew stated.

In terms of Spong and others, I think resorting to throwing labels indicates people are on shaky ground.  Labels hurt and get quick reactions, which is no doubt what many people want.  As both you and Matthew said, there are a wide range of opinions within Sydney Anglicanism - we agree on the basics, I think we need to not let others try to divide us on (what I perceive as) smaller issues.

I agree, while I fall on the other side of the fence, i.e. a literalistic interpretation of Genesis (but not of the parables).  I believe it is literal, but I do not agree with the idea that those who think otherwise are not Christian! 

Jesus said we are saved by grace through faith, not by our scientific understanding of the first few chapters of Genesis.

Glenn

I’m sure there’s at least one other position.

Some days when reading Gen 1-3 I think, ‘Yeah, makes sense that there was an Adam & Eve of some sort.’ Others I am convinced that the material does not need to be pushed that strongly.

That aspect flip-flops for me. Yet I think it a minor aspect. The major is that these chapters are from God, for his glory & our benefit. And that doesn’t change.

Ken, I am a theistic evolutionist, although I’m in the intelligent design camp. There’s not much around (that I’ve seen) on correlating evolution with the Fall. One of the best things I’ve seen written on it was by C S Lewis, ‘though I can’t remember where now.

that was a good read

I once spoke to an eminent preacher within the St Matthias group, and I informed him of my beliefs as above. He said to me that both views were equally relevant, depending on christian maturity. (Not conveying that either view was wrong - that to believe literally was not a sign of any error or immaturity) He said my views were not incorrect. A child accepts the Genesis account of Adam and Eve literally (naturally) but scientific evidence adds more for educated.

Sucks if you were Jesus… missing out all of that added goodness hey?

Some days when reading Gen 1-3 I think, ‘Yeah, makes sense that there was an Adam & Eve of some sort.’ Others I am convinced that the material does not need to be pushed that strongly.

That aspect flip-flops for me. Yet I think it a minor aspect. The major is that these chapters are from God, for his glory & our benefit. And that doesn’t change.

No, this is not a minor aspect, it as one of the most important issues in scripture. Romans, especially chapter five, falls to pieces if Adam wasn’t a real historical person.

The rest of Genesis is minor. But if you have Adam being historical… well certain positions are no longer plausible.

It seems to me that the question of whether Adam and Eve existed as real people, and the question of whether the rest of the Creation story is to be read literally, are really quite separate and distinct questions.

Answering “no” to the latter does not imply answering “no” to the former. Similarly, answering “yes” to the former does not imply answering “yes” to the latter.

if Adam wasn’t a real historical person. there was no 1st sin.

Quoth Ken

Now this church, is branded with “FUNDAMENTAL” tag, and is a target of Spong freaks. But the position of the fundamental churches is not as Spong depicts. Fundamentalists do not to a person have the identical beliefs. His depiction of his objection is based on his personal experience related to historical times. It does not relate to present times and present beliefs.

Spong is so liberal as to be barely a member of the church. (At least on the face of it). He is in such a hurry to dispense with anything he doesn’t agree with he has left nothing for himself or anyone else.

But the issue of a real Adam and Eve is important.
I think the idea of a mythical Adam is sound enough to hold up Romans (so far) and am not now feeling compelled to the urge to accept a historical Adam.

Spong probably doesn’t feel the urge to accept anything in particular, more like everything in general.

Andrew Chee - 02 April 2004 10:36 AM

Ken, I am a theistic evolutionist, although I’m in the intelligent design camp. There’s not much around (that I’ve seen) on correlating evolution with the Fall. One of the best things I’ve seen written on it was by C S Lewis, ‘though I can’t remember where now.

How did his argument go?

David Ball - 01 September 2008 02:27 PM

It seems to me that the question of whether Adam and Eve existed as real people, and the question of whether the rest of the Creation story is to be read literally, are really quite separate and distinct questions.

Answering “no” to the latter does not imply answering “no” to the former. Similarly, answering “yes” to the former does not imply answering “yes” to the latter.

Brilliant David! This is a distinction that JI Packer makes. Yes he believes in a real first man and first woman, but does he believe Satan was a snake in the garden? Not really… Packer said the snake was chosen as a repulsive symbol of evil.  Notice Adam and Eve didn’t say “Oh wow look, a talking snake!” So as to the actual biology of how Adam and Eve arrived on the scene, are we able to trust God or not? As to death and survival of the fittest prior to ‘the fall’, well, many are thinking this through and seem to be concluding that:-
1. The sting of death is sin
2. The garden of Eden seemed to be ‘special’, with a ‘tree of life’, and Adam and Eve become mortal when they leave the special garden.

I don’t want to stretch the point of the passage too far or suggest that it’s suggesting that Adam and Eve returned to normal evolutionary ‘survival of the fittest’ aging processes outside the garden, but there DOES seem to be something special about the tree of life.

23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Besides, when one walks with the Lord even the dead come back to life. They walked with God in the garden. How God actually got them there seems open to scientific investigation with the language as symbolic as it obviously is.

But the issue of a real Adam and Eve is important.
I think the idea of a mythical Adam is sound enough to hold up Romans (so far) and am not now feeling compelled to the urge to accept a historical Adam.

Owen, you’ve admitted you don’t want to look into it further, so how are you now saying the mythical Adam stands up to Romans?