Australian eJournal of Theology 19.1 (April 2012)
Covenant and Myth: Can Reformed Theology Survive
without Adam and Eve
Karl Hand
Charles Sturt University
Abstract: Reformed theology is a diverse movement, and has found many ways to
interact with the presence of mythical stories in scripture. There is a strong tendency,
however, to draw a ‘line in the sand’ at the historical existence of Adam because of the
function that he plays in the history of the covenants – particularly the ‘covenant of
works’. This article problematises that line by suggesting that it is possible to build an
authentically Reformed and covenantal theology without a historical Adam.
Key Words: Adam and Christ; Calvinism; Covenant Theology; Federalism; Genesis;
Myth; Neo-Calvinism; Reformed Theology; Romans
The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block
out the very light it is supposed to convey. "For then alone do we know God truly," writes
Saint Thomas Aquinas, "when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly
think of God." 1
he June 2011 editorial of Christianity Today (June 2011, 55/6, 61) was titled ‘No
Adam, No Eve, No Gospel.’ With this provocative title, the editorial goes on to firmly
reiterate, with some warmth toward the possibility of scientific understandings of
the origin of the universe and the human species, and in contemporary language,
the necessity of a real and ‘historical’ Adam and Eve. The article expresses the basic
Reformed teaching about Adam’s headship over humankind. This doctrine, a central tenet
of covenant theology, has traditionally been referred to by Reformed theologians as
Adam’s ‘federal’ headship in the ‘covenant of works’. The basic idea of this doctrine is
expressed in the Westminster Confession of faith VII.2 “The first covenant made with man
was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity,
upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”
Whatever Christians may believe about the origins of the universe and biological
life, a growing accord among young and thriving Christian communities draws a line in the
sand at this classical doctrine of Adam. If they compromise this doctrine, then they have
reason to think they have lost the gospel, the heart of the Christian faith.
This belief in an historical Adam is hardly standing in the way of Reformed theology
growing in the western world. In American Evangelicalism, traditional Reformed ideas
have new life in the rise of a new abundance of Reformed ministries, including such
tremendously influential leaders such as John Piper, Don Carson and Mark Driscoll. In
1
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), 219.
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Britain, the Evangelical Alliance and the spiritual successors of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and
in Australia, the Presbyterian Church and the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church have
all kept the flame of Reformed Theology burning before a vibrant and ever youthful
multitude. This movement is sometimes being referred to as ‘neo-Calvinism’.
Neo-Calvinism’s growth has been attributed by journalist Collin Hansen to a
growing discontent among young people with the self-indulgent, moralistic and
therapeutic religion of the Baby-Boomers’ era. Calvinism’s emphasis on God’s glory and
human weakness has spoken powerfully to such a generation, and the skill of the neoCalvinist leaders in systematic theology has enabled them to present this view as a tightly
integrated and logical world-view, which makes sense of every aspect of human life.
Hansen shows how the world-view of Calvinism has become a lifeboat of sanity in a
chaotic and unstable postmodern world. The atonement of Jesus is the centrepiece of this
system, and the original sin of a real Adam is the necessary presumption of the atonement
of Jesus.
The overwhelming theme of the neo-Calvinist theology is its distinctively
predestinarian and monergistic 2 soteriology, but for others, the Reformed teaching about
salvation history and the covenant has been the draw card. Hansen tells the story of Clay
Daniels, a Yale graduate who was converted to the neo-Calvinist movement while
attending Dallas Theological Seminary, a school which is confessionally opposed to
covenant theology. He considered the Calvinists he knew to be “a little whacky” for
pushing what he considered to be minor theological points. The Reformed perspective no
longer seemed so minor when he began to understand covenant theology, how God’s story
of redemption unfolds across the Old and New Testaments in the covenants of works,
redemption and grace. 3
As Reformed theology finds a younger audience, it must negotiate its place within a
more scientific landscape than it has in previous generations. One example is a theological
trend within the Sydney Evangelical movement to take an open-minded stance towards
theistic evolution. John Dickson, who is an influential historian and ordained minister in
the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, has recently published an article articulating an
interpretation of Genesis 1 which has been taught to the students of Sydney’s Moore
College for a generation now. Dickson presents the Genesis creation account as a
theologically and existentially confronting, and intentionally subversive alternative to the
ideology of Imperial Babylon’s creation myths. This subversive theology, however, is
uninformative about the material origins of the world. 4 After receiving some considerable
criticism from Creationist theologian Benno Zuiddam, Dickson clarified that his position
‘Monergism’ is the Reformed doctrine that regeneration is a work of the Holy Spirit that occurs without
human co-operation, as opposed to ‘synergism’, the doctrine that the human will co-operates with the Holy
Spirit before regeneration occurs.
3 Collin Hansen, Young Restless and Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2008), 65.
2
John P Dickson, “The Genesis of Everything: An historical account of the Bible’s opening chapter” ISCAST
Online Journal 4 (2008), 1-18. Available online at:
http://www.iscast.org/journal/articlespage/Dickson_J_2008-03_Genesis_Of_Everything (accessed March 22,
2012).
4
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on Genesis 1 should be understood within the context of his affirmation of a historical
Adam. 5
This mediating position is becoming increasingly popular within the broader neoCalvinist movement. If there is any one person who can be identified as the foremost
leader of the neo-Calvinist movement, it is John Piper, the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist
Church. In a podcast of his Ask Pastor John program on 27th May 2010, Piper explains why
there are certain points about creation that all Bethlehem elders are required to hold, and
other points on which they have freedom. He uses the covenant headship of Adam as his
criterion.
I think we should preach that he created Adam and Eve directly, that he made them of
the dust of the ground, and he took out of man a woman. I think we should teach that. I
know there are people who don't, who think it's all imagery for evolution or whatever.
And we should teach that man had his beginning not millions of years ago but within
the scope of the biblical genealogies. Those genealogies are tight at about six thousand
years and loose at maybe ten or fifteen thousand. So I think we should honor those
genealogies and not say that you can play fast and loose with the origin of man. 6
Within the scope of the historicity of the creation of human beings in the Genesis
accounts, Piper allows as much freedom as possible, including both Creationism, theistic
evolution or his own view which he draws from John Sailhamer’s recent book, Genesis
Unbound, 7 which allows science full scope regarding natural history, but not with regards
to human history. As Piper says, this view
has the advantage of saying that the earth is billions of years old if it wants to be—
whatever science says it is, it is—but man is young, and he was good and he sinned.
[Adam] was a real historical person, because Romans 5 says so, and so does the rest of
the Bible.
In contrast to this broad, popular consensus, Hans Frei has read between the lines
of covenant theology and pointed out that its connection to an historical Adam might not
be so unambiguous. There is a connection between Calvinist (even scholastic Calvinist)
theology and the post-Enlightenment separation of world-history and sacred-history. By
comparing the theologies of two such dissimilar contemporaries as the founder of
covenant theology, Johannes Cocceius, and the founder of the historical critical method,
Benedict de Spinoza, Frei shows that these “two very dissimilar views of the Bible” 8 had
something in common.
According to Frei, in the work of these men one can observe the phenomenon of
literary or theological sense and historical reference beginning to separate out, in a way in
which they had not been separable in the sixteenth century. According to Frei, “Cocceius
obviously did not realize that he was on his way to a separation of fact and story,” but
Cocceius’ spiritualisation the Old Testament to fit Scholastic Reformed dogmatics provided
5
“Genesis 1 and theories of origin.” http://creation.com/genesis-dickson-zuiddam (accessed March 22, 2012).
“What should we teach about creation?”, http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/ask-pastorjohn/what-should-we-teach-about-creation (accessed December 30, 2011).
6
7
John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 1996).
Hans Wilhelm Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 42.
8
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the grounds for the concept of Heilsgeschichte, with its clear delineation from Historie in
the work of Rudolf Bultmann, and the biblical theology movement.
Speaking as a person of Reformed and Evangelical conviction, although an outsider
to the ‘neo-Calvinist’ movement itself, I feel at liberty to offer a candid critique of the way
that the movement’s growth is taking place. My criticism is illustrated by the attitude
towards theology which could result in a simplistic formula like ‘No Adam, No Eve, No
Gospel.’ The literalism of Piper is not doing justice to the potential that Frei noticed in
covenant theology to connect with the storied nature of the biblical revelation. Rather
than a dynamic conversation, it is a wildly successful formula, and the formula is so tight
that it is unable to adapt. The real threat to Reformed theology is not that it might dry up
but that its life-blood might flow inorganically; the theology might be propagated widely
but without developing as it spreads.
This criticism is not idiosyncratic to my own point of view. It has been pointed out
by a number of theologians within the Reformed tradition. For instance, Brevard Childs
has referred to Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology (then the standard Reformed text in
English) as a “repristination of seventeenth century dogmatics.” 9 More recently, Brian
Gerrish has asked whether Reformed Theology is “obsolete”. 10 The emotive effect of his
question is not mitigated by his conclusion. He proposes that Reformed preachers must
cease to “take their stand” on predestination. 11 Not only is this unacceptable, it raises the
question how we have come to point where we need to throw away cherished distinctive
beliefs overboard like luggage to keep the ship afloat. A better question is, why are we
sinking? Can we plug the leak and keep our treasure?
Of course, the task of developing a theology is monumental. In this paper, I want to
suggest one direction. I would suggest that to maintain contemporary integrity in what is a
mainly antithetical philosophical milieu, Reformed theology must begin to theologize upon
mythological readings of the opening chapters of Genesis.
I want to approach this task holistically and thoroughly, because this theology is a
holistic and thorough theology, so I will start with a summary of the historical Reformed
doctrine of Adam’s federal headship, and an assessment of the gravity of the argument
that mythical readings cannot be grafted into the Reformed system. I then move to
exegesis of specific passages which critical scholarship has shown to be mythical (such as
Genesis 1; 2-3 and Romans 5). During this comparison the problems and tensions within
the Reformed system in the contemporary world become quite clear. Clark Pinnock has
pled that evangelicals recognize the “sovereignty of the text”, and “let the chips fall where
they may.” 12 I mean to respond to Pinnock’s call by seeing ‘where the chips fall’ for the
‘federal headship’ of Adam.
9
Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 20.
10
Brian A. Gerrish, “Sovereign grace: is Reformed theology obsolete?” Interpretation 57 (2003): 45-57.
11
Ibid., 57.
12
Clark H. Pinnock “Climbing out of a swamp : the Evangelical struggle to understand the creation texts.”
Interpretation 43 (1989): 143-155, at 155
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COVENANT THEOLOGY
If it is even possible, removing the historical Adam from Reformed theology is the most
invasive kind of surgery that can be imagined; it cuts into the nerve endings of the worldview. In many cases of post-Enlightenment theology, such as Panentheism and Process
Theology, the result of demythologisation has been nothing less than an abandonment of
classical theism. The surgery, then, will necessarily be intricate. It must begin in the realm
of theological prolegomenon. Covenant theology itself is the most extensively and
historically used theological method for Reformed theologians. Its roots origins go back as
far as Zwingli and Bullinger. 13 I would argue against historical revisionists 14 that Calvin
also stands tentatively in the tradition of covenant theologians. 15 In the 20th century also,
covenant theology has been the standard Reformed model, used by the Princeton
Theologians and Louis Berkhof, and more recently espoused by Robert Reymond. 16 It
seems reasonable, then, to begin the task with an analysis of the Reformed understanding
of the covenant.
Covenant theology classically formulated
The essential idea of covenant theology is that it arranges theology around the heads of
the covenants in salvation history. The early covenant theologian Heinrich Bullinger
defined covenant theology as the belief that “nothing else was handed down to the saints
of all ages throughout the entire scripture, other than what is included in the main points
of the covenant.” 17 This makes the starting point of theology a synthesis of biblical
material, around the central theme of the one eternal covenant of grace, rather than
organizing it around systematic, logical inquiry, according to the Aristotelian-Scholastic
method. A further assumption is that there are not two covenants (the ‘old’ and ‘new’) but
only one covenant of grace.
The covenant of grace is defined by the Westminster Confession of Faith as that
covenant in which God “freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ;
requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those
that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to
believe” (VII:2). However, the covenant of grace is not the logical starting point of
covenant theology. It is (according to Johannes Cocceius) an ‘abrogation’ of a prior
covenant: the covenant of works. 18 This covenant promised eternal life to Adam on the
condition of perfect obedience to the moral law. When Adam broke this covenant by
partaking of the forbidden tree, both he and his posterity were subjected to death.
13
Lyle D. Bierma, German Calvinism in the Confessional Age (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 31-39.
For instance, McCoy and Baker state: that there are “two alternative, yet related strands within the
Reformed tradition – Federalism and Calvinism.” C. S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism:
Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition (Louisville, Kentucky:Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 24.
14
Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids:
Baker/Paternoster, 2001).
15
Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 410, 404-7, 503-545.
16
Heinrich Bullinger “The One and eternal Testament or Covenant of God” tr. C.S. McCoy & J. W. Baker in
Fountainhead of Federalism (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 99-138, at 112.
17
18
Johannes Cocceius, Summa theologia ex Scripturis Repetita, 1662, Locus 13, cap. 31.
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The Westminster Confession VII:3 makes the logical connection between the
covenants of works and grace clear: “Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life
by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of
grace.” In other words, the covenant of grace is only possible because of the breach in the
covenant of works. This then is the basic problem of the integrative task: if we allow any
non-literal readings of the creation account, thus eliminating any real covenant of works,
there remains no basis for the covenant of grace.
Covenant theology without Adam
In the late nineteenth-century, Reformed theology was first forced to deal with the issue of
non-literal readings of the Genesis account, when it was confronted with the issue of
Darwinism. This became a scandal during the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy. As I
will show, while this problem was essentially a different kind of problem than that offered
by mythical readings, it provides a powerful analogy of how Reformed theologians may
respond to the problem of Adam’s historicity and federal headship.
The question that the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy forced Reformed
theologians to ask was not whether the Genesis account was a myth, but rather, whether
there was a way to negotiate a compromise between natural history and the scriptural
record conceived of as an alternative history. The project of Reformed theologians was to
construct a sequence of events which could satisfy both accounts. Mythical readings of
Genesis 1-3 demand more of theology than mere Darwinism does, because interpreting
the Creation account as a myth does not allow such a negotiation to take place. It rather
implies that none of these events took place in the world of human sensory experience and
that the natural history of the world must be determined entirely by science.
The situation of late nineteenth century Reformed theology does overlap with the
current situation on the issue an historical Adam. However, what is fascinating about the
responses of Reformed theologians of the time was their lack of concern about the
implications for covenant theology. They were more concerned with the doctrine of God
proper, and with the potential consequences for a theistic world-view if God were seen as
a shaper of matter, rather than a creator.
An orthodox Reformed theologian like Benjamin B. Warfield was able to take a
progressive and scientific stance on the question of creation unimpeded by either
problem. Warfield held that evolution was easily integrated into Reformed theology, such
as Calvin’s commentary on Genesis 1, and his Institutes of the Christian Religion. By
distinguishing between the primary act of creatio ex nihilo on the first day, and the process
of formation ex materia, by divine providence, on the remaining five days, Calvin gives “a
very pure evolutionary scheme.” 19 Warfield’s optimism thus opened the way for Reformed
theology to cope with the development of Darwinism.
But Reformed thinkers of the twentieth century did not follow Warfield’s lead. For
instance, Louis Berkhof took issue with problems that evolution posed to classical theism.
Berkhof points out several areas of tension between theism and evolution. One tension is
Benjamin Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Creation” in eds. M.A. Noll and D. N. Livingstone, Evolution,
Science and Scripture: Selected Writings (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 287-349, at 309.
19
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between the conflicting presupposition of theism and naturalism, “The evolutionist must
either resort to the theory that matter is eternal, or accept the doctrine of creation.” 20
Thus, he decried theistic evolution as a “dangerous hybrid”, and a “contradiction in terms”,
because it denies the place of miracles in history and consigns the origin of both sin and
religious affection to the psychological results of the natural evolutionary process. 21
Berkhof’s argument is helpful because it carefully delineates the problems the
Reformed world-view faces in the loss of a literal Adam. Howard J. Van Till, an evangelical
evolutionist, admits as much when he asks,
If we human beings are genealogically related to other life forms, what happens to our
concept of uniqueness as morally responsible beings? Was the appearance of our
species intended? Is there any purpose to our existence? 22
This concern is not only present in the Reformed academy. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
one of the most popular Reformed preachers of the 20th century also expresses concern,
The Bible does not merely make statements about salvation. It is a complete whole: it
tells you about the origin of the world and of man … how he fell and the need of
salvation arose, and then it tells you how God provided salvation … Therefore these
early chapters of Genesis with their history play a vital part in the whole doctrine of
salvation … our gospel, our faith, is not a teaching; it is not a philosophy; it is primarily a
history. 23
Lloyd-Jones is right – not that Genesis 1-3 is a ‘history’ – but that this issue has
consequences for our whole system of theology. In this quote, he broadens out the narrow
theological concern from the interface between scientific and religious histories of the
world to the nature of God and the nature of revelation.
Cornelius van Til has pointed out what is perhaps the most disturbing implication of
evolutionary theory for the Reformed system. An altered view of the creation, the human
person and salvation history – because these things are a revelation of God – will
ultimately lead to an altered view of God. 24 Within the classical theism of the Reformed
system, God’s nature has a direct relation to all entities and facts because God is the
ultimate and immediate basis of existence. As Van Til states, "God is free not in spite of but
because of the necessity of his nature." 25 Here we are treading on dangerous ground!
Every action of God is necessary and demonstrates who and what God is. For this reason,
truncating salvation-history by removing an historical Adam will (and it has done in
twentieth-century theology) call into question everything from the nature of God as
Trinity to the sovereignty of God in creation and salvation. A God who creates a complex
universe by a long process of second causes is, in fact, a different God to the God who
creates a simple paradise under a firmament by sudden and spontaneous decree. All those
who depart from this most simplistic of creation models must then rethink their theology
with careful, exegetically grounded theological method.
20
21
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of truth, 1941), 160.
Ibid., 162.
Howard J. Van Till, “The Fully-Gifted Creation (‘Theistic Evolution’)” in J. P. Moreland et al Three Views of
Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 161-218, at 176.
22
23
D. M. Lloyd-Jones, What is an Evangelical? (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992), 75.
24
Cornelius van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1974), 29.
25
Ibid., 177.
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Covenant theology as myth
A different approach to reading Genesis in the modern world is to recognise that it is myth
and to think of this sacred history as something different to the history of the empirical
world. This approach has the advantage of not needing to create dubious negotiations
between whether the biblical record or the scientific account should be preferenced.
By referring to ‘mythical readings’, I do not mean to invoke the kind of postEnlightenment thought which would say that modern science has disproved ancient,
mythic understandings of the world as factually impossible. To do so would be to confuse
the categories of myth and history, and judge myth by the criteria of historical enquiry. I
am also not interested in removing the mythical content from the Bible in order to create
some kind of scientifically sterile account which would be factually acceptable to modern
people. Rather, I am interested in anthropological understandings of myth, which observe
that there are deep structures in mythology across all human cultures, and which see this
as an expression of truths about humanity. These truths do not relate to the empirical
world with which history deals in a direct way. I am therefore proposing that the
mythological content of the scriptures is divine revelation to us about the human
condition, and that when we understand it as such, we are interpreting the text correctly.
It is now well known, and recognized in most critical commentaries, that the
opening chapters of Genesis are written in a genre which is at home in the context of all
Mesopotamian creation myths. Genesis 1 bears a striking similarity to the Babylonian
creation story Enuma Elish, Genesis 2-3 to the Mesopotamian legend of Adapa, and the
story of Noah to the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, and many other parallels can be drawn to
similar stories. However, there are also many parallels that can be drawn between these
myths and myths from around the world with which there could be no direct literary
relationship. The great mythologist Joseph Campbell compares creation epics such as
these to similar tales from Indian, Chinese, Siberian Tatar and Maori culture. Take, for
example, this metaphysical Maori genealogy, which also bears a striking similarity to
Genesis 1 and even to John 1,
The word became fruitful;
It dwelt with the feeble glimmering;
It brought forth night…
It dwelt with the empty space, and produced the atmosphere which is above us.
The atmosphere which floats above the earth,
The great firmament above us,
dwelt with the earthly dawn,
And the moon sprang forth;
The atmosphere above us,
dwelt with the glowing sky,
And thence proceeded the sun;
Sun and moon were thrown up above,
as then chief eyes of heaven:
Then the heavens became light:
the early dawn, the early day,
The mid-day: the blaze of day from the sky.
The sky above dwelt with Hawaiki,
and produced land. 26
26
Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, 254.
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The purpose of such myths cannot be understood only in a culturally specific way.
They express something universal about the human condition. Campbell suggests that this
purpose is to mediate between the perfection and unity of the transcendent realm, and the
manifold and imperfect nature of life – the point at which emanations of the deity break up
into manifold spatial forms.
We are therefore not dealing with detailed or empirically factual accounts of the
past. Rather, myths represent a truth about the way that the whole empirical world relates
to the world beyond the five senses. The date of creation (say, six thousand years ago) is
an arbitrary point chosen to represent the relationship between these two worlds. The
genealogies of Genesis show a gradual process of decay, and sin entering the world, which
separates our world from the world beyond. Placing the account of creation within the
empirical world itself, by dating it at 4004 BCE is a categorical error which negates the
possibility of the text mediating that transcendent world which does not occur within the
confines of our world-calendar. As Campbell explains,
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.
The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore it is
never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a
civilisation begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it,
temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved.
Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian
cult. 27
The Genesis account provides a unique understanding of this relationship between
the transcendent and empirical worlds, which is useful to the project of Reformed
theology. That God relates to humanity by means of God’s word and covenant, and that
God is both totally good and totally sovereign over that creation are decisive theological
values of the Reformed tradition and clearly seen in the Genesis account when it is read as
myth. The insistence on keeping the account literal distorts the function of this rich
theological text. Therefore I now turn to the text itself to give such a reading in more
detail.
THE BIBLICAL DATA
The logical starting place to approach the biblical material on the covenant of works is in
the Garden of Eden. However, this immediately brings us to a problem. Is the biblical story
which begins in the opening chapters of Genesis something that actually happened in time
and space, or is it a story told for the purpose of communicating theological truth? The
genre of the Genesis 2-3 would seem to indicate neither, since this passage is clearly a
construction of etiological myths which explain the reason for the snake's lack of legs and
the origin of gender, marriage, suffering etc. These myths bear considerable similarities to
the creation myths of other contemporary middle-eastern myths, such as the creation of
the first humans from the earth, a great flood, the presence of exaggerated genealogies,
etc. Therefore, rather than functioning to transmit historical or theological data, we should
understand them as myths, functioning within a culture to inspire spiritual growth and
depth, to help people understand their life as part of a greater reality. As I survey now the
27
Ibid., 230-31.
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biblical data about Adam, I will read the material according to this understanding of the
genre and social function of such stories.
The Adamic covenant of works
Evangelical scholarship as a whole has been reticent to accept Genesis 1-11’s mythical
genre. For instance, a standard Evangelical critical commentary on Genesis is by G. J.
Wenham, who like Warfield before him, engages in the task of negotiating between
theology and science. He proposes that Genesis 1-11 may be an "inspired re-telling of
ancient oriental traditions", 28 and that this mitigates the clash between it and our scientific
world-view, 29 and he proposes that the author of the creation account in Genesis 2-3 has
written "a fresh and original story of his own" on the basis of other mythical traditions. 30
However, this "in no way impairs the inspired truth of the… narrative". 31 Wenham now
places the locus of the “inspired truth” in the space-time details of the story, so that Adam
and Eve are "as real as the patriarchs," 32 and it is worth searching for a literal location for
the Garden of Eden. 33 Wenham has come to the very brink of demythologizing the creation
account, only to insist in the historical truth of details, which contradicts his previous
admission that this narrative is constructed from mythical material rather than historical
sources.
By acknowledging the materials of the text without following through to the
conclusions of such an admission, Wenham has subordinated exegesis to the theological
presupposition of Adam's historicity. Furthermore, he has made the inspiration of the
Bible artificial, as though what the author is saying (re-telling mythical stories) is a
different thing than what God is saying (a factual account of events). It is self-defeating to
depart from evangelical hermeneutical convictions (that the voice of the scripture is the
very voice of God) in order to maintain an evangelical reading of the text. If, on the other
hand, the stories of Genesis 1-11 are indeed mythical, then we may not (as Wenham does)
interpret the rivers flowing out of Eden as "symbolism"34 while selectively retaining the
historicity of Adam and Eve.
Henri Blocher takes a different approach. He also argues for a historical Adam and
Eve. However, he dates them some forty millennia ago, and affirms they had “an initial
period of fellowship with God in their lives before they apostatized.” 35 This is possible
because he conceives of the narrative as being a “well-crafted, childlike drawing of the fardistant past, with illustrative and typological interests uppermost.” 36
Blocher has admitted already that he is trying to reconcile Genesis to scientific
theory. Because he is approaching the text seeking a specific outcome, he adopts a position
which assigns to the text a genre (‘childlike’ history), not because the text seems to
28
Gordon J. Wenham Genesis (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), liii.
29
Ibid., xlvi.
30
31
Ibid., 53.
Ibid., 55.
32
Ibid., 54.
33
Ibid., 66-67.
34
Ibid., 64.
35
Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), 42.
36
Ibid., 41.
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demand it, but in order to reach his preferred outcome. His position, I would argue, thus
violates the reformation principle of sola scriptura by putting scientific concerns (married
to a systematic-theological preference for an historical Adam) over the scriptural
consideration of genre. He has forgotten that natural revelation is subordinate to special
revelation.
The cases of Wenham and Blocher are warnings that selective exegesis does no
justice to the text. It is better to interpret Adam as being a symbol of humanity with a view
to its origins, just as the very name Adam (human), and the context (a primeval history)
imply. In Genesis 2:15-17, a theological truth about Adam (qua ‘humanity’s origins’) is
revealed,
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And
the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely 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 die.’
The function of the myth is to resolve the tension of God’s perfection and the
existence of sin. God’s providence presents us with paradise if only we would obey the
covenant of works. This is just as true in our fallen world of space and time. For instance,
there is more than enough food and water and resources for all humanity to live
abundantly. Only our greedy hoarding of resources (or more broadly our sin) destroys this
paradise. Every verse of chapter 2 speaks on the theme of God's abundance. Gerhard von
Rad has even argued that the prohibition to eat of one of the trees is indicative of God's
"fatherly care." 37 However, the prohibition is clear: obedience will lead to life, and
disobedience to death. The obstacle to paradise and divine fellowship is sin, and this sin is
not directly created by the one who nevertheless created everything.
Looking beyond the literalism of detail, this mythology teaches us about the human
condition. Humans all originate from a common ancestry, and embedded in that heritage
is a covenant. That this is a covenant is clear from Hosea 6:7 (ESV) "But like Adam they
transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me."
That all of humanity is bound under such a covenant is further clear from Romans
2:14, "When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires,
these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves", and Romans 5:13-14, "Sin was
indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death
exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the
transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come."
The Abrahamic covenant of works
The revelation of God to Abraham in Genesis 12, 15 and 17 is a revelation of the covenant
of grace. However, in Galatians 4:21-26, Paul points out that Hagar's children were born
unto slavery, while Sarah's children (the church) are born under a different covenant that
promises freedom. Dispensational and other non-covenantal hermeneutics would
naturally think of these two covenants as being the 'old' Jewish covenant and the 'new
covenant'. However, Paul's choice of Hagar as a foil to Sarah seems to indicate that the
37
Gerhard von Rad Genesis (London: SCM, 1961), 82.
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covenants he has in mind are concurrent, that Hagar and all humankind is under the one
covenant (the covenant of works) while Sarah and Abraham were especially chosen to life
through the covenant of grace.
The Mosaic covenant of works
The covenant of works is expounded most clearly under the law of Moses, showing that
the covenant of works is still a reality for God's people Israel. Leviticus 18:5 (quoted by
Paul in Romans 10:5 and Galatians 3:11-12) makes an excellent summary statement of
this covenant. "You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live: I
am the LORD." In Romans 7:10, Paul shows the effect that this covenant has upon those of
God's people who seek to be justified under it, "…the very commandment that promised
life proved to be death to me."
The covenant of works in the New Testament
If the covenant of works was preached by Moses, then it ought to come as no surprise to
anyone who believes in a unified revelation that Jesus preaches this same covenant. In
Matthew 19:16-17 we read,
Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have
eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only
one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’
So far, none of this biblical material presents a difficulty for a mythological reading
of the covenant of works in Genesis. However, a major problem is presented in Romans
5:12-21 (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:42-49). In this passage, Adam is assigned a role in salvationhistory that is typological of the work of Christ. Indeed, Adam is the one through whom
“sin exercised dominion in death”, while through Jesus Christ, grace “might also exercise
dominion through justification leading to eternal life.” To express this in other terms,
Adam is the federal head of one covenant (the covenant of works) which brings death, and
Christ is similarly head of the covenant (or ‘reign’) of grace which brings life through
righteousness.
There seem to be two implications of Romans 5:12-21 that we cannot avoid. Firstly,
humankind is connected to Adam ontologically. Romans 5:12-21 explains Adam’s federal
headship in such a way as requires an ontological connection between himself and
humankind. The Pelagian view that “death spread to all because all have sinned” (NRSV),
meaning that all have, in time, followed the example of Adam and sinned, fails as a reading
of this text on several levels,
(1) “All have sinned” is in the aorist tense (pantes hēmarton), which usually tends to
indicate singular actions rather than continuous. There is no reason in the context to
take this as anything but a punctilliar aorist. It would be better translated ‘all sinned’
than ‘all have sinned’.
(2) Verse 18 (which picks up the argument of the anacolouthon verse 12) speaks of
the one sin which brought (not just corruption but) condemnation to all people.
(3) The whole purpose of the argument is to contrast the sin of Adam with the act of
righteousness by Christ. It is granted that the two acts need not be identical in order for
there to be a comparison; however, a comparison must indicate some degree of
similarity. According to Paul, Christ’s act is appropriated, not by following his example,
but by imputation of righteousness (4:24-25), and (in chapter 8, which forms an inclusio
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with 5:12-21) by being (ontologically) “in Christ” (8:1-2). It would seem better, then, to
take Adam’s act as bringing death by imputation of guilt.
The second implication of Romans 5:12-21 is that, on the basis of our ontological
connection to Adam, Adam must exist. This raises a major problem for a mythological
reading of Genesis 2-3, as seen in the next implication The unavoidable implication of
Romans 5:12-21 is that humankind is in some sense “in Adam”, in a strong solidarity with
his sinning that leads to our being guilty of his trespass. This is a point not lost on
proponents of the historical Adam. For instance, Lloyd-Jones has argued,
...these early chapters of Genesis with their history play a vital role in the whole
doctrine of salvation. Take for instance the argument of the apostle Paul in the Epistle
to the Romans 5:12-21. Paul’s case is based upon that one man Adam and his one sin,
and the contrast with the other one man Adam and His one great act. You have exactly
the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15; the apostle’s whole argument rests upon
historicity. 38
In order to find a resolution to this discrepancy, Genesis 2-3 and Romans 5 must be
looked at together alongside the other relevant texts.
Synthesis of the biblical material
The problem with Lloyd-Jones’ argument is that it blurs the distinction between ‘reality’
and ‘historicity’. Paul’s argument, Lloyd-Jones claims, rests on the historicity of Adam and
the historicity of Christ. But Lloyd-Jones is claiming too much here. Nothing in Romans 5
requires our concept of Adam and Christ to be specifically historical concepts. The
argument rests on a contrast between Adam’s sin and Christ’s righteous act. Reality,
however, is broader than mere historicity – a thing may be real and not historical. For
instance, history deals with the empirical world alone, and the empirical world only to the
extent that it helps explain the story of humanity in terms of causality. Adam’s ‘reality’
(which is rightly inferred from Romans 5) is a spiritual not an empirical reality, and might
not bear any specifically interesting relation to the chain of causation which is human
history.
The view that Adam’s work is specifically an historical reality might be based on the
unspoken assumption that Adam’s sin was the first human sin, and that all other sins in
human history issue from that first historical sin. However, Paul’s argument cannot
logically depend on that. The first human sin in history was the sin of Eve, who first took
the fruit. However, even though Eve’s sin was first, Eve’s sin is not used by Paul as the
archetypal human sin. Rather, Paul argues that we sin ‘in Adam’.
As Reformed scholar Douglas Moo points out, the historical placement of Adam’s sin
is not that which makes it universal and archetypal. Adam’s second sin brought
condemnation to all because he has “a status in salvation history that is not tied only to
temporal priority.” 39 Adam’s sinful act was the cause of the expulsion from paradise, not
only of Adam, but of all humankind for all of history. But there is no historical Adam. I
would argue that the implication of what Moo says here is the reality of Adam’s sin is not
contingent upon historicity at all.
38
Lloyd-Jones, What is an Evangelical?, 75.
39
Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 319.
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If there is no Adam, then what and where is the locus of the human race’s solidarity
in our rebellion against the Creator? What proto-historical act has led to the world of sin
and suffering in which humanity lives under the broken Covenant of Works? Perhaps this
question will cause us to look deeper into ourselves for answers. Blocher has already
begun to do this, suggesting that,
The fact of unconscious influences and reactions among humankind probably hints at
the reality of mysterious bonds of a psycho-spiritual nature in the community of Adam
... I propose that the decisive consideration ... remains the Headship, or capitate,
structure – the organic solidarity of the race, the spiritual dimension of humanity’s
oneness. 40
Carl Gustav Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin have both suggested that there is a
greater mind than the individual human, a ‘universal subconscious’, or ‘sphere of
consciousness’. The scriptures have shown us that there is a reality (so Paul makes clear in
Romans 5) which unites humanity under the reign of death. But (to whatever extent Paul
was aware of this) ‘Adam’ is not an historical person. Rather, Adam, as head, stands for the
body of which all men and women are members, and it is together that this body has taken
of the ‘forbidden fruit’ and expressed our freedom by seeking independent wisdom and
choice in matters of ‘the knowledge of good and evil’. Adam, however, is not any one of us.
He (now safely referred to as an ‘it’) is instead to be understood as the transcendence of
humankind, the collective sum which is greater than the parts.
SYSTEMATIC-THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
Where does this lead us? At the beginning of this paper, I noted that mythical readings of
Genesis pose some major problems to the Reformed world-view. Indeed, my reasons for
adopting a mythological interpretation of Adam remain primarily exegetical, not
pragmatic, scientific or theological. However, it seems appropriate to point out now that a
mythological reading of Genesis 1-3 is able to intersect with the Reformed system of
theology in some useful ways.
Firstly, a mythic view of Adam clearly favours a supralapsarian (or ‘high Calvinist’)
view of the decrees of election and reprobation over an infralapsarian view. The
infralapsarian holds that God’s decree of election was made after the decree to permit the
fall. This may be argued from the plotline of Genesis, because salvation begins historically
after the fall. The argument is already weak since there is no reason to suppose God’s
decrees are given to match the chronological order of their fulfilment. Indeed, Reymond
has pointed out that rational planning usually occurs in reverse historical order, starting
with the desired outcome and then working through the steps necessary to arrive at the
outcome. 41 Mythical readings of Genesis rule out the infralapsarian argument altogether,
because the fall is no longer conceived of as a single moment, but as an aspect of human
experience, as old as the emergence of human consciousness. Sin, then, like grace and
salvation, must have come into being gradually, as the human person with a ‘knowledge of
good and evil’ came to exist. It is impossible to argue that this process was historically
prior to grace. The decision of God to extend grace to humanity cannot be described as
40
Blocher, Original Sin, 124, 129.
41
Reymond, Theology, 485-488.
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happening before itself. This excludes the infralapsarian argument and confirms the
supralapsarian view espoused so clearly by Paul who states in Romans 9:11a that election
and reprobation occurred logically “before they had been born or had done anything good
or bad.” The association of mythical readings with the supralapsarian view should preemptively satisfy anyone who is concerned that mythic readings represent a weak or
revisionist Calvinism.
Secondly, the dialectic between the twin concerns of the progressiveness of
revelation in biblical theology and the analogy of scripture in systematic theology is
mollified. A considerable portion of revelation is taken out of ‘historical time’ per se, and
viewed as an eternal, ‘mythical’ truth. This advantage may seem very theoretical, but I can
already think of one major advantage, Karl Barth’s objection to covenant theology is
solved by it. Barth claimed that viewing the covenants as a history of revelation is
antithetical to a Christological view of revelation, so that “the atonement accomplished in
Christ ceases to be the history of the covenant.” 42 However, Barth’s objection assumes that
the covenant of works is an historical reality, making God’s graciousness logically
posterior to a temporal reality. Barth asks why God is “righteous in abstractio and not free
to be gracious from the very first.” 43 Clearly, if the covenant of works is an eternal – rather
than an historical – reality, Barth’s objection dissolves. I would suggest that, over time,
many similar tensions might be resolved by a mythical view of Genesis 1-11.
CONCLUSION
I hope to have shown that Reformed theologians and Evangelicals no longer need to object
to the mythological understandings of Genesis on systematic theological grounds – No
Adam and no Eve need not mean no gospel – at least not with reference to covenant
theology. In fact, as soon as we admit that the genre of Genesis 1-11 is mythological, and
then follow that admission to its (seemingly daunting) conclusions, we find that the
Reformed theological tradition is enriched! By following through the systematic
reverberations of the myth of Adam, we find that in spite of the pessimistic prognoses of
theologians such as Berkhof and Schaeffer, and even in the face of criticisms by Childs,
Gerrish and others, the theory can be integrated into our system.
Author: Karl Hand is a sessional lecturer in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt
University, where he is also a PhD candidate in New Testament Studies. He is an ordained
minister in Metropolitan Community Church, and is engaged in pastoral ministry at CRAVE
MCC <www.cravemcc.com>.
Email: redchiron@gmail.com
Karl Barth Church Dogmatics, Trans G.T. Thomson. Eds. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas Forsyth
Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1969), vol. 4, 56.
42
43
Ibid., 64.
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