Hi Matt
Good question. Very good question! Your question touches on some fundamental issues about scriptural truth, and the nature of Biblical revelation. Thanks for asking it, for it has made me think hard. Here is my answer, but please bear in mind that this is my answer, and does not represent the ‘official’ UR line on these matters. I know there are plenty of URs who believe in a ‘literal’ Adam and Eve (as, I guess, there are probably plenty of non-UR Christians who do not). Anyway, here goes.
You are correct, I do not believe in a literal, hand-made Adam and Eve. In other words, I do not believe God literally took a handful of clay and fashioned it into a human shape, like a plasticine Morph (sorry, English TV show reference), breathed into his nostrils, called him Adam, and made the first human bean. I see no reason why, given the obvious Biblical truth that God tells us stories to communicate truth – as Jesus did – that the creation story needs to be taken literally. Nowhere in scripture do I see an injunction that this must be the case. Even Augustine, the progenitor of ECT and Calvinism, did not think that Genesis need be taken literally. Augustine, for all his faults (and they were many!) taught that Genesis could be interpreted on many levels.
Now, I don’t know what actually happened to begin human life on this planet. For all I know, maybe God really did fashion Adam from clay the way a potter fashions a pot. But I do not believe that is the case. I believe God used the natural processes He initiated when He created the universe to evolve human beans. That is the way God acts in the world today, is it not? Miracles, while I believe they do occur, are very rare. God’s ‘normal’ way of acting is through nature, through the natural processes and the people He has created.
(Interestingly, this is CS Lewis’s argument in his book Miracles, following George MacDonald, that all Jesus’ miracles simply reflect the things that God always does in nature – ie turning water into wine is what God does all the time in the growing of vines; feeding the five thousand with fish and bread is what God does all the time in causing fish to breed and wheat to grow etc.)
So, I believe God created human beans through the natural process of evolution – a process He foresaw from eternity.
Now let’s get a couple of things clear here, Matt. Modern science is absolutely unequivocal that the theory of evolution is true. To believe otherwise is to fly in the face of every revealed truth about the world around us. If we deny that scientific truth we are just burying our heads in the sand, and we make the educated, non-Christian majority think we are ignorant fools – flat-earthers, or witch burners.
There are numerous Christian biologists who accept evolution as fact, including, for example, Brown University professor Ken Miller, whose book Finding Darwin’s God shows how evolution must be true, based on such things as the quantity of decaying radioactive elements in the earth, the fossil record, the relationship of successive animal forms to each other etc. The only way evolution cannot be true is if the ‘apparent age’ theory is true – ie that God created the universe with the appearance of great age. In my opinion, this option must be ruled out, as it makes God out to be a trickster, a deceiver. And God is the God of all truth, is He not?
Nothing I can say here will convince you that evolution is true, if you hold to an absolute, literal interpretation of scripture. But why do you need to do that? Nowhere does the Bible say that it is all completely and literally true. To take one trivial example, the Bible talks of ‘the right hand of God’. Does God, who is spirit, have hands? Surely the answer is no, hence that expression is metaphorical. And once you accept the principle of metaphor in the Bible – which you must, if you are not to descend into absurdity and contradiction – surely you can accept that stories such as the creation story are metaphorical, allegorical.
Interesting fact: the Hebrew word for ‘man’ is, or so I am led to believe, ‘Adam’. So ‘the Adam’ can certainly be read to mean ‘mankind’ as opposed to ‘an individual human bean with the name Adam’. Which supports my belief that the Biblical Adam ‘represents’ the first human beans, not an individual.
You ask, why did God give us the Genesis creation story, and allow Moses and the fathers to believe in it, if it is not literally true. I would reply, a) how do you know they did; and b) if they did (which I concede they probably did), how could they believe otherwise? Darwin ‘discovered’ evolution through building on hundreds of years of scientific research. The concept of hominids, from whom human beans might have evolved, would have been utterly meaningless to the writers of Genesis, just the same as the ideas of quantum physics or the circulation of the blood would have been – but these are unequivocal facts, progressively revealed to us by the God of all truth.
You ask, did the apostle Paul ‘get it wrong’ by believing in the literal creation of Adam directly from clay. I would answer ‘yes’. But is that so terrible? Why do we need to believe that Paul (who used to be Saul, persecutor of Christians) had absolute and perfect knowledge? Certainly, he had some pretty duff ideas about women, and the place of women in society, which reflect his personal prejudices – personal prejudices we all have, for we are all flawed human beans.
And actually, evolution is perfectly compatible with the idea that we are formed from ‘clay’ – for human beans are surely carbon based life forms. We are, in essence, chemical elements – clay mixed with water. As Genesis teaches.
You cite 1 Corinthians 11:8-12, which says:
“A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.”
This passage says nothing to me, except that Paul, who was the product of an utterly patriarchal society, was confused about sexuality and didn’t like women very much.
[Edit: Looking at this again in the cold light of day I see I have been guilty of rank eisegesis here. I do not think this passage says Paul didn’t like women very much. However, I [i]do think there are plenty of other passages that do indicate that. But this isn’t one of them.]
You also cite 1 Timothy 2:13-14: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”
Which tells me only that Paul took Genesis literally. And as I have said, I think he was wrong to do that. Doesn’t make him a bad guy. Doesn’t detract from his teaching. Just means he was a product of his time. However, it did lead to many centuries of oppression of women, which is unequivocally a bad thing.
So, to sum up:
I believe the Bible is God’s perfect revelation of all truth, but it is not always and everywhere ‘literally’ true.
I believe God created human beans, as He created everything that there is.
I believe in evolution, in what science shows me to be true, as God’s mechanism for creating human beans.
I believe He did this through the natural processes we can observe around us today.
I believe the ‘story’ of Adam and Eve is just that, a story which communicates vital spiritual truth.
I do not believe in a literal Garden of Eden, a literal Adam, a literal Eve, or a literal serpent.
I believe Paul was true to the truth that was revealed to him.
I believe Paul didn’t have the revelation we have today.
I believe in Jesus Christ, the only son of God.
Shalom
Johnny