a real adam and eve

Evangelicals are now being pressed by other evangelicals not only to jettison the literal historicity of the creation narrative but also the historicity of Adam and Eve.  The first is just conceivable but the second seriously strains any integrity in biblical interpretation and seriously compromises the biblical salvation narrative.  A few blogs consider some of these issues (here, here, here , here, here, here, here, and here) both biblically and scientifically and are well worth a read.

where are you adam?

When God asked Adam in the garden where he was, it was not because he, God, did not know, but because Adam did not know?  It is the first question in the Torah, the shortest question in the Torah (in Hebrew apparently only one word),  and probably the most penetrating question in the Torah.  Adam answered with an evasion, and a pitiful evasion at that (I was naked… ).  God brushes it away like a gossamer thread.  But it is more than an Adam question.  It is an everyman question.  It is the existential question God asks each of us.

The question is, will our answer be honest – I’m lost – or as pathetically evasive as Adam’s?

the first lie…

Gen 3:2-4 (ESV)
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.

Interesting to note that the first lie was a denial of judgement.  It has been the primary and prevailing lie ever since.  Received wisdom says, if you are going to lie, then lie big; the bigger the lie, the greater its panache, the more likely it is to be swallowed.  Well this one was a whopper.  Perhaps that contributed to its success.

More importantly, it succeeded because it suited Eve to believe it; she liked the look of the forbidden fruit.  The most successful lies are those people want to believe.  Who does not wish to believe that there are no evil consequences of doing what one wants to do?  That there is no day of accountability, of reckoning, is a lie many still want to believe, and do (2 Pet 3).  But it doesn’t stop it from being a lie.

Believing it ain’t so, don’t make it so.

Gen 5:1-5 (ESV)
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

the world to come – heavenly or earthly?

Many of the blogs and books I read these days, when reflecting upon God’s future new heavens and new earth seem to promote two ideas, firstly, that the new heavens and new earth are mainly a return to Eden and secondly, that as believers we will inhabit the new earth.  Both these ideas I think need some qualification.

In her, in many ways good and helpful book, ‘The Epic of Eden’ Sandra Richter writes this:

‘So what is God’s final intent for humanity?  It is obvious from tracing the iconography of Eden through redemptive history, God’s original intent is his final intent.  Eden was the perfect plan, and God has never had any other…  In fact, we could summarize the plot line of the Bible into one cosmic question: ‘How do we get Adam back into the garden?’ (Pg 129)’

Now to be fair to Richter her discussion is more detailed than this.  She recognises that the imagery in Revelation of the final State is not simply drawn from Eden but from the New Jerusalem.  She explores the imagery of the city and some of its implications.  And she may well agree with much I am about to say.  Having said this, my fear is, that language like the above which as I say seem fairly common nowadays among evangelicals, may well mislead.  We are left with a sense that the new creation is just the old creation which had it continued unsullied by sin would have turned out.  ‘Eden’, she writes, ‘was the perfect plan’.  Eden was undoubtedly perfect but are we meant to think that Eden and the first creation was God’s ultimate and final plan?  We may ask was ‘Adam’ the ‘perfect’ plan?  Was ‘Adam’ God’s intention for humanity?  Did God’s final purpose reside in Adam?  Is new creation a return to ‘Adam’?

It seems that the answer must be negative.  Christ, not Adam, was God’s perfect man.  Christ, not Adam, was God’s plan.  It was never God’s plan to finally head up all things in ‘Adam’.  He always intended to head up all things in Christ.

Eph 1:3-10 (ESV)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God’s plan was not for a people ‘in Adam’ but ‘in Christ’.  This was his plan from before the foundation of the world.  His purpose lay not in Adam, the first man who ‘was of the earth and earthy’ but in Christ, the second man, who was ‘the Lord from heaven’ and ‘a life-giving Spirit’ (1 Cor 15).  It is true that Christ is ‘the Last Adam’ but he is also ‘the Second Man’.  Of course, continuity and discontinuity is involved here.  But the level of discontinuity and the contrast between Christ and Adam dare not be missed.

The same continuity and contrast must be applied to creation itself.  Creation in one sense longs for its full realisation. It is aware that due to the fall it is not what it potentially could be.  Romans 8 says

Rom 8:19-22 (ESV)
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

And so in one sense new creation does it would appear bring out the potentiality of the old.  Yet when we ask how this happens it seems to be by convulsive and radical change.  Creation seems to strain for a new birth through the death of the old.  As the seed must die so the old must perish.  Hebrews writes, quoting the OT:

Heb 1:10-12 (ESV)
And, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands;  ​​​​​​​​they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment,  ​​​​​​​​like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.”

Peter speaks similarly when he says,

2Pet 3:10-13 (ESV)
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

There is continuity, ‘they will be changed’, but the same phrase suggests too, radical discontinuity.  The change Paul tells us, speaking at least of our human bodies, is like that between a seed and a plant.  Paul writes,

1Cor 15:35-46 (ESV)
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.  So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.

Adam has given place to Christ, the natural of the old creation to the spiritual of the new.  Now spiritual does not mean ‘non-physical’.  The new creation will be physical (as was Christ in resurrection) but physicality seems to take on a dimension we really cannot grasp.  What does it mean to live in a spiritual universe?  What does it mean to be ‘glorified’?

Eden imagery is used to describe the new creation in Rev 22.  Yes there is continuity, but the imagery of Revelation is also intended to transcend Eden in its New Jerusalem imagery.  The new creation greatly exceeds Eden regained.I feel we must take care we do not reduce the metamorphosis of creation to something less glorious than it will be.

The danger of making new creation something perhaps too like the first creation also is seen in a tendency to insist that God’s people are physical and therefore will inhabit the new earth.  Now again, it is not so much that I think this may be wrong rather my concern is it is insufficient.  It is true that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’.  But it is also true that ‘our citizenship is in heaven’.  It is also true that ‘Abraham looked for a city…an heavely one’.  And yes, this probably implies a future belonging to the world to come and says nothing concrete about the location of the city.  Yet we must not too hastily locate it on the new earth.  We must put into our equation texts such as John 14.

John 14:1-3 (ESV)
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Jesus was going to heaven into the presence of God (who says physical glorified humanity cannot happily live in heaven?).  And he says he will return to take us there too.

Perhaps we need to take care that we do not dogmatize about the distinction between heaven and earth in the new creation.  We know little of what that distinction will be.  Here, even in an unfallen creation, there was a degree of distance between the Creator and his creature that would seem to be much less so in the new creation.  God walked with Adam in Eden in the cool of the day.  If, as many say, the first creation Eden  is imaged as a temple, then Adam is in a garden in Eden and not in the immediate presence of God.  It is in and through Christ that we become a spiritual people who enter the holiest and abide in God’s presence.  And so in the imagery of Revelation it seems as if in the spirituality of the new creation a greater intimacy exists between God and man and heaven and earth.  Thus we read,

Rev 21:1-27 (ESV)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God…   And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” …. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son…  Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal…  And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.’

Notice, the discontinuity with the old creation (it has passed away).  Notice the New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb, is ‘coming down out of heaven’.  John does not see it on earth.  It is ‘coming down’.  In the imagery of the vision perhaps we are to see the close intimacy between heaven and earth.  In a sense they are now one.  Certainly, God now dwells in the midst of his people.  In fact, as is often pointed out, the New Jerusalem, is a perfect cube.  In this it echoes the Holy of Holies; there is no temple in the city for the whole city is a temple, in fact it is the Holy of Holies.  God’s people now dwell with him in the place of greatest intimacy – the immediate presence of God, a spiritual people in the likeness of Jesus, and made so through his blood upon the cross.  It is a place of effulgent unimaginable glory.

Surely there is even yet a sense in which,

1Cor 2:9 (ESV)
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”

naked and unashamed

Our sinful lustful hearts find a prurient interest in nakedness.  The nakedness of another excites us for a variety of reasons.  It is not simply the sensual attraction of a naked body of the opposite sex that excites, which of course it does, perhaps especially for men, but what also improperly excites is the exposure of the person.  Nakedness exposes a person.  People and their bodies cannot be separated. To try to separate them is a Greek and Gnostic idea rather than a Christian one.  We are psycho-somatic beings, that is, we are body and spirit, and we are incomplete if one part is missing.  This means that in a real sense when we are bodily naked we are spiritually naked, our very being is exposed.

The Bible says a lot about nakedness.  One spiritual delight of a Brethren Breaking of Bread service is that often an unusual theme of Scripture that helps us to reflect as God’s people on the death of Jesus in a fresh way is explored.  This helps to make the communal meal all the more sharply focussed. We reflected on the biblical theme of nakedness on Sunday past. I thought I would share and expand a little some of the reflections brought (by Mike, a fellow worshipper).

Nakedness in an unfallen world was natural.  Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, and unselfconscious.  This is a reflection of their innocence.  They lived unself-consciously in paradisiacal simplicity and openness.  It was not simply that Adam and Eve were without sin, though this is true, they were without the ‘knowledge of good and evil’.   They had a child-like innocence.  Infants have such an unembarrassed naïvety about their nakedness.  In fact later in the Bible it is only children who are referred to in this way (Deut 1:29; Isa 7:15).  Adam and Eve lived in moral child-like innocence.  They did not have that independent moral self-knowledge. Such knowledge was the result of the Fall.  In fact, the Genesis narrative stresses the profound contrast the Fall occasions.  Immediately they eat the forbidden fruit that is ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ everything changes.  They immediately realise they are naked and are ashamed.  They sew fig leaves to hide their nakedness from each other and God.  Life has changed forever.  They now have what they craved, independent moral awareness but immediately realise it is not all that they hoped: unembarrassed innocence gives way to self-consciousness; paradisiacal simplicity gives way to social complexity; and transparency gives way to concealment.  The ‘knowledge’ coveted is not progress.

Today, naturists attempt to go back to a pre-fall Eden.  But there is no going back.  There is no route back to innocence.  The nakedness of the naturist is neither natural nor wholesome as in Eden; it is forced.  The naturist has not removed shame and embarrassment, merely stifled them.  Naturism or nudism is at best a self-deluding pretence and at worst a self-indulgent prurience.  Societal nakedness is no longer natural.  Adam and Eve, now sinners, but sinners still with a sensitive conscience, are ashamed of their nakedness and are desperate to be clothed.  Their own attempts at clothing were pitiful.  It is God in his mercy who gives them adequate clothing.  God will cover their shame and relieve their new found sense of vulnerability and exposure.

In a fallen world nakedness is often a proof of the judgement of God.  The God who in mercy provided clothing to Adam and Eve, in judgement exposes the nakedness of men. Nakedness is now the bereft and tragic human condition.

Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart” (Job 1:21)

Poignant powerful words to describe our existential vulnerability and exposure.

In future blogs we will  further uncover (excuse the pun) the story of nakedness in Scripture.