Adam And Eve - Just An Allegory?

[ByFaithAlone]

 

 

 

Somehow you keep forgetting that both Jews and Christians held the view that Genesis was allegorical at this time. Could you stop ignoring them?

 

 

I wouldn't give two hoots for any "church father" who didn't believe in a literal Genesis. A literal Genesis is foundational to the rest of Scripture.

 

 

And the simple fact that Jesus adhered to a literal Genesis is enough to bury the allegorical crowd.

 

 

 

This is an a priori assumption on your part that Jesus viewed Adam as literal when he discussed the idea of Adam and sin. 

[Mr. Nice Christian]

Even if Jesus did refer to a literal Adam, doesn't necesarrly mean that the entire creation story in Genesis is meant to be literal.

 

And i know that some (though not all) Theastic evolutionists who do believe this, they believe there was some type of historical Adam and Eve even though they believe that much of Genesis is intended to be an allegory.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Mr. Nice Christian

[Guest]

....As to the latter I find it bizarre. I can't imagine an atheist talking about the Bible being inspired at all as I am. I certainly would not have spoken anything like I am now when I was an atheist. So, I will ask you to be specific. What exactly about my way of speaking do you find startling.....

 

~

 

I Find It Bizarre

 

And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, Deuteronomy 34:10

 

That A Follower Of Christ

 

It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father. John 6:45-46

 

Would Work So Hard To Mock And Deny The Words Of LORD Jesus

 

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7

 

Given To Us Through Grandfather Moses

 

But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. Exodus 34:34

 

~

 

Believe

 

Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. Psalms 119:160

 

And Be Blessed Beloved

 

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Deuteronomy 11:18-19

 

Love, Joe

[Guest shiloh357]

 

Literal View of Genesis

 You hold that the creation account was historical. Defining historical as something factual that occurs in the past, this can only lead me to believe that a YEC view must be held. Humanity must be regarded (based on the ages of the people in the Bible) as under 10000 years old.

 

Whether one holds to YEC, OEC isn’t relevant.  That is another matter, altogether.  We are not talking about the age of the created order.  What is germaine to the topic at hand is the historicity of the claim.  OEC do not hold to humanity as 10,000 years old and yet take a literal biblical view of the creation account.  So your argument that a literal view must be YEC doesn’t hold up.

 

These are historical and scientific claims. As it happens, both on a scientific and historical level, these opinions have no weight. No historian or scientist in his right mind would contend that the earth and humanity itself is under 10000 years old. It would be the height of folly to make such claims when we have bones that can be accurately dated to an older age. Simply put regarding Genesis as historical disregards the facts that we see in nature. Unless God is intentionally trying to deceive us (something I do not believe to be a part of his nature) I see no reason to hold Genesis as historical and literal.  

 

Again, the age of the earth is not at issue in this debate.  The Bible makes no age claims, so to assume a literal, and historical of the text reading MUST entail a YEC model is simply incorrect. 

 

If anything the account of creation in Genesis is a theological account in addition to being historical.   The creation account in Genesis answers the questions of  “Who,” and “Why.”   It does not answer the questions of “How,” and “Why.”    A theological account does not have to obey the rules of modern scientific precision in order to be true and factual.

 I will not address your list of premises as I have suffiently addressed them above and will repeat the same argument over and over. 

 

 

Regarding the Church Fathers

 

Somehow you keep forgetting that both Jews and Christians held the view that Genesis was allegorical at this time. Could you stop ignoring them?

 

I am not ignoring them at all.   I simply do not use what other people believer as a bassis for how I arrive at theological truth.  I have learned not to trust the early Church fathers as they had some very questionable theological positions as well some that are downright heretical.   They are a very poor standard against which to measure proper theology.

Just because other Chrisitans and Jews held to a particular view, doesn’t mean they were right and we are under some obligation to follow in their footsteps.

 

Regarding canon, you hold that the NT canon is older than the 4th century. This is just wrong. Canon did not exist in a codified form until the early 4th century. Granted there were lists of potential NT canon earlier from individual scholars but NT canon was not codified until the ecumenical councils and possibly the first Council of Nicaea.   

 

The canon may not have been codified but the canon has always existed since it was first penned by the apostles.  The early church did not determine the canon.  They discovered the canon.  They were led by the Holy Spirit inspite of their theological and doctrinal errors.  

 

 

Regarding the relevance of discussing the Church Fathers, I would contend that it is logical to hold to the following premises 

(1) The apostles held to beliefs regarding the OT similar to Christ 

(2) The apostles would teach these OT views to the ones they accounted and form their own disciples 

(3) The vast majority of people who learned directly from the apostles held to an allegorical view of Genesis and was consequentially expounded to future generations

(4) It is reasonable to hold that the apostles most likely held to these allegorical views.

 

It is rather presumptuous of you to contend that everything taught by the early church fathers was taught to them by the disciples. It is also presumptous of you to assume that the apostles were the only people who influenced the theology of the early church.

 

The problem is that the apostles went all over the world; the only apostle we know of that had any direct connection to the early church fathers was John.  Most of them were martyred before the end of the first of century or just after the end of the first century in other lands.  

 

From what source and upon what authority do you claim that the allegorical view of Genesis, as opposed to a literal history was the view of the apostles??    

 

P.S. How in the world do you think Martin Luther is a Church Father? This somewhat explains your confusion in regard to this issue. 

 

I wasn’t including Martin Luther because he was a church father.  I included him to show how the wicked influences and the “allegory” of the early church fathers poisoned theology down through time.  Calvin also said some very anti-Semitic things, as well.  The poison of the anti-Semitism  of the early church fathers reached down through history culminating in the Holocaust and the final solution.  Hitler believeed he was finishing the work started nearly 1,700 years prior at the Council of Nicea. 

 

The allegorical method employed by the early church father created a theological morass of virulent racism that viewed the Jews as the objects of God’s contempt.  What happened is that ancient Christians projected their anti-Semitism upon God and read it into the Scriptures, which led them allegorize Jerusalem and Israel in the OT to be about the Church and not about Israel or Jerusalem or the Jews.  All of the blessings God pronoucned upon Israel was really meant for the Church and that Israel only served as an allegorical OT reference to the Church.  Of course they had to be selective about how they applied that allegorical method so as not to include the church in God’s rebuke of Israel in several places.   So the allegorical method can be highly selective, arbitrary and subjective.   It is employed by the early church fathers where it suited them and didn’t really comprise a very respectable approach to the Bible.

 

 

A Priori Assumptions and Begging the Question 

 

Your arguments all assume that the writers of the NT held to the literal view of Genesis. For this you provide no justification. You make this a priori assumption and use it to disregard other arguments. This is simply fallacious. 

 

This goes to an imporant part of literary analysis.  If I read a text, in this case a historical narrative, and there are no internal indicators that the author is telling a fictional story the default view of that text must be literal.  I do not have permission to pencil a figurative meaning to the text.   I must stick with what the author has in view. 

I don’t read the Lord of the Rings the same way I read the Bible.  We intuitively know the difference between a historical narrative that is meant to be understood as real history an the fictional writings of J.R.R Tolkein and other authors of fiction.  “Once upon a time…”  is usually a pretty good tip off.

 

The Bible has many types of literature and we do a lot of damage to the Scriptures when we start mixing genres and misassigning them. 

If we start treating proverbs like promises, if we start treating historical stories as doctinral, we run into even more problems.  What if we created a doctrine of marriage based on the story of Isaac and Rebekah?   Most folks would never get married.

 

You are taking an historical narrative and supplanting its historicity with allegory and if anything it shows that you don’t have a firm grip on how allegory works.   If it were an allegory then why don’t we have ONE shred of Scripture that tells us what it was an allegory of??   Why would the author create an allegory and then not tell us what it is he wants us to learn from it???  That is what you are missing.   You can’t just call it an allegory without any scriptural corroboration on that claim.

We would expect the author to say:

•  Adam represents “A”
•  Eve represents “B”
•  The serpent represents “C”
•  The Tree of Life represents “D”  And so forth. 

But we don’t have that from the author of Genesis, nor do we have that from the NT authors, either..  All we have is you assuming that the apostles who penned the NT had an allegorical view on Genesis because you are making the priori assumption that everything the early church fathers wrote was result of what they allegedly learned from the apostles.   The one making the priori assumptions is you.   You are making a lot of assmed claims that you have, up to this point, not provided one shred of evidence for.

[Guest shiloh357]

You're once again assuming what you need to demonstrate- that God inspiring these people means that God didn't allow the understandings of these writers to into the content whatsoever. That's pure assumption on your part with no support.

Their understanding as human beings would not have rproduced a Bible that has a God who is eternal (no beginning nor end), all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere present, holy, sinless, sovereign, and possesses a special love for humanity.  

 

Their understanding would not have allowed a woman to be the first witness to the resurrection of Jesus, much less be the first person to tell the male apostles because the testimony of women was considered unreliable.  Human beings left their own vices would not have written a religious book that stands completely opposite the conventional wisdom of that part of the world at that time in history.  They certainly would not have created the concept of salvation by grace through faith, if they were writing from their own understanding.

 

As to the latter I find it bizarre. I can't imagine an atheist talking about the Bible being inspired at all as I am. I certainly would not have spoken anything like I am now when I was an atheist. So, I will ask you to be specific. What exactly about my way of speaking do you find startling? 

That you would even question the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible at all.   You are not at all dissimilar from unbelievers who come to this board who claim that they were once believers.  They use what little understanding of the Bible they have and make the same arguments you do.  You are not the first person to come on this board making the same arguments you are making.

 

[Guest shiloh357]

Even if Jesus did refer to a literal Adam, doesn't necesarrly mean that the entire creation story in Genesis is meant to be literal.

 

And i know that some (though not all) Theastic evolutionists who do believe this, they believe there was some type of historical Adam and Eve even though they believe that much of Genesis is intended to be an allegory.

The entire NT refers to the events in the Garden as literal, not just Jesus.  Theistic Evolution is a very sad joke.  Anyone claiming to be a theistic evolutionist might as well claim he is also an atheistic Christian.  Both are equally oxymoronic.

[Guest shiloh357]

 

 

 

Somehow you keep forgetting that both Jews and Christians held the view that Genesis was allegorical at this time. Could you stop ignoring them?

 

 

I wouldn't give two hoots for any "church father" who didn't believe in a literal Genesis. A literal Genesis is foundational to the rest of Scripture.

 

 

And the simple fact that Jesus adhered to a literal Genesis is enough to bury the allegorical crowd.

 

Right on!

[Gandalf]

 

 

 

Somehow you keep forgetting that both Jews and Christians held the view that Genesis was allegorical at this time. Could you stop ignoring them?

 

 

I wouldn't give two hoots for any "church father" who didn't believe in a literal Genesis. A literal Genesis is foundational to the rest of Scripture.

 

 

And the simple fact that Jesus adhered to a literal Genesis is enough to bury the allegorical crowd.

 

Clearly not! In fact the "crowd" seems to be increasing rather rapidly.

[enoob57]

Ex 20:8-11

8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor

your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor

your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth,

the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath

day and hallowed it.
NKJV

God defined the day concept to Moses and should end all questions about time periods....

A literal 24 hour day God defined here!  Love, Steven

[ByFaithAlone]

I think the three main points of the contentions are still with us. 

 

In regards to the historical literalism ideas, I think D-9 has accurately displayed why I think there is a problem with saying that this is not a scientific claim. If you claim Genesis in combination with the genealogy of Christ to be purely historical in nature then it is only reasonable to say that humanity is under 10000 years old as a historic fact simply based on the presupposed historic ages of Adam and his presupposed historical descendants. Based on the historical view held by Shiloh, Cobalt and Tinky it would be unreasonable to old an OEC view and still claim Genesis and the genealogy of Christ as historic in nature. Once again I would like to simply point out that the YEC view is simply unscientific and unhistorical with stacks of evidence proving not only and old universe but also human civilization that existed well before 4004 BC (if we are to use the Bishop's calculations). Thus I think the premise argument I presented still presents a  problem to those with the historical view of Genesis as they make historical and thus scientific claims (as age, etc are determined by science in addition to historical/archaeological research). 

 

In regards to Shiloh's comments regarding the Church Fathers, it would be presumptuous to assume that every view that the Church Fathers held was directly from the apostles. However, as you have noted before, the allegorical Genesis idea is important as a theological question at the very basis of the faith as it raises questions regarding the nature of the Fall (many of which you brought up). Also we know that the issue of an allegorical Genesis was a topic of discussion in both Jewish and Christian theological circles. Philo and other Jewish contemporaries held and expounded these views. I think it would be unreasonable to say that this prominent view was not discussed by the early disciples. If it was truly heresy, you would see it be denounced by disciples of John such as Polycarp and his followers which included Ireneaus but in fact we see the opposite. Furthermore, the theological school in Alexandria started by Mark the Apostle. Note that Alexandria was the home of Philo, the Jewish scholar who was noted for his support of the allegorical view of Genesis. Athenagrous and Clement of Alexandria were some of the first to be recognized theologians from this seminary, taught by those who had been taught by Mark. If Mark had viewed his contemporary Philo as heretical, why wouldn't this have been stamped out? Why didn't John say anything to Polycarp regarding this important issue? It seems unreasonable to assume these issues, so important and discussed often my writers of that day did not deserve at least one sermon or mention by the apostles. After all, how much effort would it have taken for the apostles to declare this obvious "heresy" as you put it. 

 

In regards to a priori assumptions and begging the question, I think you sink your own ship here. You say, "We intuitively know the difference between a historical narrative that is meant to be understood as real history an the fictional writings of J.R.R Tolkein and other authors of fiction." This intuition is derived from your personal views, not based on historical precedent or scientific reasons. This is the a priori ideas I am talking about. You have an intuition, an assumption, that Genesis is literal and historical and for that reason you cling to the view and say that Scripture supports it.

 

In regards to your claims that I make a priori assumptions, I used to be a YEC like yourself when I was much younger (10 or 11). I held to my views a priori, not accepting evolution, the Big Bang or much of science in general. During my teen years I began examining the scientific and historical evidence for both sides and found that YEC had no support and evolution did (In that time I also became an atheist however as is evidenced, I have since returned to Christianity). So, no I would say that my views have not been a priori but rather based on what I believe to be best supported by the facts.