Adam, the Long-Lost Relative

In one of my recent posts I glancingly refer to Genesis and evolution and the theological impact that is implied by reading the Creation Story through literary lenses. If evolution is true, then viewing the story of Adam and Eve as a documentation of literal, historical people and events can send us in a completely different trajectory than if we read it as a primeval morality tale.

One of the main objections that Christians have in eliminating the historicity of Adam is the resultant chaos it would cause with many of our most ingrained Christian doctrines; total depravity, the dominance of men over women, the condemnation of creation and the introduction of death and sin into the world. These themes are omnipresent, in one way or another, throughout orthodox, Christian theology.

So...if there is no Adam...there is no need for Christ...if there is no need for Christ..then there is no need for Christianity.

But how did we get here, theologically-speaking? Before Paul's exposition of Jesus as the new/last Adam inaugurating a new creation and a new paradigm and remaking the cosmos, where was Adam? He is absent from almost all of Old Testament scripture outside of Genesis. There are no veiled references to him. There are no Psalms that mention him. There is no hint of him anywhere, and there is even less of a hint, if it were possible, of Eve's existence.

Every once in a while, Eden gets a mention as a comparison to the good life in the prophets, but other than the brief invocation of a beautiful garden, the events that took place in the story and the main characters within it are largely absent.

That may not seem like a big deal. After all the Israelites had the book of Genesis, why do they need to keep referring to Adam and Eve? Well, it creates a void of religious thought in regards to human origins in Judaism.

The Creation is frequently referenced through the Sabbath, mirroring the tale in Genesis of God's six-day work week, with one day off to rest and enjoy his work, so there is always an echo of the Creation Story in the rhythm of Israelite life, but it is an echo that provides structure to life and to a theology of God as Creator of Life. There is no continuing echo from Adam in the Scriptures.

This seems strange when one considers how often Abraham, Jacob, and Moses find their way into the prophets, the psalms, and the histories in the Old Testament. How did someone who became so important to Christian theology fall through the cracks of ancient Jewish theology?

The answer is found in Paul. It isn't until Paul enters the scene that the Creation Story gets a fleshed-out theological treatment. Paul either believed in a historical Adam, or at the very least believed in the force of the image of a historical Adam, and that is where things get dicey, because Paul is the great explicator of Christian theology. If it weren't for Paul, there would be no direct comparison of Jesus to Adam and no theological dilemma in viewing Adam as a figurative person.

As a matter of fact, the only other source that links Adam and Jesus is the gospel of Luke, which ends Jesus' genealogy with "Adam, Son of God". This is also the same Luke who, according to Acts, traveled extensively with Paul, so we can't take Luke's reference as independent theologizing about Adam, and Adam's ties to Jesus, because it is likely that he received the idea from Paul, not from general Jewish consensus at the time.

Jesus refers to Creation in Mark 10:5-9:

5"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 7'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Other than that, there is no overt reference to the Creation Story and Adam and Eve.

There are frequently people who emphasize that Paul was not moving away from Judaism when he converted to Christianity and began his ministry as an evangelist and apostle. Yet, in the context of what Paul says about Jesus being the last Adam and that those who follow Jesus will be part of a new creation that supersedes the old creation and the old covenant, he is making a striking break with Judaism, because Judaism never believed that there was a need for a new creation. Their hope for a Messiah was firmly rooted in a hope for a historical solution to their persecution under the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans.

In many ways, Paul is making a theological end run on Judaism. He doesn't need to answer their criticisms, or justify Christianity in terms of Mosaic Law or Tradition, because he has already declared that the old world and the old way of life are dead, pushed aside by Christ; the new and perfect Adam. And we see Paul use this tactic in removing the commands of the Mosaic Law in Galatians and Romans. He declares that those ways are the old ways which have served their purpose, but which are no longer relevant.

Paul has found a long-lost relative in Adam, and a useful illustration for what he views Christianity to be about, a completely new age initiated by God.

I might add more to this later.....

Working Out My Theology

I've had several months to let my thoughts about annihilation and conditional immortality sink in. (posts about it here, here, here and here.) I've had to spend some time mulling this over, and seeing how it comes into play in my life and how it affects what I think, say and do.

It's been an interesting thought experiment.

One of the first things that happened was that I realized that old habits die hard. A friend of our family lost her elderly mother to age and sickness. In the wake of her death, while we were talking about how sick her mother had been before her death, I instinctively said,"Well, at least she's in a better place now. She's not struggling with sickness anymore." Immediately, I realized that I was saying something that I wasn't sure of any longer. Without a doubt I believed she was no longer suffering, but I wasn't so sure that she was conscious somewhere enjoying restored health and the perfection of life.

It gave me pause.

I continued to feel the impact of my new theology while at church. I share responsibility for teaching Sunday School at our church, and it soon became obvious that all of the children, between 2nd and 5th grade, had already formed strong ideas about hell and who was going there. During one of our lessons, which didn't mention hell at all, while we were talking about good and bad choices, the kids started discussing how they didn't want to go "down there". They animatedly began describing the people who were going "down there" and what it was going to be like....with sound effects and silly voices and pantomime. I reminded them that Jesus promises us eternal life and forgiveness for our bad choices and sins, and slowly pulled them back in the direction of the lesson, but my heart sank as I realized what we as parents, myself included, had already put in the minds of our children.

Because I am part of a community which doesn't necessarily believe what I currently do, I won't teach the children what my specific beliefs are out of respect for that community. However, I have changed the language I use, never referring to salvation as "going to Heaven", or "living in Heaven forever with God". I simply use the term Jesus used--eternal life. I talk about resurrection, having new bodies, and a new heaven and a new earth.....all completely Scriptural descriptions of salvation.

I wonder if that's enough, or if there will come a time when I need to speak openly about what I'm thinking. I don't think that I am quite there yet.

I got involved in the blog comments at dangerous idea, on a post about whether Catholics worship Mary and the saints, a subject which is probably the single biggest stumbling block I would have to converting to Catholicism, and halfway through the conversation I realized that I was arguing about whether Mary and saints could see, hear and respond to people's requests for help on earth.....and it was completely moot to me. Because I was pretty sure that humans weren't residing in a conscious spiritual state in between death and resurrection, arguing about what powers they did or didn't have was quite silly for me. I should have excused myself from commenting at that point.

Another consequence of this theological stance is that death has taken on a completely new meaning for me. It has paradoxically become both more tragic and less tragic in my mind. More tragic, because life seems so much more transitory and valuable. Without the comfort of thinking that those who have passed on are somehow "up there" looking out for us, or having a good time waiting for us to join them, life and death somehow suddenly seem more lonely, and more real, than before.

Death becomes less tragic once the traditional picture of hell is gone. While people may disappear into nothingness, never to exist again, at least the torturous image of eons of punishment dissipates. There is mercy to even the wicked in true death.

I'm not sure where this will continue to take me. Every now and then the implications of this view will pop up in unexpected, unpredictable ways, catching me off guard.

I'm not done figuring this all out, yet.

What's Theology?

My last post was trying to get at something that I've been thinking about for a long time, but never written about here. I realized that yesterday's post might not have made as much sense as it could have because I hadn't expressed where I was coming from.

Why am I so interested in theology as a hobby? I mean, there's no end of interesting subjects to obsess about and ponder. Why theology?

Theology is often defined as the study of God, or God's nature. That isn't quite an accurate definition. Theology is better defined as the study of what people believe about God and God's nature.

Because God isn't checking our papers, correcting us, marking certain answers wrong, we are left to rely on each other, as members of humanity, to self-correct our own papers. Theology is like one of those painfully annoying group projects you get assigned in high school or college; you have to work with people you don't necessarily like, who have different methodologies, and who you're unsure if you actually trust to get the work done. It's a collaborative process to create one unified project, one which nobody is ever 100% happy with, but which manages to meet the professor's requirements.

This is why theology becomes so complicated. The more time that passes, the more complex circumstances which call for explanations, and the more people who make contributions to theological thought, it all becomes integrated into an ever-expanding field of knowledge.

Modern Christians often think that theology is something which has its basis in Scripture; theology becomes the revealed nature of God given to select people in visions and dreams and spectacular miracles.

I think it's better to say that theology is the reconciliation of reality with what we believe about God.

On another blog, a post dealing with Job elicited a comment from a new Christian bemoaning the idea that the prologue of Job--which sets the stage for Job's story by relating a wager between God and Satan about whether Job could be made to curse God--wasn't a true and literal representation of what transpired in Heaven. The idea that the prologue was simply a metaphor was troubling to him.

In truth, it's probably better to think of the prologue as a satirical attempt to explain the suffering of innocent people. Because there is often no obvious reason why good people are made to suffer through heart-breaking events, the writer of Job has theorized a reason to explain the grim realities. We might not like his proposed theory that God likes to get into pissing matches with Satan, but it's a valid attempt to explain the nature and realities of life here on earth.....sometimes we suffer through no fault of our own and are given no good explanation from God.

That's theology, taking what is and trying to make sense of it in the context of a universe with God.

One commenter here, quite some time ago, mentioned that the early Old Testament Jewish opinion of God was that he was capricious. You couldn't quite trust him. He was one wily deity.

The more I thought about it, the more I came to see that reflected in some of the biblical stories. From a human point of view, God may very well seem capricious because life seems capricious. Things happen that don't make sense, or that seem unfair. Good does not always triumph over evil. Innocent people suffer at the hands of the wicked. The faithful aren't always rewarded.

Attributing confusing events to God's character, or trying to create an explanation that establishes part of God's personality, or "his ways" is a natural, human response....and everybody does it....all the time. However, much of what passes for doctrine is based on the exponential power of the "If, Then" caused by a single theological idea that seemed better than the other ideas offered as explanations.

The problem is that our theological explanations begin to take on a life of their own and paint very specific pictures of God which may, or may not, be truly reflective of Him.

So....when we get into a struggle between evolution and creationism, we are somewhat burdened with a greater task than our predecessors. We have a much more massive amount of information and theological thought to process than believers did 1,000 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 years ago.

The task of reformulation is not easy at any stage of theological progression. Jesus and the apostles struggled greatly to deliver a message that was very different than what the religious leaders of their day believed. The transition from a religion based on Law and Sacrifice to one based on Redemption and Indwelling was a seismic one. Overturning the weight of accumulated ideas about who God was and what He wanted didn't come easily.

That's where we are now in all of this.

We have built up a large tower of theological presuppositions which are causing us trouble as we try to assimilate what we believe about God and what we see in the observable universe.

It is not wrong to examine reality and attempt to reconcile it to our concepts of God. To stay stagnant, refusing to engage with the material universe is not staying faithful to theology or God. It is refusing to continue trying. It is refusing to participate in the tradition or our theological ancestors. It is giving up any attempt to know more about God and us.

Without living, ongoing theology, religion and relationship with God is dead.

God of the Possible--maybe

I just finished reading God of the Possible, by Gregory Boyd; termed on the cover as a biblical introduction to the open view of God.

So what is Open Theology? In a nutshell, it's the theory that God does not exhaustively ordain the future in limitless detail. Instead, certain events related to God are viewed as"pre-destined" while others are open to the possibilities of people with free will asserting their choices. This is in contrast with a more traditional view that everything that happens, happens for some God-appointed reason--the whole mysterious ways explanation for indiscernable situations.

I had read a few articles about open theology four or five years ago, but went no farther than that. It seemed like one of those debates about the nature of God that no one could actually know or settle with absolute certainty. I recall reading conservative theologians labeling it as heresy, a word that was too strong for the debate in my opinion.

After reading Gregory Boyd's book about the historic Jesus, I thought this one might be interesting. I must say that I was more than a little disappointed. It is written from a very simple perspective and seems quite repetitive at points. 169 pages could have been reduced to about 80 and still hit the high points. Also, Boyd frequently makes assertions that he does not back up with quotes. He puts in end notes, but those are pretty useless if you don't have access to the same books in your home or library. I do not believe that he's being dishonest so much as he has sacrificed thoroughness in an attempt to be accessible to general readers.

The open theology debate is really just a twist on the old dilemma of trying to reconcile an all-knowing, all-powerful God with the presence of evil in the world and the concept of free will. Do we have control over our own lives? If so, how much? If God knows everything that is going to happen, then why doesn't he stop suffering and evil? Why does he allow people to be born who will commit atrocities?

Openness proponents would say that God doesn't know that people will commit evil, but because they are free agents they have the ability to commit evil. God doesn't know ahead of time about these evil choices because until they are actually committed they don't exist and they don't have to exist. People might choose not to do evil.

That thought is a little unsettling...not the "not doing evil" part, but the God really not knowing part. If God really doesn't know everything, then how do we know that evil won't triumph in the end?

And yet, the other exteme--God knowing everything, in every way--isn't much better. A God who is ultimately responsible for evil in the world, even if it is only indirectly through the actions of people making bad choices is difficult to reconcile with the "God is Love" concept. Perhaps it's not so much the concept of an all-knowing God who does not intervene that is so troubling, but the all-powerful God who doesn't use His power to halt all the suffering with which we struggle.

Boyd tries to convey that God is all-knowing in regards to reality and pre-ordained events, but can't know about something that doesn't exist, such as a married bachelor(one of his examples).

After reading the book I was not convinced by Boyd's argument. He makes all sorts of very vague and shaky statements that fall short of his goal. While discussing the implications of open theology with regard to the uncertainty and fear that one might have in dealing with a God who does not foreknow the future, I cringed at one of his illogical conclusions:

First, how is the scariness of a view relevant to the question of whether or not the view is true? There is no reason to conclude that something is true to the extent that it conforms to our wishes. Indeed, the fact that the open view doesn't conform to what we might wish were true actually provides one more reason for thinking that it is true, for reality rarely confroms to our wishes. pg 154 [emphasis mine]

What? So scary implications don't affirm the truth of an argument, but not liking the argument somehow does? That is total, nonsensical tripe. This was by far one of the more egregious leaps of logic I came across, but Boyd tends to make dalliances with similar statements throughout his book. There is too much assumption and jumping to broad conclusions and not enough detailed examination of the issues for me to recommend the book as anything more than a simple intro to the open debate.

Having said all that, I would say that my disappointment in the book does not correlate with my feelings regarding free will and the openness of God. I don't believe in God's strict control over every aspect of His creation. While there are definitely a great deal of passages to assert God's sovereignty and ultimate power, there are also many passages in which we are shown a God who gives responsibility to humans. They must make choices and decide the path they will follow. They can be influenced, but are they ultimately responsible for their own actions and decisions.

any thoughts?

Brain Cramp

Last week I posted about flitting from subject to subject online, listing Karl Barth as one of the people I wanted to know more about.

In usual overachieving fashion I asked DH to reserve about 5 books on Barth, and by Barth, from the library for me to read through.

Wanting to warm up slowly, I read the skinniest one first; How I Changed My Mind, by Karl Barth; Introduction by John Godsey. It's a compilation of three essays Barth wrote over the course of thirty years--1928-1958. It was a good intro to Barth's personality and hinted at some of his views, but left many in sketch form.

I wanted to know more about what "specifically" he believed and taught. The Wiki article is brief and only outlines Barth's theology in the barest terms. Mainly, I was curious about what Barth had to say about the inerrancy of the Bible. I have slowly moved away from strict, literal inerrancy for various reasons, but wanted a more detailed analysis from a theologian to read through and measure my own thoughts by, sifting out problems I hadn't yet thought of. Barth, although not believing in strict inerrancy, firmly believed in Jesus, His Divinity, and position as the Revelation of God to humanity.

Intriguing combination...no?

I soon found out why the Wiki didn't have much about Barth, and also why I had never heard many people quote him in theological conversations, or been taught his premises:

Reading Karl Barth is extremely difficult.

After the first book, I plunged into On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion, by Barth. It came with a 29 page intro by Garrett Green which laid out some of Barth's points, explained the reasons for this new translation from Barth's German to English, and defined some of the terms. It was obviously an academic work, but I completely understood it.

Then....I actually started Barth's On Religion. Can I just say that my brain is still reordering itself? It has been interesting going, but I have found myself having to read and re-read paragraphs, and sometimes single sentences, just to make sure that I understood what was written. It's not so much that the writing is incomprehensible, so much as it is incredibly dense with information and the assumed knowledge of the reader--knowledge I only partially have.

That Barth character. He's intense. A single page will refer to ten different philosophers and theologians over the course of 300 years, mentioning movements, particular theses, and anything else relevant to Barth's big picture.

I feel totally pegged by a quote from Barth which came from the first book:

"Certainly we are all sorry that we could not make understanding and choice easier for our contemporaries, and especially for our American contemporaries who are always anxious to get the most simple and rapid courses of instruction!" pg 42 [emphasis mine]

This from a man who wrote 13 volumes--over 10,000 pages--of his theological masterwork, Church Dogmatics.

Guilty as charged. C'mon Karl, give me a break. You might call it simple-mindedness; I call it efficiency of mind!

I am determined to continue to try and decipher Barth, because I sense something larger in his work that I feel will be useful to me. However, I am realizing that to understand Barth's work it will be necessary to take a comprehensive approach to understanding the context of his arguments. That means a lot of digging around for me.

Maybe it will be my new hobby for a couple of months.

I'll let you know if my brain overheats and melts into a steaming pile of goo.