★★★★★ 5
Enns' view of Adam will eventually dominate in the Evangelical academy
Format: Paperback
For years and years on end, I have been fascinated with trying to make Adam and Eve line up with evolution. I took a bunch of positions that I knew were ad-hoc but I didn't know what else to do at the time. One thing I couldn't figure out was why Genesis 1-3 seemed to be completely symbolic, yet Paul seemed to interpret it so literally.
I read through Genesis 1-3 again and again and again. I picked up commentary after commentary. But the commentaries I read (other than Claus Westermann's-which is fantastic)seemed to make arbitrary jumps between interpreting the Adam story literally and symbolically. The attempts to literally interpret the story seemed to stem from a desire to stay faithful to Paul's reading of the story rather than from a desire to be faithful to the Genesis text. But shouldn't how Paul interprets the story be the final word on Adam for Christians? This is what The Evolution of Adam deals with.
Paul's interpretation of the story in Romans and 1 Corinthians seemed to be a strange re-reading of the story...one that is overly literal. A talking snake? God walking in the garden? Every good Christian knows God doesn't have a body. So why in the world did Paul read this story so literally?
It's this that Enns tries to answer. He shows us that Paul didn't intend to give us a historical critical exegesis of Genesis. Maybe Paul thought Adam was a literal person, maybe he didn't. This is beside the point. Enns shows that Paul was doing some pastoral reshaping of the Adam story along the lines of 2nd Temple Judaism to highlight the significance of Christ's death and resurrection. According to Enns' the "authorial intent" of Genesis 2 and 3 was of very little significance to Paul. Even if Paul knew (and there's good reason to believe he did) that Genesis doesn't indicate that Adam's sin has a universal effect on all humanity, he probably would have used the Adam story in the exact same way. Why? Because it was the best way to explain how Christ put Jews and Gentiles on an "equal footing."
For Paul, Christ came first. Anything that could help explain the significance of Christ, even if that meant reshaping OT testament passages from their original "authorial intent," was fair game for Paul. And as Enns shows, it was also fair game for Paul's contemporaries.
As Christians, we know we are sinners because we have a savior, not because Adam sinned.
In the words of world-renowned Patristics professor and Eastern Orthodox scholar, John Behr, "We should not begin with a claim to know ourselves as sinful and then find a savior who corresponds to what we think our problems are...Christ provides the diagnosis of our condition and simultaneously provides the remedy."
Enns' suggestions for the evolution debate are controversial among evangelicals, although they seem to be accepted by many Eastern Orthodox and Catholic academics today. Evangelicalism is a bit behind. Enns' book will provide for much discussion and will inflame reformed Evangenical fundamentalists like Albert Mohler. But his suggestions will ultimately be accepted by the majority of evangelical theologians in the next 100 or so years. I'm fairly sure of this.
Although I'm Eastern Orthodox, Peter Enns' book is thoroughly orthodox, excellently argued, pastorally sensitive and ultimately game-changing for the Evangelical world. And although it seems many Orthodox are already talking Enns' game, to my knowledge, no one has written a book on the subject that actually tackles all the sticky exegetical issues. So Enns' book transcends the Protestant/Catholic/Orthodox divide.
One thing Enns did leave out is what to do with the genealogies in scripture that mention Adam. If you are interested in a discussion of these, check out Daniel Harlow's article online entitled "After Adam: Reading Genesis in an Age of Evolutionary Science."
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Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2012
