It was just as simple and settled as that in our childhood, long ago. You see, that's what we learned at home, at church, and at the Christian school. And there was no question about it, because that's what the Bible taught.

But today — well, that's a different story.

Kuitert on Adam and Eve⤒🔗

Listen, for example, to Dr. H. M. Kuitert, profes­sor of ethics at the Free University of Amsterdam. Kuitert's book, Do You Understand What You Read?, calls the historicity of Adam and Eve into question. The book was first published in the Nether­lands with more than twenty thousand copies being sold in a little more than a year. Kuitert writes:

That the Bible is time-bound occasions many questions about how it should be understood. It is to these questions that the rest of this little book is devoted. The Bible contains any number of images that witness to a time long past and to situations and customs that have become foreign to us. The entire lifestyle and culture of the Bible bear the stamp, from beginning to end, of a time when people experi­enced their world in a way different from our way of experiencing it...

For example, the biblical writer quite natu­rally tells of the firmament that God made (Genesis 1:6). But in our way of seeing things, there is no such thing as a firmament. The blue ex­panse that stretches out over our world is not a blue umbrella or cosmic dome; it is a light ef­fect, like the light effect of water, making it look green or blue. Now this, of course, is not an example that is going to create a great deal of misunderstanding. We can read about the firmament and go on reading without having missed the intention of the writer at all.

The same Bible writer tells us about the first man, Adam, who lived with his wife Eve in the Garden of Eden as the first married couple. But no matter how far we go back in history, we do not find any hint of a single, original married couple in a Garden of Eden. On the contrary, the oldest humanity that we have been able to find evidences of appears to be of a very primitive sort, hardly like the neatly portrayed people of Genesis. Now there are believing readers of the Bible who have no difficulty at all with the account of Adam and Eve, any more than they have problems with reference to the firmament. They insist that the living world in which the writer of Genesis expresses himself as he proclaims God as the creator was a world in which a first married couple was as much a natural part as was a firmament. Both elements fit the picture people had of the world at that time...

But many devout Bible readers feel that the question of Adam is a different kind of question than the question of the firmament. In their judgment, anyone who thinks the question of Adam is the same kind as the question of the firmament misreads the Bible. Thus, this single example places us in the center of the problem of how to interpret the Bible. Which reader has understood what he has read — the Christian who says that Adam and Eve have the same reality as the firmament, or the Christian who says that while the firmament is not a literal firmament, Adam and Eve are literally the first married couple of the human race?Do You Understand What You Read? pp. 36, 37

Kuitert's question is significant and revealing.

The historicity of Adam and Eve are obviously under attack from those who profess to be Reformed.

Part of a Pattern←⤒🔗

This calling into question of the historicity of the opening chapters of Genesis, of the account of Adam and Eve, of the serpent, and of the fall, is obviously part of a pattern — something that bodes no good for the future of the historic Christian faith. The departure of Kuitert and his followers from our con­victions of long standing about these matters is by no means an isolated phenomenon.

To call attention once again to what is happening today with respect to the hermeneutical question, or the interpretation of Scripture, may be thought by some to be superfluous. There is nothing that Satan, the arch-enemy of the truth, would rather have men think. Already in Paradise, in the form of a serpent, Satan made a wedge and scored a victory by subtly introducing an apostate hermeneutics when he asked, Yea, hath God said...?

The interpretation one makes of Scripture, not only in its opening chapters but throughout, is crucial. It is precisely at this point that conservatives or evangelicals and liberals or the moderns come to the crossroads and a parting of the ways. As one writer recently observed, the issue is ultimately as simple as this: one will find himself either on the side of Jesus Christ and say, Thy Word is truth; or on the side of Pontius Pilate and say, What is truth?

One of the first principles of sound hermeneutics is that we are always to compare Scripture with Scripture if we are to read and interpret the Bible aright. In other words, there is no better commentary on the Bible than the Bible itself. However, the pattern that is emerging with increasing clarity in our time is a reading and interpretation of Scripture by comparing it with man's reason, his findings in the laboratory, and even the apodictic pronounce­ments of a pseudo-science, instead of the other way around.

That the repudiation of Adam and Eve as histori­cal persons is part of a growing pattern is documented by a recent book, The Gathering Storm in the Churches, by Jeffrey K. Hadden, professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. From a 1965 survey or poll of the clergy of six major Protestant denominations, Dr. Hadden reports certain significant findings about the matter we have in mind. Ministers polled included "a 'random' sample of parish clergy and the entire population of campus clergy" of the following denominations: Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyte­rian, American Baptist, American Lutheran, and Missouri Synod Lutheran.

Concerning the statement, "Adam and Eve were historical persons," following are the percentages of those who were in agreement: Missouri Synod Lutheran — 90; American Lutheran — 49; American Baptist — 45; Methodist — 18; Presbyterian, U.S.A. — 16; Episcopalian — 3.

Another related statement in Dr. Hadden's poll was the following: "Scriptures are the inspired and inerrant Word of God not only in matters of faith but also in historical, geographical, and other secular matters." Percentages of the clergy agreeing with this statement were as follows: Missouri Synod Lutheran — 76; American Baptist — 33; American Lutheran — 23; Methodist — 13; Presbyterian, U.S.A. — 12; Episcopalian — 5. Also other interest­ing results of Dr. Hadden's poll are provided in his book (The Gathering Storm in the Churches)

It would be especially interesting to know how the percentage of the clergy of our own denomination would compare if we had been included in Dr. Hadden's survey. Because we do not live in a vac­uum, we ought to pray fervently and also be on our guard lest this new hermeneutics (really not new at all!) takes its toll among us also.

Jesus, Luke, and Paul←⤒🔗

There should be no doubt that if Adam and Eve were not historical persons who once lived in a literal Paradise, then the plain language of Scripture is no longer trustworthy, and that also a long line of others before us have been badly deceived by this language of the Bible with its meaning so obviously on the surface.

Most serious of all is the fact that then our Lord himself was in error when He accepted the Genesis account of Adam and Eve at its face value. What did Jesus mean — if not that Adam and Eve were literal persons in Paradise — when He said:

But from the beginning of the creation, male and female made he them. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife ... What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.Mark 1:6-9

Can we in good faith come to any other conclusion than this, that Jesus ac­cepted the Genesis account of Adam and Eve as lite­ral history?

That the reality of Adam as a historical person is being called into question or denied is so serious also because it tampers with the truth of the genealogy of Christ as it is recorded in Scripture. If Adam was not a real person, then we can no longer put stock in what Luke tells us about the Savior's lineage as follows:

And Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat ... the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.Luke 3:28-38

Finally, if Adam and Eve never lived as real per­sons, what happens to Paul's teaching about all men being lost in Adam and of all believers being saved in Christ?

The first Adam, as the head of the covenant of works, and Christ, as the head of the covenant of grace, appear side by side in Scripture. How can we deny the existence of the one and at the same time cling for our salvation to the existence of the other? Paul writes about this as follows:

For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many.Romans 5:15
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.1 Corinthians 15:22

Adam and Jesus appear side by side in Scripture as it unfolds the marvelous story of sin and grace. These two stand or fall together. God's revelation is an unbreakable whole. The rejection of any one part of it eventually leads to the loss of all of it. That price is too high to pay!