10. To the Corinthians the Spirit has Paul saying: “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’ . . .” (I Cor. 15:45).
Some evolutionary theorists, who want it both ways, are fond of arguing that the term “Adam” simply means man-in-general. Grant this, and from there anything is possible.
But that obviously does not fit the Spirit‘s view of the matter. He who guides Paul’s pen surely has in view a very specific person, “the first man . . . .” Not one among others; surely not one after others. Rather, this very specific man, Adam, the first man. Just Adam and none other. That is what first man means, doesn’t it?
A-I’s unique reality is reinforced by Paul’s (that is the Spirit’s) further comparison: “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit’” (I Cor. 15:45). That “last Adam” is of course the Christ. The Spirit points to a parallel which, in God’s providence, exists between this unique historical person-the Christ!—and that other unique historical person—the first man! And one is inclined to ask, what God has joined together, who will put asunder?
No one denies—or almost no one—that the Christ was a unique, historical individual. The theorist who tries to dissolve that “first man Adam” into some abstraction cripples the parallel structure: on this side the Christ and on that side . . . man-in-general? If the Christ be the unique, individual “second” of two persons, what can the “first” be but, in his own way, unique?
The reader will note that St. Paul is guided by the Spirit to quote Genesis 2:7, “Thus it is written . . . .” We are obviously being told that the Spirit wants the Church to take Genesis at what it says.
Let’s ask the evolutionary theorist if he believes that. This is not the only indication, of course, that the inspiring Spirit, like the Christ Himself, intends us to take Moses’ Genesis literally .
In the letter to Timothy already quoted, the Spirit is saying through Paul: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (I Tim. 2:13–14). What a great deal of Genesis 1–3 is confirmed in this brief sentence–from the creation of A-I, and Eve, to their Fall! That’s the way it was, by the Spirit’s testimony!
Still more, the Spirit carefully confirms the Mosaic account of the Fall as given us in Genesis; He has Paul saying: “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (II Cor. 11:3). How much farther astray, indeed, might thoughts be misled than down the devious paths of evolutionism?
But, observe how shocking, if not degrading, to “modern” ears! In what shreds would one’s “scholarly” reputation be if he were even suspected of flirting with a deceiving serpent! And here God the Holy Spirit is affirming through St. Paul the Genesis account of that talking varment! At this point the theorist who considers himself something of an adult thinker stands much as did Adam and Eve before the forbidden tree: to take God at His Word . . . or . . . ?
At a talking serpent the arrogance of “science” draws the line. Call that part of Genesis myth, or legend, or saga, or adapted to the immaturity of the human race , or borrowed from pagan cosmologies by whoever compiled (as some theories go) Genesis call it anything but what St. Paul is here inspired to call it with inescapable simplicity: a serpent, as recounted in Genesis, talked Eve into sin. What a painful option for an academic yuppie to take!
Scientists speak of the experimentum crucis, that is the crucial experiment on which a whole hypothetical construction hangs. Others speak of the “litmus test” to mean the same thing. That talking serpent serves the same purpose in Genesis 1–3, by presenting us with the options our first parents faced: take God at His Word, or fall!
So, reader, be sure that the evolutionary theorist who wants you to keep believing his testimony of loyalty to the Bible—has a satisfactory account of that beguiling serpent. Some try the glib evasion, of course, of saying that Paul was, after all, imprisoned by the myths of his time. That is an easy and convenient (and cheap!) way to substitute man’s ideas for the Bible’s—until one sees in Paul the inspiring Spirit, who is by no means imprisoned by time. And while the Spirit no doubt employed Paul in terms of the language available to him, it is blasphemous to hold that God the Spirit misled Paul into assertion contrary to fact. Just as, of course, to brush aside or dilute the Genesis account is no less to flout the Spirit.
11. The Spirit, then, clearly confirms the Genesis account of A-I.
He does so, also, by explicitly paralleling A-II with A–I.
We have already heard His Word from Timothy. There are others:
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22). Not only a parallel which falls apart if A-I be made other than Genesis presents him, but also another puzzle for evolutionary theory: not only is A-I the first man, but his Fall first opens history to death.
Shall we inquire of the evolutionist when death first entered his theoretical universe—and why!
As to the real universe, St. Paul leaves us in no doubt: “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin . . .” (Rom. 5:12).
First the man, that very first man—then Eve—then the Fall—and only then death! So it really was.
Is that how it is for the -ism and its devotees?
Don’t brush the question aside, friend. The first man was not made to die. And death gained access to human history only after A-I’s sin. If your theory has death hanging around prior to the advent of man, how does it account for that? Or, if death is natural to evolutionism, as one suspects it is, how account for the role which the Bible accords to sin in bringing death about?
To touch on Romans 5 is, of course, to enter upon Paul’s drawing out at large the underlying parallel between A-I and A-II.
And to drive that point home, the Spirit inspires Paul to declare, as we have already noticed, that A-I “was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5: 14). Some theorists who want to hide their sabotage of A–I extol the importance of A–II. “Of the Christ,” it is piously intoned, “I will never let go . . .” or some such bathos. To the childishness of unbelief it never occurs, apparently, that if A–I never existed, or was not a specific man, it would be untenable for God the Holy Spirit to be speaking of A-I as a “type” of A-II. That kind of faulty parallel would not even pass freshman rhetoric.
And Paul is inspired to say it again: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22). And again: “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being;’ the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (I Cor. 15:45). And yet again: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (I Cor. 15:47).
Now, it is obvious that the believer does not really need more than the Spirit‘ s assertion of Truth in Genesis-that is enough! Yet we are given the Spirit’s confirmation, and re–confirmation, and re-reconfirmation of the same Truth, as we see. I say, for the believer that is, as the Spirit knows, superfluous. Why then the repetition?
For the unbeliever, of course! How often the prophets represent God as extending the hand of grace, repeating the Word of invitation, shedding abroad the light of revelation that unbelief may at last forsake its childish pride for childlike belief. We observe it here, focused upon evolutionism, in the repetition, over and again, of the ordained harmony between A-I and A–II.
Observe yet another confirmation of the Genesis account: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust,” Paul says. Exactly as Genesis has it. Moses said it first: “. . . then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground” (Gen. 2:7). God repeats it Himself to a cowering pair: “. . . you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). Nothing about, “You came from animal ancestry, so what could I expect? etc., etc.” Nothing at all! How easy for God to have said, were it so, that man had simply not developed far enough. It’s what the Carl Sagan types would be thinking. But not so the Creator!
God tells it like it was, and is. Those who cannot hear have introduced an evolutionism which so relativizes social and personal morality that a whole civilization totters over the abyss.
Dust! The Psalmist reminds us of the same: “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). And what, then, does “He” think of dust–formed theorists strutting on their platforms, posturing before the cameras, corrupting the minds of children with their “dusty” accounts of how it all began!
The theme echoes throughout the Bible: God remembers the Genesis account of our origin; do we? How fine a figure does dust-made man expect to cut?
Nothing in the Bible even suggests that instead of dust God used some other living forms to evolve into man. Nothing at all! Though there are those who advance the peculiarly gross hypothesis that God interrupted the animal evolutionary spiral at some point to adapt two specimans into what could be called Adam and Eve! If one can believe that in order to bend Genesis to evolutionary fantasy then, as they say, one can believe anything—and it seems that some evolutionists do. But in sober fact, a talking serpent is reasonable by comparison. Check it out with the next evolutionary theorist you meet.
The Lord once observed that unbelief strains at a gnat and gulps down a camel (Matt. 23:24). What more apt description (and condemnation). and from what more authoritative source, of the theorist who chokes on Genesis 1–3 and gulps down all, or even a part of, the panorama of evolutionary faddisms?
12. In the well-known description of marriage, Jesus Himself confirms the unique individuality of Adam and Eve: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one?’” (Matt. 19:4–6).
Note not only the dominical affirmation of Moses’ account, but also our Lord’s emphasis upon “from the beginning.” If “from the beginning” means anything at all it means “nothing prior to.” Before this “male and female” no others. Man began as Moses reports. Hear Moses to hear the Lord!
13. The biblical confirmation of Genesis 1–3 could, of course, be extended. Though the believer has, as we have observed, no claim upon the Lord for confirmation of the Word which he ought to accept at first hearing, it is graciously given , setting before us all the unmistakable choice: the Word of God, or the words of man?
The reader might, if he wishes to pursue the subject, study J.P. Verstees’ Is Adam a ‘Teaching Model’ in The New Testament? And pursue in his Bible passages related to those cited above.
The Word will exercise, as we all well know, its own persuasion.
14. Ah, but what of all those fossils, all those drawings and models of prehistoric creatures, and the methods for dating bones, stones and stars?
Don’t we live in a “new” era, one in which science makes the Genesis account untenable?
If you are musing in this way, what do you think of this from Jeremiah, suggesting that the Spirit (of course!) foresaw evolutionary theorizing long ago:
“As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed; they, their kings, and their prophets, who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face.”
That’s the way it was rather long ago, it seems. Nothing so “new” about evolutionism after all. Unbelief did not wait upon Darwin to hypothesize trees and rocks into our ancestry. And God did not wait upon Darwin-and-company to condemn that either. But when will our “advanced” theorizers be ashamed, “they, their kings, and their prophets?”
Jeremiah goes on: “But in the time of trouble they say, ‘Arise and save us!’”
Sound familiar?
The prophet continues with a dire threat, which explains why our “new” era totters on the edge of disaster:
“But where are the gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah” (Jer. 2:26–28).
As apt to this moment as if written this morning, and as neat a description of the underlying assumptions, and terrible threat, of evolutionism as only the Spirit could reveal!
How long will it be before the Church at large declares that the prevailing -isms have no power to save?
But what, then, of all those fossils and specimens and brazenly touted tests for length of years out of which the evolutionists’ imaginations fashion so much? What are we to do with those?
Dear me, friend. What are we to do with them?
Why, nothing, of course.
The childish will have their toys. What fun, filling imagined zoos with snarling, growling, ponderously weird creatures. Do you suppose that if the “in” folk prefer scraps of bone and rock to Jeremiah and Genesis and St. Paul that anyone can enlighten them? If the childish prefer their games, who is to deprive them of what may look as attractive as did the fruit of the forbidden tree to A-I and wife—and perhaps for the same reason!
Let those who believe the Word walk with Genesis in hand, having an obedient life to be living, leaving a diet of fossils to those who have a stomach for it.
One day all will be clear, and meanwhile Genesis will see us through—thanks be to Him who breathed it!
The forms of unbelief turn out to be monotonously the same, as do those who proclaim them. That’s why Jeremiah fits today so neatly.
But be sure of this: The issue is one of destiny.
The burdens which evolutionary assumptions lay upon every aspect of our lives—moral, religious, pedagogical, social, political and economic—will bring down the Western world unless the Church once again preaches and teaches the reality and significance of the A-I–A-II axis upon which history moves into its future.
Looking ahead in the 1930s, the distinguished French Catholic thinker, Jacques Maritain, predicted that the combination of secular forces then gaining a strangle-hold on humanity would one day reduce mankind to the level of technical barbarism. He foresaw the time, of which Nazism was harbinger, when only those gifted with saintly perseverance could endure.
He died, a decade or so ago, without having found any ground for altering that fearful premonition. ·
Between the childlike in faith and the childish in pride hangs, humanly speaking, the fate of the humane life and the well-being of generations just beginning their pilgrimage.
But how could it be otherwise when the battle is between belief and unbelief!
Lester De Koster. a former Calvin College professor and editor of The Banner, lives at Grand Rapids, Michigan.