Finding Adam: A Layman’s Interpretation of Genesis

Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
Genesis 3:9

Preface

When I first read the Book of Genesis many years ago, I did it out of scientific curiosity. I was an atheist who believed all religions were superstitions. But, I was very curious why many otherwise highly intelligent human beings believed in the existence of God. So I attempted to examine faith on the scientific principle of reproducibility. If I can repeat what a normal Christian does that leads him to his belief, and produce the same result, I would consider the belief rational. As an experiment, I not only read the Bible, but also prayed to the Unknown God. (I reasoned that I had nothing to lose. In hindsight, I can only agree with C.S.Lewis, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”)

Because I first read it without any knowledge of existing doctrines in the Church, I tend to interpret the Bible solely based on personal judgment. Consequently, my exegesis lacks the depth, rigor and richness of classical Christian theology, but I hope to avoid preconceived notions that may be indefensible. I welcome anyone who is willing to point out my mistakes in interpretation or any logical errors in thinking.

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
Genesis 1:3-5

What’s In a Day?

The word of God creates the days in Genesis 1. They consist of darkness and light, either co-existing or alternating. Divine command, not any physical entity, determines the duration and advance of a day. God speaks, and there is a new day. It may be misleading to say that the Lord created the world in (for lack of a better word) six days. Because the days and time itself are His creation, and He is not bound by time.

A day as such is not necessarily the 24-hour period of the earth’s rotation relative to the sun. For the “two great lights”, commonly understood as the Sun and the Moon, didn’t come to being until the fourth day. Without rotation, a day can extend indefinitely. For instance, a day is literally a year long at the North and South Poles, with six months of darkness followed by six months of light.

God commanded the observance of the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. “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”(Ex. 20:11). He also commanded the observance of the Sabbath Year, and seven Sabbaths of years, and the year that follows the forty-nine years, the Jubilee (Ex. 23, Lev. 25). This pattern of expression suggests that what is significant is not the length of each day, but the consummation of days, and the relation of the seventh day to the previous six as a whole. Moreover, for six days, there are both darkness and light, but on the seventh day, there is no darkness. This suggests that the seventh day signifies a reality different from the preceding six.

The Primacy of Man

Some have used the seeming contradictions in the accounts of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2 to argue that we shouldn’t take these accounts literally. I think we can harmonize the two accounts without any loss of their literal and metaphorical meaning.

Firstly, Genesis 1 follows the order of time, Genesis 2 the order of priority. This is why days are clearly enumerated in the former, but not in the latter. In order of time, man is created at the end, as the culmination of Creation; in order of priority, man comes first, and everything else follows, as they are created for the sake of man.

Secondly, Genesis 1 depicts the Creation on a grand cosmic scale, “For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm”; Genesis 2 depicts the Creator’s relation to His Creation on an intimate personal level. “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 being.”

Thirdly, according to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of effects which might otherwise result from intelligence and nature. Since what is per se is prior to what is incidental, intelligence and nature are prior to spontaneity and chance. Accordingly, Genesis 1 is an enactment of divinely ordained principles of nature in a time series; Genesis 2 reveals the timeless counsel and intelligence of God. Two accounts of Creation show emphatically that Adam came to existence by the determined purpose of God, not by chance.

The Personhood of Adam

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Psalm 139:14-15

Some evolutionists argue that Adam cannot be a real person because there was never a time in the history of the Earth when only one person existed. If the origin of species is the result of random mutation and natural selection, it is highly probable that many individuals of a new species have emerged from such a process in the same time period.

From a theistic perspective, however, I believe what causes Adam to come into being is not natural selection, but divine election, not random mutation, but free volition. God “upholds the universe by the word of his power”, and not one sparrow “will fall to the ground apart from” Him: The continual existence of the earth, of our living environment, of man and his free volition, all are sustained by the Will of God. On the one hand, there is no generation or origin of any species, no change or mutation, no matter how minute, apart from His Will, for He is the Creator; on the other hand, the creature has a choice in what s/he ultimately becomes. [1]

One prominent theme throughout the Bible is “Immanuel”, meaning “God with us”. God desires to enter into a covenantal relationship with man and dwell among man. What makes Adam first and unique is not his physical or genetic makeup, but his spiritual relation to his Creator. Adam comes from dust, but he also bears the Image of God. For God has chosen Adam to bear His Image and have fellowship with Him. For this reason, among many others, I believe Adam is a real person, not a symbolic representation of mankind, although he is also that in an important sense. For only a real person can enter into a relationship, and only a real person can break the covenant of trust, as Adam did in the Garden of Eden.

Notes:

^1. Just as every choice each individual makes in life determines what kind of person s/he ultimate becomes, so in the formation of the genetic sequence of each individual, each base in the sequence is a choice, which cumulatively determines what the individual is, and which species s/he belongs to. As Origen posits in his work On First Principles, free choice of will is the reason why there is a wide diversity and gradation of beings in the world.

Related Posts:

• On the World as a Stage: II. The Conception of Time