It is time for me to resume my juxtaposition of C. John Collins’ Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care and Peter Enns’ The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins. I paused for a while, but the previous twenty (!) posts can be accessed through this portal here.
In parts 12 and 13 I surveyed Collins’ reading of Second Temple Jewish literature as it discusses Adam. Now it is time to do the same with Enns. Collins seems to be convinced that Adam’s appearance in this literature is further support that Paul believed something like the traditional view of Adam and therefore we ought to do the same. Enns comes from a different angle. He seeks to show how the worldview and hermeneutics of that time are different from our own. Paul is different from us and he lived in their world, not ours. Other Jewish interpretations of Adam don’t establish his historicity. Rather, they establish Paul’s context. As Enns writes: “However much he was guided by the Spirit of God to proclaim his gospel, as Christians confess, he was guided by the Spirit not as an empty vessel but as a first-century Jew (Kindle Locations 2254-2255).” Also, “Paul engaged his Scripture against the backdrop of hermeneutical conventions of his day, not ours, and we must understand Paul in that context (Kindle Locations 2296-2297).”
Enns discusses the Jewish worldview and where Paul fits, including ideas like a threefold heavenly realm and other aspects of ancient cosmology. Paul is an ancient and he views the universe as an ancient. Therefore, we should not expect scientific accuracy from Paul regarding matters of science, human origins, cosmology, and so forth.
Enns writes, “It is my experience that Christians by and large have little trouble with what I am saying here in principle, but all bets are off when this logic is applied to Paul’s understanding of human origins—which is where his take on Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 comes into the picture (Kindle Locations 2281-2283).”
This is true: we are OK with Paul telling us the truth through a fallible cosmology, but Christians tend to be more reserved when it is suggested that he did the same through a fallible anthropology.
Next, I will share Enns description of Jewish hermeneutics post exile and Paul’s interpretive paradigm.
October 18, 2012 at 10:40 am
I don’t hide my disdain for critiques that appeal to relativism, on the grounds I believe the foundation for biblical truth is ‘objective truth’. Whether I am a poor purple stone-age man or a modern white middle-class career woman, two plus two is four whatever my perspective. This is objectively true.
Whether Adam and Eve existed, or not, is not a function of some subjective lens. It is either objectively true, or it isn’t. What is a function of the some subjective lens is how we assess evidence for their existance AGAINST our assessment of the veracity of scientific THEORY (which itself is subjectively voguish).
Argument 101 says that ‘a valid argument may have false premises and a false conclusion’ just as it says ‘a valid argument does not rely on the truth of falsity of it’s premises but the validity of its logical form (Wikipedia repeats this as something like: “An argument form is valid if and only if all arguments of that form are valid.”)
Let’s suppose Paul’s view of anthropology is all wrong, and reflective of cultural ideas, making his premises invalid, does that mean his conclusion MUST necessarily be false? NO, the only way Paul’s conclusions must necessarily be false is if the form of his argument is INVALID. So, in looking at Paul’s anthropology, is Enns looking at the validity of Paul’s logic or his premises?
Let’s assume Pauls premises (about Adam and Eve) are wrong, culturally biased, but his logic VALID, that means there is a necessary relationship between the truth of the premises and conclusions. If Paul’s premises are invalid, but his logic valid, his conclusions (about Christ) must be invalid. So why would Enns spend time establishing Paul’s premises as invalid when the net effect is to undermine the validity of the bible?
Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps faith in science can be strengthened, and faith in the bible weakened with one stone, all by undermining Paul’s premises. The problem is that science itself is based on the fallacy of ‘Affirming the Consequent’ so we have no guarantee about the truth if its claims. So we’ll potentially throw out valid logic, valid conclusions at the whims of invalid logic and questionable conclusions. Enns’ apparent line of thinking is fruitless.
Sometimes I wish more highly qualified (well-known) academics would invest time understanding the basics principles of classical rhetoric and logic. Or perhaps, I should wish the rest of us would so we could ridicule those (academics) who didn’t.
October 18, 2012 at 7:11 pm
Why would Collins need to support the idea that Paul believed something like the traditional view of Adam. Nobody I’ve read thinks otherwise. The problem is his conclusion, that because Paul thought Adam was historical that we should also. There is a lot of things people in the 1st cent. thought that we now were not true.
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