The Escape
- One of the prisoners then escapes from their bindings and leaves the cave.
- He is shocked at the world he discovers outside the cave and does not believe it can be real.
- As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was wrong.
- He begins to understand his new world, and sees that the Sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning
- He see’s that his former life, and the guessing game they played is useless.
The Return
- The prisoner returns to the cave, to inform the other prisoners of his findings.
- They do not believe him and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free.
- Sounds familiar!
However, for most, to not take the tales and myths of the Bible as literally true is a threat to faith and many New Testament and Church Doctrines that have evolved from them.
I personally have been told, privately, by many a pastor/priest that they know the stories are not literally true, they also know the average person is not ready to come to that kind of conclusion or understanding and thus they cannot generally speak of it. It depends on the denomination and whether one is dealing with the liberal or conservative wings.
Thank you so much. Our minister announced last night during a Bible Study that Adam and Eve were just allegorical references to humanity, and that there is no evidence of the devil in the Garden of Eden. I appreciate your blog. Would love to know you better, as I teach an adult Sunday School and his statement was rocking my world.
Were Adam and Eve Real People or Just Allegorical?
It appears that even among very conservative fundamental churches there is starting to be a movement away from believing that Adam and Eve were real people. Is it really of any great importance whether we believe it or not? Yes. Why is that? Because if they were not real people, the entire Bible, its message, Christ's death and resurrection are completely undone. There is no need for salvation, nor reason to believe the Bible, and Christ was a liar.
Those are strong statements to make, but they are the logical conclusion of saying that Adam and Eve were not real. Let's start with the New Testament and work backwards. Jesus genealogy was traced back to Adam in Luke 3:38 “ Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.” How could Jesus genealogy be traced back to someone who did not exist? It could not. So we see that Jesus lineage is one verification that Adam was real and that Seth was his son. Luke gave us the first witness to that fact. Now Paul is going tell us that Adam was also very real. 1 Corinthians 15:45a, says that Adam was the first man that God created as a living soul. “ And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul.” He also tells us this again in 1 Timothy 2:13-14 “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
Then in a verse in Corinthians Paul tells us the result of that transgression. 1 Corinthians 15:22 “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Paul is saying that because of Adam's transgression all mankind is cursed to die, not only physically, but we are born spiritually dead, however in Christ we can have both spiritual life and eternal life. Paul also tells us in Romans 5:14 that death, which was brought about by Adam reigned from Adam to Moses even over people who had not sinned as Adam had. “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.”
Jude, Jesus brother, tells us that Enoch, the first man to be “raptured” or translated, was the seventh patriarch after Adam. Jude 1:14 “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints.” Jude was saying that Adam was a real person.
Now returning to the Old Testament, we see that Job accepted Adam as a real person from whom his original sin nature came. Job 31:33 “If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom.” Everyone believed Adam to be a real person.
Moses writes about Adam when he mentions that God divided the inheritance of the nations or sons of Adam. Deuteronomy 32:8 “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” Moses is saying that all people are descended from Adam
Hebrews mentions two of Adam's sons, Abel and Cain. There can be no sons, if there is no father, so Adam had to have existed. Hebrews 11:4 “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” and Hebrews 12:24 “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Abel was real, and he was the son of Adam, so Adam had to have been real.
If Adam and his sons did not exist, then the writers of these verses are liars. Worse we have the testimony of Jesus Himself that Abel was a very real person, thereby verifying that his father Adam was real, as Abel could not exist without a father. Jesus is warning the Pharisees in these passages. Matthew 23:35 “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” Luke 11:51 “From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.” If Adam did not exist to father Abel, then Jesus Christ was a liar
Setting aside all these verses for a moment, let us merely look at the logic of the situation. What is the Bible supposed to be? It is supposed to be a portrait of Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation for man. But why does man need salvation? Because man is sinful. Why is man sinful? Because Adam sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit. But wait, what if Adam wasn't real? What if he is just an allegory. Then....well, then death, which supposedly came through Adam's fall existed right from the beginning, not as a result of Adam sinning. If death was a part of creation, then when God said everything was good, He meant that everything dies as part of the natural order. Therefore, death is not a result of sin. But if death is not a result of sin, then there is no sin. If there is no sin, there is no need for redemption. If there is no need for redemption, why would we need a redeemer? If there is no need for a redeemer, then Christ dying for our sins is a sad joke on Him. If Christ's dying was meaningless, then why believe in Christ for salvation. If we don't need Christ, and the Bible isn't true as to the whole story of sin and redemption, and death is natural and normal, then why not throw away the Bible and just live as we please? Without a real Adam, without a real fall from grace and sin, without death entering the world through Adam and mankind needing a redeemer, the whole reason for Christ and the entire Bible becomes pointless. So, was there a real Adam? Well, if you are reading this and you are a Christian, and you don't believe Adam and the entire creation account was real, your faith is useless. Christ will have been a liar, as were his apostles, and you are spending your life trying to live for something that doesn't exist, and then you will die and that will be the end. Or.....you believe that God was telling you the truth about things exactly the way they happened. He created a world in six literal 24 hour days that looked as if it had been here for millennia. And He created a man called Adam in perfection, who then disobeyed bringing sin and death into the world. He then promised and gave us a redeemer to pay for our sins and restore us to a relationship with God giving us eternal life. Those are your choices. You choose what you will believe."
On the flip side, we only know what the Gospels wrote that Jesus said. Plus we are 99.99% sure He was not speaking to His local audience in Greek.
ReplyDeleteSome will insist they can believe the theology of the NT AND not take the story of Adam and Eve as literally true. This is not possible. One MUST take it literally true as all in NT did when formulating their theology and beliefs.
ReplyDeleteIn the same way, one cannot really believe in evolution and Creationism. Actual scientific discovery does not mix with religious prejudices and Bible literalism. A theology driven scientist, while able to worship as they please, cannot bring those beliefs into the lab. They are faith based inhibitors to scientific discovery. They cloud the scientific method of discovery. IMHO of course and that of millions if not billions of others.
The modus ponens is:
ReplyDeleteProposition 1: If there is not a literal Adam, the Bible and its message is completely undone.
Proposition 2: There is not a literal Adam.
Conclusion: The Bible and its message is completely undone.
The logical structure of the syllogism is fine. The problem is that the veracity of Proposition 1 has not been established. It is an assumption. And the veracity of Proposition 2 also has not been established. So the syllogism collapses under the heavy weight of assumption.
For example, Adam may have been allegorical. We cannot know if Job thought of Adam as a metaphor or a real person. The context of his usage does not elucidate this issue. For Job, the term "Adam" could be the personification of early mankind - like wisdom is personified in Proverbs. The same is true of the other scriptures cited. This fault in reasoning is like anthropomorphism - believing God has a body because of some literary devices. In fact, Diehl's entire train of logic is rife with the kind of literalism that would make a blazing fundamentalist proud.
It is a sophomoric "sleight of hand" to try to use assumption-based arguments within an acceptable syllogism as a logical substrate for the invalidation of Christianity. It comes to mind I have witnessed a lot of this before - from pulpits in the Worldwide Church of God.
Diehl:
ReplyDeleteYou cannot make the world what you want it do be by declaration. What you are presenting is a festival of tendentious assumptions.
Dennis, even Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 do not literally agree with each other. The ancient Jews weren't morons. They understood that the Bible was true, not that it was a factual science textbook. The notion of a literally true Bible is mostly a product of frightened American Protestants in the last 150 years who have seen science make mincemeat of the idea of Bible-As-Science-Book approach that began to grow after there Protestant Reformation essentially made a god out of the Bible to replace the Pope in Rome. Neither Catholicism nor Judaism, nor honest Protestantism, require a belief in a literally factual Bible. This isn't a marginal opinion, either, as the great Jewish scholar Maimonides said essentially what I have said above, as have a handful of Popes and by now more than a few Protestant scholars.
ReplyDeleteThere are good reasons to disbelieve the Bible, but it's intellectually dishonest and naive to insist that your literal reading of the Bible is the only valid reading.
Luk 13:28 - There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.
ReplyDelete"IMHO of course"
ReplyDeleteNow that's the funniest thing that I've read here in weeks!
If we examine the records that exist on the planet, not written on clay tablets or papyrus, but in the geology, in the ice sheets, in the excavated remnants of human activity, in biological records that exist in our genes, in dendrochronology, etc...
ReplyDeleteAnd then if we look at the bible, with its stories of creation, of Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, a flood of water high enough to cover "the mountains of Ararat," the rise of the Jewish people descending from a single patriarch, their enslavement and eventual freedom, their wandering and dying in the wilderness, and their systematic conquest of the Levant culminating in wealth and glory...
Each of these records a totally different story.
One of these is a human tale. Within its own texts it tells the story of how it came to be. For centuries already, textual scholars have noticed how the details of the bible point them having been written, and rewritten, and rewritten again, each time differently. Then each version was fused back together, unifying all the disparate elements into a single narrative. Then it was redacted, and redacted, and redacted some more, eliminating portions that had become undesirable, while expanding those portions that reflected then-current theological fashions.
The other is a natural tale, inscribed upon the face of the earth by billions of years of geologic and hydrologic forces, in fossils, in pottery sherds, in refuse heaps, in caves, and in the living things that still exist around the globe. It is a story that has been written only once, and has never been tampered with. But it is a long story, and an unfinished one that is still being written today.
It's very easy for one of these stories to be allegorical. It isn't even possible for the other not to be literally true. Just for example, it would require massive feats of landscape reengineering and vast eons of time to force geology to tell any other story than that of it's literal past.
So, if you're going to take one literally, and relegate the other to allegory, which is which?
ReplyDeleteThe greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.
Keyser Soze
Dennis needs to escape from the cave and give up his god Carl Sagan.
ReplyDeleteNo. Actually he needs to stop being the Dave Pack of atheism!
DeleteYou cannot understand the bible unless you understand the Kabbalah and the Talmud. The OT is just part of the picture of what Judaism was and is, and Christianity is a Judaic religion.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteYou cannot understand the bible unless you understand the Kabbalah and the Talmud. The OT is just part of the picture of what Judaism was and is, and Christianity is a Judaic religion.
Sounds too complicated and too much work. I thought there was a simplicity in Christ along with a burden that was somewhat light. (Matthew 11:30) Not that easy or light I guess huh?
"Sounds too complicated and too much work. I thought there was a simplicity in Christ..."
ReplyDeleteDon't criticize the bible then, since it's too much work for you to understand it.
" Let's start with the New Testament and work backwards. Jesus genealogy was traced back to Adam in Luke 3:38 "
ReplyDeleteWell, the geneology starts with Joseph. So apparently Luke 1:34-35 is out the window.
No virgin birth. "Those are your choices. You choose what you will believe."
True statement.
Too bad Dennis won't be in the kingdom. At least he'II make a good talking point at the water cooler. We'II miss you Dennis!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 7:48 It's posts like this that illustrate you are not ready for any sort of real leadership role, let alone living forever. First, you'll be bored with no one to show how Christian you are too. As everyone else thinks and acts like you do, your feeling of speciality will evaporate. I hope you get the afterlife you're looking forward to and are bored to tears afterwards. I hope intergalactic real estate development and the increase of government that will never cease is every thing you hope it to be. But hey... Those water cooler breaks where you shit talk atheists and all those who are ashes under your feet will make it all worth it.
ReplyDeleteI'm also flabbergasted at the butt hurt of some "Christians" on this blog because one of the main contributors is a textual critic and a science proponent. In this age of disproportionate reactionary rhetoric where everything is a outrage, people need to really just read and listen more and comment less. If you don't like it or disagree with it instead of insulting the author, perhaps find a channel like Fox News, or your local COG congregation where you can all speak the same thing and listen to the same thing and never critically evaluate any piece of information or demonstrate any willingness to challenge your dogma.
ReplyDeleteIf you want free and independent thought, it is here, but if you just have the need to dismiss and disparage someone you don't agree with just to feel more secure in your antiquated Bronze Age thinking you can jump in a lake. Not the lake of fire which you would wish upon all those who don't agree with you, but an actual body of water that might help you chill out.
It's true that Dennis won't be in the kingdom. But then, neither will anyone else, either.
ReplyDeleteSilly to still believe in ancient Mesopotamian gods in this day and age.
10:07 Why don't you start signing your posts "butt hurt"? You've used that phrase so often on here it really makes me wonder about you.
ReplyDelete9.50 PM
ReplyDeleteI'm telling you you the way it will be. Shooting (especially smearing) the messenger doesn't change the reality.
10.07 PM
Your post brings back memories of 1967 hippy talk. We must be tolerant, and listen to others point of view, blah, blah, blah. Now that these neo hippies are in the drivers seat of today's culture, their so called tolerance has vanished. Their professed tolerance was one big self serving lie.
I know a Lutheran professor of theology who says that taking the first 11 chapters of Genesis literally is heresy.
ReplyDeleteI usually agree with Dennis or at least understand where he is coming from. But I don't understand this attempt to impose an either/or decision.
Hate the establishment, until you're in control of the establishment.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm, sounds like a UCG/COGWA story to me.
Kevin
Dennis, you said "...one cannot really believe in evolution and Creationism. Actual scientific discovery does not mix with religious prejudices and Bible literalism. A theology driven scientist, while able to worship as they please, cannot bring those beliefs into the lab. They are faith based inhibitors to scientific discovery. They cloud the scientific method of discovery. IMHO of course and that of millions if not billions of others."
ReplyDeleteThat's a blanket generalization, and you're not really being fair to those scientists who have made this work. They show that it can be done, even to the point of their scientific discoveries strengthening their faith.
Check out "How I Changed My Mind About Evolution" and biologos.org. It gives another perspective to the either/or discussion...
Reading your comment again, I agree that literalism and prejudice do inhibit a lot of things, even more than scientific discovery and inquiry.
ReplyDeleteTo be theology-driven outside of those parameters, though, should not inhibit scientific discovery; and that was my point, not that such scientists are also biblical literalists/fundamentalists.