The story of Adam and Eve is “true,” but not “factual.” At least, that’s how some 
progressive Christians try to harmonize the iconic couple with evolutionary science.
It’s a sticky proposition. I mean, at what point is something mythically accurate but historically flawed? Can something not have really happened yet be immortalized in a timeline? Call me confused, but tinkering with truth and fact is a bit like dissecting the atom. At some point, everything explodes.
Just ask James Frey.
Frey was the author whose memoir was canonized by Oprah, before it was learned he falsified significant parts of his life’s story. Frey defended himself on the grounds that, even though the details were slippery, the essence was true. His publisher didn’t agree. They eventually dropped out of a two-book, seven-figure deal, and offered a refund to readers who felt duped.
Truth bites, eh?
Which is why I’m troubled whenever I hear Christians regurgitate the “truth not fact” line.
I felt that way after reading an interview with author Madeleine L’Engle a while back. L’Engle is often considered, along with Lewis, Tolkien, George MacDonald, and G.K. Chesterton, as one of the great Christian mythmakers. Well, apparently she took that literally.
If myth can be taken literally.
In an interview with Newsweek (May 7, 2003) entitled “I Dare You,” this exchange occurred:
Q: What are you against?
L’Engle: Narrow-mindedness. I’m against people taking the Bible absolutely literally, rather than letting some of it be real fantasy, like Jonah. You know, the whole story of David is a novel… Faith is best expressed in story.
Q: If the Bible is not literally true, does that mean we don’t need to take it seriously?
L’Engle: Oh no, you do, because it’s truth, not fact, and you have to take truth seriously even when it expands beyond the facts. (emphasis mine)
Perhaps it’s an exercise in semantics or just a symptom of our postmodern age, but when did truth and fact get divorced? According to Dictionary.com, the primary meaning of “truth” is
Conformity with fact or actuality
I actually have a head on my shoulders. Any assertion otherwise — whether based on lack of sleep, heavy drinking, or watching too much CSPAN — is simply not true. But apparently, this reasoning no longer holds water.
The following word was chosen as the Word of the Year both in 2005 and 2006: Truthiness. Accordingly, the word is used “to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or ‘from the gut’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts.” For instance, I cannot factually prove that the food pyramid is upside down, but I seem “to know [it] intuitively or ‘from the gut.'”
Donuts aside, this is how the Bible is effectively castrated.
Ms. L’Engle: “I’m against people taking the Bible absolutely literally, rather than letting some of it be real fantasy, like Jonah.” In other words, Jonah is a metaphor, a fairy tale, a vehicle to convey truth rather than an actual historical person / event. That stuff about whale barf — forget it.
No doubt, some biblical stories ARE metaphors. Jesus spoke in parables and it’s fairly clear when He did. The problem is when we make the story of Jesus a parable.
Here’s the issue:
- The Bible presents the story of Jonah, not as a myth, but as a factual, historic event
- Jesus confirmed the historicity (see: factuality) of the Book of Jonah
This is so very important. Look at the words of Christ:
. . . just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matt. 12:40 NASB)
According to Christianity, the most important historic event was the Resurrection of Christ. If Jonah was a myth, make-believe, then why would Jesus cross-reference a real — and really important — historic event with something that was allegorical, ahistoric, and non-factual? Why would Jesus correlate History to Fantasy, actual events to symbols? This effectively undermines the historical accuracy of Scripture and mythologizes the most important event in biblical history.
Which is what’s at stake in the Adam and Eve debate.
Yes, I understand, as Lewis put it, that “Christianity is Myth become Fact,” that myth transcends historical details. However, this does not negate its playing out in those details. Nor does it minimize the reality of, or the need for, historical details.
And that’s the problem with a non-literalist position: We become arbiters of what’s TRUTH and what’s FACT. So anything I seriously question — like someone parting an ocean, walking on an ocean, or living for three days in the belly of a fish underneath an ocean — I just call it “truthy.”
The problem is, If it didn’t really happen, why should I believe it? Might as well pray to Superman as trust in Jesus Christ.
Sorry. Though all truth cannot be immediately confirmed by Fact, where Truth exists, Facts will follow. Just ask James Frey.
*sigh*
I talked to my husband about this last night and he said I erred in my Monday blog post by using the word “myth”. He said myth means “not true” or “false”. Which, yes, that’s how we use it today. We say “that’s a myth” to dismiss something.
I have trouble explaining my thoughts on this issue as my husband can testify but it kind of boils down to this: why, when I studied comparative mythology in college did it point me toward Jesus, while it points most others to the notion of relative truth?
God used the myths of other cultures to highlight his absolute truths–that all men are seeking after God, that all men have common desire to know where they come from. I looked at all the myths from a wide angle, connected them together, and the picture I saw in the end was the Bible. Because the Bible is not part truth, but all truth, and provides answers to those questions that all men naturally ask in their hearts.
So, for me, I take issue when myth is just discarded, as if worthless lies. Not true. If cultural myths were useless vehicles for expressing God’s truths, why did those myths lead me to Jesus?
I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Most of the Old Testament has Jesus in mind. God knew what was coming–his savior–and he prepared the world for it with Old Testament writings.
My point to unbelievers who are seeking, or just on the brink of accepting Jesus is, if Genesis seems mythological to you, don’t get caught up in that. Leave it an open question. Because the fact remains that however those words ended up there, God orchestrated it. Not a word ended up in the Old Testament that wasn’t okay’d by God first.
This comment is better expressed than your blog post, in my opinion. But I would take it the other way: cultural myths sprang from a central truth, even though they were perverted along the way. That’s why I don’t think of the Bible as mythical in any way, but as the central truth from which different cultures culled their myths. I would agree that God used these myths to reveal Christ to pagan peoples. Sadly, the truth was so obscured or perverted in some cultures that the people have never readily accepted Christ–India is an example of this. Only about 2% of the population claim to be of the Christian faith, yet they have some of the oldest biblical myths out there (quite possibly the oldest).
But thank God you saw your way to Christ through the study of comparative mythology. God is good.
When I said blog post, I was referring to Jessica’s. Just to make that clear. 🙂
You win some, you lose some. 🙂
I agree with you, Jessica, about myth pre-figuring Christ and God using culture myths (see: Eternity in Their Hearts) to highlight absolute truth. I do not want to appear to be “discarding” myth. I do, however, believe that some who tout myth do so as a way to “discard Scripture.” That’s what I’m attempting to address here.
Thanks for the book reference, Mike.
“Though all truth cannot be immediately confirmed by Fact, where Truth exists, Facts will follow.”
Hmm. Not sure I agree with that sentence. When I read through the bible, Fact seems to be far from the minds of the people involved. God required the Israelites to go about living on Faith, just as Jesus requires us to live on Faith. Faith is the essentially believing with a lack of Facts.
It’s our scientific, logical minds of the 20th & 21st centuries that crave Fact and eschew Faith. Yes, there is historical evidence that provides Fact of Jesus, Jonah, Daniel, et al., and thank God for that, but Fact should not be a prerequisite to Faith.
I find it fascinating to see the role Faith plays in our society. While some people come to Christ based solely on Faith, others come because of Fact, such as CS Lewis or Lee Strobel. But to continue in Christianity is to have Faith and Hope and Love.
So I suggest a modification: “Though all truth cannot be immediately confirmed by Fact, where Truth exists, Faith will follow and Fact may decide to show up, too.”
(Okay, not as elegant, but you get the idea.)
logan, I am equally reserved about your points as you are mine. Especially this statement, “Faith is the essentially believing with a lack of Facts.” Would that be like believing that the world is flat? If so, you will travel forever looking for the Edge. Fact MUST be a prerequisite for faith, unless it is blind faith. But blind faith is not biblical faith. Appreciate your comment!
Yep, that’s exactly what it was. Using your example, before people learned that the world wasn’t flat, many did believe that world was flat, i.e. they had faith that the world was flat. Was their Faith flawed? Yes, and it would have been wrong to continue to believe the world was flat after the Facts proved otherwise. But was their faith wrong prior to the Facts? No, I think not. To them, until they learned that Fact proved otherwise, the world was flat.
But yeah, I suppose my simplified definition of “Faith is essentially believing with a lack of Facts” is erroneous. Perhaps I should have gone with “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
That said, I’m not dismissing Fact. Indeed, it would be foolish to have Faith when Fact says otherwise. Of course, we individually have to decide the validity of Fact, and that’s fine. When the evidence is undeniable–an absolute certainty, that is–then how can we dismiss it? Fact and Faith work together at times, and at times they do not. We must take our Fact from reputable sources, and that will undoubtedly vary from person to person. Some will support evolution and others will decry it, both based on Fact. It’s this, when Facts lead to different conclusions, that we are given a choice of what to believe. I mean, isn’t believing in Fact and History ultimately having Faith that Fact and History is True?
I guess the question it leads me to is why is their a need for historical details/Facts? I appreciate them, and I can see how history is necessary for society, but why is Fact placed above Faith?
In regards to “blind faith is not biblical faith,” I must disagree. When Peter stepped out onto the water, all scientific Fact and common sense said he’d sink. Surely he thought “Jesus is only standing on water because he’s the Son of God.” But still he stepped out, believing in the Son and casting away his Knowing for a hope. Or when Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal wasn’t he Hoping God came through and burned the saturated offerings when they very well should not have burned?
If God’s thoughts are above our thoughts and His ways above our ways, surely His majesty supersedes Fact from time to time?
(I think semantics are causing some issues here, too, but that’s a different discussion.) Oh, and great post & discussion.
Logan, you said:
Interestingly, the sermon at my church on Sunday was from Hebrews 11, and the preacher pointed out that the Bible never pits faith against reason. Instead it contrasts faith with sight.
Sight, however, refers to facts we can ascertain with our senses, not those which are spiritually discerned. Many an atheist denies the existence of anything beyond what we can touch, taste, smell, hear, or see. Does that mean nothing exists outside that finite box? And are there no facts to support the existence of More?
I suggest the resurrection of Jesus was absolute fact, witnessed by 500 hundred people. So were the confirming signs of His Messiahship. The resurrection and the miracles can’t be tested by the scientific method, but they are no less fact.
So too with God’s nature. Scripture records that in Jesus was the fullness of God. Hebrews said He is “the exact representation of His nature.” So do we have facts about who God is? Absolutely. Are those facts the kinds we can put under a microscope? No. But they are facts nonetheless.
Faith comes in believing facts other than those we can see.
You mentioned Peter walking on water. His “fact bank” undoubtedly informed him that people didn’t walk on water. Yet there Jesus stood, outside their boat. What was he to believe? He had to choose between one set of facts and the other. That’s really the way faith works.
Interesting discussion, Mike. Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
Becky
Right on. You said it much better than what I said. “He had to choose between one set of facts and the other. That’s really the way faith works.” That’s what I meant by “It’s this, when Facts lead to different conclusions, that we are given a choice of what to believe.”
Even still, though, I cannot get over the fact (haha) that at some point we are going to have to step out blindly on Faith, where reason and logic and science and fact are not present. We are human, living in a universe filled with unanswerable questions. Heck, even the Gospel is a Mystery. God alone knows all Truth. It’s a blessing that He’s revealed certain Facts to us.
What I’m suggesting is that Fact and Faith can work together, but not always. And Faith is at the root of the Gospel. The Fact is that we’re all sinners and worthy of Hell. The Fact is that Jesus Christ lived a perfect, sinless life and was sacrificed to pay for our sins. The Fact is that He arose from the dead, defeating death and paving the road to salvation. But to me this screams Faith. Where are the Facts that Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life? How are we to know that He never sinned while He was alone or among sinners? We Know this because the bible claims this, thus we call it a Fact, when in essence it’s Faith in the Fact of the bible and the innerancy of scripture. Furthermore, how do we know that following Jesus is the only way to heaven? Because we believe what He says (faith) based on the way that He lived (fact).
Like I said earlier, I think we’re just splitting hairs on semantics now.
Logan, this is where I disagree with you. I don’t think there’s anything blind about faith, and the verse you quoted from Hebrews says as much. How can we be assured of something being true if it flies in the face of reason, logic, science, and fact? What we’re left with is believing because we want to believe and that’s wishful thinking, not faith.
The preacher I mentioned explained faith from the Hebrews 11 text as trusting God and acting accordingly.
Yes, we have to believe that God did in fact give us the Bible through His Holy Spirit, but we don’t believe that, absent any evidence that it is true.
Once the Bible is in place as a source of Truth, then a lot of other things fit together. But again, I would say they don’t fly in the face of known truth as some seem to think.
Becky
Hebrews 11 is instrumental here. If the facts aren’t right, the faith is meaningless. In other words, if the object of faith is a lie, there is no virtue in faith.
Every one of my unbelieving family members believes that heaven awaits them after death. They have faith. They are missing the facts.
Faith comes from the Greek word pistis which means “trusting in something for which you have seen the evidence.” Faith without evidence is blind belief. Just go and read Hebrews and Romans 1. Our faith in God is based on evidence that is obvious to man that no man is without excuse.
So, we can’t throw out logic and scientific or historical evidence. What we can insist on is how that evidence is interpreted. The problem with naturalism or an evolutionary point of view is the presupposition that no supernatural explanation is allowed. Thus, all of scripture is disallowed as “myth” or “fairy tale” or “allegory” at best.
However, we now know that all of humanity (homo sapiens) originated from an original pair of humans — Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosome Adam — somewhere in northeastern Africa or the Mesopotamia area. We also know that there was an anthropological “big bang” with the appearance of humans with the sudden appearance of art, music, and most importantly, spiritual activity that was never seen in the Neanderthals or the hominids. So, you see, science fact can be resolved with scripture.
The difference we see between fact and scripture is the story element. Moses was writing an elegant account of the creation and chose a literary style common to the creation myths of his time. He did so in order to create familiarity to the reader who had heard these myths but at the same time show how God’s creative activity is unique and factual. In fact, the appearance of life and the flow of events in Genesis 1 perfectly parallel the scientific record. That’s amazing considering Moses wrote this 35oo years ago.
Paul Copans in a recent podcast on http://www.reasons.org talks about these facts and discusses the whole “God is a moral monster” issue in his latest book. I found it helpful because he discusses this very issue you raised about throwing out scripture that seems mythical as not true.
Thanks for bringing this up. We are increasingly under attack for sticking to truth and insisting it is absolute. As you have pointed out, Mike, we have no choice! Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
I’m so glad you posted on this. I always take flak for saying that Madeline L’Engle’s belief fell outside the pale of Orthodox Christianity. She didn’t believe in the blood atonement. In what world is someone who doesn’t believe in the blood atonement considered a wonderful Christian writer? She thought if God put Jesus to death for the sins of others that would make him a child-abuser.
And that’s what happens when you start picking and choosing what you are going to believe. You have no solid ground to stand on. If some of the Bible is untrue, why should we think any of it is true? How do we judge? It boils down to everyone believing what they want–or everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.
If Adam and Eve aren’t real people, then what happens to the fall of man? And if Adam doesn’t damn us with his fall, how can Christ be the second Adam, saving us with his perfect righteousness? (Romans 5:19) It’s the same thing as the Jonah example you gave. Why would Paul talk about an imaginary man and event to convince us of the truth of salvation in Christ?
By the way, the image you used at the opening of you post. Is that supposed to be Adam and Eve or the “mything” links?
Well, I was a little worried, as I made my way over here from my RSS so that I could actually comment, that my comment would look more like a blog post. Then I got here and saw that comments like blog posts seem to be the norm for this one. 🙂
Also, a lot of what I was going to say has been said in other comments, leaving me with just one thing, a simple syllogism:
A) Everything the Bible (which God wrote) tries to teach us is true.
B) Everything the universe (which God made) tries to teach us is true.
Therefore, when they seem to be in dispute, it is our understanding that it as fault.
There is no dispute between what the Bible is trying to teach us about creation and what the universe is trying to teach us. Any seeming discrepancy is due to our own limited understanding. And can I explain the difference? Not at all. Do I have to? Not at all. I can’t begin to understand how God is three beings united in one, and I can’t begin to explain creation, and when those arguments turn heated, I simply drop the subject.
We know enough about the concepts involved to to know that somehow it worked, that there is one truth, and that God is at the heart of it.
That’s what we can’t lose sight of.
Such a good word, Mike. Good comments, too.
I especially love your reference to Christ’s words about Jonah. Jesus and his apostles verified a lot of OT history that scholars today are trying to pass off as myth, including Adam and Eve and Noah’s flood. As soon as we try to explain away one part of scripture, the whole thing begins to unravel.
I do believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and I’ve always read (and taught) Genesis (and the rest of the OT) as history. I make no apology for that. When former students pointed out how the biblical account conflicted with information in their science textbooks, I’d ask, “Who wrote your science textbook?” After they answered, I’d ask, “And who wrote the Bible?” I loved the look that would dawn on their faces as they answered, “God.”
Pop Quiz: Is God the authority on truth, or is man? How sad that, for many Christians, this is no longer an easy A.
I think there needs to be a balance here between assuming what’s in the Bible didn’t happen and treating certain biblical text as historical records as modern, Western science would treat them.
Some things are clearly labeled parable and allegory. But in those cases, they were likely based upon reality. Maybe it didn’t happen exactly like the story tells it, but you can be certain there were merchants upon finding a “pearl of great price” would go and get the money to buy it no matter what it took.
But other sections are more poetically constructed as well. Doesn’t mean what they talk about didn’t actually happen, only that they can’t be read like a historical document: “First, God did X, then He did Y, etc., etc.”
For instance, the creation narrative is a form of Hebrew poetry of parallelism. Note the parallels:
Day 1 is linked with day 4
Day 2 is linked with day 5
Day 3 (2 parter) is linked with day 6 (2 parter)
If you read the days of creation in that order, you’ll see the links, how each day goes from general to specifics, and how day 3 shows the the plant life to be a link between the inanimate life a biological life, while day 6 shows man to be a link between the created biological life and the divine life breathed into man. And the whole thing moves to a climax in describing the creation of man in a triple statement that God created us.
No doubt those events listed there are based upon actual events. But neither can we treat them literarily as a history book instead of the type of literature it was written to be when Moses wrote it. Most of our errors tend to bubble up by thinking of them as Western history books like we had in school.
The fact is, no one was there to see it except God. The images given Moses by God convey to us truth in the manner that they could understand it then and still conveys to us truth now. I’ll assume the “facts” of what happened blow by blow are contained in those words without needing to be spelled out, but to take them literally as an historical account of what order God did first, second, third, and so on, is also a violation of the text as given. And our assumed facts from those types of analysis can lead us to worry about inerrancy and all sorts of things based on our own human deductions of what the “facts.”
So I sort of sit in the middle of this debate, I guess. I think what a lot of people think are facts are really their own human deductions about what the Bible says, their particular brand of interpretation that they are having faith in. Meanwhile, others do decide that what happened in the Bible are just stories, fantasies, that convey truth, but didn’t actually happen. It’s mostly a matter of what testimony and interpretation do you have faith in.
I was embroiled in a little debate yesterday regarding this same subject, but my statement in THIS FACEBOOK THREAD went unanswered. Here’s my comment:
“…I have no problem conceding evolution. But once you begin mythologizing sections of Scripture and biblical events, you risk undermining the entire Bible. Thus, the ‘historical Jesus’ becomes an amalgam of liberal caricatures, stitched together by progressives to suit their ideology. Unlike, [Al] Mohler, I have no problem believing all organic life had a single source. But at some point, historically, Man became more than a Monkey. Evolution cannot account for that point. Neither can mythologizing Adam.”
I think it is funny (in a sad way) how many people have such problems with the story of Jonah. It’s the one that I hear referenced over and over when people want to discount sections of the Bible as a sort of poetic exaggeration of the basic facts.
Ironically, it is one of the most _probable_ of the Old Testament ‘stories’, given the vast number of large creatures who live underwater and the extremely slow digestive systems they have.
Not to rely too much on “old” conversations, but this all goes back, for me, to the discussion on Mystery and how the Church would very much love to rewrite the mystic episodes of our faith into more prosaic and explainable accounts. Believing in Mystery requires too much acceptance of nuance. Our generations born after World War II are arrogant in thinking that we Really Have The Answers Now, Thanks To Science and rush to quickly dismiss anything not pre-approved by Science as a sort of truthy poetry.
Now I do think there are vast sections of Biblical narrative that are poetic imagery, the Genesis account of creation being among them. That doesn’t mean everything that doesn’t immediately make sense deserves to be discounted. And it doesn’t mean they aren’t TRUE.
The thing to keep in mind is that the Bible is the story of God’s relationship to mankind. It is not a history textbook or a science textbook. Using the Bible for those purposes always strikes me as sort of backward. It’s like using a golden spoon to clean out a drain. Because here we have this amazing gift: God telling us about God’s own self, about why we are here and what we are here for and how God has interacted with us and on our behalf, shaping eternity around our existence merely because we are loved.
And people are busy using that wonderful document to decide things that don’t matter. Did we “come from monkeys” or from dust? Really? THAT’S your issue? Not “how fantastic that God engineered our existence in order to foment an eternal relationship”?
Ultimately we could have come from dust that turned into monkeys and then us (I don’t think so, but who cares, really?). This world could be six thousand years old or fifteen billion or both. So what. We have the miracle of the resurrection–prefigured in Jonah, of course–and that’s what the Bible is about.
Jeanne, great comment.
Rick, the problem I have with this approach that calls into question the western mind is that it doesn’t give the Holy Spirit any credit for being able to steer the church away from error.
I tend to think that those who many speak of as literalists actually haven’t read the Bible closely. For instance insisting that “day” means a twenty-four hour period is a shaky stance considering that the Bible uses the word before the sun which we use to measure those hours was created.
I think the parallels you noted are interesting, but more so because I believe it shows something of God’s nature more than it does of Hebrew poetry.
Clearly you’re right, that God alone was there in the beginning, and He alone knows what process He used to create. That He chose to reveal any process at all is a matter of His kindness, I think.
In response, I don’t think we should make more of what He told us, or less.
Mike, interesting Facebook discussion. I wish the train of thought had stayed with what you said. As happens too often in those, something nonsensical distracts from the real issues.
Thanks again for this post.
Becky
Hi Becky,
My only point is that we take text written way before the Western mindset and treat it like it was written with a Western mindset for Western mindset people, instead of taking it for the type of literature it is.
Note: poetry doesn’t mean it isn’t true or didn’t happen “that way,” only that its purpose isn’t to give us all the details of how it happened and what order, as the parallelism shows. And most certainly the poetic nature of it brings out the nature of God, and His relationship with man as created, which then fell. That as Kathryn pointed out quite well, is the whole point of the narrative. Not to debunk theories of origins. Doesn’t mean you can’t cull some “facts” from the narrative, only that you can’t always treat it literally as in history textbook literal, which is where most people get into trouble.
Incidentally, Mike, the answer to the “no clothes” in that thread (didn’t read the whole thing, but enough to catch the drift) is that before the fall, Adam and Eve were clothed in God’s light. When the “scales fell from their eyes” happened, the divine light disappeared and they saw “reality” as naked from that light, including themselves. At that point, that was the first time each had ever seen the other as “naked” in the sense we speak of it.
But there are so many points being bandied about there, that it would be pointless to try to counter everyone one of them, and could be debated till Jesus returned.