Nothing changed in this regard after I became a Christian until one day I came across the argument in Romans 5 that all people have inherited sin from Adam. I spent a long time studying this and other passages and contemplating the implications. I also began reading books that took issue with the idea of Evolution and that sought to refute the evidence on which it is based. This lead to a period of active skepticism, and I sometimes engaged in debates on the subject. On one occasion, the professor of a course on Evolution & Systematics offered the class an opportunity to express any dissent on the last day of class. I took the opportunity to point out that the micro-evolutionary processes we had studied may explain how dogs might have diverged into such a wide range of types, but it does not explain how a whale might have evolved from a land animal. There things stood for a decade, during which my focus shifted from Aquacultural Engineering to the Anthropology of Language & Literature so that I could better understand the mechanics of scripture. Then one day, I read in the journal Science that the fossil of a four-legged whale had been discovered in Pakistan. That jarred me, and I began to ponder the question of evolution again.
I had long since dismissed the notion that the first ten chapters of Genesis were intended metaphorically—I can assure you that actual days are intended—but I had also come to regard all scripture as essentially a genealogy of the future, and I knew that the ancient world considered genealogies to be statements of legal standing whose relationship with historical events could be complicated. For example, Samuel was born to Elkanah, a Levite, but he was dedicated to the Lord and so became the son of Eli the High Priest and thus a descendent of Aaron, becoming High Priest after the death of Eli. To take another example, John the Baptist warns the Pharisees against relying on their natural descent from Abraham by declaring: “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:8-9). Because even stories such as those in Leviticus are considered genealogical elements, it is possible that the account in Genesis of a seven-day creation defines the status of things but not necessarily how events transpired.
So what are we to make of the first three chapters of Genesis? The first chapter describes time and space, as well as inanimate celestial bodies and all living terrestrial creatures, as the handiwork of God. Moreover, all things are assigned their proper boundaries, which in turn serves as the basis for distinctions between clean and unclean, etc. Finally, the last day celebrates God (and not our labor) as the source of Life. The second chapter describes Adam (the Hebrew word for Man) as charged with cultivating (protecting and extending) the garden, beyond which lay a vast wilderness. The extension of the Kingdom of God is, in effect, our eternal purpose. The third chapter describes our fraught relationship with God: our wretchedness, his hiddenness, the chaos that now envelopes us, and the hope of peace in the Son of Man. This is the seed of the Gospel.
