This week we feature the third clip from the upcoming documentary “From the Dust”, directed by filmmaker Ryan Pettey. It is our sincere hope that, above all else, the film can become a focal point for some of the big questions that inevitably arise at the intersection of science and faith. We believe Ryan's work will inform faith and enrich discussion, and we feel that this week’s topic, the Fall, is of particular importance for Christians as we think through the ramifications of creation by evolutionary mechanisms.

To help foster such dialogue, we are once again including several discussion questions with this week’s clip. In the transcript below, you’ll find several prompts that are meant to help viewers dig deeper into the material being presented. Mouse over each highlighted region and a question will appear on the side. We encourage you to watch this video with your friends, your churches, your small groups and Sunday School classes, your pastors -- or anyone else for that matter – and take some time to discuss what is being said (and maybe even what isn’t). You may not all agree, but you will find yourselves engaged in fruitful and spirited conversation. And it is this kind of conversation that will help move the science and faith discussion forward.

The provided questions are just a few of the discussion questions that go with this transcript, and we'd be happy to send them to you to foster further conversation within your church or small group setting. If you’d like to see the questions, or if you have stories from your own small group discussions about the clip, we would love to hear from you at info@biologos.org.

Editor's Note: The full documentary is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. You can order the film here, and learn more about the project here.

“The Fall” Transcript

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “My friends and colleagues, who have concerns about evolutionary theory for theological reasons, are onto something, and one of them involves the Fall, the nature of the Fall, what it is. Even if it is a metaphor, it is a metaphor for something, and what is that something? And how would we make sense of that something in light of evolutionary theory? The other issue on this has been probably the most serious issue that not only Christians, but all theists who believe in a good and providential God have wrestled with, it is the problem of natural evil.”

Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd: “The problem of evil is a real problem to religious faith. It was certainly the thing for Darwin himself. That is what made him question his faith, and I think rightly so. It does not look like the sort of system that a good and loving and benevolent God would have set up. Now, obviously that raises huge questions because we don’t see any evidence of a world that was harmonious. We only see evidence of a world that was at war with itself, and that obviously is the problem that Christian theologians face. For a long time I used to believe that the Genesis narratives paint a picture of a world completely at peace, completely harmonious until the human fall, and then something goes wrong. When I began to look at it more closely, I began to think that there is more to it than that. There is evidence from the text that things are already dislocated, already out of joint. For one thing, there is the serpent, and however you interpret the serpent, here is a bit of the created order that is actively talking against God, working against God—so there is already something that has gone wrong. Secondly, there is the command to fill the earth and subdue it. There is the suggestion that something needs to be subdued, something is not quite right that needs to be put right and humans beings are called to do that—to put it right. And thirdly, it is a garden. It is almost as if God has said, ‘Here is a little bit I have done for you, here is a little bit of order and harmony that I have done for you. Now you go and spread that order and that harmony throughout the rest of creation.’ The tragedy is, of course, that human beings don’t do that. Rather than put that right, they make it worse.”

Dr. Alister McGrath: “Clearly Scripture distinguishes humanity from the rest of creation by this idea of the image of God. And that is understood in a number of ways—one of which is relational. Human beings have this God-given capacity to be able to relate to God, which is simply not there for the rest of creation. How do we understand that phrase: the image of God? If we accept the narrative of biological evolution, we have to say that at some point humanity became sufficiently distinguished from the rest of the natural world to be able to have this relationship with God.”

Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd: “If you have a very finely graded gas tap and you begin to turn it on, initially, there is not enough gas in the air for the gas to ignite. So, you turn it up some more, still nothing, a bit more, still nothing, and a bit more, still nothing. At a particular point, there will be enough gas to air ratio for the thing to ignite. So, you can have a completely smooth, upward development, and yet, you can have something decisive happening at a particular moment. You get an increase in that moral capacity and moral awareness; you get an increase in their relational ability, in their social ability. You get an increase in their tool-making ability. You get an increase in their language. At a particular point there is enough of all that. There is enough relational capacity; there is enough social capacity and moral awareness and spiritual awareness for God to deal with us in a new way: ‘They have enough creativity to reflect the fact that I am the creator. They have enough relational capacity to reflect the fact that I am love. This in some way reflects who I am, and I will stamp my image upon them.’”

Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne: “As hominids evolved and became more complex, then self-consciousness, in the sense of projecting our minds into the remote future or past began to dawn in them. And that didn’t bring biological death into the world, because obviously it had been there for millions of years beforehand, but it brought into the world what you might call mortality. Because our ancestors were self-conscious, they knew they were going to die. Because they had turned away from God, they had alienated themselves to the only one who was the ground for the hope of a destiny beyond death. And so, mortality, meaning the sadness, the human sadness at transiency and decay dawned in human life. Another very subtle feature of the Genesis 3 story is that it is a fall upwards as people would sometimes say. It is the gaining of some knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, the story says. And so, the dawning of self-consciousness is also the gaining of something that wasn’t there before. What the serpent whispers in Eve’s ear is, ‘eat this fruit, and you will be like God. You won’t need God anymore. You can do it yourself.’ That is the fundamental sin, the fundamental mistake in human life is believing that we can do it on our own, doing it my way, and spiritual death is to deliberately and persistently cut yourself off from that. It doesn’t occur as an angry God giving you a punishment for not falling into line. It is simply that you have punished yourself. You know, preachers sometimes say that the gates of hell are locked from the inside not to keep the creatures in, but to keep God out. And that, I think in the end, is what spiritual death is if you persist in it. But God is always, I am sure, at work, seeking to draw people back into the divine love. I think that is the work that is necessary to understand what Paul is getting at in Romans 5 when he says that death came into the world through one man. The cost of development is a degree of precariousness. The people need the grace of God if we truly are to live fulfilling lives.”

Dr. Thompson responded that while the essence of Sin is ultimately mysterious, he suggests that there are some ways to think about Sin in the language of interpersonal neurobiology.

On the other hand, Dr. Smith found the wisdom of St. Augustine in The Confessions quite helpful—The essence of Sin is loving the wrong things in the wrong ways. It’s a disordered love.

We need to have an account of Sin in terms of habit. A lot of Christians today think of “sins” and discreet choices, but historically Christians have thought of Sin as a habitual tendency and disordering. It is formed over time—that’s what a vice is. Virtue and sanctification require ongoing re-habituation, a counter-formation of our inclinations.

Dr. Thompson followed up with a reference to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and noted that people who are really good at what they do generally acquire it through lots of practice. Thompson then asked the audience, “How are we, in an embodied way, going to practice Christianity for 10,000 hours?”

We hope you have enjoyed this video series. If you'd like to learn more, we encourage you to read Curt Thompson's The Anatomy of the Soul and James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Dr. Smith also has a new book coming out this winter entitled Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works. ]]> Fri, 05 Oct 12 04:00:00 -0700 Curt Thompson, Smith, James K.A. http://biologos.org/blog/life-and-death?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/life-and-death?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication If you go back into the Genesis account, it says “now do not eat this or you will surely die”. There is a whole chain of events that happens when Adam and Eve decide they want to walk away from God.

Today's video is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures.

Video transcript

I think there are sometimes a couple of biblical images we struggle to lay hold of. In the New Testament we find when we talk about life, we have the idea of living or ‘bios’. In other words, we talk about how we are alive. But Jesus talks about the fact of “coming to life “ when we know him. That doesn’t suddenly mean that our heart starts beating. It means that there is this whole side to us which was dead… which wasn’t alive and is now… that has actually sprung to life. And we run into complications maybe if we reduce all of these things into exactly the same categories. Now you can have the same issues with ‘death’ too. That word is used in many ways, and different words are used to try and signify various different things.

Now what is interesting is that if you go back into the Genesis account, it says “now do not eat this [apple] or you will surely die”. There is a whole chain of events that happens when Adam and Eve decide they want to walk away from God. The first thing that happens is that they cover themselves up. There’s like a psychological alienation that comes. They are no longer happy with the way they are. The next thing that happens is God steps into the garden, they run and hide. There is spiritual alienation. The voice that was once welcoming where they went, they now find themselves cut off from that. Then there is a social alienation that comes as a result of turning away from God. They start blaming each other. There is a vocational alienation that comes as a result of, of course, judgment. That which was meant to be home for them, all work become labor, and we could keep going.

So when we talk about “death” the picture, to me, seems to be much bigger, much fuller. I can’t think of a more comprehensive view of possibly what it could mean. And so I think we need to again break away from a straight forward, in fact, mechanistic understanding. In no way do I think that impoverishes either or understanding of the gospel or of the cross. As a matter of fact, it enhances it. It makes the work of the cross even more incredible and it makes the idea that God is looking for redemption from us more complete. We are not talking simply about the idea of physically living forever because that’s clearly not what it means. We know that we are going to physically die. All of us. But when you think about it in terms of what that means psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, socially, vocationally and so on it becomes a huge picture. The text is teaching us something which is real, which is true, which is there. I think we just need a bigger more sophisticated handling of the text, than a reductionist one that I think actually impoverishes or understanding of The Fall, the cross, redemption, the ‘coming again’ and so on.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 6:23

Today Christians everywhere observe Good Friday. While it is indeed the darkest moment of the Holy Week celebration, a somber reflection of Christ’s death upon the cross, it is also a moment filled with anticipation, for we know how the story ends: with his triumphant resurrection on the third day.

Yet, as we dwell upon Christ’s death and the sorrow that comes with it, we should also take time to consider the beauty and importance behind the sacrifice. The above video, produced by Highway Media, offers a striking visual metaphor for the spiritual death of sin, the same death that Christ conquered through his crucifixion. The unsettling music and vivid depictions of decay remind us of what was at stake as Christ hung high on Calvary.

Through his death and resurrection, Christ has given us the chance to play this film in reverse, to undo the death that sin can bring. Even as he suffered, in this darkest of hours, Christ knew that through his actions the wages of sin could be overcome, and it that hope that carries us through the sorrow of Good Friday to the holiest of celebrations: Christ’s glorious resurrection which we will celebrate this Sunday.

For further reflection on Christ’s death and resurrection, we invite you to read Mark Sprinkle’s pieces “With What Kind of Body” and “Down by the Riverside”.

In this video Conversation, BioLogos Senior Biblical Fellow Peter Enns discusses why Adam and Eve seem to be at the center of the Culture Wars. In particular, he considers why questioning the historicity of this particular origins narrative is so threatening to evangelicals.

Enns notes that challenging the literal interpretation of Genesis and its “first parents” frightens people. He suggests that much of this fear is a factor of the time in which we live—where there has now been 100-150 years of battle and conflict behind us. Consequently, we have been taught that the only way to protect the Bible is to protect its literalistic reading and interpretation. Enns notes that the ongoing debates are primarily motivated by fear—not flawed theology.

One way to get over the fear—which will take time—is to help people become more self-conscious or self-aware, says Enns, about the assumptions that we carry. Instead of believing that the Christian worldview and faith hinges on our interpretation of Adam and Eve, we should instead view their narrative in its proper context as one biblical passage.

“A central component is the centrality of Jesus and what he did for understanding of the Gospel and of the Bible itself,” Enns explains. “That is our epicenter—that is our beginning point as Christians and I think we work out from that.”

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In this video Conversation, senior biblical fellow Peter Enns asks Rev. N.T. Wright to respond to a common question of readers concerning the historicity of Adam. Specifically, Enns asks Wright to respond to the question of how Adam functions theologically in the Old Testament and whether a historical Adam is central or important for that “Adam theology” that is brought up later in Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he describes Christ as the “new Adam.”

Wright describes the first half of the letter to the Romans as offering a big-picture summary in that it returns to the project of Genesis 1 and 2 and announces that the original plan is back on track. In the Old Testament, redemption was to come through Israel—the people of Abraham—but Israel let God down.

In Romans, Paul says that Israel remains the solution. For Paul the significance of Abraham’s family is not who is this family, but what was this family supposed to do. Israel’s mission or promise will be fulfilled through the Messiah, Christ Jesus, and will be offered to all those who believe. Thus, the historicity of Adam is not central to the theology, it what Adam represents—which ultimately is revealed through Christ, who shows his faithfulness by keeping the original covenant between Israel and God the Father.

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In my previous post, I indicated that there is a lot of figurative language in Genesis 1. The same may be said for Genesis 2, the second creation account in which there is a focus on Adam and Eve. Also, as we saw in Genesis 1, there is an implicit polemic against ancient Near Eastern mythological ideas. Listen to the description of human beings in the Babylonian Atrahasis. The background to this passage is a strike on the part of the lesser gods who are tired of doing heavy labor on behalf of the major gods. They insist that they be replaced. Belet-ili, the mother god, takes clay and mixes it with the blood of the instigator of the strike, then the text says:

After she had mixed the clay,
She summoned the Anunna, the great gods,
The Igigi, the great gods, spat upon the clay.

From this mixture of clay from the earth and the spit of the gods Belit-ili creates human beings in order to do the heavy labor of the gods.

We should read the description of the creation of Adam with this as a background because the original audience certainly did. Adam too is created from the ground (dust) and a divine component (God’s breath). Is this a literal description of how God actually created the first human being? Hardly. Even without recourse to knowledge of ancient Near Eastern literature, this description is clearly not literal. God does not have a body with lungs so that he would literally breathe into dust. God is a spiritual being. The description has other purposes than telling us how God created human beings. It is, in the first place, saying God, and not any other god, created human beings. Second, it is, in contrast to the Atrahasis, presenting a picture of humanity’s creation which indicates that we are creatures with great dignity (created from God’s breath, not the spit of the gods).

Again, the point is that Genesis 1 and 2 are not interested in the question of how God ordered creation and human beings in particular. It is proclaiming that God is the creator of both.

The description of how Adam was created is certainly figurative. The question is open as to whether there was an actual person named Adam who was the first human being or not. Perhaps there was a first man, Adam, and a first woman, Eve, designated as such by God at the right time in his development of human beings. Or perhaps Adam, whose name after all means “Human,” is himself figurative of humanity in general. I have not resolved this issue in my own mind except to say that there is nothing that insists on a literal understanding of Adam in a passage so filled with obvious figurative description. The New Testament’s use of Adam (Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15) does not resolve the issue as some suggest because it is possible, even natural, to make an analogy between a literary figure and a historical one.

This issue is an important one. It is wrong to challenge people to choose between the Bible and the science of evolution as if you can only believe that one or the other is true. They are not in conflict. It is particularly damaging to insist that our young people make this kind of false choice as they are studying biology in secondary school or college. If we do so, we will force some to choose against the Bible and others to check their intelligence at the classroom door. This is a false dilemma created by a misuse of the biblical text.

For many Christians, the biblical characters Adam and Eve can present a significant challenge to accepting evolutionary theory—that is, when they are cast as historical figures who are also the biological progenitors of the human race. In this video, the Rev. Daniel Harrell discusses how there may be some “middle ground” in the way that Christians understand Adam and Eve. Harrell points out that the historicity of Adam and Eve does not necessarily conflict with science.  Rather, the claim that conflicts with science is the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humans, the only original biological ancestors of all humans today.

Instead, another way to view them is as the first two people with whom God chose to enter into a covenant relationship, like He did with Abraham, for example.  In this view, Adam and Eve become representative of the kind of relationship that God intends to have with all people. This may be a point of possible convergence, says Harrell, “for those who are worried about a historical Adam and Eve to breathe easier, and those who are concerned about integrity with DNA and evolutionary science to also breathe easier.”

In this video conversation, Old Testament scholar Peter Enns discusses the Apostle Paul and his understanding of Adam as the progenitor of the human race.

Enns writes about this issue in a recent blog post, and in today’s format, he reemphasizes a few key points—but namely that we must consider Paul within his first century context, and not in our contemporary one. What this means is that Paul wouldn’t have had 21st century scientific discovery and knowledge available to him at his point in time. He wouldn’t have understood the theory of common descent, so he would have seen Adam as a historical figure. “There is really little doubt that Paul understood Adam to be a real person, the first created human from whom all humans descended,” Enns says.

One might wonder: does that violate the theological point Paul is trying to make of connecting Adam to Jesus? More importantly, does the “non-literalness” of Adam affect the validity of Jesus?

Not so, says Enns. And as you watch this video, pay close attention to Enns' emphasis at 1:22.

While in Paul’s mind, there may be a more “organic” connection, Enns points out that for most Christians, this has no bearing on the “literalness” of Jesus.

“How Paul handles Adam does not determine modern scientific discoveries about the origin of humanity. Paul does not determine that for us. Paul is a first century man, and what he says about Jesus and Adam has to be understood in that context,” says Enns.

In this video clip, Denis Alexander, Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, discusses the description of the Fall found in Genesis. Alexander suggests that the picture we might have of the story owes more to the imaginative expansion of the narrative as found in Milton’s Paradise Lost than what is actually present in the biblical text itself. He notes that within the actual text the details are spare and do not fully answer all of the questions a reader might have.

But Genesis does have a clear storyline we can follow: humankind was in fellowship with God until humankind disobeyed, eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In doing so, they tried to put themselves in the place of God. For this, they were cast out of the Garden of Eden.

God warned Adam that on the day that he ate of the tree then he would surely die. Alexander points out that the Hebrew text is pretty clear in this reference, using the word “yom”, though physical death does not occur immediately. In fact, Adam and Eve go on to have a large family and live long lives.

In their moment of disobedience, however, spiritual death comes into being.

Alienation from God comes into being.

This story may be told in figurative language, Alexander comments, but it is a real story. Adam and Eve’s exclusion from the Garden illustrates that as human beings we cannot find our way back to God through our own works, efforts, and strengths. God’s grace is the key.

After watching this clip, consider going back to the N.T. Wright video we posted a couple of weeks ago. If they are correct, how do you think their view would enrich and enliven the first three chapters of Genesis? We would love to see your thoughts, but remember the question is not whether they are right. The question is if they are right, how would that enrich and enliven… ?

Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles for evangelical Christians who are resistant to the idea of evolution is a literalist reading of scripture –– in particular, the text of Genesis 1-3, which details the creation of the earth and its inhabitants.

While most biblical scholars would likely advocate a literary reading of Genesis, as opposed to a literal one, the characterization of Genesis 1-3 as a “mythic” text can make some people uneasy. This is largely due to the fact that in our American culture, “myth” has become synonymous with “not true”. From its Greek origin, however, myth is simply defined as a story or legend that has cultural significance in explaining the hows and whys of human existence, using metaphorical language to express ideas beyond the realm of our five senses.

But to suggest that Genesis is both a mythic text as well as the “inerrant Word of God” may require a leap of faith for some.

British author, pastor, and theologian Rev. Dr. N.T. Wright suggests that the mythological part has been misunderstood and discarded by many evangelicals in favor of a reading based entirely on questions of historicity.

He argues that “to flatten that [the text of Genesis] out is to almost perversely avoid the real thrust of the narrative … we have to read Genesis for all its worth and to say either history or myth is a way of saying 'I’m not going to read this text for all its worth, I am just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask'.”

Many might wonder—but isn’t this pursuit of contemporary context a good thing? Not so, Wright replies, “I think that’s actually a form of being unfaithful to the text itself.”

In this video clip, Wright suggests that questions concerning the historicity of Genesis and the historicity of Adam and Eve get caught up in contemporary cultural issues and miss the larger story.

For more conversations about science and religion, be sure to visit our new "Conversations" section, accessible through our Audio/Video page or on our YouTube channel.