Adam, Eve, and the Culture Wars with Pete Enns

In this video Conversation, Pete 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.

Transcript

And the question is why? Why does it frighten people? What is going on inside of us? And I really think so much of this is a factor of the time in which we live, as Evangelical Christians, for example, and the Fundamentalist Christianity as well, that has had now 100 to 150 years of conflicts and battles behind us. And we’ve been taught that the only way to protect the Bible is through a literalistic understanding. I think one way to get over the fear, which takes time. It’s not going to happen like this (snaps). It has to be done carefully, actually. But a way to get beyond the fear is to help people become more self-conscious, in a good sense of the word. More self-critical about just assumptions we carry into this.

But I think fear is the number one issue. I rarely see theological debates. I see fearful arguments where how we look at the world is threatened. It’s not just the biblical passages, it’s what we think of God and what we think of all these other things. A central component that I try to keep before people is the centrality of who Jesus is and what he did for understanding of the gospel and really of the Bible as a whole. I think that’s our epicenter. That’s our beginning point as Christians, and we work out from that.