The Historical Adam and Eve

“What would be lost if we decided that Adam and Eve were not historical people?” This is a question of supreme importance. In saying this, of course, I am giving away my first answer — We would lose something essential to the whole of the gospel and the biblical worldview. I would show three aspects of this truth, namely, that it is biblical, trustworthy, and essential.

The Historicity of Our First Parents is Biblical

By “biblical” here I simply mean that it is the only natural reading of the text of Genesis. Could it be inferred from the poetic form of other elements of Genesis 1-3 that Adam is likewise intended to be a figure? The notion that if other elements of Genesis 1-3 are figurative (or generic), then the ontological status of Adam must likewise be figurative (or generic) is a non sequitur, and begs questions both hermeneutical and doctrinal in nature.

Some will point to the Hebrew word adam, which is not only a proper name, but the word means “man.” Since the proper name follows the generic name, why not apply Ockham’s razor to this and conclude that the original “adam” only had that figurative role?

The first reason is that this begs the whole question—namely, whether the generic did indeed precede the proper. Consider also that Eve is named symbolically (Gen. 3:20), so there is no reason to choose one versus the other with Adam anymore than with her. The second reason is that there are even more generic names for male and female, and that in the very same narrative. The Hebrew for man and woman used in 2:23 is ish and ishshah. It turns out that putting “adam” exclusively in the role of generic name is not the simplest explanation in this case. 

How do those who claim a high view of Scripture reconcile their denial that all descended from Adam?

According to Richard Gaffin, there are typically two roads taken: “one flatly denies the historicity of Adam; the other affirms this historicity but denies that he is the first human being who has fathered the entire human race.”1

We might also wonder whether there are any Old Earthers who would also agree that Adam was a special creation of God. Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, in their book Who Was Adam? (2005) clearly affirm that Adam and Eve were created by God both directly and physically (not just spiritually), and conversely deny that Adam and Eve were descendants of older hominids (see especially page 44). John Lennox, in his Seven Days that Divide the World (2011) also affirms the “direct special creation” of Adam by God (p. 69). Whether they have to perform textual gymnastics in order to reconcile this to a wholly inerrant Bible makes for an interesting discussion, but we should at least be charitable in representing the view of others. 

The Historicity of Our First Parents is Trustworthy

There had always been people on the fringe who challenged the Bible’s account of our first parents. Even following the Reformation, there were sects like the Diggers and Ranters who held to a much older world, and the Jewish skeptic in France, Isaac La Peyere, wrote a scandalous work, Men Before Adam in 1655, suggesting that the race spoken of in Scripture was only meant to narrate the Jewish line and not the rest of humanity, which was outside of Adam.2 The allegedly more sophisticated challenges of our day are really no different. We find the most ancient civilizations (e.g. the Chinese) with chronicles predating those previous calculations in the Western church and we falsely conclude that it is the Scripture’s calculations that need adjustment. 

It is important to consider the logic of the conflicting claims. One reason is to head off a very predictable objection: “Jesus and Paul were limited to the knowledge of their time, so that it can be true that Adam is a figure or an ‘everyman’ (ahistorical) and yet their doctrine is still true.”

The trouble with this idea is that Jesus and Paul were not just claiming ahistorical doctrinal truth about Adam, but were also claiming historical facts about Adam. The doctrinal implications are inseparable from the historical claim.

If Jesus and Paul were not correct about that, they would not be “limited” in their knowledge, but would be in error. That brings us to our third and last point.

The Historicity of Our First Parents is Essential

It is necessary to the logic of the gospel that Adam first represented his whole race before Christ represented His. The analogy at the heart of the gospel is this: the reason that Christ brings a double-cure (obedience rendered and punishment absorbed) is because there was a double-curse. The nature inherited from Adam incapacitated what is still owed, and the guilt imputed from Adam required that justice be satisfied for everyone born to the sinful race. Consider a few New Testament passages. If we denied Adam’s historicity, then we would undermine both this gospel logic and the truthfulness of the inspired authors of Scripture. 

Paul’s arguments in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 directly hinge upon Adam’s historicity. Our doctrine of Scripture is dealt a subtle blow if we dismiss how Paul treats Adam with historical realism in 1 Timothy 2:12-14. Think also of the Apostle’s claim about this very truth on Mars Hill:

“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26).

In fact, biblical authority, clarity, inerrancy, and sufficiency are all undermined by revising the Christian belief in the historical first parents. What then of our doctrine of Christ when we read Jesus doing the same in Matthew 19:4-6? Any other view would necessitate the fallibility of Jesus. To put it plainly, it would mean that He is not in fact divine. 

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1. Richard Gaffin, No Adam, No Gospel (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2015), 11.

2. William VanDoodewaard, The Quest for the Historical Adam (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2015), 88-89.