http://update.greystoneinstitute.org/the-historical-adam-and-the-theological-virtues-a-suggestion/ Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:43:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.1 http://update.greystoneinstitute.org/the-historical-adam-and-the-theological-virtues-a-suggestion/#comment-24 Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:19:40 +0000 http://www.winceandsing.com/blog/?p=319#comment-24 I was at a conference of a large science and religion society having a friendly conversation over lunch on the historicity of Adam (among other things). One person, then a graduate student in theology or biblical studies, did not stop at challenging the historicity of Adam, but asserted that the whole concept of historicity in our modern sense was foreign to the texts in question. I do not know if in fact this is what was taught in her school or was her own misunderstanding of what she had been taught. I was helpfully instructed in my seminary OT classes that biblical texts had ‘tendence’. That is, they were written from a particular viewpoint and therefore emphasize some events and leave out others. I can see how someone might take that a step farther and reject the possibility of any event being accepted as such, in the physical and temporal sense.
My answer was not as well conceived as what you just read above, but might be a helpful addition. No one will deny the reality and pervasiveness of covenant in the OT, not least of all in the Pentateuch. A covenant, whether with God or other individuals, is based on agreed states of affairs in the world, with conditions and consequences. A covenant would lose all force if there was no memory of the specific event in which both parties agreed to the terms. So important are such events that we record them exactly as the terms were agreed by both parties. It is in the interest of both parties to ensure that it is so, so that they are not cheated down the road. A covenant is thus historical in the sense that we use the word ‘historicity’ in debates about the historicity of Adam.
Even the most liberal biblical scholar would not reject covenant as one of the most comprehensive theological principles of the OT. It is in Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy by name, at the very least, but theologically everywhere else as well. But you cannot accept that covenant is there without accepting that the parties involved had a historical sensibility which we share and accept. ‘Stuff happened, we wrote it down so we would not forget who did it and how it happened. You were there right beside me when it happened and checked what we wrote down so that I can’t change the facts to my advantage in the future.’ Is that not the historicity we are looking for?

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