The second part of my personal history of relating to the Adam and Eve narrative
(Read Part 1 here)
In college I also first encountered the significance of the Adam and Eve narrative in regard to gender roles. While I was at Wheaton College, the college, in partnership with the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, held a series of lectures on the biblical roles for men and women. Key to many of those lectures were discussions regarding the correct translation and interpretation of the term “ezer kenedgo” in Genesis. What I heard them argue was that the term meant that women were created to help and serve men. While not ontologically different than men (women are created in God’s image) women and men have complementary roles. Men therefore have the burden of leading and providing for the family and the church while women are to submit to that leadership as they help men with that difficult task.
Central to this complementarian position is the situating of the establishment of women’s identity as a helper before the Fall. Male headship and women’s role as helpers cannot then be blamed on sin, but must be accepted as God’s design for men and women. Given this interpretation of the creation of Adam and Eve and the heightened awareness of that interpretation the series of lectures promoted at my college, it became very difficult to hold to any divergent interpretation. If one spoke of egalitarianism, one was told that to be a Christian who believed in the Bible one had to be a complementarian. It was the same argument based on an inerrant foundationalist approach to the Bible that I had heard used to argue against evolution, but now it was used to silence any questions about women’s roles. Similarly, girls who dared to ask a guy out on a date were mocked for usurping the leadership in the relationship. Once when a girl was asked to say a prayer during a chapel service, she was shouted down by someone who quoted Bible verses at her about women not being permitted to speak in church.
As one with emerging egalitarian leanings at the time, I struggled with this interpretation of Genesis. Yet at the same time, I believed that to question the Bible was a sin. I felt that to affirm the full equality of women I had to reject the Bible (and therefore my faith) entirely. Genesis became a battle ground. Either one accepted Genesis or one accepted science and the equality of women, there was no middle ground. It eventually took me leaving the world of conservative evangelicalism behind before I could admit that such choices presented false dichotomies.
For years after I rejected the evangelical approach to Genesis (as I had been taught), I treated the Genesis narrative with ambivalence. I knew I did not have to interpret it in light of creationism and complementarianism, but the way those ideologies had been used to silence and control questions left me with lingering uncertainties about Genesis. I finally found my way back to Genesis through my reading of authors like N.T. Wright and Brian Mclaren who focus on the Jewish cultural and theological roots of the New Testament story. Such a perspective rooted the narrative arc of the Bible in the Abrahamic Covenant of the people of God being blessed so as to be a blessing to the nations. This approach opened up for me the possibility to approach scripture, and even the Adam and Eve story, as part of a theological narrative that emerged out of a specific cultural setting. I find myself therefore recently both engaging the Genesis narrative as response to Ancient Near-Eastern mythology that shaped the Hebrew faith and as a narrative grounding for Christian theology. The historical approach fascinates me, but it is in the theological approach that I find the most meaning.
For example, instead of reading the Adam and Eve story as a story about science or gender roles, I see in it the basis for why humanity is to be valued and treated with dignity. The affirmation in this religious text that humans bear the image of God implies for me that to treat another person with injustice is to mock and mistreat the very image of God. I’ve similarly come to interpret the narrative of the Fall through a theological lens as well seeing Adam and Eve’s act less as an infraction that has to be punished, but as a failure to trust in God’s timing as they seek their telos of becoming ever more like the God they image. It is a story telling how humans are both image-bearers of the divine and yet must accept the limits of creation, time, and space. Like the tale of Pandora’s Box, Adam and Eve’s impatience and attempt to tap into instant godlikeness brought disaster. The moral of the tale is a reminder that we must accept the embodied life we have and relationally journey toward more fully reflecting the image of God as the finite creatures that we are.
This theological interpretation subsequently informs practical living. Given that the world is hurting and because our very being is to reflect God’s image we are to love the world just as God loves us. This isn’t just some inner warm-fuzzy that makes us feel close to God – it involves action. If we are moving closer to God then we will act like God and care for that which is made in God’s image – in short God’s creation. Hurting others, destroying the environment, being greedy, achieving at the expense of others – all these things don’t acknowledge our identity as being made in God’s image. Accepting who we are, our vocation as image-bearers, involves a responsibility to live for others and work for their good. God has blessed us abundantly, so by nature we are to bless others.
From the literalism of my youth to the contextual and theological lenses of my present readings, how I have interpreted the story of Adam and Eve has shifted dramatically over time. I look forward to being shaped in yet more ways as I continue to engage the text in the years to come.