Rhetoric Race and Religion
Shortly after the 2004 publication of his book, Random Designer, biologist Richard Colling was prohibited from teaching introductory biology courses at Olivet Nazarene College in Illinois and his book was banned from the campus. Peter Enns, who earned his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, claimed that the first chapters of Genesis are firmly grounded in ancient myth, which he defines as “an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins in the form of stories”; in 2008, the board of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia forced Enns, a tenured faculty member, to resign after fourteen years. In 2010, Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando fired biblical scholar Bruce Waltke for stating that evolution is true. In 2011, Calvin College firedtheologian John Schneider and silenced biblical scholar Dan Harlow for challenging the traditional Christian understanding of a literal Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve are the third rail for contemporary evangelical scholars–touch it and you will die (homosexuality is another third rail).
Science has peeled away successive layers of the Adam and Eve narrative for over two centuries. According to the traditional account, Adam and Eve, the morally pure first couple, lived in a paradise where, though they didn’t work, their every need was met. In Eden there was no suffering and death (not just for humans but for every living creature). Adam’s fall, then, issued forth in natural evils such as earthquakes, pestilence, and famine (and the suffering and death that lie in their wake) and moral evils such as human slavery, war, and other forms of violence (and the suffering and death that lie in their wake). Prior to the fall, the world was one of suffering-free and death-free bliss.
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