Was Eve a real woman?

The book of Genesis and especially its story of creation in six days has long been under siege by liberal critics, but now increasingly it is also under attack by those who call themselves evangelicals.

Well-known theologian, author, and teacher John Schneider resigned from the faculty of Calvin College because he has begun to question whether we can, in the face of evolutionary science, continue to believe that Adam and Eve were real, that Eden existed, and that a fall happened (see this article in HigherEd). He is not alone in his doubt, neither at Calvin College nor beyond.

Schneider’s skepticism comes from science, particularly genetic mapping. Genome science is proclaiming that we couldn’t all have come from just two human beings or even from a human original. So, rather than question whether this new science in fact knows everything, Schneider has chosen to throw Adam and Eve overboard—and along with them he is also jettisoning centuries of church teaching about the Scriptures, sin, the work of Christ, and God himself. (Don’t take my word for it; read the first few pages of his article.)

How, you ask, could questioning whether Eve is really “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20) affect all these doctrines?

Well, first of all, the Scriptures say that Eve did become the mother of all the living. The Scriptures say that Adam and Eve are not evolved animals, though Adam and the animals share some characteristics: both were made from the ground as “living, breathing creatures” (the Hebrew is nephesh chayyah; Genesis 1:24, of animals; 2:7, of man—to learn more about this see Into the Weeds: What we have in common with animals--and what we don't). The Scriptures say that man and woman are the only beings made in the image of God, each created by God’s own distinct acts, not by evolution from apes. In fact, the Scriptures say, Adam was formed before the animals (see Genesis 2:4-20).

The Scriptures say Eve did take the fruit, eat, and give it to her husband and that he ate. They say that God came down in judgment and laid out for Adam and Eve the consequences of their disobedience. They say this first sin was imputed to all who are born in the line of Adam and those consequences affect every human being, because we are descended from Adam. They say that the Savior has come as the fulfillment of the promise God made to Eve that her seed would crush the serpent.

What Schneider and others are doing is no different from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics who decided Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead—because that was unscientific. They too would make all such Scripture merely literary devices and man-made stories about the general human condition, not actual history. But Christianity, it has often been said, is a historical religion. If Adam were never Adam, and Eve were never Eve, then we are most to be pitied (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-19), because our salvation is not sure in Christ.

Paul tells us that Christ is the second Adam. This means, Paul says, that as sin came into the world through one man (Adam) so “the free gift of righteousness” comes through one man (Jesus Christ) (see Romans 5:12-21). It means that in Adam we all died, but in Christ all shall be made alive (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-23). And it means that “just as we have born the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [Jesus Christ]” (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-57). Christ as second Adam guarantees our whole salvation: justification, sanctification, glorification.

All the elements of the story the Scriptures tell from Genesis to Revelation fit together because they have one Author who inspired and oversaw the writing of each piece throughout. Throwing out one element (in this case in favor of unproven science) undermines the integrity of the whole. The historical life of Adam and Eve is just as important to our salvation as is the resurrection of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15).

Systematic theologian Robert Peterson, in Salvation Accomplished by the Son: The Work of Christ (forthcoming from Crossway), argues that there are prerequisites, things that had to happen, for Christ to save us by his obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension. If you deny that the prerequisites ever happened, how long is it before the logical next step is that you must also deny the work of Christ? Schneider seems to be on that path, one already taken and well-traveled by nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century critics. Schneider too wants the church to reconcile science and Scripture in a way that puts Scripture in the back of the bus.

So let’s take the road less traveled: Christ is the seed of the very same woman who picked the fruit in the garden, ate it, and handed to her husband; the very woman about whom God himself said, “… her seed will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel” (see Genesis 3:15); the woman Adam named Eve, because she became the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20).

Into the weeds: What we have in common with animals—and what we don’t

Genesis 1 and 2 teach us that there is a certain amount of commonality between animals and people. Both are nephesh chayyah made from the ground. (All Scripture quotations are from the ESV.)

“God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth …’ ”

“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth [i.e. wild animals] according to their kinds.’ ” (Genesis 1:24).

“—then the LORD God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)

“So the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” (Genesis 2:19)

The Hebrew phrase translated “living creature(s)” is nephesh chayyah. Chayyah means living, alive. L’chaim, the Jewish toast (“To life!”), comes from the same root. But nephesh can mean many things: breath; anything that breathes, i.e. an animal; person; soul; life; self; spirit, feelings; inclination, desire. Some translations call Adam a living soul, though never the animals. Both Adam and the animals are living, breathing creatures.

Both Adam and the animals are made from the ground, and God “forms” both. Thus Genesis calls our attention to something scientists know: human being and animals are alike. That’s why medical researchers can test new drugs on rats and new surgical procedures on dogs. That’s why we find the sorts of physical similarities that fuel the theory that man evolved from the apes. God made man and animals from the same raw material and both sets of creatures became nephesh chayyah.

But that’s not enough—and that’s the big joke in Genesis 2. Notice that in Genesis 1, we read that God makes the animals, then man and woman in his own image. But in Genesis 2, God makes the man, and says, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Readers of Genesis 1 expect Eve to come next, but that is not what God does. Instead God makes every kind of animal—the cows, the sheep, the lions, the elephants, and so on and so on—as well as every kind of bird and brings them to Adam.

And none of them is suitable for Adam. (See Genesis 2:19-20). Only after Adam has seen all of the animals and named them does God put him into deep sleep and make Eve. None of the animals is suitable to Adam, because out of all God created, only Adam and Eve are made in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27). Humans and animals are alike, but not alike enough.

So perhaps the bigger joke is the one that evolutionary scientists have pulled on many Bible scholars, convincing them that scientific discoveries nullify the word of God. Except this one is not funny. It’s harmful.