It is no longer academically respectable to hold to Adam as a special creation from the dust of the ground. That thinking is dead and gone….Even if it were true, it lacks cultural timbre. It is now more germane to soak your morsel in the communion cup. Let’s not be so banal about the language or historical meaning of the Confession. This is a new day, and theology should not be so nasty, so separating, so rigid, so . . . historically reformed. Drop Adam and dip your bread in your wine. Adam is extinct, let’s intinct.

To Dip or Not To Dip

To the surprise of some of my fellow elders in my Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) Presbytery, I voted against the proposed language change to the Book of Church Order 58-5 concerning intinction.(1) It is not because I believe or practice intinction. In fact, in my estimation, the exegetical and historical arguments against intinction deliver a knockout blow.

Some defend intinction, claiming that its rejection logically requires the rigid adherence to a common chalice or the use of wine rather than grape juice. I don’t mean to pass the cup, but such arguments simply fail to persuade. They confuse categories; they are apples and oranges – or perhaps better, bread and wine.

Others make a case for intinction because of its graphic value. “A bloody sop of bread is a vivid and nearly gruesome reminder of the broken body and poured out blood of our Savior.”(2) Cultural trends evidence a fierce longing for multi-sensory experience in worship. Twenty-first century worshippers seek services which grip with the kind of emotional and graphic force of Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the crucifixion (The Passion of Christ). Drunk with existential idols, worshippers want to feel something. Intinction drips alluringly for such contemporary instincts.

Yet in reflecting the biblical texts (Matt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26), our confessional language could hardly speak more lucidly: eat and drink, not eat in drink. Jesus himself regulated the Supper. He distinguished verbally and methodologically between the bread and the wine. Our Standards do not miss these distinctions.

Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) (3) calls us to give and receive bread and wine “according to the appointment of Jesus Christ” (WLC 168). In keeping with the regulative principle, the catechism calls us not to a generic communion principle, but to the express command of our Lord.

This theology in practice gets further explanation in WLC 169: ministers of the Word are “. . . to take and break the bread, and to give both the bread and the wine to the communicants: who are, by the same appointment, to take and eat the bread, and to drink the wine, in thankful remembrance that the body of Christ was broken and given, and his blood shed, for them” (cf. WSC 96). Intinction plainly does not honor the words of institution, the methods of the Lord of the Table, nor the theology of the sacrament itself.

So why did I oppose the amended language to BCO 58, forbidding the practice of intinction? For the same reason I oppose in thesi statements (declarations on a particular subject) on the historicity of Adam.

To Adam or Not To Adam

At the same General Assembly (2012), Westminster Presbytery (among others) brought an overture concerning historic Adam. Westminster’s statement, which was subsequently delivered to all PCA presbyteries, was quite good. The statement communicated faithfully, clearly, even usefully. I liked it. I agree with it. I do not support it.

Why not? Because whether Adam was a special creation from the dust of the ground is not confessionally uncertain. Following texts like Genesis 2:7, which unambiguously express Adam’s creation as a distinctive work of God, our Standards render Adam’s unique creation with potent perspicuity. Adam was not, and then God made him from the dust.

WCF 4.2 states that God “created man,” and that he spoke to man and woman in the Garden. Remarkable fellowship follows the punctiliar creation. WLC 17 (cf. WSC 16) more explicitly expands the special creation of man by personal and immediate divine action. Again it is put in time (“After God had made all the other creatures, he created man male and female”), and describes a particular process (“formed the body of the man of the dust of the ground, and the woman of the rib of the man”), in which God’s creating work was special and immediate.

WCF 7.2 indicates that God made a “first covenant with man.” The statement rests upon the personal, immediate work of God in the creation of our First Parents in his image (cf. WCF 6.1; WLC 21). In fact, WCF 6:3 describes these parents as the “root of all mankind,” and Adam is described as a “public person” in whom “all mankind . . . fell” (WLC 22). Adam is both “covenant” head and genetic head (WLC 22).(4)

Advocacy–not mere affirmation or acceptance–of this historic Adam is a confessional non-negotiable, because its truth strikes at the vitals of religion (cf. BCO 34-5). In the Westminster Standards, the divine creative act is neither historically nor theologically elastic. We find no wiggle room.

Yet, many worm and squirm. So why all the wiggling?

Biologos  has hit the evangelical world with a big bang. Working with a concordist model of science and faith, the organization claims, “evolution is a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes in creation” and “the Bible [is] the inspired word of God, and . . . is compatible with new scientific discoveries.”(5) As their research and writing indicates, the “evolutionary creation” (yes, that is what they call it) model raises questions about the historicity of a first man. With echoes of Shakespeare, to Adam or not to Adam has become the pressing question.(6)

For the narrowing list of adherents to a real historical Adam, Derek Kidner’s “modified monogenesis,” or some kissing cousin of this paradigm evidently remains the only academically respectable position to take. Adam’s Genesis 2:7 “creation” is really a pre-historic selection from a pre-Adamic group of hominids. With thanks to the ex cathedra interpretive conclusions concerning the genetic code, we now know the Adam you thought your Bible taught is not the Adam that was. . . or wasn’t.

Confused? Troubled? Don’t be. Thus saith the scientific community and so followeth the evangelical academic Magisterium.

The big bang has actually rattled still closer to home. Bruce Waltke’s affirmation of theistic evolution on Biologos propelled his departure from Reformed Theological Seminary. Former Westminster Theological Seminary professor, Peter Enns now seeks to free evangelicals from the allegedly naïve union of history and theology. He winsomely explains how your mother’s historic Adam is now extinct.(7) With Gumby-like hermeneutics, Enns not only denies this Adam, but actually espouses a post-exilic writing for the entire Old Testament, when the freed peoples defend their own existence through creative re-imagining. In this paradigm, Adam is not Adam; he is Israel in retroactive recapitulation. Clear as mud? Read Enns to see the ambiguity more clearly.

Enns no longer finds a real Adam a real need. “The more I look at this passage, the less I see how it makes a lick of difference to the force of Paul’s argument whether Adam is an historical figure or not.  To my mind, the fundamental analogy still holds even if we were to add one more disanalogous element to those we have already rehearsed: whereas Adam was a fictional character of a mythic past, Jesus was for Paul an historical figure of recent memory. No matter. The comparison still holds. Jesus is, in some important ways, like Adam, just as He is said elsewhere in the New Testament to be like Moses, like Jonah, like Jeremiah, like Elijah, like a lamb, like a vine, like a door, like a shepherd, and like dozens of other things.” (8) So there you . . . like . . . have it. Penetrating interpretive analysis at . . . like . . . its best.

Covenant Seminary Professor Jack Collins’ book on Adam (9) leaves the historic and confessional interpretation of the Old Testament effectively an open question. Employing his well-rehearsed and at many points commendable literary approach, Collins seeks to preserve some (nondescript) notion of historicity within the Old Testament narratives, including the early chapters in Genesis. One of the open options is pre-Adamic hominid election. Adam and Eve could have been a pair chosen from out of groups of hominids, selected for divine purpose. As recorded in a Christianity Today article, Collins remarks, “‘If genetics eventually forces reconsideration,’ he could perhaps reconceive of Adam and Eve as ‘the king and queen of a larger population’ and thereby preserve Genesis’ historicity.'” (10)

What Then is the Problem?

Out of these contemporary considerations of Adam and the Lord’s Table, the message blares loudly. The Westminster Standards and the PCA’s Constitution are documents to interpret creatively rather than to advance sympathetically. In fact, for many, imaginative spinning elicits admiration rather than alarm. That trend in itself is alarming. Add to that drift the driving “theology of nice,” where latitude in theology is a badge of honor and marking theological lines is inherently unloving, we find ourselves in an age when truth gets trumped by contemporary imports – academic and cultural.

It is no longer academically respectable to hold to Adam as a special creation from the dust of the ground. That thinking is dead and gone. Get with the times.  Even if it were true, it lacks cultural timbre. It is now more germane to soak your morsel in the communion cup. Let’s not be so banal about the language or historical meaning of the Confession. This is a new day, and theology should not be so nasty, so separating, so rigid, so . . . historically reformed. Drop Adam and dip your bread in your wine. Adam is extinct, let’s intinct.

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NOTES:

1. Intinction is the practice of dipping the bread in the wine and partaking of the elements simultaneously. The PCA’s Book of Church Order (BCO) contains the Form of Government, The Rules of Discipline, and the Directory for the Worship of God.

2. http://futonreformer.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/the-pcas-debate-on-intinction/ (Accessed February 15, 2013).

3. The Westminster Standards consist of three statements of doctrine: the WCF = Westminster Confession of Faith; the WLC = Westminster Larger Catechism; the WSC = Westminster Shorter Catechism.

4. Original sin comes to all humans “by natural generation” (WLC 26).

5. www.biologos.com (Accessed February 13, 2013).

6. For an excellent treatment of this question, see J. P. Versteeg, Adam in the New Testament: Mere Teaching Model or First Historical Man? (Second Edition; translated by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012).

7. Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2012).

8. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/11/who-needs-a-historical-prometheus-uh-i-mean-adam/ (Accessed February 13, 2013).

9. C. John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011).

10. Recorded in Richard Belcher’s “Review of C. John Collins’ Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?” https://theaquilareport.com/did-adam-and-eve-really-exist-by-c-john-collins-a-review/ (Accessed February 13, 2013).