RE: The puzzle of Adam

George wrote:

1) The fact that the descriptions of an originally paradisal state in the Bible _are_ very sketchy, and many features of a blessed initial state that Christians have accepted in the past have been read into, rather than out of, scripture. 2) Given what we know of evolutionary history, we really have to wonder whether or not anything like an initially perfect state of harmony, peace &c ever existed. Of course this just returns us to the much-discussed question of whether or not - or to what extent - the Genesis accounts are to be read as historical narrative.

rich:
George is right. That is the much discussed and important question. In my opinion, the structure of the genesis accounts have a strong underlying psychological and anthropological theme that suggests they were artificially constructed to convey a theology, rather than provide a historical narrative.
The references to self consciousness and fear upon the fall are evolutionarily precise. Before human self consciousness, man was unself-conscious (no shame) and could stand in the presence of God without fear (no ontological anxiety).
After the fall, he is ashamed (self-conscious) and fearful (the awareness of death that comes with self-consciousness increases ontological anxiety).
I suspected this was the case with Genesis and looked for an understanding of that fall and the return to God in later texts. I found it in the GofT (37).
His disciples said: "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?"
Jesus said:"When you disrobe without being ashamed... you will not be afraid."

This is the theological opposite of:
"When Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” the “eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made loincloths… and hid from the Lord God.” (Genesis 3: 6-7)

Notice in the fall, shame (self consciousness) and fear (ontological anxiety) appear with free will, which arises with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Free will to an evolutionist arose with the expansion of the behavioral repertoire and the rapid evolutionary growth of the brain. Notice in the GofT "return to God" Jesus describes, shame and fear disappear, which is the opposite of what happened with the fall. You take your free will and give it back (by doing God's will rather than your own and living "intuitively") just as God "withdrew" to give free will to you. When you are doing His will, there is, of course, no shame and no fear.

Since the GofT is theologically consistent throughout, as attested here:
Kenneth Neller has recently attested to its integrity: "That the coptic Gospel of Thomas is a complete literary work, designed to stand as a whole, there can be no doubt. It is unified by its claim to a single author; it is unified by its relatively consistent form; it is unified in its content." [[K. Neller, "Diversity in the Gospel of Thomas: Clues for a New Direction," SecCent 7/1 (1989-90)3. His essay provides extensive citations to the literature on Thomas.]] Accordingly, serious efforts must be made not simply to mine the Gospel of Thomas for passages paralleled in canonical materials but to seek understanding of the ideas and ideology of Thomas itself.
from "The Christology and Protology of the Gospel of Thomas"
by Stevan L. Davies
Journal of Biblical Literature Volume 111, Number 4, Winter 1992

...Then the theology of the fall is RATIONAL and consistent with recognized human evolutionary principles from Genesis to the GofT which is what I demonstrate in True Religion:
"In the beginning…

        When Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” the “eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made loincloths… and hid from the Lord God.” (Genesis 3: 6-7)

Adam and Eve’s eyes are opened, their nakedness is revealed and they hide. They see something they could not see before, something upon which they suddenly and intensely focus, they feel shame and they feel fear. From these lines in Genesis you can readily discern two states of the human mind: a prior state of consciousness and an emerging and “fallen” consciousness that sees. You can also infer from the Biblical text that this prior state of consciousness does not have an experience of self since Adam and Eve do not feel shame until after they have eaten the forbidden fruit.
One is necessarily ashamed of one’s self. Without a sense of self, what would one be ashamed of?
The Bible speaks of two states of consciousness. Do scientists speak of two states of consciousness? Do they speak of a unique consciousness that only man possesses? Of course they do. But scientists use language peculiar to science and religious men use language peculiar to religion, so you have to penetrate the language to discover the religious in the scientific and the scientific in the religious. Here in Genesis was a transition from one consciousness to another. Scientists also speak of a transition from one consciousness to another, only they call the transition an evolution. Scientists also say the consciousness of lower forms of life is relatively inflexible and grounded in instinct while man’s current consciousness is largely learned one life at a time.
If Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the pivotal event that marks the Biblical transition from one consciousness to another, what is the corresponding pivotal event that marks the scientific evolution from one consciousness to another? What do scientists say about “the beginning?”
Scientists claim irrefutable evidence that some time around 4 million years ago man’s hominid ancestors left the safety of the jungle canopy for the open African savannas. Over countless generations they evolved to walk upright on two legs. Once their hands were free and they could manipulate objects skillfully, man’s ancestors made tools and began to learn sophisticated survival strategies. One of the things they did was use the new tools and the learned strategies to kill others of their own kind. When a number of individuals were required to manufacture and deploy an effective tool or mount an effective strategy, again over countless generations, our ancestors evolved speech to facilitate communications. They learned to tolerate one another in greater numbers in their efforts to organize and defend themselves from other groups of early men.
The escalating conflict caused by the freeing of the hands for technology naturally selected for bigger brains that could juggle more behavioral alternatives. The behavioral repertoire expanded rapidly. As the behavioral repertoire expanded, man found himself consciously choosing from among a growing number of behavioral alternatives and his unique sense of self emerged; a consequence of having to consciously juggle many behavioral alternatives in his struggle for survival.
The consciousness that emerged from the evolutionary expansion of the behavioral repertoire is unique in the scope of its potential behavioral alternatives. Imagination resides in consciousness and we boast that man is only limited by his imagination. There is a distinct disadvantage, however, to having numerous behavioral alternatives. You no longer know what choices to make. Decisions had been fixed to a much greater extent in the prior state of consciousness, behavior was regimented and instinctual, a manifestation of inborn tendencies that were unlearned responses to stimuli. Now behavior would be learned one life at a time and decisions would be consciously made rather than reflexively intuited.
Then the pivotal event(s) in human evolution corresponding to Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit is the expansion of man’s behavioral repertoire accompanied by the rapid evolutionary growth of the brain culminating in man’s knowledge of good and evil.
What Genesis does not specifically say about either of man’s two states of consciousness is easily inferred from the Biblical text. According to Genesis, in man’s original state, before:

The rapid expansion of the behavioral repertoire
The enlargement of the brain
And the emergence of self-consciousness
 
He generally knew what to do, had little or no sense of self… and could therefore not imagine fear. In man’s current state, again according to Genesis, he often doesn’t know what to do, he does the wrong thing, he is self-conscious and he hides from God.
Those scientific categories of instinct and acquired behavior are embedded in this religious language. If you behave instinctively you intuit what to do and do not have to make a decision based on what you have learned previously. An organism that behaves instinctively cannot behave otherwise and does not make conscious mistakes. On the other hand, if you rely on acquired behaviors you have learned, you must consciously choose from among many possible behavioral alternatives in any given situation. You are prone to error and your awareness of that fact generates ontological anxiety.
Given these few lines from the Bible, literally read, it became clear to me that if one wanted to attain the original state of consciousness, the one God intended for us, one would have to abandon one’s self-consciousness and learn to intuit appropriate behavior. I believe I am reading Genesis correctly when I say; one could then stand in God’s presence without fear.
Despite countless artistic renderings of a celestial Eden, the Catholic catechism defines heaven very simply as being – in the presence of God.1
    The hunger for spirituality, then, is the natural desire of an evolved self-conscious mind to return to a time (the beginning) and a place (paradise) before men made tools and plotted the murder of other men, when a man’s behavior was intuitive, and he could stand in the presence of God without fear. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says,

     “When you disrobe without being ashamed… you will not be afraid.”2
    
Jesus’ words in this Nag Hammadi text from 1st century Egypt dovetail perfectly with the nature of the fall in Genesis. The fall brought shame (self-consciousness) and fear (ontological anxiety). Returning to God would remove them.
We have easily identified a plausible evolutionary counterpart for each Biblical fact. The comparison suggests that our awareness of God biologically evolved with self-consciousness. Adam and Eve, Biblical archetypes of the human condition, did eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The allegories in Genesis regarding human consciousness chronicle scientific facts. Those scientific facts do not contradict Scripture.
They are Scripture."

The fall in genesis is a real fall easily translatable into scientific terminology arising from human evolution, a knowledge that was easily accessible to pastoralists who bred herd animals and could see the difference between animal instinct and free will.

If you don't make an attempt to read the fall in genesis the way I've described it, you can't appreciate the story of Jacob and Esau as cited by Darwin in the Origin of Species because the theme begun in the fall is continued in the story of Jacob and Esau, but only if you interpret the accompanying allegory from a Darwinian perspective as Darwin pointed out.

The significance? The fall never assumed man was evil or depraved as is occasionally asserted, but simply a being with free will who could err. And the beauty? Nothing was read into Scripture to come to these conclusions. And you can now see the real human dilemma of the fall is logical and consistent with the understanding of man's evolved nature in the natural sciences.

rich
Received on Mon Dec 6 19:40:10 2004