The Lost World of Adam and Eve Quotes

“When Jesus talks about the Sabbath, he makes statements that seem unrelated to rest if we think of it in terms of relaxation. In Matthew 12:8, he is the Lord of the Sabbath. When we realize that the Sabbath has to do with participating in God’s ordered system (rather than promoting our own activities as those that bring us order), we can understand how Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. Throughout his controversies with the Pharisees, Jesus insisted that it was never a violation of the Sabbath to do the work of God on that day. Indeed, he noted that God is continually working (Jn 5:17). The Sabbath is most truly honored when we participate in the work of God (see Is 58:13-14). The work we desist from is that which represents our own attempts to bring our own order to our lives.2 It is to resist our self-interest, our self-sufficiency and our sense of self-reliance.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Whatever humanity does, it should be directed toward bringing order out of non-order. Our use of the environment should not impose disorder. This is not just a house that we inhabit; it is our divinely gifted home, and we are accountable for our use of it and work in it.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“From these data it is easy to conclude that Adam’s sleep has prepared him for a visionary experience rather than for a surgical procedure. The description of himself being cut in half and the woman being built from the other half (Gen 2:21-22) would refer not to something he physically experienced but to something that he saw in a vision. It would therefore not describe a material event but would give him an understanding of an important reality, which he expresses eloquently in Genesis 2:23. Consequently, we would then be able to conclude that the text does not describe the material origin of Eve. The vision would concern her identity as ontologically related to the man.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“We also expect Genesis, read properly, to be compatible with the truths about our world that scientists uncover because both the world and the Word emanate from God.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Humans are the special, direct creation of God in certain ways—that is not in question. The uncertainty lies in how much of that special creation falls into the material category.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Even as we have seen many points of contact between Genesis and the ancient Near East, we should not neglect to notice the places where the Israelites were departing from the standard ways of thinking in the ancient world. People (God’s images) were placed in sacred space just as the images of the Babylonian gods were placed in sacred space in their temples to mediate God’s presence and God’s revelation. But images were excluded in worship in Israel—we are the only images God allows.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“When we consider the image in these four categories, we can affirm that all human beings must be considered as participating in the divine image. It is something that is more corporate than individual”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Just as naming is an act of creation in the ancient world, so this giving of identity is a spiritual act of special creation.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“have only space enough to survey the aspects of the image of God that these studies (as well as my own) have identified. This will entail a brief presentation of four aspects: function, identity, substitution and relationship. These are not mutually exclusive alternatives, and I would propose that each of them is true.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Evolution can be defined as an interpretation of the world around us that posits a material (phylogenetic) continuity among all species of creatures (biological and genetic, not spiritual) as the result of a process of change over time through various mechanisms known and unknown.1 It is not inherently atheistic or deistic. It has plenty of room for the providence of God as well as the intimate involvement of God. It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss whether evolutionary models are correct or not. The more important question is whether the conclusions of common descent and material continuity are compatible with a faithful interpretation of the Bible. Today”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“In all these cases, while the Bible could be read as suggesting that Adam was the first human being, it is more debatable whether it is making a scientific claim that would controvert the possibility that modern humanity is descended from a pool of common ancestors as indicated by the genetic evidence.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Genesis 2 talks about the nature of all people, not the unique material origins of Adam and Eve. Consequently, we do not find human origins stories in Genesis 2 that make scientific claims. That does not mean that modern scientific theories are therefore correct by default—it just means that we can consider scientific claims on their own merit rather than dismissing them because they contradict biblical claims.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“The distortions Western theology has introduced into Paul’s Adam-theology are cognate with the distortions, or the downright ignoring, that have happened in relation to the kingdom of God. They belong together; and together they may give us a sense of how to talk wisely both about salvation and about origins.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“the message ought never to be simply about me and my salvation. It ought to be about God and God’s kingdom.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“it leads me to my proposal: that just as God chose Israel from the rest of humankind for a special, strange, demanding vocation, so perhaps what Genesis is telling us is that God chose one pair from the rest of early hominids for a special, strange, demanding vocation. This pair (call them Adam and Eve if you like) were to be the representatives of the whole human race, the ones in whom God’s purposes to make the whole world a place of delight and joy and order, eventually colonizing the whole creation, were to be taken forward. God the Creator put into their hands the fragile task of being his image-bearers.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“But here is the problem: that we have seen the goal of it all as “humans being rescued so that they could have fellowship with God,” but the Bible sees the goal of it all as “humans being rescued so that they could sum up the praises of all creation and look after that creation as God’s wise stewards.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“The image is a vocation, a calling. It is the call to be an angled mirror, reflecting God’s wise order into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to the Creator. That is what it means to be the royal priesthood: looking after God’s world is the royal bit, summing up creation’s praise is the priestly bit. And the image is, of course, the final thing that is put into the temple (here I draw on John Walton’s careful exposition of Genesis 1 and 2 as the creation of sacred space, and the seven days of Genesis 1 as the seven stages of temple building), so that the god can be present to his people through the image and that his people can worship him in that image.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Christians have been in danger of focusing on the existence of Adam rather than the vocation of”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“One of the distinctions between the two models is that in the Augustinian model, the world is infected because we are infected, while in the Irenaean model we are infected from the world that got polluted because of that first act (disorder let loose and run amok).”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Perhaps the time has come for the church to reconsider how original sin is formulated and understood.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Augustine’s model is one in which sin is passed from generation to generation as we are born, though of course biology in general was not well understood in his time, and, more specifically, they were totally ignorant of genetics. The more we have learned about biology and genetics, the less likely Augustine’s model has become.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Genesis 3 is more about the encroachment of disorder (brought about by sin) into a world in the process of being ordered than it is about the first sin.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“In taking from the tree, Adam and Eve were trying to set themselves up as a satellite center of wisdom apart from God. It is a childish sort of response: “I can do it myself!” or “I want to do it my way!” These are not a rejection of authority per se but an insistence on independence. The act is an assertion that “it’s all about me,” and it is one that has characterized humanity (individually and corporately) since this first act. With people as the source and center of wisdom, the result was not order centered on them but disorder. This disorder extended to all people of all time as well as to the cosmos, and life in God’s presence was forfeited.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“Some scholars today believe that Israel was in the habit of borrowing other people’s myths and transforming them into a mythology of their own. I do not share that perspective. What is sometimes perceived as a shared mythology is more often a shared propensity to think imagistically about the same issues using a shared symbolic vocabulary.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“In this way, we commit to taking the Bible seriously and fulfilling the demands of our commitment to the truthfulness of Scripture. If the text chooses to use metaphorical symbols, it is free to do so, and we would be remiss to read them any other way.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“According to my analysis of the tōlĕdōt (account), I would suggest that Genesis 2 is not recursively recounting what happened on day six but is talking about what happened in the aftermath of day six.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“rather than understanding Scripture as necessitating the view that Adam and Eve are the first humans, in light of their specific role concerned with access to God in sacred space and relationship with him, we might alternatively consider the possibility that they are the first significant humans. As with Abram, who was given a significant role as the ancestor of Israel (though not the first ancestor of Israel), Adam and Eve would be viewed as established as significant by their election. This would be true whether or not other people were around. Their election is to a priestly role, the first to be placed in sacred space. The forming accounts give them insight into the nature of humanity, but they also become the first significant humans because of their role in bringing sin into the world (for fuller discussion see chap. 15). Adam was the “first” man, given the opportunity to bring life, but he failed to achieve that goal. Christ, as the “last” man, succeeded as he provided life and access to the presence of God for all as our great high priest (see 1 Cor 15:45).”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“In Gilgamesh, Uta-napishti is “settled”22 there, whereas the word used for the placement of Adam is even more significant, since it is the causative form of the verb “to rest” (nwḥ). In God’s presence, Adam finds rest—an important allusion to what characterizes sacred space. Both Adam and Uta-napishti are placed in sacred space, where they have access to life.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“In that priestly role, they are mediators, and their actions have implications and at times real impact on the entire group they represent.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate

“The role of Adam and Eve in the garden, I would propose, has less to do with how the priests operated within Israel and more to do with Israel’s role (and later, that of believers, 1 Pet 2:9) as priests to the world.”
― John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate