I hereby repent in sackcloth and ashes for saying “YES!”
Yesterday I linked to a post by Pete Enns entitled, “Adam is Israel,” and simply said, “YES!”
The beauty of a blog is that it’s a work in progress, and I can perpetuate my posting by disagreeing not only with the rest of the world but also myself.
Ok, so, maybe I’m not totally disagreeing with myself. But I think I’d nuance the issue a bit differently than Pete does over there.
My primary concern is to say that the creation stories are written for the purpose of prequelling the story of Israel. That is to say, they are not written to be allegories of Israel’s creation (as some seem to be taking Pete’s post, though I don’t think that’s what he’d say); and I don’t think they’re even written to be metaphors of Israel’s life before God.
I’d say that they are written to tell the story of the world in such a way that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and possibly even the Davidic Kings, would be seen as fulfilling God’s purposes for His human creations.
So yes, they are stories of everything, but stories of everything for the purpose of privileging the subsequent Israelite narratives as being the continuation of the creational purposes of YHWH.
So I think I’d rather say, “Israel is Adam,” than, “Adam is Israel,” eschewing all notions that the transitive property is relevant to theological articulation. Such a fine distinction also enables one to make some important caveats that I think are essential (that creation and covenant are two different ways of being related to God, for one thing).
That is all. For now. Until I get Pete my post on Adam and Jesus to put up at Biologos…
