How long has humanity created in the image of God lived upon the earth? Do all human beings derive from a single human pair, or were there multiple origins? Is there a unity of humankind that transcends the racial or ethnic differences among human beings? These are questions that are of particular importance to Christians in the twenty-first century.
I. THE ANTIQUITY OF HUMANKIND#
A. BIBLICAL MATERIALS: TRADITIONAL APPROACH#
Throughout most of the history of Christianity, Christians assumed on the basis of their reading of Genesis that the length of human existence upon the earth was rather limited. This conclusion normally resulted from efforts to calculate on the basis of the so-called genealogical passages in Genesis the time of the creation of the first humans.
Moses lived in the fifteenth century B.C
The universal flood of Noah’s time had occurred less than a thousand years earlier.
The creation of Adam and Eve had occurred little more than sixteen centuries earlier than the flood.
Hence creation could be located about forty centuries before the birth of Jesus.
This is precisely what James Ussher had computed during the seventeenth century the creation of all things, including the first humans, in 4004 B.C. Calculations based on the Samaritan Pentateuch pushed the date back to 4243 B.C., and those based on the Septuagint back to 5328 B.C.
B. EVIDENCE FROM THE SCIENCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY#
Beginning with the work of William Buckland (1784-1856) before the middle of the nineteenth century, those seeking animal fossils came to discover human fossil or skeletal remains. Charles Lyell (1797-1875) in his The Antiquity of Man (1863) pushed back further the age of human life on earth than had previous authors. For more than a century archaeologists, anthropologists, and others have participated in the discoveries and assessments of skulls, jaws, teeth, thighs, and arms which they have attributed to human beings and which they have dated by use of geological evidence and of flourine.
Although interpretations of these human fossils have varied, they have been uniformly placed in one or more of the periods of the Stone Age, the end of which is normally dated prior to 4004 B.C.
C. REASSESSEMENT OF THE BIBLICAL MATERIALS#
As early as 1890, William Henry Green (1825-1900) of Princeton Theological Seminary, in the words of Bernard L. Ramm, demonstrated for certainty to Biblical scholars that the genealogies of Genesis were not strict father-son relationships. Ramm concluded in 1954 that the “precise age of man” is not derivable from “the genealogies of Genesis” or from any other part of the Bible.
Yet Genesis 1-3 seems to be intimately connected with Genesis 4-11, and especially is the connection between Genesis 3 and Genesis 4 to be noted. Ramm took account of the fact that in Genesis 4-5, there are “lists of names, ages of people, town, agriculture, metalurgy, and music”, which data imply “the ability to write, to count, to build, to farm, to smelt, and to compose” on the part of Adam’s “immediate descendants”, and yet evidence of civilization can hardly push its origin behind 8000 B.C. or 16,000 B.C. Furthermore, the early chapters of Genesis have some basic ties with Babylonian civilization which can hardly be harmonized with the creation of man at 400,000 B.C. or earlier.
A date of 400,000 B.C. for the creation of human beings still seems to pose problems vis-à-vis Genesis 1-11.
D. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS#
1. Rejection of All Anthropological/Geological Evidence and Holding to the Recent Origin of Humankind
Some, epsecially Protestant Christians, would resolve the question of human antiquity by rejecting all the evidence from anthropology and geology drawn from the human fossils and by position the creation of human beings either in 4004 B.C. or some other time not earlier than 10,000 B.C.
This proposal was advocated early in the twentieth century by the Seventh-day Adventist author George McCready Price (1870-1963), and it has more recently been vigorously advocated by the Creation-Science movement under the leadership of Henry M. Morris. It consitutes no “solution” for scientific anthropologists, who thereby are asked to disclaim all their findings.
2. Advocacy of Pre-Adamism
This is the hypothesis that one can properly differentiate fossil people (as “sub-human”, “prehuman”, or “pre-Adamite”) and biblical humans (or the humans of Genesis 1-11). According to this view, fossil people, or pre-humans, died out before the creation of Adam, and thus the two, fossil people and biblical humans, did not coinhabit the earth.
Although this view has been traced to the seventeenth century, its principal advocacy has taken place since the alte nineteenth century. Fabre d’Envieu, Alexander Winchell (1824-91), Reuben A. Torry, and Arthur Rendel Short (1880-1953) espoused the view in the latter ninenteeth or early twentieth centuries. Its most recent defender seems to have been an English anthropologist, Eustace Kenneth Victor Pearce, who has identified
Adam of Eden (Genesis 2) with the new Stone Age man, who was a farmer and breeder of animals
Adam of Genesis 1 with pre-Adamite man
Against Pearce’s form of the theory is the fact that the image/likeness passage (Genesis 1:26-27) conveys the unique likeness of human beings to God the Creator more markedly than does Genesis 2.
3. Regarding Early Genesis as Incapable of Being Associated with the Dating of Human Origins
Two different forms of this perspective need to be identified:
Certain Roman Catholic scientists, especially Ernest Charles Messenger (1888-1951) and H.J.T. Johnson, who affirmed that man’s soul came by special creation of God, interpreted Genesis 2 metaphrically, though not in such a way as to be “non-historical” and concluded that Genesis 2 cannot be used to date human origins.
Emil Brunner, taking Genesis 1-3 as mythical and nonhistorical, took God’s creatorship as an inference from His lorship and posited human createdness on the basis of an existential encounter with God as Lord. Thus the question of the antiquity of humankind must be left entirely to the sciences.
The more one finds a historical dimension to Genesis 1-3, the more unsatisfying will likely be these two attempted solutions.
4. Direct Divine Creation of Adam and Eve at a Time Conformable with Anthropological Data
Although Ramm did not specifically espouse this view, he did state:
If the anthropologists are generally correct in their dating of man (and we believe they are), and if the Bible contains no specific date as to the origin of man, we are then free to try to work out a theory of the relationship between the two respecting both the inspiration of Scripture and the facts of science.
There seems to be at present no agreed upon harmonization of early Genesis and anthropology. Because of the genuine difficulties which have not been fully resolved, it is fitting to be cautious as to any final statement of the question.
E. AGREEMENTS BETWEEN GEOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND THE BIBLE#
It would be wrong to conclude from the lack of harmonization as to the precise time of the origin of human life on earth that there are no areas of agreement between anthropology and geology on the one hand and the Bible, as interpreted by present-day Christians, on the other hand.
Ramm cited three important areas of agreement:
“Both geology and Scripture teach that man is the latest major form to appear on the earth”
“Anthropology and Scripture agree that man is the highest form of life”
“Anthropology and the Bible both assert that man has much in common with the animals”.
II. THE ORIGIN OF HUMANKIND: MULTIPLE OR SINGLES?#
A second issue concerning which Christian theology and anthropological science have interacted is that of the origin or origins of the human species. Is the Christian teaching that all human beings are the descendants of one couple, Adam and Eve, still valid, or must the theory of multiple human origins, called polygenism or polygeneticism, be accepted as valid?
A. BIBLICAL MATERIALS#
1. Old Testament
Not only did the first creation account declare that God created human beings male and female (Gen. 1:27) but also it cited the divine mandate to the first humans to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28). Furthermore, prior to the record of the birth of their first child, Genesis declared concerning Eve that “she would become the mother of all the living” (3:20b, NIV)
2. New Testament
In his sermon at Athens, Paul affirmed “And he [God] made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth…” (Acts 17:26a). When Paul, in writing about the future resurrection, declared in an analogy that “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22), he most probably was thinking of all human beings as being Adam’s descendants as well as sharing in his death.
In his extended treatment of the differences between the activity of Adam and the work of Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:12-21), Paul alluded in the Greek two times to “one man” or “the one man” (vv. 12, 19), four times to “the one” (vv. 15, 16, 17), and once to the “one trespass” (v. 18).
Whereas Paul’s primary reference was likely the singular personhood of Adam vis-à-vis the singular personhood of Jesus, it seems unthinkable that Paul could have thought of any human beings as underived from Adam.
B. ANTHROPOLOGICAL POLYGENISM#
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some scientific anthropologists have espoused polygenism, or polygeneticism, which is the view that instead of the origination of the human race or humankind from a single stock a multiple origin of humankind via independent evolution is to be affirmed. Accordingly, there would have been several or many independent originations of human beings not necessarily at the same time. Ramm cite Reginald Ruggles Gates (1882-?) as a representative exponent of polygenism
C. THEOLOGICAL REJECTION OF POLYGENISM#
1. Roman Catholic Church
Pope Pius XII (1876-1958) is his encyclical Humani Generis (1950) disallowed any Catholic acceptance of polygenism.
2. Protestantism
Protestants, for whom there is no centralized teaching authority, have not dealt with the challenge of polygenism by means of church or denominational pronouncements but have left the matter with individual theologians and apologists.
Ramm, assuming that a concept of the imputation of Adam’s sin to all human beings is essential to Protestantism, regarded the challenge of polygenism as a serious one. Ramm proceeded to set forth four evidences for the unitary origin of humankind from the sciences of anatomy, physiology, psychology, and reproduction and used these in his case against polygeneticism:
From anatomy come the evidence that “the human body is the same form from pygmies to the giant Wattusies and from the fairest Scandinavian to the darkest negroid”
From physiology come the fact that variations in breathing and in pulse rates are very slight among human beings.
From psychology come the data that “the powers of perception, the patterns of reaction, and the function of the central nervous system are similar” in all human beings
From reproduction comes the paramount fact of “racial interfertility”
D. THEOLOGICAL ACCEPTANCE OF POLYGENISM#
Some Christian theologians have accepted polygenism, integrating it with their interpretation of Genesis.
Dale Moody contended that the mark placed on Cain (Gen. 4:15), the law of blood revenge (Gen. 4:15), the need for identifying Cain’s wife as someone other than his sister, Cain’s building of the city of Enoch (Gen. 4:17), and the 8,000- to 10,000-year age of certain excavated cities, Jericho being the oldest, necessitate the existence of other human beings contemporaneous with Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. Futhermore, Moody differentiated collective Adam (Gen. 1:1-2:4a, P source), representative Adam (Gen. 2:4b-3:24, JE source), and individual Adam (Genesis 4, J source).
Whereas some advocates of pre-Adamism have held that the pre-Adamites or hominids died out before the adam of Genesis 2 lived, Moody and polygeneticists have held to the contemporaneity of many stocks of Homo sapiens from pluralistic evolutionary origins.
E. ANTHROPOLOGY’S SHIFT AWAY FROM POLYGENISM#
Pearce, writing in 1976, reported on the basis of works by anthropologists Wilfred Edward le Gros Clark (1895-1971), Raymond William Firth (1901-), Royden John Harrison (1927-), L.C. Dunn, and Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (1900-75), that “the variety of races who live on earth now, are all descended from one stock, namely, the more recent Homo sapiens”.
III. THE UNITY OF HUMANKIND#
The third issue pertaining to human beings created inthe image of God is that of the fundamental unity of humankind in view of racial or ethnic differences among humans and of the phenomenon usually called “racism”. On this issue, Christian theology interacts with ethnology and sociology.
A. BIBLICAL MATERIALS#
Already in this chapter reference has been made to the generational tables of Gen. 5:1-32, 10:1-32, and 11:10-32 and to the “of one” statement by Paul the Apostle (Acts 17:26a). To these must now be added the account of the confusion of languages and scattering of peoples fomr the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9)
B. DIFFERING RACES OF HUMANKIND#
It has been widely held during the modem era that humankind may be divided into basic races or ethnic families such as the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid, and that these races may be differentiated by basic physical characteristics, if indeed not also by other characteristics.
Some Christian theologians and historians have concluded that neither early Genesis nor any other part of the Bible provides specific data concerning racial differences among human beings.
John Wtlliam Dawson regarded Genesis 10 as an historical account of migrations from Sumer of the Chaldeans to places in western Asia, eastern Europe, and northern Africa that takes no account of later migrations and deals with no physical characteristics of different races, though it implies resemblances in language despite Gen. 11: 1-9.
According to Theophilus Goldridge Pinches (1856-1934), Genesis 10 was limited to what could be “obtained from merchants, travelers, envoys, and ambassadors” and did not intend to embrace all humankind.
For H.J. T. Johnson, the Caucasian, the Negroid, and the Mongolian races had “nothing to do with the Semitic, Japhetic and Hamitic … ones in Genesis 10.”
Bernard Ramm concluded that the Bible presents no clear, unambiguous account as to the origin of races or of racial diversity among human beings. He rejected any “effort to derive the races of the entire world from Noah’s sons or the Table of Nations.”
On the other hand, Arthur C. Custance (1910-) has more recently revived and elaborated a theory that is built on the principle that early Genesis does specifically teach about the origin of racial diversity among human beings. Accordingly, Genesis 10 is said to be “a completely authentic statement of how the present world population originated and spread after the Flood in the three families headed respectively by Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” Custance has also insisted that to each of these “families” of humankind was given a special responsibility for humankind
“The spiritual” to the Shemites
“The physical” or technological to the Hamites
“The intellectual” to the Japhethites
This division of responsibility is both recognized in the Bible and confirmed by later history. This means also that, for Custance, “all the so-called colored races-the ‘yellow,’ ‘red,’ ‘brown,’ and ‘black’ - the Mongoloid and the Negroid” were derived from Ham.
C. RACISM’S DENIAL OR OBSCURING OF THE UNITY OF HUMANKIND#
Although some contemporary conflicts between human groups are basically economic, linguistic, or religious rather than racial, racism has posed special problems, partly because it has rested on ideologies of superior and inferior races, and has threatened seriously the fundamental unity of humankind that derives from the doctrine of the creation of human beings. Human slavery of black people and later segregation of white and black races were defended on the basis of certain specific arguments, which may be summarized as follows:
Negroes or blacks do not have human souls. Josiah Priest (1788-1851) defended this view in 1852.43 Augustine Verot (1804-76), the Roman Catholic bishop of Savannah, Georgia, told the bishops of Vatican Council I (1869-70) that it was “more important to declare that black people have souls-there were those in his part of the world who denied it-than to struggle with recondite German philosophical theories about the makeup of the human composite.”
Negroes or blacks constitute “another species of man,” for Adam is thought to have been “the father of only the white race.”
Negroes or blacks are reckoned to be “two-footed beasts” who went into Noah’s ark as animals, not as humans.
That these first three arguments can rest on no biblical base and are indeed false should be evident, and hence specific refutation is not necessary. But with the next three arguments, which have been associated with specific biblical texts, refutation will be in order.
Negroes or blacks are under the curse of Cain. The mark placed on Cain (Gen. 4:13-15) is taken to mean that Cain was a slave and turned black.Such an interpretation ignores the protective purpose for the mark that is mentioned in the text, assumes without evidence that Cain became a slave, and assumes without evidence that Cain became a black person.
Negroes or blacks are under the curse of Ham (Gen. 9:20-27).
Charles Everett Tilson (1923-) in 1958 enumerated five faulty assumptions in the pro-slavery, segregationist interpretation of Gen. 9:20-27.
First, it wrongly assumed “that God pronounced the curse,” when it was pronounced by the drunken Noah (vv. 24-27).
Second, it dubiously assumed “that the curse be biologically transferable,” when Ezek. 18:20 would seem to speak to the contrary.
Third, it faultily concluded that Ham was “the original victim of the curse,” even though Ham’s name does not appear in v.25 and Canaan, whose name does appear, was “one of Ham’s four children.”
Fourth, it questionably assumed “that the children of the original victim of the curse be slaves,” when in fact “Canaan’s descendants dominated the whole land of Palestine until long after the death of Moses, and Jerusalem, which took its name from Canaan’s son Jebus, remained in Canaanite hands until David led Israel in its capture” seventeen centuries after Noah.
Fifth, it unjustifiably assumed “that the original victim of the curse be a member of the Negroid race.” Tilson cited W. F. Albright as authority for the conclusion that all peoples associated with the Old Testament setting were Caucasian with the exception of the Cushites, or Ethiopians.
- Negroes or blacks should be segregated because the confusion of tongues (Gen. 11:1-9) was an act of God’s providence designed “to frustrate the mistaken efforts of godless men to assure the permanent integration of the peoples of the earth.”
Tilson pointed out four faulty assumptions with such interpretation of the text.
First, it wrongly assumed “that God inflicted the confusion of tongues on men as a penalty for their attempt at racial integration.” The event at Babel was not an attempted integration of ethnic or racial divisions. It involved concentrated human vanity and pride (v. 4) and was really an “attempted integration of and man.”
Second, it doubtfully assumed “that the existence of linguistic differences denotes progress among men.”
Third, it also dubiously assumed “that linguistic differences and racial differences are coextensive.”
Fourth, it questionably assumed that the principal divisions among human beings after the Fall were “along racial lines.”
Such exegesis of texts in early Genesis in behalf of racism stands as a monumental example of genuine eisegesis, or the reading into the text one’s presuppositions, biases, and prejudices instead of reading out of the text its intended meaning. Fortunately such interpretation no longer elicits many advocates.
D. UNITY OF HUMANKIND BY VIRTUE OF CREATION#
Whatever explanation we may offer for the differentiation of mankind in “races,” we ought not to obscure or deny the basic biblical emphasis on the unity or oneness of the whole of humankind under God. The oneness of the Creator is matched in biblical thought by the oneness of the human creatures. All who have been made in the image of God have more in common than they have in distinction from one another.
Furthermore, the alienation of persons within differing races from those in other races and the consequent oppression and conflict belong to the doctrine of sin. The reconciliation of such persons and such groups belongs to the doctrine of reconciliation through Jesus Christ. The fellowship of such persons and groups in and through Jesus Christ as Lord belongs to the doctrine of the church. Here the doctrine of creation forms the base and the limit of the discussion.