In my last post I began with the picture of Adam’s (and through him, of mankind’s) intended role in God’s creation of sacred space, as suggested in various writings by J H Walton, G K Beale, J R Middleton and, in an excursus to Walton’s new book, N T Wright. This was my abridgement of Wright’s treatment:
This 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… If they failed, they would bring the whole purpose for the wider creation, including all those other nonchosen hominids, down with then… Not that death, the decay and dissolution of plants, animals and hominds, wasn’t a reality already; but you, Adam and Eve, are chosen to be the people through whom God’s life-giving reflection will be imaged into the world…
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