On reading Genesis literally

I don't think I could ever be one of those people who takes the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden literally. In any case, I don't think the writer of Genesis (if there was only one writer – a number of scholars seem to be a little unclear on this) took the story literally either. Adam may have been one man or a million. Eve probably wasn't just one woman either. Adam and Eve may have arrived on the scene ex nihilo or out of some weird evolutionary process. Whatever happened, no one is exactly sure, so it would be both stupid and arrogant to act is if you are sure. Are you absolutely sure that an actual serpent spoke? I can't be. My faith is too small. It makes a mustard seed look like Jupiter.

When I think about it (which isn't that often), I am truly amazed that there are people out there who do take Genesis so very literally, because an exact literal interpretation is precisely the sort of thing that has to end with the abolition of faith. If you're not convinced, I don't mind, but this is why I say that ...

A literal interpretation treats the text as a concrete, substantial entity-on-its-own; something to be known but not believed in. And, lest we forget, that kind of a perspective denies something crucial to how we understand the world. Nothing is an entity-on-its-own. Yes, if you, like Descartes and a myriad famous thinkers after him, follow a basic substance ontology then things can exist on their own terms. But if you're a thinking Christian (and there aren't too many of those out there as far as I can tell) this is the very ontology that you cannot accept. Not even Genesis exists in isolation. Why, for pity's sake, do people treat it as if it does?

Scientists, when at work, can consider the nature of substances, but then scientists are dealing with empiricist interrogations of substances as entities-on-their-own and/or within-systems of substances. But theologians, historians, artists, philosophers and poets (all in their respective fields of inquiry) do not and in fact cannot see the world in such concrete terms. Everything is connected. A rock is not a just rock but a symbol of stability. A sky is not a just sky but a field where hope plays. A suit is not a just suit but a symbol of the dignity of man.

In an exactly literal interpretation there would have been no room for doubt, and thus no room for faith. In other words, there would be no room for any human being, including the scientist who thinks about life after he has finished questioning the rocks, skies and fabrics of reality. There would be no room for me.

I still think (in amidst my doubting) that the opening chapters of Genesis are filled-to-overflowing with life-sized and larger-than-life truth. Much of my understanding of human nature comes from Genesis and that's something I'm not going to apologise for. But to read Genesis and especially the story of Adam and Eve as if it were an empirical tract would be to abolish the need for grappling properly with the text and would, consequently, result in your being excommunicated from the Garden long before Adam and Eve are.