Dust of Earth, Wind of Heaven

“What does it mean to be human?” That's what the words on the wall asked me to consider. The other week, as you all know, my wife and I went on vacation to our nation's capital, and while we were there, we spent a few hours in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Now, among the permanent exhibits there is a section known as the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. I wanted to be there, to see it for myself, before I came back to preach this sermon today. We've been working together for a while now through the Book of Genesis, God's word on beginnings. But to many American Evangelical Christians today, when they think of Genesis, one thing looms large: controversy. That controversy is often put in the language of 'creation' versus 'evolution.' And as much as I originally wanted to preach through Genesis without this topic, I realized that it isn't really possible. As I walked through the Hall of Human Origins, it was obvious that Christians from the same church could stroll those same exhibits and have very different reactions to the fossils and artifacts and reconstructions and, above all, the answers the museum offers for how we got here and, more daringly, what it all means.

To some Christians, the story of humanity the Smithsonian tells is helpful and largely true, even if incomplete. These Christians agree that all living things stand in a (physical) family relation going back through several billion years, and that the human branch emerged only with millions of generations of processes like mutation and natural selection, but all of which took place in the hands of our loving God, the God of Genesis. Meanwhile, to other Christians, the story of humanity the Smithsonian tells isn't just incomplete but fundamentally false, maybe even deceptive. These Christians deny one big family tree for all life; they say we've got one all to ourselves, and that God's creative work toward making the first humans involved no suffering at any point along the way.

Each position faces its assorted challenges. Those who reject evolutionary stories, especially if they do so in the name of a 'literal' reading of Genesis, have to deal, on the one hand, with tricky questions about apparent gaps or oversights in the Genesis text (e.g., Cain's wife), about the anthropocentric description of the world it presents (e.g., animal kinds coming pre-divided into domestic vs. wild), about Genesis' commonalities with ancient Near Eastern mythical accounts, and about preserving a literalist reading while not resorting to too many 'background miracles' not suggested by the author; and, on the other hand, with the overwhelming weight of scientific consensus drawing on the many lines of scientific evidence cited in favor of evolution, such as developments recorded in the fossil record, genetic linkages among creatures (including indications that the second human chromosome is a fusion of two ape chromosomes preserved as distinct among chimpanzees), etc., etc.

Meanwhile, those who accept evolutionary stories have to deal with tricky questions about how to harmonize those evolutionary stories (with their preference for gradualism) with the theological significance that the Church has always read in Genesis, including at least two necessary non-gradual events of spiritual or moral significance: the transition from pre-human hominins not made in God's image to full theological humans made in God's image, and the transition from a state of original righteousness to a fallen condition of sin that needed a Savior. Some Christians who accept evolutionary origins will do so at the cost of one or both of these necessary events. Thankfully, others refuse to abandon clear historic Christian teachings – but they may come up with some different suggestions on the related questions of when Adam could've lived or even what biological species he might have been.¹

The point here, though, isn't for us to get sucked too deep into all the nitty-gritty details. It's to remind us that each position has real questions to wrestle with. As for which camp is right, I don't think this pulpit's put here for me to spout off my latest opinions. I will say I've known pastors in our denomination who are convinced strongly against the kinds of evolutionary stories you'll see at the Smithsonian, because they're deeply concerned to uphold the Genesis story as God's inspired word. I will also say that I've known other pastors in our denomination who are convinced strongly for those same sorts of evolutionary stories, and who are just as comfortable championing Genesis as the inspired word of God. And what goes for our pastors goes for our people. It's not a reason to divide fellowship or be suspicious of our fellow believers. We can (and should!) pose each other the tough questions without losing the spirit of unity in Christ.

The reason we bring this up is that in today's text, we're introduced to Genesis' close-up look at what a human being is. (Questions about who a human being is, or why a human being is, will unfold over the next couple months.) Among our brothers and sisters in Christ who might feel least at ease in the Smithsonian's Hall of Human Origins, sometimes one of the many motives for that discomfort is the sense that there'd be a big problem for human dignity if the ancestry of our bodies included lower lifeforms. In the years after Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, one critic expressed umbrage at “tracing descent from an ape,”² another critic called “degrading” any theory that “herds us with all four-footed beasts and creeping things,”³ while a third adamantly rejected any “genealogical table which begins in the mud” and which would tie the human family to “a race of obscene and dirty little brutes.”⁴ In 1925, when the whole thing got tied up in court, the Christian prosecutor of evolution insisted that for humans to “have come from below” and to “link their ancestors with the jungle” would be an unacceptable demotion from “the high plane upon which God put man.”⁵

So what does Genesis say? “The LORD God sculpted the man from the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). What are we to make of these inspired words? First, we can see this involves at least some figurative language – Christians always knew God doesn't literally have hands for sculpting with or a mouth to breathe out with.⁶ Second, we should see Genesis describes human creation this way because it would be easy to understand. In Israel's neighbors' stories, human beings were often sculpted by the gods out of clay.⁷ Long before evolution was on anybody's radar, Christians pointed out that Genesis uses the images it does because it was, they said, “written for a primitive people.”⁸ In this case, the image of God as a potter emphasizes his total authority over what he's shaping: “Who are you, human, to talk back to God? Will what is molded say to its maker, 'Why have you made me like this?'” (Romans 9:21).

So, third, as much as some of us worry about outside ideas that would make our human ancestry 'lowly,' our own Bible's psalmists confess that “we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), Job's friends describe humans as “pinched off from a piece of clay” (Job 33:6), Paul says we're “from the earth, of dust” (1 Corinthians 15:47), and Jesus says humans are naturally “from below” (John 8:23). It's hard to see how an ancestor swinging in a tree would be any lower than an ancestral dirtball! Really, it's Genesis we should find humbling! And early Christians saw it that way, saying: “From these words spring no little instruction in humility... whenever we consider where our nature derived the beginning of its subsistence.”⁹ Our “genealogical table,” either way, “begins in the mud.”

But, fourth, where does Genesis picture animals coming from? In chapter 1, God commands, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures” (Genesis 1:24). Here in chapter 2, we read that “out of the ground, the LORD God shaped every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens” (Genesis 2:19). The earth produces, but it's God who sculpts – from the same ground whose dust is also where Genesis gets us from. This is actually one of the things that sets Genesis apart from the creation myths of Israel's neighbors: the emphasis on how much humans have in common with the non-human animal world.¹⁰ So no matter which camp of Christians we fall into on the evolution question, the Bible binds us all to agree that, in some way, God made us, so far as our bodies are concerned, from the same stuff as other creatures.

That's why, long before Darwin hit the streets, it was Christians who were saying that, when it comes to the human body, “man and the other animals have the same kind of origin,”¹¹ that “the human being takes the beginning of its composition from the earth, as do the plants and the irrational beings.”¹² And now we know, after all, most life shares with us the same basic cell structure, with nuclei, membranes, mitochondria. As animals, we live by breathing oxygen and by consuming organic material. You can map the bones in your hand onto those in a bat's wing or a cat's paw or a dolphin's flipper. We have similar eyes and ears, mouth and stomach, liver and lungs, kidneys and brain – in fact, almost every animal has the same eleven organ systems you or I do. Martin Luther said, in light of all this, that in such bodily functions “there is no difference between man and beast.”¹³

And none of this is bad, shameful, or unchristian! It was good that the Potter made his clay into animal bodies with beautiful biology. God didn't decide to give us “affinity with lower bodies” without having a reason for doing that.¹⁴ Early Christians testified that God wanted to “link together the different natures by small differences, so that the whole creation is one and akin, by which it is particularly evident that the Creator of all things is one.”¹⁵ Yet the human body was “made in no other way than by the great wisdom of God,”¹⁶ and “if there seems to be any fault in the human body's constitution, it must be taken that such a fault is a necessary consequence of the material used.”¹⁷ Or, as Darwin put it, “man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”¹⁸ But even such a body, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “belongs to a person's essence. … People who reject their bodies reject their existence before God the Creator.”¹⁹

God made us bodily, biological beings with a grand purpose. That isn't to be rejected, no matter what condition your body has come to, or what design improvements you might have suggested for it. The human body is part of what God proclaimed “very good” (Genesis 1:31). And biologically, it makes sense to understand the human body as animal. Early Christians read even Genesis as teaching that “your body is related to the beasts.”²⁰ The Bible itself, in Ecclesiastes, directly warned that God tests human beings “so that they may see that they themselves are animals” (Ecclesiastes 3:18). But we are, in one scientist's words, “the paragon of animals.”²¹

So if we hear people in the world say that humans “are animals and subject to the same rules and limitations... as all other forms of life,”²² or that scientific research can “shed light on the question of what it is to be human,”²³ Genesis reminds us that that's at least partially true. ...But only partially. Because there's a lot to our existence that Genesis reserves as only partially touchable by science, whether by biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, anthropology – these can only get so deep into the human mystery.

The day after visiting the Smithsonian, my wife and I headed to the Museum of the Bible, which happens right now to have a special exhibit on Scripture and Science. Little sooner had we set foot there than the wall asked us a question not unlike the Smithsonian's: “What makes me human?” And as you might guess, the Museum of the Bible reminded its visitors, without rejecting anything from the Smithsonian, that there's still more to the story: that, though humans and other animals share “close similarities,” yet “our sense of morality discerning what is fair and just, our spirituality and worship, storytelling, and our unique accumulation of knowledge and culture over time sets us apart from other species,” for “only humans are made... 'a little lower than angels.'”

In this, they're echoing the many scientists who admit that “there are innumerable ways... in which we human beings are distinct from even our closest relatives in nature,”²⁴ that even our nearest parallels are “incapable of making sophisticated tools or using conceptual language,”²⁵ that “human beings, alone among the creatures, speak, plan, create, contemplate, and judge,” or “can think about the whole, marvel at its many-splendored forms and articulated order, wonder about its beginning, and feel awe in beholding its grandeur and in pondering the mystery of its source.”²⁶ I think my cats are precious and personable (and full of 'personality,' though not personhood), but God didn't place eternity in their hearts like he did in yours and mine (Ecclesiastes 3:11). You'll never meet an elephant engineer, a poodle poet, or a horse historian. We've sent chimps to space, but none ever knew what space was. There's no such thing as an eel with existential dread, a philosopher piranha, or a penguin priest; neither will you find a sinful skunk or a sainted squirrel. But humans can know and will the infinite.²⁷ Different from all other animals “in kind and not in degree,” we are, it's been said, “not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.”²⁸

Why? Because there's more to us than dust. The myths of ancient Babylon agreed, but they thought the other ingredient was the blood of a sacrificed god.²⁹ But listen to Genesis: “the LORD God... breathed into [the human being's] nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). Not violence, but gentleness! And Christians understand this other ingredient to be, not demon blood, but the human soul. Now, every living creature has a soul of some kind, a “primary principle of life” that “actuates its body.”³⁰ If you've ever asked whether animals have souls, consider that the word 'animal' literally comes from the Latin word for 'soul'! Yes, every animal has a soul, from mammoths to mosquitoes. But we're unique in the kind of soul we have. Other animals have “souls... produced by a certain material force,”³¹ souls “coextensive with matter,”³² but ours is described as a 'rational' or 'intellectual' or 'spiritual' soul. It isn't made from stuff or produced by stuff. For each human who's ever lived, God directly created their spiritual soul out of nothing at the very start of their lives.³³ God “breathed into him the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), and Christians always said that “this became the origin of the soul's being.”³⁴ Because this soul is the special form of the body, even our bodies, with all they share with animals, are a suitable “instrument” to “raise a fitting hymn to the Lord.”³⁵

Since the start, Christians always defined the human being as “the living thing composed of soul and body.”³⁶ On this account, it's been said that, if in our bodies our nearest parallels are apes, in our souls our nearest parallels are the angels and archangels, powers and dominions, cherubim and seraphim! Think about that: for all science might ever discover about what parallels they can draw between you and other animals, the story isn't complete until we factor in all the parallels between you and the host of heaven! Between ape and angel, simian and seraph, chimp and cherub, we're the unique and miraculous overlap of two vastly different ways of being God's creation. That's because God saw it fitting that “a combination of the two should take place... as a kind of binding together of the visible and invisible natures.”³⁷ Each of us is a sampler platter of the creation, “material and spiritual at the same time,” with “one foot on earth and one foot in heaven.”³⁸ It's almost incomprehensible that you are “such an earthquake as the image of God in dust..., a cloud of dust shaken up into a shocking miracle of life.”³⁹ But this dust of earth has caught the wind of heaven, and it can never be the same.

The mystery is that we're “made from dust and yet destined for glory.”⁴⁰ And the main place the Church, down through the ages, has worked out these truths of what a human is, is in one place above all: Christ. What did the Son of God take on to become one of us? In the Church's most solemn answers, she said that “the Word... united to himself flesh animated by a rational soul,”⁴¹ and so became “truly man, of a rational soul and body..., consubstantial with us in respect of the humanity.”⁴² In Jesus Christ, who as God is beyond every category and is from above, he became also from below, condescending to a genealogy of mud, to the indelible stamp of a lowly origin, to adopting our Homo sapiens biology with its 23 chromosome pairs, its common chemical composition, its history stretching back to the dust by whatever route ours took from there, and hence he came to share with every animal who ever lived a common physical source in the earth, herded with four-footed beasts and creeping things and you and me even while he himself is “the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:48). And along with that flesh, he took for its form a real human spiritual soul, a soul he created the same way he makes yours and mine. Anything less than everything laid out in Genesis, and he wouldn't have been human.

That's why we talk about this. To know what we are, what a human being is, is to know not just an earthquake but a heavenquake: that the hands nailed to the cross had the same bone layout as the foreleg of a lamb, that the flesh and blood that bought our salvation was animated by a spiritual soul like yours and mine, that a 'human animal' body with brain and heart has been raised from the dead and taken up in splendor, that his humanity – now a “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45) – is hope and awe to every ape and to every angel. And so he pronounced our dusty bodies of earth, our windy souls breathed from heaven, the entire miniature world that each one of you is, to be too good to leave outside his glory if you're willing to come in. Glorify him! Amen.

1  For suggestions connecting Adam to Homo sapiens living during the later Neolithic era, between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago, see Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, rev. ed. (Monarch Books, 2014), 290; S. Joshua Swamidass, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry (InterVarsity Press, 2019), 25; John Garvey, The Generations of Heaven and Earth: Adam, the Ancient World, and Biblical Theology (Cascade Books, 2020), 67; and Andrew Ter Ern Loke, The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Scripture and Science in Conversation (T&T Clark, 2022), 136.

For suggestions connecting Adam to Homo sapiens living during either the later Upper Paleolithic or the earlier Neolithic era, between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, see Justin L. Barrett and Tyler S. Greenaway, “Imago Dei and Animal Domestication: Cognitive-Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Uniqueness and the Imago Dei,” in Christopher Lilley and Daniel J. Pedersen, eds., Human Origins and the Image of God: Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017), 74-75.

For suggestions connecting Adam to Homo sapiens living during the earlier Upper Paleolithic era, between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, see James P. Hurd, “Hominids in the Garden?”, in Keith B. Miller, ed., Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), 230; and Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Baker Academic, 2017), 228.

For suggestions connecting Adam to Homo sapiens living during the later Middle Paleolithic era, between 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, see C. John Collins, “Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It Matters,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62/3 (September 2010): 160; Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85/2 (Spring 2011): 235; Ian Tattersall, “The Acquisition of Human Uniqueness: How We Got from There to Here, and How We Did It So Fast,” in Christopher Lilley and Daniel J. Pedersen, eds., Human Origins and the Image of God: Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017), 35; Nicanor Pier Georgio Austriaco, “Defending Adam After Darwin: On the Origin of Sapiens as a Natural Kind,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92/2 (Spring 2018): 346; Gerard M. Verschuuren, At the Dawn of Humanity: The First Humans (Angelico Press, 2020), 182; and Matthew J. Ramage, From the Dust of the Earth: Benedict XVI, the Bible, and the Theory of Evolution (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 15.

For suggestions connecting Adam to Homo sapiens living during the mid-Middle Paleolithic era, perhaps between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, see David L. Wilcox, “Finding Adam: The Genetics of Human Origins,” in Keith B. Miller, ed., Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), 249; Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85/2 (Spring 2011): 235; David L. Wilcox, “A Proposed Model for the Evolutionary Creation of Human Beings: From the Image of God to Original Sin,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 68/1 (March 2016): 39; Richard Potts, “The Religious Sense: Human Uniqueness, Human Evolution, and the Origins of Symbolism and Culture,” in Christopher Lilley and Daniel J. Pedersen, eds., Human Origins and the Image of God: Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017), 99; Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creation, and the Wise and Good Creator (Baker Academic, 2017), 156; Fuz Rana, in “The Anthropological Evidence: How Are Humans Unique?,” in Kenneth Keathley, J. B. Stump, and Joe Aguirre, eds., Old-Earth or Evolutionary Creation? Discussing Origins with Reasons to Believe and BioLogos (InterVarsity Press, 2017), 209, 217; David L. Wilcox, “Updating Human Origins,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 71/1 (March 2019): 46; and Andrew Ter Ern Loke, The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Scripture and Science in Conversation (T&T Clark, 2022), 145.

For suggestions connecting Adam to early Homo sapiens living between 400,000 to 300,000 years ago, or even to late Homo heidelbergensis living between 650,000 and 500,000 years ago (and so ancestral to Homo sapiens as well as to Neanderthals and Denisovans), see Marcin Edward Uhlik, “Could There Have Been Human Families Where Parents Came from Different Populations: Denisovans, Neanderthals, or Sapiens?”, Scientia et Fides 8/2 (2020): 209-210.

For suggestions connecting Adam to early Homo heidelbergensis or a predecessor Homo species (e.g., Homo antecessor or Homo ergaster) between 1,000,000 and 700,000 years ago (and so, again, ancestral to Homo sapiens as well as to Neanderthals and Denisovans), see Dennis Bonnette, “The Impenetrable Mystery of a Literal Adam and Eve,” Nova et Vetera 15/4 (Fall 2017): 1034-1035; and William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2021).

For suggestions connecting Adam to Homo erectus or to some other early representative of the Homo genus living between 2,100,000 to 1,800,000 years ago, see Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85/2 (Spring 2011): 234-235; William Stone, “Adam and Modern Science,” in Hans Madeume and Michael Reeves, eds., Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin: Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives (Baker Academic, 2014), 78; and Matthew J. Ramage, From the Dust of the Earth: Benedict XVI, the Bible, and the Theory of Evolution (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 14 n. 37.

Finally, for an eccentric and non-evolutionary suggestion connecting Adam to species that predate the genus Homo, such as perhaps a member of the genus Australopithecus living around 3,300,000 years ago or even a member of the genus Sahelanthropus living around 7,000,000 years ago, see Michael Chaberek and Rômulo Carleial, “Human Origins Revisited: On the Recognition of Rationality and the Antiquity of the Human Race,” Studia Gilsoniana 11/2 (April-June 2022): 278-280.

2  Samuel Wilberforce, quoted in Ian Hesketh, Of Apes and Ancestors: Evolution, Christianity, and the Oxford Debate (University of Toronto Press, 2009), 81.

3  P. R. Russel, “Darwinism Examined,” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 47/20 (18 May 1876): 153.

4  Horace Lorenzo Hastings, Was Moses Mistaken? or, Creation and Evolution, The Anti-Infidel Library (H. L. Hastings, 1896), 25-26.

5  William Jennings Bryan, in The World's Most Famous Court Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case: A Complete Stenographic Report of the Famous Court Test of the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act, at Dayton, July 10 to 21, 1925, Including Speeches and Arguments of Attorneys (National Book Company, 1925), 174-175.

6  Augustine of Hippo, Literal Meaning of Genesis 6.12 §20 (early fifth century), in Works of St. Augustine I/13:312.

7  See, e.g., Enki and Ninmah II.32, in Wilfrid G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 337; Atrahasis I.210-211, in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (CDL Press, 2005), 235.

8  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.91, a.1, ad 4 (thirteenth century), in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 13:21.

9  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 12.13 (late fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:164-165.

10  Raymond R. Hausoul, God's Future for Animals: From Creation to New Creation (Wipf & Stock, 2021), 18.

11  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.75, a.6, ad 1 (thirteenth century), in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 11:31.

12  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 12.14 (late fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:165.

13  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis (sixteenth century), in Luther's Works 1:85.

14  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.91, a.1, ad 1 (thirteenth century), in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 13:19.

15  Nemesius of Emesa, On Human Nature 1 (late fourth century), in Translated Texts for Historians 49:37-38.

16  Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.3.2 (late second century).

17  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.91, a.3 (thirteenth century), in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 13:27.

18  Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (John Murray, 1871), 2:405.

19  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1-3 (1933), in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 3:76-77.

20  Ambrose of Milan, Hexaemeron 6.7 §43 (late fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 42:256.

21  Adam Rutherford, Humanimal: How Homo Sapiens Became Nature's Most Paradoxical Creature: A New Evolutionary History (The Experiment, 2019), 214.

22  John H. Langdon, Human Evolution: Bones, Cultures, and Genes (Springer, 2023), 28.

23  Lesley Newson and Peter J. Richerson, A Story of Us: A New Look at Human Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2021), 1.

24  Ian Tattersall, “The Acquisition of Human Uniqueness: How We Got from There to Here, and How We Did It So Fast,” in Christopher Lilley and Daniel J. Pedersen, eds., Human Origins and the Image of God: Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017), 25.

25  David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (Oxford University Press, 2018), 25.

26  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 38.

27  Gerard M. Verschuuren, At the Dawn of Humanity: The First Humans (Angelico Press, 2020).

28  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1908), in Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton 2:158, 166.

29  See, e.g., Atrahasis I.224-231, in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (CDL Press, 2005), 236; and Enuma elish VI.31-33, in Wilfrid G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 111-113.

30  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.75, a.1 (thirteenth century), in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 11:7.

31  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.75, a.6, ad 1 (thirteenth century), in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 11:31.

32  Gerard M. Verschuuren, At the Dawn of Humanity: The First Humans (Angelico Press, 2020), 175.

33  Augustine of Hippo, Literal Meaning of Genesis 7.28 §43 (early fifth century), in Works of St. Augustine I/13:345.

34  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 12.15 (late fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:166.

35  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 13.9 (late fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:173.

36  Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 1 (mid-fourth century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:62.

37  John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 26 (early eighth century), in Popular Patristics Series 62:129.

38  Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 53.

39  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, column, Illustrated London News, 11 April 1908, in Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton 28:79.

40  Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 87.

41  Cyril of Alexandria, second letter to Nestorius, adopted by the Council of Ephesus (431), in Translated Texts for Historians 72:118.

42  Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith, 22 October 451, in Translated Texts for Historians 45:2:204.