God's Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation
Authors: Garvey Jon 
Published: November 2022

GOD'S GOOD EARTH: The Case for an Unfallen Creation by Jon Garvey. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019. 209 pages. Paperback; $30.00. ISBN: 9781532652011. *THE GENERATIONS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH: Adam, the Ancient World, and Biblical Theology by Jon Garvey. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020. 264 pages. Paperback; $36.00. ISBN: 9781532681653. *Together, these two books endeavor to provide an interpretation to the Genesis creation accounts that sees them not only as historical but also coherent with modern scientific theories. The result is a proposal that initially appears coherent, drawing on Garvey's extensive reading in many areas. *The Generations of Heaven and Earth (GHE) complements Joshua Swamidass's The Genealogical Adam and Eve. Garvey explains that Swamidass's premise is "that a historical couple living in the Ancient Near East, amongst an existing human population, at any time plausibly matching the biblical account, would almost certainly be common ancestors of everyone living in the world today" (xiii, italics original). At the same time, GHE builds on God's Good Earth (GGE) which argues that "what happened to humankind in the garden did not spread to the rest of the world" (GGE, 4, italics original). *The two volumes contain a number of positives. Garvey displays a high view of the sovereignty of God and his relationship to the world. He argues strongly that God's creation is good and that humankind has a responsibility to take care of it. He highlights the need to accept the supernatural, including noting how the question of consciousness is more metaphysical than scientific, thus denying naturalism. He calls out science for its significant role in the abuse of the earth. He places Adam firmly in history. He distinguishes sin from evolution. He bases his high view of scripture on divine authorship, and notes how "the old critical consensus on the supposed literary disunity of the Old Testament" has failed. But, a closer reading of the books revealed several inconsistencies and raised several concerns, both biblical and scientific. *The basic premise of GGE is that the fall event in Genesis 3 affected only humankind and not the rest of creation. He divides the book into four sections. The first three use, respectively, biblical passages, Christian theologians throughout history, and science to show that creation not only was created good, but is still good. The fourth is application. Garvey's focus on substantiating that the current natural order is good (in a functional sense) seems overstated. While one would readily agree that there is much good about nature today, he explains away any passages that indicate otherwise, such as Romans 8. His view of science is complicated. He critiques the founders of the evolutionary hypothesis for not seeing anything wrong with nature (GGE, 72), but then blames all of the problems of nature on humans, beginning with the Mesopotamians; he places special onus on the scientific community for the "massive problems" it has created (GGE, 171-79). *While he strongly critiques evolutionary theory for its "hyperbolic expressions of the depravity and savagery of nature that have been with us since Darwin and tend to be taken as axiomatically valid" (GGE, xviii), he argues that God used the evolutionary process to develop the "natural order" spreading the development of life over 3.8 billion years. That he sees everything under the sovereign control of God who serves to bless or judge, suggests that God is behind all that we call evil, although Garvey tries to evade that by claiming nature "must surely be regard[ed] as 'good,' for it is utterly obedient to the will of its maker" (GGE, 8). He validates this several ways. First, he defines good not as a moral term, but functional (GGE, 34-35). Second, he cites Peter who was told not to "call anything impure that God has made clean" from Acts 10:13-15 (although Peter called the animals "impure" because God had declared them "impure" in Leviticus 11). Third, and most provocative, he argues that most living organisms do not experience pain or suffering--this is something limited to humans. As such, carnivores do not cause suffering when they kill their prey, so this system can be viewed as good (GGE, 147-67). *Garvey argues that the early chapters of Genesis are "essentially historical" (GHE, 9), seemingly conflicting with his acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis. His solution is a genealogical Adam (per Swamidass) which, he claims, "works with the usual scientific dating of the earth, and posits 'natural humans' living alongside, and long before Adam and Even (sic) in the Garden of Eden" (GHE, 52). In other words, mankind evolved per the standard paradigm, and after several hundred thousand years of development God selected one couple out of all who existed at that time and placed them in a garden called Eden. Given Swamidass, he suggests 4004 BCE. Taking Abraham as an example, Garvey labels Adam the "first father" of the human race solely on the basis of a covenant with God. Specifically, he says, "Adam was called to be the first instance of such a personal relationship with God, from an existing human race which might well have had all the features of a culture, and even of religious worship, though based on nature rather than revelation" (GHE, 123-27). Adam "sinned" as the representative head of that already-created human race (GHE, 110). Here Garvey seems self-contradictory. He argues that all of "mankind" who lived "before and alongside of Adam" was a "human race created in the image and likeness of God" (GHE, 116). Then he asserts that Adam differed from "non-Adamic" humanity outside the garden primarily because of the imago dei" (GHE, 132). *Noting Paul's theological argument that "it was necessary for all men to be 'in Adam,' before they could be 'in Christ,'" Garvey maintains that a genealogical Adam and Eve would be ancestors of everyone who existed on the earth at Paul's time. So, he asserts, "Christ's coming for all humanity was, on that time scale, almost immediately after the time when all humanity became children of Adam" (GHE, 50-52). Given that genealogical conclusion, however, multiple generations between Adam and Paul, as well as multiple generations of "humans" asserted to exist prior to Adam, would not be descendants. He implies that, although in the image of God, they were not fully human since they did not have a personal relationship with God, although the original monotheism reported by Schmidt, Lang, and others could have applied to them (GHE, 133-46). Or, "in some way the blessings promised to Adam were intended to act retrospectively to those outside of the garden" (GHE, 145). *Given a long period of evolutionary preparation for Adam, Garvey concludes that Genesis 1 and 2 are sequential, producing a "second creation," a matter of several concerns. First, this contradicts God's rest in Genesis 2:3. Second, Genesis 2:4 is not a sequential indicator. The Hebrew phrase elle toledot connects the two accounts. Although translated as "these are the generations" or "account" or something similar, recent scholarship concludes a better translation is "this is what became of." Used throughout Genesis, this phrase organizes Genesis into eleven sections, each explaining what happened to the previous account. Thus Genesis 2:4-4:26 tells what happened to the earth that God had declared as very good in the preface to the book. Third, in Genesis 2:18-20, Adam does not name all the animals of creation. Rather, Adam named "helpers" that God formed for him after putting him in the garden (probably domesticable animals). When no helper was "suitable" (NASB) or "fit" (ESV) for Adam, God created Eve. Fourth, while Garvey wants to avoid an allegorical understanding of scripture, he is driven to it here as he presupposes a race of humans who long preceded Adam, and who co-existed with Adam. *Contrary to Garvey, God did not rescind the curse on the ground after the flood (GGE, 28). "Never again" does not mean "no longer." Garvey downplays this major portion of the pre-Abraham material (one third) and does not show how it was good. To support his theory, he characterizes the flood as regional, allegorizing the entire account (GHE, 39-49). He alludes to archeological evidence for support, but he ignores both textual and scientific material suggesting otherwise. If the flood were truly global as presented in scripture, the evidence likely would be geological, not archaeological, a matter of scientific interpretation of data beyond this review. *Much more could and should be said, but space disallows. I found these two books challenging, forcing me to think through a number of issues, both scientifically and theologically. I appreciated how Garvey critiqued aspects of evolution as well as "traditional" interpretations of scripture. As an Old Testament scholar, I appreciated his observation on how "the old critical consensus on the supposed literary disunity of the Old Testament has failed" (the so-called JEDP theory--GHE, 188). As an engineer schooled in the sciences, I appreciated his scientific challenges to the philosophy of naturalism, recognizing that the physical realm is not total reality. He noted several times that scientific assumptions needed to be rethought in the light of new evidences and cited cases such as consciousness, or the nature of Satan. I was especially intrigued by his observation about "enculturated 'soft scientism,'" which he defined as saying "that theological statements must be subjected to scientific scrutiny in order to have any intellectual credibility" (GHE, 12). He correctly describes the early parts of Genesis as historical, as noted by even critical biblical scholars such as Gerhard von Rad. And, yet, when the text conflicted with current secular scientific interpretation, he reverted to allegorizing, exhibiting that same soft scientism he critiqued. *Reviewed by Michael A. Harbin, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Taylor University, Upland, IN 46989.