Craig's backwoods exegesis

William Lane Craig recently expanded on a defense of a position he took regarding the depiction of God in Gen 2-3:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/genesis-2-3-anthropomorphism-or-theophany

I've already discussed his original presentation: 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-genesis-mytho-history.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/gods-audible-voice.html

I will reproduce his entire answer at the bottom of my post. By way of comment:

i) One of the revealing things about Craig's interpretation of Gen 2-3 is the contrast between his philosophical prowess and his exegetical prowess. How that exposes the difference between his philosophical sophistication and his hermeneutical naivete. Over the decades, Craig's philosophy and philosophical theology have undergone great development. By contrast, it's like he still reads the Bible the same way he did as a teenager. His grasp of biblical hermeneutics never developed in tandem with his grasp of philosophy. His hermeneutic is in a state of arrested development. Intellectually, part of Craig never grew up. His philosophical toolkit matured while his hermeneutical toolkit remains immature, stuck in Sunday school. 

It reminds me of some apostates who become proficient philosophers and scientists, but when they attack Christian theism, they never brought their understanding of the Bible up to the same level of their mastery of science or philosophy. In the age of specialization, that's understandable, but it lays bare a big hole in Craig's skill set. 

ii) The way Craig frames the alternatives is an understatement. As he explained in his original presentation, what he means by "anthropomorphic" is "palpably false if taken literally".

iii) A basic flaw in Craig's analysis is assumption that in order for something to count as a theophany, the criterion is not the nature of the event but whether the account is introduced by a verbal formula: "God appeared to…" Likewise, that a figure must be explicitly called the "Angel of the Lord". 

iv) Another flaw in his analysis is his failure to appreciate that Gen 2-3 isn't told from the viewpoint of Adam and Eve. It's not a first-person, indexical description of how God looked to them. Rather, it's told from the third-person, external viewpoint of the narrator. 

v) Yet another flaw in Craig's analysis is the equivocal notion of an "appearance". It doesn't even seem to occur to Craig that that word or concept has multiple meanings, and so it's necessary to identify which one or ones may be germane to the issue at hand. Among other things, "appear/appearance" can mean the following:

• Materialize

• Be present or show up

• Come into view; become visible or noticeable

• Perform (e.g. Franco Corelli appeared in Il Travatore)

• How something is perceived by one or more senses (e.g. an indirect realist says appearances are all we have to go by–we can't peel back the veil of perception. Or a Catholic says that in transubstantiation, the Host retains the appearance of bread and wine) 

vi) Apropos (v), does a "theophany" mean God "appears" in the sense that he's present or localized at a particular time and place? Does it mean God "appears" in the sense that he can be seen? These are distinct ideas. For instance, an angel might be present but invisible. Take the Balaam account where the Angel of the Lord was present, but initially invisible to Balaam. 

vii) Although the default connotation of "appear" may signify to a visual appearance or apparition, theophanies often include auditions as well as visions. God's audible voice. Or preternatural thunder. So "appearance" can be shorthand for something that's perceptible to one or more of the senses. In principle, it could be tactile as well. 

viii) Some incidents in Scripture indicate that angels are able to materialize and dematerialize. So that's another sense of "appearance" which is applicable to theophanies and angelophanies. In the case of the Angel of the Lord, the two categories overlap. He's the theophanic angel.  

ix) Then there's Craig's frankly silly objection that Adam and Eve didn't exist at the time of the theophanies. But once God brought them into existence, they were in a position to see their Maker, if he took the form of the Angel of the Lord to create them. Likewise, Adam regained consciousness after the operation. So even on his own grounds, Craig's objection is hairsplitting. 

x) Craig reads biblical narratives atomistically, as if similar incidents in the Pentateuch can't shed light on one another. To take a comparison, consider movies, novels,, or a miniseries where earlier scenes raise questions that are answered as the plot unfolds. You don't understand it all at once. Rather, as you go deeper into it, later plot developments retroactively illuminate earlier scenes. 

Likewise, it isn't necessary to pedantically use the same clues each time same kind of event is narrated. That's woodenly repetitious. Readers are expected to analogize from explicit examples to comparable examples. 

For readers who lack the background, let me set the stage for your very important question, Thomas. In my Defenders lectures I claimed that the descriptions of God in Genesis 2-3 as a humanoid deity are inconsistent with the transcendent concept of God in Genesis 1 and are therefore not to be taken literally. Rather these descriptions are figurative anthropomorphisms, descriptions of God in human terms, a style of speaking with which we’re all accustomed, as when we say, for example, “God’s eyes are upon the righteous and His ear is open to their prayer.”

The challenge raised to this interpretation of Genesis 2-3 is that in these chapters we have theophanies of God, that is, appearances of God in human form. Yes, God really is transcendent, but here God appears to people in human form. For example, in Genesis 18 God appears as a man to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre. Therefore, the descriptions are literally true of how God looks to people. 

Now that’s certainly a possible interpretation. There are lots of theophanies in the Old Testament. But is that the most plausible interpretation of Genesis 2-3?  I raised two reasons for thinking that it is not: (1) Genesis 2-3 lack the language indicative of a theophany. In Genesis 18.1 we read, “And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre. . . .” There is nothing like that in Genesis 2-3. (2) God is described anthropomorphically in Genesis 2-3 even when He is not appearing to anyone. The first example is in the description of His fashioning Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. This cannot be an appearance to Adam because Adam wasn’t even alive yet! The second example is God’s fashioning Eve out of Adam’s rib. Since God had put Adam to sleep to perform this surgery, God cannot be appearing to Adam, since he is unconscious (and, of course, Eve doesn’t even exist yet, so God isn’t appearing to her).

Now you challenge my first reason for thinking that Genesis 2-3 are not describing theophanies. You point out that the language of “appearing” is absent from some theophanies. Consider the cases cited from the Pentateuch, since these are the relevant cases for Genesis. Notice that although Jacob’s wrestling with a man in Genesis 32.22-30 does not use the language of God’s appearing to him, it is so characterized in retrospect: “God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name’” (Gen 35.9-10), the very re-naming of Jacob mentioned in the wrestling episode.  Similarly, Genesis 35.1 says, “God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there; and make there an altar to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau,” referring back to Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28.10-17. Jacob’s life was apparently punctuated by a series of divine theophanies providentially directing Jacob.

In some cases there are other expressions that tip off the reader that one is dealing with a theophany. For example, in the appearance to Hagar [n.b. not Exodus 3.7-13, but Genesis 16.7-13], we encounter the mysterious figure of “the angel of the Lord,” who is described as an angel and yet also as Lord and God. In Genesis 31.3-13 Jacob describes a similar figure in a dream who is both “the angel of God” (v 11) and yet “the God of Bethel” (v 13), Who, you’ll remember, appeared to Jacob there (Genesis 35.1). In the appearance to Moses in Exodus 3.2, we read, “the angel of the Lord appeared to him.”

Now in Genesis 2-3 this sort of language is entirely missing. There is neither language of God’s appearing nor of the mysterious angel of the Lord. These stories just don’t read like theophanies.

Taken together with my second point, that in Genesis 2-3 God is described anthropomorphically even when He is not appearing to anyone, I think that construing the human descriptions of God in Genesis 2-3 as literary anthropomorphisms is more plausible than taking them to be literal theophanies.