Evangelicals Debating Adam

Some Theological Remarks

Hans Madueme, PhD candidate, Theological Studies, TEDS

I. Introduction

II. Historical Background

• “Conspiracy Theory”: Charles Darwin was the reason Christians turned to old-earth views and theistic evolution. • Not so! Over 50 years prior to Darwin’s Origin of Species, many theologians agreed with geologists who said the earth was older than Bishop Ussher’s date of 4004 BC.

• Geology and Darwin were only two key players in a larger drama.

• Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676) was a controversial figure in his day, born in Bordeaux (France) to a Calvinist family.

• He read widely and had many questions about the beginning chapters of Genesis.

• In 1642 and 43, La Peyrère wrote a two-part magnum opus defending the theory that Adam was not the first human.

• His proof-text was Romans 5:12-14: “For till the time of the Law sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed, when the Law was not.”

• La Peyrère was considered a blaspheming heretic. He was forced to recant his heresy and fake a conversion to the Roman Catholic faith.

• However, his ideas had a major influence in later modern thought.

• The questions we’re struggling with today are not new.

• People had doubts about the traditional picture of Adam before 1859, but Darwin made it much harder to believe in Adam and Eve as the first human beings who later fell.

• Non-evangelical traditions have now concluded that Christian theology should learn to live without Adam.

(e.g., David Kelsey says that the old idea of the fall is “unintelligible” and “no longer believable”)

• Such theologians see Adam as a cipher for “Everyman.” • As a result, soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) becomes the new doctrine of original sin.

• Yes, it is possible to have “Christian theology” without a historical Adam and Eve … but not the kind our church fathers would have recognized.

III. Relating Science and Theology

• We’ve abandoned other beliefs in the past (think of the geocentric universe theory); what makes this one so sacred?

• “Science-and-theology” is a specific professional discipline built on addressing the relationship between natural science and Christian theology.

• Ian Barbour, with his Issues in Science and Religion published in 1966, was influential in the emergence of this discipline.

• Scholars in the US and across the world are now reflecting on science and theology in numerous ways.

• They are all trying to show how science and the Christian faith are in basic harmony. For example:

a) Templeton Foundation in Pennsylvaniab) The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in

Berkeleyc) The Faraday Institute at Cambridged) The Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxforde) BioLogos

• Regarding the controversy over Adam and Eve, the authority of Scripture is the hinge on which it all turns.

• Ian Barbour developed a typology for how to relate science and Christian theology.

1. “Conflict”2. “Independence”3. “Dialogue”4. “Integration”

• Barbour’s example of the conflict position: “scientific materialists” and “biblical literalists” (both are extreme!)

• Instead Barbour recommends the dialogue position (avoid conflict at all cost!); he wants to show the “reasonableness” of the Christian faith …

• But, sometimes there are real conflicts between science and theology (e.g., the traditional doctrine of the fall and mainstream evolutionary theory).

• Scriptural realism is my proposal for how to relate science and theology.

• It tries to address a concern that theology keeps being revised because of new scientific data.

Canonical Epistemology

Critical Fideism

Christian Eclecticism

• How would spiritual realism help us in the debate over evolution and the historicity of Adam and Eve?

The doctrine of the fall is a central doctrine (and presupposed in all of Scripture)

All major church traditions affirm these doctrines despite differences in detail.

Christians can be theologically agnostic about conflicting evidence from scientific data (a warranted agnosticism).

IV. Different Evangelical Positions

• Evangelicals who believe in the doctrine of the fall and the historicity of Adam have responded in different ways:

Traditional Young Earth Theology

Creationist Preadamism (e.g., Millard Erickson, Robert Newman, John Bloom, Hugh Ross)

Evolutionary Preadamism (e.g., John Jefferson Davis, Henri Blocher, James Orr, Old Princetonians)

Federal Headship Preadamism (e.g., Derek Kidner, John Stott, Tim Keller, Karl Rahner, Denis Alexander)

• These different proposals disagree about the apologetic threshold (some have lower, others have higher “thresholds” to the conflicting scientific data).

• With any model, there is a tradeoff … On the question of Adam and the fall, the closer you are to the mainstream scientific picture the further away you are from the biblical narrative.

Some hard questions …

• Since all four proposals affirm the historicity of Adam and Eve, and also affirm the doctrine of the fall, should we consider all of them within the bounds of confessional orthodoxy?

• Should evangelicals be open to the possibility of human evolution?

• Is it a problem if Adam and Eve are not the biological parents of all humanity (as in federal headship preadamism)?

• And even if you disagree with federal headship preadamism, is there room for such a proposal within our church tradition?

V. How Should We Respond?

• How should churches and seminaries deal with this debate about Adam and the fall, or more broadly, with the relationship between science and theology?

1.Churches and seminaries should set dogmatic boundaries on these sorts of questions.

2.We need more scientists who are confessional and who are wrestling with the most difficult questions in science and theology.

3.We need to think about how we can best create “intellectual space” for our best theologians and scientists to explore tentative, non-binding hypotheses (from a scriptural realist perspective).

VI. Questions?