what are they saying about… adam & eve, the garden of eden, original sin, death….?

What are they saying about…

Adam & Eve, the Garden of Eden, Original Sin, Death….?

More and more evangelical scholars are acknowledging that:

1. Evolution offers the best scientific explanation of the development of life on earth;

Calvin College Biology Department Perspectives on Evolution (Feb. 4, 2011):

We teach evolutionary theory as the best scientific explanation for the dynamic

diversity of life on Earth.

The theory of evolution is one of biology’s key unifying principles. It integrates and explains observations in all areas of biology, including

the DNA sequences in genomes of creatures past and present,

the emergence of resistant strains of disease,

similarity of molecules in widely divergent lineages,

hybridization events between different species,

elegant camouflage coloration in insects, and the uniqueness of species on tropical

islands.

We believe God brings forth the creation through evolutionary means. While no biological theory is ever beyond revision, we affirm the scientific consensus that life has existed on Earth for billions of years and that it has changed, and continues to change over time.


2. the universe began some 13.7 billion years ago;3. all past and present living organisms descended

from a common ancestor;

4. hominids appeared 4-5 million years ago;


5. the genetic diversity in the modern human population could not have come from a single human pair but more likely from a group of 10,000+/- human ancestors about 150,000 years ago;

6. modern Homo sapiens appeared some 120,000 years ago;


7. labor pains, the locomotion of snakes, predation, deadly diseases, mass extinction, thorn plants and weeds, and violent natural events existed for millennia before the existence of the first humans.

What, then, of traditional Christian doctrines like the perfect garden of Eden, the Fall, death as the result of the Fall, Original Sin, Divine sovereignty/action, and the origin of evil? How are we supposed to read the Bible now?

A. The garden of Eden, The Fall, death, andoriginal sin in the Western Christian tradition:

• God originally created a first pair of human beings, positioned them in idyllic spiritual and moral conditions so that, when deliberately subjected to temptation, they were genuinely free to obey God or not.

They freely chose not to obey God, and as a consequence, they “fell” from these utopian beginnings, so that they and all their descendants, by heredity, became mortal and enslaved from birth to a natural desire to embrace their disobedience (sin).

Finally, somehow, their disobedience brought about a “Fall” for the cosmos and nature, too. (Schneider)

Eden: And God saw all that he had made and it was very good —Genesis 1:31

• Everything was finished and in a perfect state—traditional WC tradition

• Science #7: labor pains, the locomotion of snakes, predation, deadly diseases, mass extinction, thorn plants and weeds, and violent natural events existed for millennia

before the existence of the first humans.


1. Adam began in a state of innocence and simplicity. “He was a child, not yet having his understanding perfected.” It was necessary that he should grow and so come to his perfection” (Irenaeus).

God set Adam on the right path, but Adam had in front of him a long road to traverse in order to reach his final goal (immortality and incorruptibility—H.S.).—Bishop Kallistos Ware, Eastern Orthodox tradition , TOC 225.



2. Everything was functioning well.—John Walton, Wheaton College.

3. The scientific counterpart to Gen. 1:31 would be the Anthropic Principle’s recognition of the astonishing potentiality with which the laws of physics are endowed.

—John Polkinghorne, quantum physicist, Anglican priest.

4. The original state described in the Garden story represents an ideal state that was never realized. The idea is that Genesis 2 falls into the category of a “golden age” story. It provides a preliminary and partial sketch of what an ideal relation with God would be like.

—Robin Collins, Messiah College.



5. Eden reveals the beginning of God's vision for the world and for human beings, as to be consummated not in Adam, but in still-superior form through recreation in the image of Jesus Christ.

—John Schneider, Calvin College, 203.


6. Genesis itself does not picture the first humans being created in a state of spiritual maturity and moral perfection. What Genesis describes is a ‘process whose starting point is not perfection but nascence.’ The first couple’s humanity was not given to them complete but was a work in

progress.” —Daniel Harlow, Calvin College, 188-9.

Adam and Eve: Who were they? Were they?

Adam & Eve were actual persons uniquely created by God some 10,000 years ago —traditional C tradition

• Science #3: all past and present living organisms descended from a common ancestor;

• Science #4: hominids appeared 4-5 million years ago;• Science #5: the genetic diversity in the modern

human population could not have come from a single human pair but more likely from a group of 10,000+/- human ancestors about 150,000 years ago;

• Science #6: modern Homo sapiens appeared some 120,000 years ago;

Adam and Eve: Who were they? Were they? 1. Declaration F. The church declares that the clear

teaching of Scripture and of our confessions on the uniqueness of human beings as image bearers of God rules out the espousal of all theorizing that posits the reality of evolutionary forebears of the human race.

Note: This is not intended to limit further investigation and discussion on the origin of humanity. —Synod of CRC, 1991

Adam and Eve: Who were they? Were they? In response to an overture in 2010, synod noted that

Declaration F “appears contradictory and confusing" and declared that it "no longer be part of the CRCNA’s official position statement on creation and science." —Synod of CRC 2010


2. Recent research in molecular biology, primatology, sociobiology, and phylogenetics indicates that the species Home sapiens cannot be traced back to a single pair of individuals…. Adam and Eve are strictly literary figures—characters in a divinely inspired story about the imagined past that intends to teach primarily theological, not historical, truths about God, creation, and humanity. —Daniel Harlow, 181

Adam and Eve: Who were they? Were they?3. The writer of Genesis created the figures of Adam

and Eve by logical and imaginary extrapolation, or by a sort of ‘first-cause’ fictional-historical deduction, that he placed them quite naturally in

his own geographical location (where, so far as he knew, history began), that he gave them typo-

logical names, and that he then used these imagined historical figures to promote his distinctly Hebrew and anti-Babylonian theology.

—Denis Lamoureux, St. Joseph’s College, U of Alberta; John Schneider

Adam and Eve: Who were they? Were they?4. There was a time in the evolution of human beings

when God took one out of the population of tool-makers and endowed him with the image of God. This would have lifted him up to a whole new plane of life.

There followed a special creation of Eve which established the first human pair as God’s vice- regents and clinched the fact that there is no natural bridge from animal to man.

God now may have conferred his image on Adam’s collaterals to bring them into the same realm of being. —Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian

Church (PCA), following Derek Kidner.


5. The word ‘Adam’ can represent human beings in general… I would suggest that ‘Adam’

should also be understood as having a historical reference, as also representing what could be called the ‘stem-father’ of the human

race. In evolutionary terms, such a ‘stem-father’ would

be the first group of evolving hominids who gained moral and spiritual awareness

—Robin Collins, 486 (see D.4)

The Fall and Original SinAs traditionally formulated, the doctrines of the Fall

and original sin has involved three claims:• There was a first couple who existed in a paradisal

state of spiritual, moral, and intellectual rectitude, without corruption or sin, from which they fell by willfully disobeying God;

• Our nature is fallen as a result of this sin, and thus bound over to evil; and

• All human beings are guilty of the sin of Adam, and hence everyone is deserving of eternal death.

The Fall and Original Sin• The Fall was not an accident of human libertarian

history, but was part of ‘Plan A’ in the fore-knowledge and purpose of God to begin with. Adam and Eve were juvenile innocents, no match for the seductions of the serpent. Their pity would be the world’s loss, but greater gain —“O happy fault, that merited so great a Redeemer!”

(cf. Al Plantinga)– The unpleasant, destructive, painful, and deadly

disorders in nature fit with the presumed divine purpose, which is to bring human beings and the entire creation into maturity and perfection, via triumph—not just to make them that way at the beginning. —John Schneider, 203.

The Fall and Original Sin2. Evolutionary biology tells us that we share a

transtemporal and universal biological and cultural heritage that predisposes us to sin.

Original sin is a biologically inherited state, a by-product of billions of years of evolution. Intrinsic to the process of evolution is the inclination toward self-preservation at the expense of other creatures.

Yet selfish behavior did not become sin…until the evolution of their self-consciousness (and God-consciousness) allowed our remote ancestors to override their innate tendency to self-assertion….

The Fall and Original Sin

Original sin is not the result of a single fall but of repeated falls in the life of every human being and of their cumulative, systemic effects in society and culture.

And humanity’s constant falling away is not a descent from some primordial state of integrity but a failure to live up to a divinely posed ideal. —Daniel Harlow, 191


3. Paleoscience overwhelmingly proves that labor pains, the locomotion of snakes, predation, deadly diseases, mass extinction, thorn plants and weeds, and violent natural events existed for millennia before the existence of the first humans. Thus they cannot be the consequences of a ‘curse.’ —John Schneider.


4. Adam and Eve play two representative roles: (1) representing “everyperson”—i.e. each one of us— and (2) representing the first hominids, or group of hominids that had the capacity for free choice and self-consciousness.

With this capacity for self-consciousness and free choice, these hominids also became aware of God and God's requirements, but more often than not rejected them.

The Fall and Original Sin• One could imagine that this awareness was

particularly clear, uncluttered..by spiritual darkness…. In this sense, these first ancestors were in…an original state of ‘justice and holiness…’

• Nonetheless they were subject to various temptations arising both from the desires and instincts they inherited from their evolutionary past and from various new possibilities for self-centeredness, self-idolization, self-denigration etc., that came with their new self-consciousness.

The Fall and Original Sin• Instead of the ‘Fall’ being thought of as distorting

human nature.., under (my) view the sinful acts of our first ancestors created a form of spiritual and moral darkness along with an accompanying bondage to sin.

• Therefore, original sin refers to: (1) the sinful choices of these hominids, (2) the continuing sinful choices of the succeeding generations including ourselves

as we come to self-consciousness, and (3) the resulting bondage to sin and spiritual darkness that is

inherited from our ancestors and generated by our own choices.

The Fall and Original Sin• This spiritual darkness and bondage is

hypothesized to be inherited in analogy to the way in which we inherit the genetics and culture from our ancestors.

• My view disagrees with the idea that the Fall somehow deeply affected human nature…. Scripture seems to suggest the loss of direct awareness of God and bondage to sin.

—Robin Collins

Death

1. Read on its own, Genesis does not teach that the first human beings were created immortal and that death entered the world only after and as a consequence of their transgression.

Mortality is regarded as part of humanity’s original created nature. Expulsion from the garden denies the man and woman access to the tree of life which would have granted them immortality. According to Genesis, then, human death was a natural part of God's created world, not part of the fallout of a fall. —Daniel Harlow, 188

Death2. Some have pointed out that in the Garden of

Eden there would have had to be some kind of death and decay or fruit would not have been edible. It could be that Adam and Eve were given conditional immortality and…a foretaste of what life in the world would be like…living in perfect harmony with God and his creation.

The result of the Fall, however, was ‘spiritual death….’ We now die eternally when we die physically . —Tim Keller.

Death3. It is commonly agreed that the idea of original sin

is not in itself found in Genesis 2-3, which is one reason this doctrine is not part of Jewish

theology. Paul nowhere claims or presupposes that our natures became distorted through Adam’s sin (see D. bullet 3).

Rather, Paul presupposes that Adam is responsible for the entrance of sin into the world; it is the continuing sin of the human race, however, that brings death. —Robin Collins, 475, 480

Divine ActionAs our scientific understanding of the universe expands, it

has been increasingly difficult to see how God can purposely act within physical processes. Three strategies have been suggested:

1. ‘God banished’—this strategy abandons talk of God acting in the physical world;

2. ‘God before’—God may have started the whole thing going but has not been involved since;

3. ‘God behind’—God acts behind the system of causation at another, unnoticeable level (primary vs. secondary causation)

Divine ActionCurrently, some theologians/scientists are pursuing a

fourth strategy:4. Modern physics sees a system of causation that is

open, that contains inherent gaps into which God can effectively work to bring about change. There is a ‘causal joint’ at which God—as a transcendent, immaterial world cause—interacts particularly with causative factors in the material world.

–CTNS, 6

Divine Action1. In nature, there were once two metaphysical

fundamentals: matter and energy. The physicists reduced these two to one: matter-energy; the biologists shortly afterward discovered that there were still two metaphysical fundamentals: matter-energy and information. …

What makes the critical difference in evolutionary history is increase in the information

possibility space, which is not something inherent in the precursor materials, nor in the evolutionary system, nor something for which biology has an evident explanation.

Divine ActionWhat is the most adequate account of the origin of this

genetic information? … Perhaps…there is a Ground of Information, a.k.a. God. —Holmes Rolston III, U of Colorado, Philosophy.

Divine Action2. The clockwork universe is dead. The future is not just

the tautologous spelling-out of what was already present in the past. Physics shows an openness to new possibility at all levels, from the microscopic (where quantum theory is important) to the

macroscopic (where it is not). … Since there is …open flexibility within the general

process of the world, it seems consistent to suppose that there is scope for action there also. God…influences the world by means of causal joints hidden within the unpredictability of process.

–John Polkinghorn, S&P 40,41

Divine Action4. The view of evolution I propose is what I call

theistically guided evolution. I define (it) as the view that all life on Earth is the result of the evolutionary process, but in various places God guided or influenced this process.

God could guide the (it) by mutating some gamete or even adding new information to the gametes, thereby resulting in one organism giving rise to significantly different offspring.

–Robin Collins

Suffering and Evil1. God accords to the processes of the world that

same respect that he accords to the actions of humanity (freedom—H.S.).

The open flexibility of the world’s process affords the means by which the universe explores its own potentiality, humankind exercises its will, and God interacts with his creation. The first, through its limitation and frustration,

gives rise to physical evil.

Suffering and EvilThe second, through its sinfulness, gives rise to

moral evil. The world so marred is not abandoned, for the

third is the means by which the Creator can exercise a providential care within the evolving history of his creation.

The only satisfactory conclusion to the matter will come if it is indeed true that ‘all shall be well.’

—John Polkinghorne, S&P 78-9

Suffering and Evil

2. A logical problem for Christians presented by the existence of evil:

P: God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good Q: The actual world contains genuine evils, natural,

personal and social.It is claimed that these propositions are logically

incompatible. But if we insert another possibly true proposition R such that P + R entails Q the problem can be resolved.

Suffering and EvilSuch a proposition R is: R: It is not possible for God to create a world in

which entities could exercise creativity and which did not contain genuine evils.

—Terrence W. Tilley, P&C, 203-4

Suffering and Evil3. God endowed the natural order with the freedom to

‘become,’ and the result was an interesting, morally complex, spiritually rich, but ultimately selfish species we call Homo sapiens.”

We must trust that God created the kind of world that he did because an evolutionary process involving selfishness, suffering, and death was the only way to bring about such creaturely values as novelty, complexity, and freedom.

–Daniel Harlow

4. “Why does God permit evil?” The answer is because he wanted to actualize a possible world whose value was greater than L; but all those possible worlds contain incarnation and atonement; hence all those worlds contain evil. --Alvin Plantinga “Supralapsarianism, or ‘O Felix Culpa’

Suffering and Evil

what are they saying about… adam & eve, the garden of eden, original sin, death….?

Documents

schneider slide

evangelical scholars

tthe fall

tthe perfect garden

disobedience sin

theory of evolution

billions of years

violent natural events