Truth Unites - On Owen Strachan, William Lane Craig, and the Historical Adam

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

William Lane Craig's recent treatment of the historical Adam generated  some critical feedback, but much of it rests upon a misunderstanding of  Bill's position. Here I respond to Owen Strachan's critique.   Bill's article: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/10/the-historical-adam  Owen's critique: https://owenstrachan.substack.com/p/a-response-to-william-lane-craig?justPublished=true  Bill's book: https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Historical-Adam-Scientific-Exploration/dp/080287911X Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus.   Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai.    SUPPORT:  Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites  One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites   FOLLOW:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/  Website: https://gavinortlund.com/  

A couple days ago, William Lane Craig wrote an article about the historical Adam and Eve in First Things, and it's related to his book, which I will try to grab here and not blind you with the glare from my light. I'm going to interview Dr. Craig on that book and on some of these questions I'm going to get into here in two weeks on this channel, so you can stay tuned for that interview. Well, the article he wrote got some pushback, and I think some of the pushback represents misunderstanding of his view. and I was thinking about it tonight and I thought, I'm going to make a video about this. I think it could be helpful to try to clarify a few of the hermeneutical issues here. So one of the articles was written by Owen Strand, who very strongly criticized Dr. Craig's views.

He put up a tweet saying, grieved to read this by William Lane Craig. He says Genesis 1 through 11 is not literal truth, nor is Adam historical. Then he said in a later tweet, I've now lived to see an esteemed Christian philosopher for publicly mock Genesis 1 through 3. And then he links to a video of an interview with Dr. Craig. Then he wrote an article. In the article, he refers to an argument of Dr. Craig's as threatening to destabilize Christian doctrine in general,

not just the historical atom. Now, I think this represents a thorough and complete misunderstanding of Dr. Craig's position and kind of an ignorance of the state of the discussion happening right now. and I want to explain a few things of why I think that. Just for the sake of people watching on, I try to stay out of polemical stuff. I don't really have a personality that loves that. But there's some issues and there's sometimes where I say, you know, it's kind of like I wrote a response to John MacArthur a year or a half ago on the whole, whether churches in California should close.

And I was like, you know, I think it'd be okay to speak into this. I think this could do some. So every now and again, I'll jump in with. something that is criticizing somebody for their views. I'm willing to do that on this one, because number one, I really care about this issue. I'm very curious about it. I've agonized my way through it personally. If you've watched my video on spiritual deconstruction, you know how much I care about this. Number two, as a pastor, I've seen how much it affects the church when there is not charity and carefulness in our dialogue about these things. And I've seen how much it

affects people's ministry. And number three, I am very eager to, to defend reasonable voices. And I think William Lane Craig is a very fine apologist and philosopher who's done so much good for God's kingdom. I actually don't align with him in every detail on this issue. I'm not in agreement with his specific proposal, but I think it's a wonderful book and a fascinating proposal, but I'm not in agreement with it. But I'm very eager to defend reasonable voices. I see so much polarization. There's this massive movement of deconstruction on the one. side. On the other side, I see this uptick of fundamentalism, and I'm very concerned about that. And so I want to try to protect reasonable voices out there. And I think Dr. Craig is a very

reasonable voice. So let's just hit a couple of the basics here, okay? First, the claim that Dr. Craig denies a historical atom is so flagrantly inaccurate and uncharitable and misleading. And now I'm seeing other people talk about that on Twitter. And I'm just thinking, we've got to do better than that in the body of Christ to represent, even whatever view you take on this, you need to accurately describe the opposing side. If you didn't pick up on it from the First Things article itself, all you need to do is go to the Amazon page of the book or pick up the book itself and go to the book description. So I've got it here in the front flap, where on the second sentence, the whole purpose of the book is described as concluding, quote, that the entire Bible considers Adam the historical

progenitor of the human race, a position that must therefore be accepted as a premise for Christians who take seriously the inspired truth of scripture. That's the whole project Dr. Craig is engaged in, defending a historical Adam. On the spectrum of possible views, he's relatively conservative. He puts Adam way back. So he'd be more on the conservative side than someone like John Stott. Now, you can disagree with the effort to try to coordinate Adam and Eve in the actual paleoanthropological timeline. You can just say that whole effort is wrongheaded or something like that. That's fine. You can have any view on this you want.

But say that. Don't say he denies a historical Adam. That is so flagrantly. That's why I wanted to speak out on this and try to help produce more accurate understanding. Because I bet a lot of people won't read this book. but they'll read that article and come away with that false impression. Now, let's talk about the hermeneutics of this and why this is so complicated. One of the reasons I suspect why Owen mistakenly attributes a denial of historical Adam to Dr. Craig

is that he seems to be struggling to see how a historical figure can be both historical and literary. I'm using that word. This is the common terminology in the literature on this question right now to refer to a literary atom. It does not mean Adam is not also historical. We can do the same thing with other figures where, so a literary atom is when, or a Melchizedic in the book of Hebrews, a figure can function in a literary context as a particular construct or type in the context of an argument. Without that, and so then you're talking about that usage of that historical personage. That doesn't mean they're not also historical. Okay.

So I think there's a real, I'm sorry to say, ignorance of the state of scholarship on this question to assume that historical and literary or historical and figurative even are at odds with each other. Now, so let's make a basic point here that I want to plea, make a plea for people to really take to heart and think about on this issue. Very basic, but it seems to be important. There is a difference between how the Bible narrates truth and whether it narrates truth. Okay? It's a big difference between whether a text is true and how it narrates truth. In his response, Owen says, quote, you cannot have history be both true and mythological or figurative. And he also compares the literary genre of Genesis 1 through 11 to that of the Gospels.

This is more complicated. Okay. There are many different literary genres in the Bible. Bible, and many of them use various kinds of non-literal language to convey true historical events. Now, there's lots of examples we immediately think of, like the apocalyptic literature, the night visions of Zechariah, much of Ezekiel, Daniels, Revelation, etc. Many of the Psalms. But there's lots of examples that would fit into the category of mytho history that Dr. Craig

has put onto the table. I think people hear this word mytho history and they start freaking out and they treat it as though it's the same as myth. Mytho history and myth are not the same. I would say that Habakkuk 3 and various Psalms that the way they describe the Exodus is roughly in that category. It's describing a historical event in a very particular, highly stylized, imagistic way. And the scripture loves to use language like that. And that's our problem. If we want to flatten out all historical narration as though it all has to function in the same way.

Now, people have worries like, well, what are the guardrails here? If you start interpreting Genesis 1 through 11, less literalistically, what next? Well, the answer to that is biblical harmonetics, you know? Look at the genre you're dealing with. That's just a matter of we've got to read the Bible carefully. The reason you wouldn't read the Gospels or the book of first kings, the same way you read Genesis 2 to 3 is because, you're dealing with different kinds of literature. And Dr. Craig is not the only one.

It's not the first person to come along and suggest, you know, Genesis 1 through 11 feels pretty different from Genesis 12 through 50. It seems like it's navigating a little differently in terms of how it's portraying history. Let me give some examples of this. Henri Blashe, not a liberal exegette. Very, he's in the context of the statement I'm about to read, he's vigorously defending the concept of original sin and a historical fall and so forth. He distinguishes Genesis 1 through 4 from what he calls straightforward ordinary history,

that'd be like Genesis 12 in following, and he calls Genesis 1 through 4, quote, another historical genre, that of a well-crafted childlike drawing of the far distant past with illustrative and typological interests uppermost, something like the images carved on the timpins of Romanesque cathedrals and the stories told by their stained-glass windows. J. I. Packer, staunched offender of inerancey. wrote the book Knowing God, not a liberal. He distinguishes the ordinary narrative prose of Genesis 12 following from the, quote, poetic prose mode of narration in Genesis 1 through 11 with its pictorial,

imaginative, quasi-liturgical phraseology, its paucity of mere information, and its drumbeat formulae. He goes on to call it archetypal history, but at the same time, he says this is not saga or legend or myth. It's not just modern exegetes. I wrote a whole book on St. Augustine's views on the Doctrine of Creation. I will resist the urge to start to draw you into interest in my book. That's not the purpose of this video. But I'll simply say, I was shocked as I'm doing my research for chapter five in my book on Adam and Eve. I'm like, I know Augustine doesn't read Genesis 1 literally.

I know that. But Genesis 2 to 3, you know, I was shocked. You get to book 8 of his literal commentary on Genesis. and he says there's three options. Adam is either a real person and Eden, a real place, or they're symbols of humanity and heaven, respectively, or both. And he says, basically, to summarize, he says, it's both. But if we had to go with option number two and they're symbolic, we could do that and still be orthodox. I'm not lying, you don't believe me, look it up, or check out my book. I was shocked at how open and flexible his hermeneutics were. And the reason is there's a lot. So I'll give you a quote,

so you don't think I'm exaggerating here. You can see all these in my book. But he's talking about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He says, quote, if by any chance these people mean to take that tree in a figurative sense and not as a real one with real apples, this opinion may lead to ideas that are agreeable to write faith in the truth. End quote. Now, you can disagree with Augustine. You can say his hermeneutics are crazy, but you can't call him a liberal because he lives in the fourth century, in the early fifth century. You can't say, oh, he's compromising to science because he lived 1,500 years before the scientific revolution. There are reasons in the text that make people wonder, how literally should we read this? You've got an angel with a flaming

sword. How literally do you take that? Is he going to stab people if they cross his path? You've got God walking in the garden. How literally do you take that? What does it mean for God to walk? God doesn't have legs and feet. How does God walk? There's lots of other details too that have made thoughtful, godly, not liberal, sane interpreters wonder, how literally do we take this? By the way, the same appeal that Owen is making, this kind of simplistic contrast of it's either true or it's false. And that, you know, the lack of appreciation for the nuances of how the Bible can narrate history, this was the same thing that was at play in what led so many Christians to reject Copernicus. And Luther called reportedly called Copernicus a fool who's just trying to invent

clever new ideas. Calvin, I won't even say what Calvin said about Copernicus and his followers because it's so bad. But they did not like Copernicus and they had the same appeal. Look, the Bible's as clear as day. The Bible just says it. Psalm 93-1, the earth shall not be moved. Psalm 1045, the earth doesn't move. The Bible says the earth doesn't move. The problem was, here's the thing. The scripture is absolutely infallible, unbreakable. The scripture cannot be broken. That's John 1035. Our Savior teaches us to trust the scripture with our lives.

I do. How we interpret the scripture changes all the time because we are fallible interpreters. We make mistakes as interpreters. And so we need to have more humility in the way we engage in the interpretation of scripture. And there are complexities in many of these passages that should make us open to, in my opinion, open to listening to the science. if it's valid science. So that's where I'm coming from. I hope that the intent of this comes across right.

I'm not just trying to attack Owen, but I'm genuinely concerned about what I regard as the over-the-top bombast and rhetoric of his criticisms of Dr. Craig. I think there's a very unhelpful on an issue that requires patience and charity and nuance and careful listening and lots of study. I think especially for science and faith things,

both, we need a lot more humility in how we address these issues. And so I'm very concerned that perspectives like Dr. Krebe, even though I don't necessarily share his view in the details, that's exactly the kind of thing we need more of, is careful work, people trying to wrestle, smart Christian philosophers engaging the science and wrestling with this. And then we can all keep working at it together. And so I don't want his views to be dismissed too easily as though Dr. Craig is going liberal or all the things you see out there that he has an anti-supernatural hormonutic or something like that. No, it's not anti-supernaturalism. He's not, it's just, how should we read these texts? That's the driving motivation. So I hope this video is helpful

and just drawing attention to some of those complexities and I hope we can keep working on these issues and talking about them with humility and charity and listening to one another. But that also, there's a place for strongly stating our mind, and I've tried to do that here. So hope this is helpful. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments. And if you enjoyed this, subscribe to my channel. And like I said, two more weeks. I'll put some of these issues as questions to Bill, and I'll let him speak into these things.

So that'll be great to learn from him himself, how he would respond to some of these concerns. Thanks for watching. God bless you.