Truth Unites - Were Adam and Eve Historical People?

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund addresses whether a historical Adam and Eve can be harmonized with evolutionary science. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Critics of Christianity often claim that modern science debunks the Bible's account of human origins in Genesis 2 and 3 in this famous story of Adam and Eve. Jerry Coyne is an example of this. He talks about the clear results of populations' genetics that Adam and Eve could not have existed. He uses this issue to proclaim the victory of science over religion, and he references the real difference between science and religion. Science discards ideas when they fall to pieces. faith tries to cobble them together into something that still convinces gullible believers.

I won't give other examples of this way of thinking. I learned when I cited Bill Maher in my videos on the flood. Don't trigger people. But you're familiar with this. Most of the people who watch my videos from one side or the other are aware of and familiar with kind of the science versus faith kind of issues. So you're aware. You've heard this kind of thing before.

In this video, I want to respond to those claims. and I want to argue that the biblical account of humanity has not been falsified in the modern world. On the contrary, it's a gift to the modern world. It's what the modern world is searching for. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 to 3 is like food for the hungry. It offers us this foundation for what we all long for, namely the true story that explains who we are and what is significant about human beings. and it's a story that we can't find elsewhere fully.

So it's unique as well. At the same time, this is a difficult passage of scripture. It needs to be interpreted carefully. A lot of Christians assume the most literalistic way of reading it. I'm going to push back against that as well. And so this will be kind of a controversial video. I'm aware of that. I've counted the cost.

I've already been through this. I've kind of made a resolution just to never shy away from talking about something if it's in line with the goal of my ministry, which is Truth Unites exists to cause. gospel assurance through theological depth. And this is an issue that causes a lack of assurance. It causes deep anxieties. And I think when we shy away from something just because it's controversial, that sets people up for failure. And it contributes to that anxiety. And it contributes to the struggles. You know, we've just got to find a way in the body of Christ to talk about these things.

And in a spirit of sincere openness before the text of Scripture working through it and so forth. So I'm going to try to do this. I hope this will be helpful for people in this video. I'm aware these are challenging things to talk about. I want to give my life to help people and to serve the cause of truth. So I've kind of just said, you know, come what may. I mean, if nothing else, even if my videos make you angry, at least know they're coming from a heart that is sincerely committed to trying to help

advance what I believe is true. So now, at the same time, the goal of this video is not actually to arrive upon a conclusion in terms of one specific option for how to put things together. Rather, what I'm going to try to do is bring conceptual clarity about the various options that are on the table for Christians. I want to increase awareness and engagement in this important area, and then I want to encourage a certain disposition toward the question that I'm going to describe as a groundedness on the central issues, but more humility and open-handedness on some of the peripheral

issues that come up. If this video is successful, it will be able to be able to be. accomplish three things. Number one, it will provide some answers to secular critiques. Number two, it will inculcate patience within the body of Christ when we talk about these things and when we work through our differences. And number three, it will reduce anxiety along the way for struggling Christians who are wrestling with this. And that's a lot of people right now, especially our precious young people in the church. There are three sections. First, I want to argue that it's important for Christians to maintain and to uphold a historical Adam and Eve and a historical fall.

And I'll define that tricky word historical when I get there. Second, I want to encourage patience concerning efforts to harmonize a historical Adam and Eve and a historical fall with contemporary scientific claims. And then third, I want to give a description or taxonomy of possible models for what that harmonization process could look like. So first, I want to make a case for a historical Adam and Eve in a historical fall. I'm aware that every single thing I argue in this video is going to get pressure from one side or another. So I can understand this is going to sound crazy to some people, or secular people. But let me explain. So the adjective historical is kind of ambiguous here.

There's a couple of distinct questions we want to disambiguate and kind of uncluster. First question is just, are Adam and Eve real people in the past? Second, were Adam and Eve fresh de novo creations? That is, from scratch. Or were they descended from previous hominins, to find that word in a second? Third is, were Adam and Eve the first human beings? That's a slightly different question than the second question. And then another fourth question is, were Adam and Eve the biological progenitors of all

living human beings. And that is also a separate question from the third question, because as we'll get into, this gets very, there's actually a number of different options that Christians have advocated for that we'll have to work through here. Now, most of my work previously in the doctrine of creation is on Genesis 1 and the creation of the world. Here I'm moving on to Genesis 2 to 3, the creation of humanity. And for a lot of Christians, rightly so, I think, this is where the deeper worries and anxieties and challenges lie. There are a lot of Christians who are willing to say, Genesis 1 is kind of an agree-to-disagree issue, even animal death before the fall. You know, I can kind of see that both ways. You see all these quotes in the church fathers

where they're saying, oh, animal death is fine, you know. So a lot of people are more circumspect about those questions, but when we get to Genesis 2 to 3, the alarm bells start going off more, and we start to worry more, and I think that's a good instinct. I think this is more important. The concerns here come into the deepest questions about who we are, what is our need for the gospel, what does it mean to be human, how did the fall happen? There's so many important kind of foundational issues here that seem to go further in their theological consequence than just how old is the world and when did animal death come in. So I can basically, I'm just saying, I think it's right to feel, and believe me, I've been wrestling with this for about

22 years now, and I feel the anxiety. I get that. I understand that. I felt that at times in my own life. What people like Jerry Coyne and others are saying is a challenge, and it comes at two levels. First, for a while now there's been the challenge from what we call paleo anthropology, which is basically the study of early humanity. So you think of anthropology as the study of humanity. Paleo anthropology, meaning the study of ancient humanity or early old humanity. And basically what we're talking about here is fossils, archaeological artifacts, like tools that we discover and so forth. And we're talking about especially hominin fossils. So the word hominin, usually now is taken to refer to all modern and extinct humans and

their immediate ancestors. And then the word hominid with a D is a broader term referring to all modern and extinct great apes. So that's how I'm just going to use the term hominin when we're talking about. these other species like Neanderthals and Denisovans and so forth, and even those words, I know I pronounce them probably wrong. I hear other people do it different. Anyway, I know even causing, I know even saying those words causes some people out there different reactions. All I can tell you is with a pastoral heart, I'm going to try to just work through this. So, but, and also the terminology about homininin versus hominid, that's not always consistent.

You can see a little variation there. But bottom line is, we've always had, we, we, Well, not. For a while now, we know we have these hominin fossils, okay? We've got to try to find some way to interpret that. But this whole area has kind of ratcheted up another level in terms of the challenge here because of the extra layer now that comes on from genetic science. So the claim on the table, okay, is that the human population never went through a bottleneck of fewer than about 10,000 people, much less two people. and that that's pretty certain. That's put forward as like, we know that for sure. So you've got the paleo-anthropological data that's already creating some angst, and then the genetic data comes in as like a one-two punch, and it's causing a lot of angst about this area. And rightly so, we should think this through. You know, it's a tough area. It's so important. So how do we respond? Well, I'm going to argue that we shouldn't just reject all of those claims, and a lot of the viewers of my channel will disagree with me about that. But first, and I'll just ask for patience and ask for your listening

ears first. I'm condensing a lot of research down into a relatively short video here. I could just ask you to hear me out. Okay. So first of all, let me highlight what I think we can't give up. And I think it's absolutely imperative to retain a historical Adam and Eve and a historical fall, by which what I mean is minimally that Adam and Eve were real people in history. You could point over and look and see Adam walking around and Eve, and that the historical fall was a real event, and that this has a universal and ultimate explanatory significance for what it means to be human.

In other words, Genesis 2 to 3 is telling us about real events in history that tell us most deeply who we really are. Okay? Why is that important? I'll give three reasons, a biblical, theological, and apologetical, or having to do with apologetics, specifically having to do with the odyssey or responding to the problem of evil. So you could say the three reasons here are number one, the doctrine of scripture, number two, the doctrine of humanity, and number three, the doctrine of evil. First, the doctrine of scripture, if we have a high view of scripture, as I do, if we think basically scripture is trustworthy revelation from God, then we need to take seriously its portraitual. of Adam. And it really looks like in the Bible, Adam is, it's tricky because Adam is employed in an array of archetypal and literary and typological ways. Nonetheless, he looks like a real person, a real historical figure, and so also with Eve. And this is where I, in my writing on this, depart from some other treatments. I've mentioned like Scott McKnight and Peter ends and others who I think sometimes what happens is because the idea of Adam is used as a kind of

construct or it's used as a type that is set over and against Adam's historicity. But you can have figures that function in a literary way or a typological way like Melchizedek is an example of this in the book of Hebrews. He serves to represent a certain kind of priesthood. Adam is used like this in Jewish literature in the Intertestamental period in the New Testament. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a real person. And in the Bible, Adam seems like a real dude. He seems like a real person. He's included in genealogies, three of them. Genesis 5, First Chronicles 1 and Luke 3. Now, by the way, if you're wondering here in Genesis 5 what it means when it says, Adam begot Seth in his own image, that's a fascinating little phrase. I wrote a whole article on that

phrase. I think it's really interesting. But this is really significant. To my awareness, there's not precedent for including a merely mythical or fictional person in a genealogy in ancient literature. I've not seen that, and I'm aware that people often claim that you don't really see that. So this is, to me, this is the strongest way to just show, we need a real person named Adam that you could point to. And I would say it's even stronger than what people usually go to, and that's Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, even though I think those passages are strongly suggestive. Somebody could argue that you have a comparison there between Adam and Christ that is

kind of disanalogous. Like a friend of mine once gave me this sample sentence as an example, Lady Liberty has founded our nation, and Adolf Hitler is setting out to destroy it. Somebody could say that during World War II. it's a meaningful, kind of a strange sentence, but it's a meaningful sentence, just like when Paul talks about Adam Christ, okay, yeah, you could maybe try to make a case that there's something going on like that where these two figures are not parallel in their historicity. But the genealogies, I don't know how any way around that, because genealogies don't

deal with mythic people or people who are fictional who don't really exist or who are merely typological or something like that. And with Adam, we have specific information about how long he lived, how old he was when he fathered certain children. I'll put up Genesis 5 again, for example. He's 130 years old when he has Seth. Now, even if you think the long ages are symbolical or something like that still, we have the specific information of he's fathering certain children like Seth and Kane and Abel and so forth. In his commentary on Genesis, Augustine points to Adam's fathering of children as a reason not to interpret him as merely figurative because he's basically saying, well, look, are the kids figurative too?

You know, if Adam's not a real person, who was Cain's father? And that's a totally legitimate question. Only real people can have children, right? So that's biblically, it really looks like that's how Adam is being portrayed in the Bible. He's a real person, so is Eve. Secondly, and even more importantly, the doctrine of humanity, human beings are qualitatively different from the animal kingdom. There's different aspects of human uniqueness. You can think of like the image of God.

You can think of the soul. Not everyone believes in a soul. I believe in a soul. That's the traditional view that a dualism, your body and soul. Our moral capacities, like our accountability to God, our potential for falling into sinfulness and needing salvation. Our rational faculties, like our capacities for language, and you can add on other things as well.

these people try to dispute in terms of how qualitative is this difference, you know, when people talk about human beings as rational and actually people try to point out like the upper level mammals like dolphins and they try to say it's just a quantitative difference. But, you know, from a classic Christian standpoint, you have to recognize there are at least some things about human beings that are qualitatively unique. Like the doctrine of the image of God, for example. We don't think that dolphins are made in the image of God. Okay. So then you say, how do you explain human uniqueness apart from a punctilier starting point

to humanity? And by human uniqueness, you could just include all the things you think that are qualitatively unique about human beings. And what you get to very quickly is you see, a historical Adam and Eve and a historical fall is an incredibly useful, and I would say necessary explanatory mechanism for that qualitative uniqueness and for the transmission of that qualitative uniqueness to everybody else around the globe because you don't get it's very hard to see how you get qualitative uniqueness sequentially you know if you're

just like evolving along it's hard to see how you wouldn't have like well now they're 80% made in the image of God and then 81% and so forth so historical Adam and Eve basically puts the pieces of the puzzle together for just having what we theologically want to say about human beings. The third reason would be, and this is in some respects the most poignant one, is the problem of evil. So it's really a concern if we make God the author of evil. And that applies to other things in the world, but it also applies to human nature. Without a historical fall, without a before and after, without a, you know, we were good and then we became bad. We were innocent and then we fell into guilt. It's very hard to see how we don't make

God the author of evil. You know, think of like in some of my other videos on the more, my video advocating for the moral argument, I talked about chimpanzee wars. And I was trying, there's, there's these famous, it's fascinating, these like four-year wars going on between these different tribes of chimpanzees and so forth. Well, if you're just going from the animal kingdom where this, where like horrific violence is just par for the course, and you just slowly, quantitatively get into human beings, and there's never any kind of threshold where you cross where there's a period at which we are good and then we become bad, it's very hard to see how God isn't the author of evil, and this is a real big concern. It's a helpful article in this book.

I'll put up on the screen that Henri Blouchet talks about this, and he just warns against this, and he's saying, we need to see evil and sinfulness as an alien intrusion into God's good creation, and that applies to human nature. Jamie Smith has a similar point in his article in this book, which I'll put up, he talks about this as the danger of naturalizing sin, and this is a real concern. So I'm being brief and I'm abstracting from a lot more, by the way. Sorry if I talk about my books too much, but this is all coming out of this book, if you're interested more in this retrieving at Guthson's Doctrine of Creation.

It's in the video description. Check it up. But minimally, what I'm trying to say now is we need a historical Adam and Eve as real people. A historical fall is a real event, and this is the explanation of the human story. Okay. However, that leaves open a lot of questions. If you're paying attention to those four questions I put out at the front, the numbers two through four are still kind of open here.

And what I want to argue is that there's a need. and this is the second main argument of this video, is that, and this is going to take longer, okay, we need, we should be patient with the possibility of harmonizing this true historical account we have in the early chapters of Genesis with the current paleoanthropological and genetic claims. In other words, it's legitimate to consider efforts at harmonizing a historical Adam and Eve in a historical fall with evolutionary science. And I'm not going to tell you how to close the lid on this, and I don't know how to do it. And I'm not going to say, here's exactly how it all fits together. But again, I'm arguing for a certain posture. I'm saying it's legitimate to look into this,

be patient with this, to consider this. The arguments I'm going to give for this are from the text of scripture. I'm not going to argue from science. Okay. I'm not a scientist, so I kind of leave that to the side. But that's obviously a real issue as well. I'm not saying that's unimportant, but I'm going to speak from my own area as a theologian and just make two points to argue for a posture and a disposition of humility, open-mindedness, consideration, give this careful review, and then I'll give you some options that people have proposed, but I'm not going to say, here's exactly how you have to come to a conclusion. But patience for the process, that's all I'm trying to argue at this point. It's a modest goal, okay? Because, from

Frankly, a lot of people aren't very patient for that, and they're kind of like, oh, that's, why would you ever do that? You know, I don't think that's helpful. I don't think that's what we need. Let me give two reasons why. From the scripture, the first one is Genesis 4. I think there are features in the texts of the early chapters of the Bible, especially Genesis chapter 4, that invite questions about the possibility of other people outside the

Garden of Eden. And this is what comes up with Genesis 4, which is a huge. Neglected an important chapter. By the way, Genesis 4 is part of the same literary unit. So you've got Genesis 1, that's kind of its own thing, big picture creation, and you've got Genesis 2 and 3. Genesis 4 is a part of that same literary unit, and then you have a block with the genealogy in Genesis Chapter 5. So when you go from Genesis 2 to 3 to Genesis 4, you're going from the Garden of Eden to outside the Garden of Eden. Your geographical reference is expanding outwards. By the way, the very fact that there's a Garden of Eden at all is interesting.

The whole world is not the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden is this special, unique sanctuary place, place of God's presence. When you get out of that place and you look around, you notice some curious things. First, Kane, the first generation son of Adam and Eve, is introduced as having a wife without any explanation. Yes, I know how people explain that. We'll talk about that. But it's just interesting. It's like, oh, you know, he's got a wife, okay.

Second, when he's banished to wander throughout the earth, he's afraid that others will find him and kill him. Okay, that's really interesting. Third, he builds a city. Okay? Now, the traditional answer on a lot of this in the main is that this is his brothers and sisters. Okay, he's marrying his sister. He's afraid of his brothers or slightly distant relatives, you know, nieces and nephews as you go a little further. and so forth, and he's building a city with his nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters and so forth.

These are all just Adam's other children. Here is the thing about that. You know, I'll often have people who, when I'm advocating, say, hey, let's keep an open mind about this. Maybe there's harmonization efforts like what John Stott and others have argued for that I'm going to get into in the third section of this video. People often say, oh, that's just so obviously not what the text is describing, right? But the thing that I come back to is I think the alternatives are not so obvious either. All of the different views have some awkward points, not just because of the moral problem of incest and the way people have to explain that, which is not in the text.

The way people explain the sort of exception to the later prohibitions against incest, that's not something you get from the text. It's not explicit. You're reading that onto the text. But more just the more basic question is just, what's the natural reading here? You know, as you go outside the geographical locale of the Garden of Eden, it kind of looks like there's just other people around.

And I think it's a very natural way to read the text. Those who disagree with that, those who say, oh, no and whatever, that's complete capitulation to evolution and modern scientific claims. There's nothing in the text. You're just jamming that into the text. I would say not only is the alternative view, the traditional view, kind of odd as well, but you might be interested to know that a lot of people have wondered about this before any theories of evolution came about before Charles Darwin wrote Origin of Species.

People have looked at Genesis 4 for a long time and wondered about this. So in the early years after Darwin, you find, you know, relatively conservative theologians, a lot of them trying to build harmonization efforts between what Darwin is saying, and these are conservative theologians, and I've talked about this before in other videos, that the dominant, immediate response of conservative and even fundamentalist Christians was not just like rejection of what Darwin was saying. But the thing is, when they were doing this, they were building on a prior tradition of thought. Okay? There had been a long tradition of speculation about pre-Adamites. And what I'm about to get into, I'm not saying this is all correct, but I just want

to show how people have always wrestled with Genesis 4. And this goes way back before. evolution. A couple of years before the origins of species was published, the prominent British Orientalist and lexicographer Edward William Lane generated a huge controversy for his proposal that basically you have pre-Adamites who are continuing in existence after Adam and intermarry with the Adamic line. And one of his big arguments is from Genesis 4. He's citing Genesis 4 14 to 17, what I just referenced. And he's saying, this doesn't seem like a natural reading of the words to say that we've got, he's just afraid of his brothers and he's marrying his sister and so forth.

And he was not the first person. He himself was drawing on a long tradition. It really goes back to Isaac La Herrerae. Okay. I think I'm pronouncing this is a French lawyer and cartographer, meaning someone who builds maps in the 17th century. In 1655, he published. this book called Men Before Adam. And he's basically talking, he drew his view from Romans 513,

but also from other passages. And this generated this huge tradition of thought where a lot of people are wrestling with this and they're considering this. And the big, by the way, if you want a good book about all this, David Livingston, Adam's ancestors, fascinating book. He goes into far more detail about this than you probably want. But he shows how common this became in the 17th century 18th century people thinking like this. And a big part of the reason this got a lot of traction is because of Genesis 4. A lot of people struggled to see the biblical text is really teaching that Cain is the third man of the world. And a lot of these people are pretty conservative. Let me just give an example more recently, R.A. Tori. He's at the heart of the fundamentalist

response to liberalism. He's one of the editors of the book, The Fundamentals. He had a key role in institutions like Biola and Moody Bible Institute, very conservative, you might even say in kind of the fundamentalist type space places, okay, early 20th century and so forth. And but he thought, so this is not a liberal, okay, but he's thinking from the text of Scripture, from Genesis 4, and he's thinking that Genesis 1, 3, and following is not talking about the creation of the world, but the reconstruction of a world that had been decimated by the sin of some pre-adamic race. And he basically said it may be that these ancient civilizations,

which are being discovered in the vicinity of Nineveh and elsewhere may be the remains of the pre-ademic race already mentioned. And he's going on about that. You can read that quote. There are lots of people who've wondered about this because of Genesis 4. Just from the text alone, it's not dumb or liberal to just wonder. Like, once you get outside the garden, it kind of looks like there's some other people around. Okay, at least in my second point, which will focus us in more on Genesis 2 to 3 a bit more.

Here's the point I want to make here. There is a difference between historicity and literalism. This is such a basic point, but sometimes I've been surprised that in my dialogue on these issues, it doesn't always get traction. And sometimes people actually not only accidentally conflate those two things, but even resist their distinction, even though they're pretty obvious. obviously different. So we really need to press this point a bit. Historicity is about whether a text is talking about historical events. Literalism has to do with how those historical events are

related. And it's pretty obvious that the Bible is very keen on talking about historical events in ways that are not literalistic. Now, I'm going to use the word literalistic a lot more frequently because the word literal actually has kind of a range of meanings. I'm talking about literalistic, a very wooden way of reading the text, just at face value, not being open to any sort of stylization or elevation or imagery and so forth, symbolization in narration and in description of historical events. But the Bible has so much that is about history, but it's not literalistic. And it's not just like apocalyptic literature like Daniel and Revelation. It's huge portions of the wisdom and prophetic literature, like the night visions of Zechariah 3. A favorite

example of mine is Habakkuk 3, talking about historical events in a very visual and stylized way. You even have poems and songs embedded into the historical literature of the Bible, like Deborah's song and Judges 5. It's clearly talking about historical events, but it's not doing so in a literalistic way. And then even within the historical books of the Bible, there are kind of different registers. So the question comes up, what kind of historical narration is Genesis 1 through 11? It's true, it's trustworthy, and it's telling us history, but it's doing so in its own elevated, more broad-stroke manner. And pretty much all interpreters of the book of Genesis recognize, oh yeah, the narrative kind of slows down and changes a little bit in Genesis 12. Okay? Well, you have in Genesis,

1 through 11 is a little bit different from, say, the Gospel of Luke, and it's certainly different from modern historiography. Let me give some examples of people who are not liberals who make this recognition. J. I. Packer. He talks about how Genesis 1 through 11, he distinguishes this in its poetic prose mode of narration with its pictorial imaginative, quasi-liturgical phraseology, its posity of mere information, and its drumbeat formulae. He distinguishes that from the ordinary narrative prose mode of Genesis 12 through 50. But J.I. Packer is very vigorous in rejecting labels like legend or saga or epic or myth or tale to describe Genesis 1 through 11. And he's saying, no, these are space-time history, although told in Moses's chosen incantatory poetic way.

elsewhere he talks about in another writing he talks about the early chapters of genesis as historical events but shrouded in the mists of antiquity and communicated in a subtle and secret manner jab hacker is no liberal he's you know on record staunchly defending biblical inerrancy and so forth it was a wonderful man of god okay he's not but he's just recognizing the kind of literature that we're working with here by the way it's not a virtue to be really wooden and literalistic on how you read the Bible. That can actually be a way of dishonoring the scripture if it goes against the intention of the author. The way to honor the scripture is to sort of cooperate and yield to the way it's trying to communicate with us. Okay. Here's another example,

Henri Blouchet. Another, he's a French evangelical theologian, very conservative. You know, he's on record. He wrote a book defending original sin. He's resisting. the general lunge toward kind of revisionist views in the modern era, but he describes Genesis 1 through 4 as distinct from straightforward ordinary history as 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. Isn't that powerful? imagery. So what I'm trying to say is there's a danger of interpreting these chapters of the Bible

too literalistically and to show that this concern is not just rooted in theological liberalism. Let's look at pre-modern exegesis of these passages. Of course, you know, I'm going to talk about Augustine now because I love Augustine and because he's so helpful on these. He wrote more, he wrote five commentaries on Genesis, the early chapters of Genesis, more than all the other church fathers. He delivered more than anyone kind of the most mature. body of reflection on these chapters in scripture, and I've argued in my book that the doctrine of creation is sort of central to his entire thought. It's really important to him. And he put a lot, he put a lifetime of work into it, and this is the most important theologian in the early church,

certainly in terms of his significance. Now, Augustine believes in a historical Adam and a historical Eden and fall account, but let me just take you through some passages and show you how balanced he is and cautious and careful he is and sophisticated he is in that. And these passages are going to blow your mind if you've assumed that a wooden literalism is the way to be faithful to the Bible. First, here's how he describes the creation of Adam's body. But in what manner did God make him from the mud of the earth? Was it straight away as an adult, that is, as a young man in the prime of life?

Or was it as he forms human beings from then until now in their manner? mother's wounds. Isn't that an interesting question? I mean, who is asking that question today? Augustine leaves that question open. He wonders whether it's even our business to ask about that, and he asserts that whichever of these God did. After all, he did what was in the power of a God both omnipotent and wise in what befitted him to do. By the way, in his commentary is on Genesis, Augustine is always kind of saying these kinds of things. He's always raising questions saying, who knows? You know, God did whatever is best. You don't need to know. You don't need to know. he's incredibly cautious and sort of strictured in sort of what he requires you to believe in.

He's always going back to the rule of faith and saying that's what you focus on, be grounded in that. Take a bullet for the rule of faith, the central, like the Apostles' Creed Christianity, but these kind of more detailed questions of how do you interpret these ancient texts, he's much more circumspect about. To defend that open posture of the question of, is Adam born, was Adam created as a 21-year-old body or as a baby who grew up, He says basically that when things develop from a latent to a manifest state of being,

this is in no way entails that God abdicated the supremacy over everything of his will. Did he see what he's saying there? He's saying, God can create slowly. If God creates the seed and the seed grows into the tree, fine. God still made the tree. And he's basically being open. I mean, you can see his openness. It's amazing.

He's saying, it doesn't matter whether Adam was made as a grown man or as a baby because either way God made him. That's amazing. By the way, this whole principle is this idea of the seminal reasons or the causal principles and it's translated in many other ways. This is a huge discussion. I'll put up the Latin words of this. In my book, I have a section discussing whether this principle of Augustine, how it's similar to evolution, how it's different from evolution, whether it's supportive of evolution, has been a huge point of controversy since the late 19th century, when, as recounted by this fascinating book, the distinguished Roman Catholic physicist who taught at the University of Notre Dame,

John Zom, made that connection. And there's a huge thing in the literature is, you know, the similarity is, and other people like Alistair McGrath in today's world have made this connection between this principle of Augustine, this idea that God can plant the seeds and then things grow out of the seeds and God is no less the author of that. And to what extent is that similar to the idea of evolution? It's not hard to see how it is similar in some ways. Okay, and I'll put up what Zom said. You can see that. So, okay, we're moving along here. I'll try not to get too bogged down in Augustine. This is what happens. I make a video about creation and I get to the section on Augustine and it's like a huge portion, but it's because I've done a lot of research in this.

And I think it's interesting and I think it's important. I mean, isn't it interesting already? Just wait until we're going to go next. You see Augustine's flexibility on the question of the nature of Adam's body and age at the time of his creation. Now look where he goes next. This is really going to alleviate some anxiety out there for somebody probably, hopefully. Okay? What Augustine basically does as he goes through in his final, summative, literal commentary on Genesis is he's insisting on the basics. He's insisting upon a historical, Adam, a historical fall, but he's incredibly flexible on how to understand the details of that. So in book six of his literal commentary, he poses this question of whether Adam, while in the

Garden of Eden, had the kind of body that will have at the resurrection. And he's uncomfortable with that because he wants to take the trees and the fruits mentioned in Genesis 2 to 3 in a historical sense. And he thinks that's hard to square with Adam having a fully glorified body. And then he offers this concession, though. But if no other solution can be found, it is better that we should opt for understanding paradise in a spiritual sense. So this is talking about a figurative or symbolical reading of the Garden of Eden in these details he's just recounted.

Now, you might say, well, that doesn't seem that strong. How do you know what he means in a spiritual sense? Okay, I'm telling you, that's what he means. And let me show that by going through. he gets to this again in a in book eight okay book eight of the literal commentary he starts off and he just poses the question there are three options he posed the question basically uh there was adam a real person and was even a real place and it's very interesting that he's aware there's a range of opinions about this he says i am not ignorant that many people have said many things about this paradise and he says

there's three generally held opinions about this. First, those who interpret Eden bodily as a real physical environment, second, those who interpret it spiritually as a symbol or type, and third, those who interpret the Garden of Eden in both senses as a real physical environment on planet earth and a spiritual type or symbol of heaven. And then the same question is with Adam. Is he just a type of humanity? And Augustine favors option three. He says it's both symbolic and a real thing, but then he strictures that and he leaves space for Option 2. This is the amazing thing. So, basically, by the way, with Option 2 there, some people think that he's talking,

they're like, what is he talking about? Who are these people he's talking about? We know Augustine's own conversion story. He was famously impacted by Ambrose's allegorical preaching on Genesis 1. But at this point, he's probably talking about Origins' view. Origin was hugely influential, especially before he became more. more controversial later on. And Origin had advocated for a symbolical interpretation of Genesis 1 through three, not just Genesis 1. I'll put up this passage. You can see he's basically saying he finds it

kind of silly to believe that this is all literal that God has planted these actual trees and, you know, there's a visible and palpable tree that you can see there and God is walking in the garden and so forth. I'm not endorsing origin right now. I'm just saying that view is out there on the table. Lots of people used to say there's actually a lot of parallels. between Augustine's exegesis of Genesis 1 through 3 and Origins ideas. And a lot of people used to try to account for that through intermediate texts, like Hillary's treatises on the Psalms and Gregory of Alvira's treatise on the creation of man, Ambrose, his homilies.

But in recent years, Georgi Heidel has argued for a direct influence. Basically, he says, no, there was a Latin compilation of Origins' views circulating around in the 4th century. So Augustine probably has origin in mind here. And basically, and that's actually, but you can see other views floating around at that time, too, where it's more figurative interpretation of Genesis 2 to 3. So Augustine basically comes along and he says, the option 3 is correct. It's not just figurative. It's both typological and historical.

However, there are many who accept the authority of Scripture who opt for option 2. quote, I am addressing, of course, those who accept the authority of these sacred writings. Some of them, you see, are not prepared to have paradise understood literally and properly, but only figuratively. And then he's distinguishing this from the more insidious position of the Manichaeans, this non-Christian group. Quote, as for those who are altogether opposed to these writings, I've dealt with them elsewhere in a different way.

And then he's basically saying that those people that deserve a harsher rebuke, but these people of ours who have faith in these divine books are not prepared to have paradise understood to the proper literal sense. So he's making a distinction between these two different options, originism and manichaeism. And then here's the concession that he offers concerning Genesis 2 to 3. He says certainly, he's arguing against originism. He's saying, no, I think it needs to be historical. But then he offers this concession.

Certainly, if the bodily things mentioned here could not in any way at all be taken in bodily sense that accorded with truth, what other course would we have, but to understand the misspoken figuratively, rather than impiously to find fault with Holy Scripture. So you see here, his concern to uphold the truthfulness of Scripture, but he's cautious about interpretation. And he has lots of different passages like this. Now, again, the greater portion of his writings is he's defending. These are real historical events. Adam was a real person, though it was a historical fall. But he's offering this concession. You know, he's saying, if it should turn out that this is wrong, then that's how we'd have to interpret scripture.

Later in the literal commentary, he makes a similar concession with regard to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He's defending the historicity of various elements in Genesis 3, and he pauses to reflect awareness of a particular alternative view in which this, basically, Adam and Eve were eating of the tree too early before they were ready for it. And as he's considering that view, he says, if by any chance these people mean to take that tree in a figurative sense, not as a real one with real apples, this opinion may possibly lead to ideas that are agreeable to write faith and the truth. So again, you see his willingness to be concessive. He's saying, this is what I think is true, but if I'm wrong about it, here's what you could take. And I know

for a lot of modern readers, this is going to be shocking because Augustine is on the more, quote, unquote, conservative side in terms of church fathers. comes to this stuff, and he's often set over and against, someone like Ironaeus, in terms of having a more matured view of Adam and Eve. But it's just amazing. You know, the point here's this. Modern Christians often assume that the best way to read Genesis 1 through 11 is this kind of straightforward, photographic, historical narration, just like modern historiography. But all throughout our church history, there's been an appreciation of the more imagistic way that these chapters are functioning. And you can see the symbolism of the story comes up all throughout

Jewish and early Christian interpretation. Adam often functions, by the way, as a type or symbol for Israel in Jewish interpretation and in patristic interpretation, Eve as a type for Mary, Eden as a type for Mount Sinai, and banishment from Eden as a type for exile to Babylon. Okay? So they're still reading it as a historical text, but they're seeing all this rich kind of significance and symbolism in the text. So this is Augustine's ultimate kind of legacy for us, I suggest. He's very concerned about the historicity and the core message, but he's pretty open about how literally to take the details. I'll just give one other example in the city of God. He's very aware. He's talking about how some wonder why Kane built a city when there were

only three people on earth. And he says, well, the writer of the sacred history, does not necessarily mention all the men who might be alive at that time, but those only whom the scope of his work required him to name. Now, what can be a, what a sentence, right? Wow. I want to try to be clear. I want to try to be fair to Augustine. He does seem to think that Kane was the third person. Okay. He does seem to think that everybody's biologically related to Adam and Eve. This is where Augustine can be kind of confusing. You know, that's the thing that's so interesting. He'll throw out these possibilities like this. And he's just you can just tell. He's like, He's not even anxious about trying to harmonize everything that he might say.

But the point is, he's a lot more flexible in his hermeneutic than we often think. Okay. So if we're kind of open ourselves up to say, okay, what if the text is telling us the true history, but we're kind of trying to be sensitive to how it's narrating history, the fact is this leaves open. No one thinks that Genesis is like talking about evolution. What is a possibility is that it's simply leaving a lot of things open. Just like Augustine said in the city of God there, it's just outside of the purview of the text.

It's just not going into it at all. So let me just give one example of the kind of thing where there's a need for caution and more openness. The text simply leaves open. And that is the creation of Adam from the dirt. And a similar point could be made about the creation of. of Eve from the rib of Adam, that this may have more of a kind of archetypal or symbolical meaning than just giving you straight up photographic history. I'll put up Genesis 2-7.

Augustine had some great cautions about this passage as well, and God's breathing and how do you understand that and all that. But basically, this is just a representative of a larger area here of how literally do we read these texts, how literalistically, right? and a lot of people, I think, just instinctively conceptualized that when God created Adam, it was from the dust, from the ground. He's the man of dust from the ground. So it was, you know, brown particles of dirt coalescing upwards into human flesh in, like,

immediate process, whether it takes one second or 10 seconds, it's just like zoom, there it is, from the physical dirt into a 21-year-old body. I don't think the text actually requires us to take it like that. I think there's actually room for a lot of patience to just think about, well, what is the text actually saying? What would the original hearers have been concerned about? Consider how the dust imagery is used all throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible. One chapter later, Adam is told at the conclusion of the curse against him, for you are dust

and to dust you will return. Okay, so he's made from the dust, but he is dust, present tense, and he will return to the dust. So the use of the present tense, dust, invites the question if Adam's living body at the time of that curse being given to him was dust, and if he's going to return to the dust, this raises questions that are legitimate to then ask about the origins of Adam's body from the dust, right? You don't have to have a lot of imagination to start to wonder, well, in what sense is Adam currently dust? obviously that's not like the brown particles you sweep up with a broom, that kind of dust, right? And then we find this language applied to all human beings all throughout the scripture. Ecclesiastes 320 says that all are from the dust and to dust all return. Psalm 10314 says God knows how we are formed.

He remembers that we are dust. Job 10, 9 through 10 combines the dust imagery with the clay and potter imagery to use for Job's own creation and death. I don't think people argue that Job couldn't have had, you know, biological ancestors or something like that. Paul picks up this imagery in 1st Corinthians 1548. Basically, as the man of dust, I'll put up the Greek word there, so also are those who are of the dust.

And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are. So you see, the dust being made of the dust, it's not easy to just assume that that's trying to give you photographic imagery to know just how it happened. It seems very possible that maybe Genesis 2-7 is making a more general claim about the nature of Adam. It's saying he's dust, i.e. he's not like the angels. In other words, maybe the dust here is talking not about the exact process by which Adam was made or the precise physical substance with which he was made, but rather his physicality

as such and his consequent mortality. And if so, then this question just, the text just isn't a, addressing questions that would come up with evolution. Now, I'm not committing myself to evolution or to any theory like that. I'm just, I'm actually not being a scientist. I kind of stay open on the details. My basic position, try to be completely transparent because I think that builds trust, because I know a lot of people are suspicious and cynical of everything I'm saying here. My basic position is it looks like God has used some long process that has involved evolution, but I'm just uncertain about the details because I'm not a scientist, so I just leave it open,

and I say let these conversations that are going on about this rumble on. And, you know, but so I'm not trying to like come down and say, here's how you have to understand it. I'm trying to inculcate patience with the biblical text and how it's functioning. It's not so obvious how you always take this imagery in these passages. Now, I know this makes people nervous. And I know, I'm well aware, you know, one of the things I can say is, I know people like Christian Mario will mock me for, for this kind of stuff.

other of like the watchdog type bloggers and stuff will call me a liberal and a heretic for this kind of stuff. I understand that. And I understand the worries. And I understand, I understand how to it can seem from a certain angle, especially if you haven't really studied this very much, or known godly Christians who went this route as in America. It's very much like that a lot of times as opposed to somewhere like the UK. I understand how that can happen. And I understand the anxieties that can come up.

But there's multiple dangers here. The only danger is not an over-adaptation to scientific claims resulting in liberalism, but also an under-responsiveness resulting in fundamentalism. And in previous videos, I've talked about heliocentrism as an example of that, and the way the church responded to scientific evidence for heliocentrism as an example of that danger that we need to be sensitive to. So my plea would be, if someone is watching this video and you're saying anything you're talking about, this effort to be open, this willingness to consider,

harmonization between historical Adam and Eve and contemporary evolutionary science, anything like, if you're just disagreeing with that, I would say three things, and I would just honestly beg you for these things. Number one, don't judge my motives, okay? I'm not doing this, quote, unquote, for the approval of the world. It's nothing but headaches. I don't function in contexts where there's any benefit to talking about this. I'm a conservative evangelical churchman.

most of the people who watch my videos are more on the conservative side and they watch it because I like defend Protestantism and stuff. So I get attacked a lot for this kind of thing. There's no benefits from that. My motive, so honestly, so far as I know my own heart, my motive is the truth. Okay. I am seeking to fling myself at the feet of the truth. With every fiber of my beings and caution to the wind, who cares about anything else, seek the truth.

And then out of that concern comes a desire to be pastoral for people who are in and about this. That's my motive. Second thing I would say is, please really look into this and read people on both sides of it. I think a lot of people, they read like Young Earth Creationist science stuff, and then they just assume that there's just too much overconfidence. You know, you really got to look at both sides. And the third thing I would say is, can we do some theological triage on these things so that those of us, like myself, who think we need to be patient with these efforts at harmonization, is there space for us to still believe in the gospel? Because I've got a lot of people who would say, if you're open to any form of evolution,

if you even consider it, because I don't even know exactly where to draw the lines, I'm just considering it. There's a lot of people who say, you're denying the gospel, okay? And I think this is not the way we want to go. Do you want to have, don't you want to have a Christianity that has room for C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham and John Stott? these are three of the most fruitful Christians in the 20th century all open to evolution. Triage this, please triage this.

If you're going to disagree, at least do the triage. Okay. I'm sensitive. If all that seems too much, I'm sensitive to how these conversations go. I'm aware of it. And I'm trying to do what I believe is right, okay, in terms of especially all the young people who are leaving the church because of these kinds of issues. and I think we need to be more careful on this.

If you trust me at all, and I've looked into this a lot, I've studied this, this is not one of these hills to die on. This is an area to be more careful in. I'm willing to take a bullet for the truth. I'm willing to take a bullet for the gospel. I'm willing to have my head chopped off for the virgin birth of Christ,

for the resurrection of Christ. That Adam didn't have any biological ancestors, that there's no possibility of human evolution coming in in some way or another. That's not the same level of importance. I think that scenario I think we need to be careful. And I feel strongly enough about it that I want to keep putting it out there for people to wrestle with because it's so important. All right.

Third and final section of the video, let's say you're open to that and you're saying, okay, so what are the options? How could we do that? What might it look like? Well, let me survey three options. First, what I call the ancient atom model. Second, a recent atom model. and third, a genealogical atom model. Okay?

I'm not advocating for one of these versus the others, and those are not the only models. I just want to describe them, give some pros and cons for each, and you'll see each has some challenges. And I'm going to leave aside here, like the notion of a group fall, like C.S. Lewis's view and the problem of pain.

I'm just, that's not going to come in here at all. So first, ancient Adam is basically, a lot of people think that Adam lived a long time ago. So you have like some proposals of like a neolithic, Adam and Eve or more recent Adam and Eve who are more sort of archetypal human beings. Maybe they lived 10,000 years ago or 15,000 years ago. But a lot of others think Adam and Eve were a lot older. And part of the concern here is you want to be able to have Adam and Eve as the biological

progenitors of all human beings. And so some people, you can find people who will put Adam and Eve back around 100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago. I think the more recent models of the ministry of reasons to believe. It's a wonderful ministry that does a lot of work in these areas. They do a lot of great evangelism and other things as well, other topics. I think they're probably somewhere in this ballpark, you know. Others go even further. You can even find proposals like the anonymous scientist in this book, for example, puts Adam, considers this proposal pushing Adam way back to the start of the homogenous. So this would be almost two million years ago.

Probably the most famous example of this in more recent times would be William Lane Craig in this book, which I have interviewed him about on my channel. And you can check out that. I'll put up a thumbnail of that video. It shouldn't be hard to find. And this is a really important work in this area. He basically goes through, he has two sections. First, he goes through Genesis 1 through 11, and he argues the genre of this is mytho history. People routinely misunderstand that as though he's calling it just myth.

Okay, myth and mytho history are two different things. You can disagree with it, but it's not myth. Okay? He's saying it is historical in its interest. And then he's arguing from the New Testament that basically based upon what Paul says and what Jesus says, you need a historical Adam. So he's trying to defend a fairly conservative view. And so he ends up putting Adam way back, maybe 750,000 years ago or even older.

And so that, and he thinks of Adam is possibly, a member of the species Homo Hidalbergensis, which is one of the homin species. And he reflects upon this theologically, very careful and interesting and useful and important book. I don't quite, I'm not inclined to agree with his specific proposal, but it's a really important book in this area. What are the pros and cons of this? If you have an ancient atom like this, the obvious benefit of this model is you are

protecting the unity of humankind more clearly. The further back you place Adam and Eve and the fall, the smaller the human population is and the more geographically contained the human population is, so it's easier to explain how Adam's sin and other aspects of human uniqueness spread to all humanity. And that's somewhat dependent, of course, on how you play out the details, of course. There are some challenges for this view as well. three that I see. First, if you have an ancient Adam view, typically that requires an African location for Adam and Eve before the emigration of Homo sapiens to other continents. But a lot of the features

in Genesis 2 to 4 look like they're talking about the Near East. You've got references to the Garden of Eden as in the East in Genesis 2.8. You have the Tigris and Euphrates rivers identified. And you have a lot of things that look more in the Neolithic ballpark, like maybe 10 or 20,000 years ago at most. You've got farming in Genesis 412. You've got precious metals like gold and onyx in Genesis 2, 11 through 12, and bronze and iron in Genesis 422. You've got musical instruments like the lyre and the pipe in Genesis 421. So all of this, it's like, okay, maybe that's way further back in Africa, but it looks more

recent in the Middle East. Second, it's widely acknowledged that biblical genealogies can have gaps. So you can't use genealogies for exact dating. But it's tough to see the genealogies can stretch out this far, as certainly some of these proposals require. You end up with having genealogies that would be equivalent to, like us today, saying Julius Caesar begot Charlemagne, who begot Neil Armstrong. You know, you're skipping vast passages of time.

that seems difficult. Third, if you have an older atom, you have the struggle of these interbreeding events between Homo sapiens and the other hominin species, especially Neanderthals and Denisovans, or Denisovans. And so basically what the science looks like is that you have interbreeding between these different species. So we all have the Neanderthal DNA in us, for example. And that that interbreeding, those interbreeding events go up to maybe like 30,000 years ago.

So this is going to create some problems because now you've got basically sinful, image-bearing descendants of Adam potentially interbreeding with non-human beings. Or if you say those other hominin species are also human, you have to explain that. You could have a scenario in which Adam's descendants split into different species. Okay. Now, there's the responses to that, but I'm just flagging. That's a challenge you've got to work through. Okay.

What about a recent Adam view? A lot of people go this route. And they say, okay, look, Adam's not the biological progenitor of all modern human beings. He's more for this archetypal human. Like people, you know, you think of the founding fathers of our nation. Okay. Adam and Eve are our parents in this more representative or federal sense. John Stott, evangelical Anglican.

leader. He's a good example of this position. And I'll put up this quote. You can see, basically, he was very comfortable with trying to harmonize these harmonization efforts between Adam and Eve and evolution. And in his book, Understanding the Bible, he went a little further. He said, basically, some forms of the theory of evolution don't necessarily contradict Genesis. And the real problem is this alternative between the two. A lot of times these terms, of course, are not defined very carefully, but a lot of times there's a perceived tension there, and that's the real problem. And with respect to Adam and Eve, what he basically says, he coined the famous term homo divinous. And he basically says, my acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of

pre-ademic hominid seem to have existed for thousands of years previously. And he talks about this a little further. You can read this quote, and he talks about Adam being the first homo divinus, the first man who is made in the image of God, and so with Eve as well. Stott may have been influenced by his fellow Anglican Derek Kidner, who he's of evangelical, he wrote wonderful biblical commentaries, and he had, Tim Keller has talked about this proposal of his, that basically Adam is a kind of refurbished hominin, and then Eve is a de novo creation from Adam. So this is kind of an intermediate view. And the motivation for this is basically to not simply accommodate to the evolutionary science, but also to make sense of the biblical data. Because I'll put up Tim Keller's quote here,

but basically it would explain some of these questions about Genesis 4. Another option here is Dennis Alexander. If you read this book, this older book, he goes through like five different models on page 289 option C is this model he goes through that so there's lots of others um john walton's work on this might fall into this space maybe uh so what are the pros and cons of this obviously the downs somebody might say by the way well obviously you have to have adam and eve is the bio i mean eve is called the mother of all the living in genesis 320. But on the other hand, again, we have to be so careful. In Genesis 4, you have Jabal as the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock and Jubal, his brother is the father of those who play

the liar in the pipe. When it says they're the father of those who do that, that doesn't necessarily seem to mean biological. It does seem possible that you've got Adam and Eve is functioning more in this kind of archetypal or federal way. However, there's some real. There's some real challenges for this view. Okay, I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to say this is right. I'm trying to flag it. Say this is an option. People like John Stott have proposed, but it's got pros and cons. And one of the challenges, you have to find a way to account for the transmission of human uniqueness all over the globe. Because basically what most people think is that human beings had emigrated to Australia, maybe 50,000 years ago to the American continents

already, 10 to 20,000 years ago. Sometimes that's put earlier. So you've got to find a way, to say, how do you have the transmission of human uniqueness to everybody else? And ultimately, it's hard to retain that. You have to go more to like what Dennis Alexander proposes as the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which it doesn't cause human rights. It's recognizing that. And some people want to see Genesis 2 to 3 like this. That's a steep price to pay.

So you have to be aware that's a con for that position. A third option is the genealogical atom view. This book is a couple years old now. Got a lot of press when it came out. Josh Swamidas wrote this book. And fascinating book. So he's basically arguing that the traditional account of human history from the Bible is true. And that's totally compatible with evolution.

And to get this, he distinguishes between a genealogical atom and a, or I should say, genealogical ancestors and genetic ancestors. So a genetic ancestor is someone from whom you get your DNA. A genealogical ancestor is someone whose lineage we descend from. And he's saying you could take the story of Genesis. Totally, as literally as you can imagine it, okay, atoms made from the dust. And then as human beings then spread out from the garden and, you know, marry other people who are outside the garden, then human uniqueness spreads like this.

and you could have universal, Adam and Eve can be the, it can explain the genetic challenge without any problem at all. It's an interesting book. Let me read from one of the endorsements on the back cover. Quote, I am one of the many scientists who have maintained that the existence of Adam and Eve,

as ancestors of all people on Earth is incompatible with the scientific data. In this book, Joshua Midas, effectively demonstrates that people like me stuck in a specific genetic paradigm were wrong. The existence of two individuals ancestors of us all, is now freed from what seemed like the scientific inconsistency and placed once again purely into the realm of theology where it belongs. That's from Daryl Falk at Point Loma.

So obviously that view has some strengths. One of the challenges is the weirdness of this way of spreading human uniqueness out through intermarriage. And, you know, the first question that immediately comes up is, was Cain's wife made in the image of God? And that's, you know, So this is still, you're not just getting the traditional model. You're getting a change of its own kind, of a different kind, and it has some peculiar aspects that eat after then try to explain. So I'm not trying to say that's a problem that couldn't be overcome, but that's one of the things you need to be aware of.

So what do you make of all this? Those are just, I'm just trying to canvas some options. So these are three proposals that have been put out there for how to put this all together. I probably incline a little more towards the second of those two, the recent, but I recognize it's got challenges. I can't answer all the questions. I think one rational approach to this is simply to be careful and simply say, we don't know yet, and just refrain from taking a hard position. And basically to be able to say, we don't know exactly how to put all the pieces together,

but we think there is a way to do it. And here's a way you could think of it. It's not necessarily irrational to maintain two different beliefs and just be uncertain how to harmonize them yet. But you know, they can be harmonized in different ways, but you're just not sure how to put it all the pieces together. In fact, I think almost all of us are going to be in a situation like that. As the conclusion here, let me return to this idea that Genesis 2 to 3 is a gift to us.

I find Derek Kidner very helpful on this. He says, the accounts of the world of science and scripture are as distinct. and each as legitimate as an artist's portrait and an anatomist's diagram, of which no composite picture will be satisfactory, for their common ground is only in the total reality to which they both attend. Scripture's bold, selective this, like that of a great painting is its power. I love that phrase. Scripture's bold selectiveness.

That's what Genesis 2 to 3 is. It's hard to harmonize Genesis 2 to 3 and science because they're different. You know, it's like trying to harmonize a painting that's true and historical and a diagram. You know, they're functioning differently. But that's the great power of Genesis 2 to 3. The power of the painting is it's telling you something you could never learn elsewhere. It's telling you who you really are. You are completely different from the animal kingdom.

You are made in the image of God. And you have a soul. You are morally accountable to God. and we inherit this status of alienation from God, which means we need reconciliation to God, which he is provided through Jesus Christ. That's the core. That's the core of it all.

And I'm urging for patience in how we then understand all of that. All right, let me give some book recommendations to finish, partly because my camera's going to die soon and partly because it's late. But there's a lot more here. Is there anything else I want to say at the end here? I guess I could sum up by saying, I think we need a historical Adam and Eve. in a historical fall.

I think we should be patient in trying to understand how that fits with the current scientific claims. There's a number of models on the table, and it's okay to be sure which one, to not be sure which one is correct. That's kind of what I'm arguing in this video. I know that will make some people angry, but I'm doing this because I think a lot of people, a lot of people are so in anxiety about this. We just got to talk about this.

We have to be able to talk this through. like I'm doing in this video, just trying to lay it out there because it causes people to walk away from Christianity wholesale, and I don't think we want that. A couple books to recommend. Alvin Plantago, where the conflict really lies. Amazing book. I love his writing, too.

The first sentence, let me open this up. This isn't a couple years old. First sentence of the book says this. My overall claim in this book, there is a superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism. And I think he makes that case powerfully.

Fantastic book. I've recommended Jack Collins' book reading Genesis well before, but he's also got a book on Adam and Eve specifically. Did Adam and Eve really exist, who they were and why you should care? He defends the historicity of Adam and Eve, but he, again, he's careful in how he works that through. If you want a great book on the Doctrine of Creation in general, Matthew Levering's book, came up with Baker Academic a couple years ago, amazing book.

And he's got a chapter in here on Adam and Eve. Matthew Levering is a brilliant Roman Catholic theologian, one of my favorite theologians alive today. And he's got, let's see here, I think it's chapter six or chapter five, I can't remember, where he goes through Adam and Eve. And he talks about, again, he's very conservative in his instincts, but he's showing patience for how to put all the pieces together. And it's another great treatment of this. All right, let me know what you think in the comments.

I'm sure there'll be some negative reactions, but I'm doing this because I think we have to talk about this, and I think some people really need to know there's some options to work through here. And, you know, consider what Augustine had to say. And I think that gives us some space to say, we shouldn't be so quick to assume we know exactly how to interpret these ancient texts. Sometimes, like I said, I've been studying this for decades now. Honestly, I have some more questions now than I had at the beginning. because these issues are complicated. They're not simple. If nothing else, let's try to show love

to each other along the way as we talk to each other. And for non-Christian viewers, I want to say, this need not be a barrier for you. If you, like if you believe in evolution, this need not be a barrier. Start with the claims of Christ. That's the core of Christianity. And then, can you see how Genesis 2 to 3, if it's true, is offering like Kidner suggested, this window into the deepest questions about who we are. I think the story of Genesis, too, think about it like this. If you don't have this story, oh, the trouble you get into in terms of just trying to explain these things that we all sense are true, like the significance of the moral realm, the significance of human dignity and so forth. It's hard to ground those if you don't have the painting. All right, so that I don't ramble,

I will end it there. Thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time.