I really appreciated Hans Madueme’s contribution to the Books & Culture forum on the historicity of Adam. Dr. Madueme is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College and the co-editor, with Michael Reeves, of Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin: Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives (Baker, 2014).
You can read his initial essay here. And here’s the conclusion to his response to the other contributions:
I want to close with a lingering Christological worry. Scientific plausibility is the key; can we still believe doctrines that are implausible by the lights of current science? We can invert the question: If scientific plausibility should guide the expectations we bring to Scripture, then why would we be Christians? Why would we believe that the Son of God became a man? That he died and rose again after three days? That he ascended into heaven? These fundamental Christian beliefs contradict everything we know from mainstream science. If we can no longer believe Adam was historical, then why should we believe in the resurrection? In The Evolution of Adam, Peter Enns answers this way: “For Paul, the resurrection of Christ is the central and climactic present-day event in the Jewish drama—and of the world. One could say that Paul was wrong, deluded, stupid, creative, whatever; nevertheless, the resurrection is something that Paul believed to have happened in his time, not primordial time.” That misses the point. We’re told that we can’t affirm a historical Adam because it’s scientifically unbelievable, but why trust Paul on the resurrection when that, too, is scientifically unbelievable? Or, to flip the script, if we believe the resurrection, then a historical Adam is no biggie.
HT: Andy Naselli
