So how exactly can you square a literal Adam - the father of all mankind - together with an old earth and evolution?
On my reading of the Bible, Adam need be no more than the representative of all humankind.
As I have said several times.
That doesn't inevitably mean a literal Adam didn't exist, though.
It simply means the issue of whether or not Adam was a literal individual is irrelevant to the intended message (and thus impossible to determine from the content).
Okay, but if Adam is a representative of all mankind, that's not a "literal Adam".
So that's not answering the question about how one can believe in a literal Adam and square it with evolution.
A "literal Adam" could mean several things - some of which are impossible to determine with science (such as whether an individual called Adam existed), some which are disputed (such as the idea that all of humanity has a single common ancestor).
But given that what many/most believe when they say the phrase "literal Adam", then that's incompatible with what we know from science.
And quite possibly throws up theological issues as @Barnabas62 mentions above.
It's hardly "irrelevant" if it is being insisted that the faith must believe something about a myth that every thing else says is impossible.
But even over-and-above that, it is possible that there was someone called Adam. But it's really not possible for the world to be a few thousand years old.
The one is a charming story. The other is a horrible lie.
Okay, but if Adam is a representative of all mankind, that's not a "literal Adam".
It is eminently possible for somebody to be both a representative and an actual, literal person. As the Wikipedia article on Federal Headship (which is by no means exclusively about theological matters) makes clear.
So that's not answering the question about how one can believe in a literal Adam and square it with evolution.
The incompatibility between Adam and evolution according to @MPaul, if I've understood him correctly, is that in his view the doctrine of original sin requires all of humanity to be descended from a single, actual individual, Adam. It is my view that this doctrine (or at least several widely-accepted versions of it, such as the one the Wikipedia article refers to) does not require actual biological descendance from a single, named individual, but rather sees Adam as humanity's representative.
But given that what many/most believe when they say the phrase "literal Adam", then that's incompatible with what we know from science.
I think not a few of the people inclined to talk about a "literal Adam" are using it as a term of ridicule, and that riducule is one of the worst enemies of sensible DH debate.
My argument is that whether or not Adam was a literal individual is irrelevant - and that making that issue a shibboleth is thus particularly pointless.
It's hardly "irrelevant" if it is being insisted that the faith must believe something about a myth that every thing else says is impossible.
Yes, it's not irrelevant from @MPaul's perspective. But from what he's said, that's because he thinks the logic of "as in Adam all die, so all in Christ shall be made alive" requires both Adam and Christ to be literal figures, otherwise the doctrine of sin collapses.
I think his analysis of Paul's phrase is mistaken, and that the doctrine of sin does not collapse if Adam is not a literal figure. So as far as I'm concerned (along with plenty of people who believe in the universality of sin - @Boogie, apparently, for instance) - the existence of a literal Adam is irrelevant.
(Unless of course you hold that "the faith mustn't believe something about a myth", in which case it is a genuine shibboleth. Hence my earlier question.)
But even over-and-above that, it is possible that there was someone called Adam.
Finally, agreement!
But it's really not possible for the world to be a few thousand years old.
I would tend to agree with you, but I'm interested in finding out from @MPaul exactly why he thinks its only a few thousand years old.
The other is a horrible lie.
I think "lie" suggests a wilful intent to deceive. I certainly concur that some YECers do wilfully intend to deceive, but I'm really not sure all of them do. (I also think that some proponents of evolution also wilfully intend to deceive in the sense that they overstate and underqualify their position to make ideological arguments). I think it's pretty important to the debate here - indeed, to any reasonable debate - that we assume our interlocutors are not wilfully intending to deceive.
I think it's pretty important to the debate here - indeed, to any reasonable debate - that we assume our interlocutors are not wilfully intending to deceive.
Someone who holds a position that is empirically and demonstrably false (for example, a flat earther) is still a deceiver, whether they are also themselves deceived or not. The question then becomes moot as to whether their deception is intentional.
Eutychus:†I'm still interested to know why you seem to think the Bible requires belief in a young earth.
I am not sure I do. God tells us in many places that he is the creator. He also gives us the order of events in the creation. However, he never explicitly tells us when he originally did it so I think that remains an open question. I am a possible ‘gap theorist.’ In 2 Peter, it is stated that the heavens existed 'long ago' and in many other scriptures, special creation is affirmed.
However in Is 45:18,(ASV) it is stated he did not make it void but formed it to be inhabited. This contrasts with Gen1:1 ‘tohu wa bohu’. If it was formless and void, but not created so originally, then possibly there is a gap between Gen1:1 and Gen1:2.https://ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/creation-or-evolution-does-it-really-matter-what-you-believe/earths-age-does-the-bible-indicate-a-time-interval-between-the-first-and-second-verses-of-genesis
I think his analysis of Paul's phrase is mistaken, and that the doctrine of sin does not collapse if Adam is not a literal figure.
You seem to think the notion of federal headship takes care of this. I cannot see a mechanism that does away with a literal Adam especially when pretty well all the NT writers who mention him do so assuming his literalness. It is only much later you get anything different.
Paul says sin is not 'imputed' when there is no law.
It seems the English word 'imputed' suggests the idea of 'infected'. The physical necessity of Adam does not mean that this 'imputation' is physical, but that's the closest I can get to a definition.
Adam and Eve had to be physical to fall into a state needing redemption, that their offspring inherited but the transmission of their 'fallenness' is not via their physical genetics but via their spiritual state.
Without their literalness, you need some kind of mechanism to show the need for Christ to die for humanity to rectify this, to make the theology of salvation work. It is easier just to say, with scripture, that Adam was a direct creation. This is reinforced in Luke's genealogy of Jesus in 3;38 who calls Adam the 'son of God', a term used by Jewish scriptures for a direct creation.
In which case, so far as I can see, you are a creationist but not necessarily a Young Earth creationist. So the argument in this respect is not (contra much bile here) about the age of the earth but about how long it took to be formed.
pretty well all the NT writers who mention him do so assuming his literalness.
I think it's an assumption that they assume that. We regularly mention wholly fictional characters to make comparisons. Paul names Jannes and Jambres and uses them to support his point in 2 Timothy but there is absolutely no prima facie evidence for them being historical figures.
Paul says sin is not 'imputed' when there is no law.
It seems the English word 'imputed' suggests the idea of 'infected'.
It does? Who says so? And besides, what's the English meaning got to do with anything?
According to Strong's, the Greek word ἐλλογέω means "to charge to one's account" (the French word imputer is much more commonly used than its English equivalent and is regularly used in this sense in accounting).
I could hardly think of a better argument against the need for any physical connection between us and Adam. In accounting debts and credits are intangibly assigned in a ledger: no gold, silver, cash, or cash equivalent physically changes places. The accounting department doesn't move piles of money from one place to another to keep the finances in order; it uses a representative system in which amounts are "imputed" ('reckoned') to be in a certain place.
The physical necessity of Adam does not mean that this 'imputation' is physical, but that's the closest I can get to a definition.
I submit your definition is wholly unsupported - see above. Care to re-examine it? The meaning of the word used for "imputed" in the Bible is entirely different.
Adam and Eve had to be physical to fall into a state needing redemption, that their offspring inherited but the transmission of their 'fallenness' is not via their physical genetics but via their spiritual state.
Why do you keep mentioning Eve? Both Genesis and Paul focus on Adam. Which should be another clue that his role is representative and the consequences are not linked to biological descent. The important thing that Genesis tells us is, as Paul, @Boogie and @Mr Clingford have told us, is that humanity as a whole "has fallen short of the glory of God". Try and stretch the narrative to define the mechanics of exactly how that came about and you break it.
Without their literalness, you need some kind of mechanism to show the need for Christ to die for humanity to rectify this, to make the theology of salvation work.
I think you have this exactly the wrong way round. It's your expectation of understanding the mechanism that creates your need for complete literalness. If you think the theology of salvation needs to be explained in terms of a "mechanism" we humans can and must fully understand, in exploded detail like a Haynes car manual to "make it work", then yes I can see that you may well want everything in that diagram to exist literally.
But I don't think it is actually reasonable or required that we understand exactly how salvation "works" or the "mechanisms" involved and that there are no shortage of Bible verses suggesting just that.
I think the issue of what sort of book we believe the Bible to be is at the end of the day what leads you to differ from so many others here (cf also our discussions of dispensationalism): it doesn't have to be a spiritual Haynes manual to be true.
It is easier just to say, with scripture, that Adam was a direct creation.
It's only "easier" if you subscribe to the "Haynes car manual" view, which in the end creates far more problems than it solves. Scripture doesn't say that anywhere in so many words and one can live without it and still believe in the universality of sin. What the Genesis narrative of the creation of humankind tells me is that humanity is inherently different from animals because we have a moral conscience.
This is reinforced in Luke's genealogy of Jesus in 3;38 who calls Adam the 'son of God', a term used by Jewish scriptures for a direct creation.
I don't know where you got that last bit from, but it cannot have escaped your notice that Jesus is also referred to as the son of God and while his Incarnation is portrayed as having a miraculous component, it certainly isn't on a par with the "ex terra" creation of Adam depicted in Genesis.
As far as biblical interpretation is concerned, I'm very much with the symbolic/representative Adam. But here's where I have trouble: would there not have been a very first being to whom we would give the species homo sapiens? A being evolved from older species? Dating from well, well before the stories of Adam and Eve evolved,and certainly not the biblical Adam.
As far as biblical interpretation is concerned, I'm very much with the symbolic/representative Adam. But here's where I have trouble: would there not have been a very first being to whom we would give the species homo sapiens? A being evolved from older species? Dating from well, well before the stories of Adam and Eve evolved,and certainly not the biblical Adam.
No, in the same way that there wouldn't be a first person who spoke French as opposed to Latin.
Is that not the point though? His humanity can only be established if he was actually created imagio dei and fell from grace. I agree it is a powerful metaphor but how can one establish ancestry without history?
We did, all by ourselves. Babies don’t sin.
Paul’s other metaphor isn’t about falling from grace, it’s about failure to reach the goal - to be humans, not animals - and the point that we can’t do that in our own strength.
Well, unsurprisingly, the animal ancestors, if real, would be the end of faith for me, the ultimate show stopper.
You need to have a good look at the evidence for animal ancestors. I had a period of believing like you do. Then I met a biologist who showed me the evidence.
I still have faith in God. S/he’s bigger than my changing beliefs
He looks at all the rational and empirical evidence through the wooden eyes of textism.
Well, unsurprisingly, the animal ancestors, if real, would be the end of faith for me, the ultimate show stopper.
Wow, I've just got to jump in here. If your faith depends on belief in creation / young earth etc ISTM that you are of all 'men' most miserable. I'm sure others will want to respond to you.
Unless I misunderstand you, of course.
You understand perfectly. It's a pitiable situation. One shared by nearly all evangelicals, other catholics, all Muslims. Damnationists all. Textism.
Change is gradual. You can look at a text from 250AD and say "yep, that's Latin" and one from 1200AD and say "yep, that's French" but in between there is gradual change with no clear dividing line; if you had a recording of speech every 20 years between the two dates you'd find it impossible to categorise the ones in the middle into those categories. Similarly you can look at you, me or even Donald Trump and say "yup, human" and then look at a H. ergaster or A. afarensis and say "yup, not human", but if you had a line of photos of an individual every thousand years from 3mya to 10,000ya you'd have a lot of individuals in between (and especially in the last few hundred thousand) that you really would struggle to categorise.
You can look at a text from 250AD and say "yep, that's Latin" and one from 1200AD and say "yep, that's French" but in between there is gradual change with no clear dividing line
FWIW, this is generally held to be the first extant text that's recognisably 'French' as opposed to 'Latin'. And that's what I learned in my French "history of language" classes.
While it is an actual text, its main function is of course that it's representative, not that all modern French derived from it
There is some evidence that representative communication (language and art) developed gradually. Homo sapiens means 'wise or clever human'. The evolution of humans over the past 3 million years or so demonstrates among other changes gradually increasing skull size implying gradually increasing brain capacity. So it seems likely that reasoning capability, symbolic representational capability (language and art) and abstract thinking were all gradual developments.
There is certainly some evidence of rudimentary language (meaningful sounds) in both other hominids and other animal species and researchers have found some capabilities for abstract thought as well.
This evidence seems to point away from a First Man and towards the gradual emergence of what we now see as human characteristics. Differences of degree, rather than of kind? Emerging cleverness?
Eutychus
I think what separates old earth and young earth creationists is not the possibility of gaps in the biblical record (particularly the genealogies) but differences of understanding of the six days of creation.
To clarify this point, MPaul, do you believe that the term 'day' in Genesis means a period of 24 hours? Or is it to be understood less literally than that?
I think it's pretty important to the debate here - indeed, to any reasonable debate - that we assume our interlocutors are not wilfully intending to deceive.
Someone who holds a position that is empirically and demonstrably false (for example, a flat earther) is still a deceiver, whether they are also themselves deceived or not. The question then becomes moot as to whether their deception is intentional.
Exactly - and stops many people exploring the faith.
Human evolution is still happening, you wouldn’t really expect otherwise. As well as evolution taking hundreds of millions of years, it can also happen fast.
Gene research can track shifts that show evolution in action. Charting how, since Roman times, Brits have become taller and fairer. One study shows how, in two generations, the effect of a gene that favours cigarette smoking has dwindled in some groups.
Thank you all for your comments. I can certainly understand your points about thinking ability and so forth but was more thinking along the lines of genetics - was there in fact a first with the genetic make up of homo sapiens - whether that was 3 million years ago or even sooner than that, under a million.
Classifying the genus Homo into species and subspecies is subject to incomplete information and remains poorly done.
Also, this observation
There has historically been a trend to postulate "new human species" based on as little as an individual fossil. A "minimalist" approach to human taxonomy recognizes at most three species, Homo habilis (2.1–1.5 Mya, membership in Homo questionable), Homo erectus (1.8–0.1 Mya, including the majority of the age of the genus, and the majority of archaic varieties as subspecies, including H. heidelbergensis as a late or transitional variety) and Homo sapiens (300 kya to present, including H. neanderthalensis and other varieties as subspecies).
Which gives you some idea that the whole concept of different human species may give us the wrong impression of how human beings evolved - and are still evolving. It is a fact that fossils from different ages show developmental differences and that some of them are marked enough to use a different classification. But it seems unlikely from the record that homo sapiens suddenly emerged as a separate species; more likely that homo sapiens represents the accumulation of various advantages which existed in rudimentary form in earlier humans.
Classifying the genus Homo into species and subspecies is subject to incomplete information and remains poorly done.
I was going to say earlier that I think anthropology remains highly tentative. Certainly too tentative to worry too much about trying to fit Adam into any particular model.
I think what separates old earth and young earth creationists is not the possibility of gaps in the biblical record (particularly the genealogies) but differences of understanding of the six days of creation.
To clarify this point, MPaul, do you believe that the term 'day' in Genesis means a period of 24 hours? Or is it to be understood less literally than that?
Not wanting to answer for @MPaul here, but he's clearly said he may be a "gap theorist". (I assumed when he said that that he's not a "day-ager"; they are two different creationist views).
Eutychus, if you look here again you will find this quote.
However some contemporary or more recent proponents of Young Earth Creationism have taken this figure back further by several thousands of years by proposing significant gaps in the genealogies in chapters 5 and 11 of the Book of Genesis. Harold Camping for example dated the creation to 11,013 BC, while Christian Charles Josias Bunsen in the 19th century dated the creation to 20,000 BC.
Of course I appreciate this point also from the article.
Gap creationism
The "gap theory" acknowledges a vast age for the universe, including the Earth and solar system, while asserting that life was created recently in six 24-hour days by divine fiat. Genesis 1 is thus interpreted literally, with an indefinite "gap" of time inserted between the first two verses. (Some gap theorists insert a "primordial creation" and Lucifer's rebellion into the gap.) Young Earth Creationist organizations argue that the gap theory is unscriptural, unscientific, and not necessary, in its various forms.)
I'm just not clear in which sense MPaul was using the term "gap".
@Barnabas62 I'm definitely trying to find out whether @MPaul assents to gaps in the genealogies. If he does then I think there's a lot of room to find common ground.
I'm just not clear in which sense MPaul was using the term "gap".
I took him to mean the "Gap creationism" in your quote, because he described himself as a "possible gap theorist". Which if so means criticism of him as a YECer is wide of the mark.
Neither of the two theories in your above post is the same as the "day-age" theory.
Classifying the genus Homo into species and subspecies is subject to incomplete information and remains poorly done.
I was going to say earlier that I think anthropology remains highly tentative. Certainly too tentative to worry too much about trying to fit Adam into any particular model.
Thank you all for comments and links. I'll follow them through over the weekend. I do see genetics as being in a different category to language use, but that's about the only conclusion I've reached so far. Certainly not trying to fit any Adam-type into any model if by that is meant that is the person who fell. I don't see how Adam (or Eve for that matter) can be other than symbolic for mankind as a whole.
Well, unsurprisingly, the animal ancestors, if real, would be the end of faith for me, the ultimate show stopper.
Wow, I've just got to jump in here. If your faith depends on belief in creation / young earth etc ISTM that you are of all 'men' most miserable. I'm sure others will want to respond to you.
Unless I misunderstand you, of course.
You understand perfectly. It's a pitiable situation. One shared by nearly all evangelicals, other catholics, all Muslims. Damnationists all. Textism.
Really? It's my impression that evangelicalism has moved significantly over the years - or perhaps 'polarised' is a better way of putting it. There are vast numbers of evangelicals who hold to a more radical theology and yet keep the main points of their evangelical faith.
Not that I have an axe to grind, but I was one such 'radical evangelical' in a former life.
Classifying the genus Homo into species and subspecies is subject to incomplete information and remains poorly done.
I was going to say earlier that I think anthropology remains highly tentative. Certainly too tentative to worry too much about trying to fit Adam into any particular model.
Thank you all for comments and links. I'll follow them through over the weekend. I do see genetics as being in a different category to language use, but that's about the only conclusion I've reached so far. Certainly not trying to fit any Adam-type into any model if by that is meant that is the person who fell. I don't see how Adam (or Eve for that matter) can be other than symbolic for mankind as a whole.
Well, they aren't the same, but I find parallels in the evolution of languages and organisms; in both cases the evolution happens to populations, not individuals, which is an important point.
There are vast numbers of evangelicals who hold to a more radical theology and yet keep the main points of their evangelical faith.
Not that I have an axe to grind, but I was one such 'radical evangelical' in a former life.
I don't understand what "more radical theology" means here, especially contrasted with "the main points of their evangelical faith". Can you clarify?
No, in the same way that there wouldn't be a first person who spoke French as opposed to Latin.
If one were to hold that there is a spiritual component to being 'human' that other animals lack - which might include a significant development of consciousness, ethical sense, and the ability to have some better form of relationship with God - then that would not necessarily be an evolved trait. If God chose an individual (or couple, or group, of) African ape(s) at a particular point in history, and said to them "know me!" thus awakening that spiritual dimension in them from that moment, it seems to me that it would be entirely possible to believe in a literal Adam (a 'first human'), and also to believe that 'Adam' evolved.
There wouldn't necessarily be any way, now, to say which of our ancestors' relics are to be dated before or after such an Adam. God could, presumably, have given spiritual life to a being that we wouldn't be able to distinguish from a proto-chimpanzee, and equally could have delayed such an act well into the lineage of creatures that we'd definitely class as biologically human. I guess evidence of art and ritual would (on this view) be evidence of a spiritual life, but it's absence would not prove non-spirituality. All that's necessary for the Genesis story to represent spiritual history would be for there to have been, at some point, an 'Adam' who was given the opportunity to choose to be God's faithful steward of creation, but decided instead to disobey.
This is entirely possible, but it's not what the Bible says and it's not really amenable to scientific enquiry either, since this "spiritual dimension" isn't something that can be defined and reliably tested for.
So it's firmly in "who knows, eh?" territory.
The question is also raised that is we imagine this had occurred, then we still have to ask whether (a) all of humanity is descended solely from these individuals and (b) whether that matters for theology.
There are vast numbers of evangelicals who hold to a more radical theology and yet keep the main points of their evangelical faith.
Not that I have an axe to grind, but I was one such 'radical evangelical' in a former life.
I don't understand what "more radical theology" means here, especially contrasted with "the main points of their evangelical faith". Can you clarify?
I was reacting to 'shared by nearly all evangelicals'. The main tenets of evangelicalism for me are to do with salvation by faith alone, the resurrection, the trinity, and so on (perhaps most would adhere to the Apostle's Creed). I am very rusty. The radical bit would indicate that there is an acceptance of social justice and service of the poor etc.
This is only how I see it - and I am far removed now.
A question on Gap theory. I don't see how it fits into the 6 day picture of creation, since the sun, moon and stars don't get created until the fourth day.
What am I missing? It seems such an obvious criticism.
The Gap Theory, it seems to me, is a 'want my cake and eat it,' theory.
Rather than accept that the Genesis account isn't literal history in the contemporary sense, it tries to maintain that idea whilst ignoring obvious objections such as the one Barnabas62 has raised.
That's how fundamentalist approaches work. Selectively.
Well, unsurprisingly, the animal ancestors, if real, would be the end of faith for me, the ultimate show stopper.
Wow, I've just got to jump in here. If your faith depends on belief in creation / young earth etc ISTM that you are of all 'men' most miserable. I'm sure others will want to respond to you.
Unless I misunderstand you, of course.
You understand perfectly. It's a pitiable situation. One shared by nearly all evangelicals, other catholics, all Muslims. Damnationists all. Textism.
Really? It's my impression that evangelicalism has moved significantly over the years - or perhaps 'polarised' is a better way of putting it. There are vast numbers of evangelicals who hold to a more radical theology and yet keep the main points of their evangelical faith.
Not that I have an axe to grind, but I was one such 'radical evangelical' in a former life.
nontheistfriend, I know that a significant all but deathly silent minority of evangelicals, who knows, maybe the silent as the grave majority, don't buy all of the 'plain meaning of scripture', but all the preaching, singing, public prayer, blogs, publications, radio stations appear to. In the UK. Apart from one Verdant Watering Hole in the desert.
The vast majority of Protestant noise is yeah-but damnationist. Other western Catholics don't know or are damnation-lite, i.e. purgatorial. Heard a wonderful anecdote on Saturday demonstrating that. A child asking Francis if his atheist dad was in hell. Francis asked the crowd whether a loving father would do that. They were to afraid to say at first.
A question on Gap theory. I don't see how it fits into the 6 day picture of creation, since the sun, moon and stars don't get created until the fourth day.
What am I missing? It seems such an obvious criticism.
I did a bit of digging re this curiosity and Gap theorists get it in the neck from both YEC fundamentalists and scientists.
There seem to have been two explanations for the creation of the sun moon and stars on the fourth day.
1, God is light and so for light to shine on the earth before the creation of the sun moon and stars is no problem for him. Referring to Revelation 21, since the Holy City has no need of sun and moon, God is its light, they are simply temporary creations before the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. That does have the virtue of consistency with the text.
2, The earth was covered in cloud and the fourth day was when the sun moon and stars first became visible. Which to say the least is not a literal reading of the text.
I have looked in vain for the way Gap creation theorists explain Day 4. What the Wiki article tells me is something else.
Gap creationism became increasingly attractive near the end of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, because the newly established science of geology had determined that the Earth was far older than common interpretations of Genesis and the Bible-based flood geology would allow. Gap creation allowed religious geologists (who composed the majority of the geological community at the time) to reconcile their faith in the Bible with the new authority of science. According to the doctrine of natural theology, science was in this period considered a second revelation, God's word in nature as well as in Scripture, so the two could not contradict each other.
Short summary. It is a rationalisation. It may seek to preserve the six day creation narrative but can only do so by taking it non-literally re the creation of sun, moon and stars. Keep the days as days, but rationalise the creation sequence.
Comments
As I have said several times.
That doesn't inevitably mean a literal Adam didn't exist, though.
It simply means the issue of whether or not Adam was a literal individual is irrelevant to the intended message (and thus impossible to determine from the content).
So that's not answering the question about how one can believe in a literal Adam and square it with evolution.
A "literal Adam" could mean several things - some of which are impossible to determine with science (such as whether an individual called Adam existed), some which are disputed (such as the idea that all of humanity has a single common ancestor).
But given that what many/most believe when they say the phrase "literal Adam", then that's incompatible with what we know from science.
And quite possibly throws up theological issues as @Barnabas62 mentions above.
But even over-and-above that, it is possible that there was someone called Adam. But it's really not possible for the world to be a few thousand years old.
The one is a charming story. The other is a horrible lie.
The incompatibility between Adam and evolution according to @MPaul, if I've understood him correctly, is that in his view the doctrine of original sin requires all of humanity to be descended from a single, actual individual, Adam. It is my view that this doctrine (or at least several widely-accepted versions of it, such as the one the Wikipedia article refers to) does not require actual biological descendance from a single, named individual, but rather sees Adam as humanity's representative.
I think not a few of the people inclined to talk about a "literal Adam" are using it as a term of ridicule, and that riducule is one of the worst enemies of sensible DH debate.
My argument is that whether or not Adam was a literal individual is irrelevant - and that making that issue a shibboleth is thus particularly pointless.
Yes, it's not irrelevant from @MPaul's perspective. But from what he's said, that's because he thinks the logic of "as in Adam all die, so all in Christ shall be made alive" requires both Adam and Christ to be literal figures, otherwise the doctrine of sin collapses.
I think his analysis of Paul's phrase is mistaken, and that the doctrine of sin does not collapse if Adam is not a literal figure. So as far as I'm concerned (along with plenty of people who believe in the universality of sin - @Boogie, apparently, for instance) - the existence of a literal Adam is irrelevant.
(Unless of course you hold that "the faith mustn't believe something about a myth", in which case it is a genuine shibboleth. Hence my earlier question.)
Finally, agreement!
I would tend to agree with you, but I'm interested in finding out from @MPaul exactly why he thinks its only a few thousand years old. I think "lie" suggests a wilful intent to deceive. I certainly concur that some YECers do wilfully intend to deceive, but I'm really not sure all of them do. (I also think that some proponents of evolution also wilfully intend to deceive in the sense that they overstate and underqualify their position to make ideological arguments). I think it's pretty important to the debate here - indeed, to any reasonable debate - that we assume our interlocutors are not wilfully intending to deceive.
Someone who holds a position that is empirically and demonstrably false (for example, a flat earther) is still a deceiver, whether they are also themselves deceived or not. The question then becomes moot as to whether their deception is intentional.
However in Is 45:18,(ASV) it is stated he did not make it void but formed it to be inhabited. This contrasts with Gen1:1 ‘tohu wa bohu’. If it was formless and void, but not created so originally, then possibly there is a gap between Gen1:1 and Gen1:2.https://ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/creation-or-evolution-does-it-really-matter-what-you-believe/earths-age-does-the-bible-indicate-a-time-interval-between-the-first-and-second-verses-of-genesis
You seem to think the notion of federal headship takes care of this. I cannot see a mechanism that does away with a literal Adam especially when pretty well all the NT writers who mention him do so assuming his literalness. It is only much later you get anything different.
Paul says sin is not 'imputed' when there is no law.
It seems the English word 'imputed' suggests the idea of 'infected'. The physical necessity of Adam does not mean that this 'imputation' is physical, but that's the closest I can get to a definition.
Adam and Eve had to be physical to fall into a state needing redemption, that their offspring inherited but the transmission of their 'fallenness' is not via their physical genetics but via their spiritual state.
Without their literalness, you need some kind of mechanism to show the need for Christ to die for humanity to rectify this, to make the theology of salvation work. It is easier just to say, with scripture, that Adam was a direct creation. This is reinforced in Luke's genealogy of Jesus in 3;38 who calls Adam the 'son of God', a term used by Jewish scriptures for a direct creation.
I think it's an assumption that they assume that. We regularly mention wholly fictional characters to make comparisons. Paul names Jannes and Jambres and uses them to support his point in 2 Timothy but there is absolutely no prima facie evidence for them being historical figures.
It does? Who says so? And besides, what's the English meaning got to do with anything?
According to Strong's, the Greek word ἐλλογέω means "to charge to one's account" (the French word imputer is much more commonly used than its English equivalent and is regularly used in this sense in accounting).
I could hardly think of a better argument against the need for any physical connection between us and Adam. In accounting debts and credits are intangibly assigned in a ledger: no gold, silver, cash, or cash equivalent physically changes places. The accounting department doesn't move piles of money from one place to another to keep the finances in order; it uses a representative system in which amounts are "imputed" ('reckoned') to be in a certain place.
I submit your definition is wholly unsupported - see above. Care to re-examine it? The meaning of the word used for "imputed" in the Bible is entirely different.
Why do you keep mentioning Eve? Both Genesis and Paul focus on Adam. Which should be another clue that his role is representative and the consequences are not linked to biological descent. The important thing that Genesis tells us is, as Paul, @Boogie and @Mr Clingford have told us, is that humanity as a whole "has fallen short of the glory of God". Try and stretch the narrative to define the mechanics of exactly how that came about and you break it.
I think you have this exactly the wrong way round. It's your expectation of understanding the mechanism that creates your need for complete literalness. If you think the theology of salvation needs to be explained in terms of a "mechanism" we humans can and must fully understand, in exploded detail like a Haynes car manual to "make it work", then yes I can see that you may well want everything in that diagram to exist literally.
But I don't think it is actually reasonable or required that we understand exactly how salvation "works" or the "mechanisms" involved and that there are no shortage of Bible verses suggesting just that.
I think the issue of what sort of book we believe the Bible to be is at the end of the day what leads you to differ from so many others here (cf also our discussions of dispensationalism): it doesn't have to be a spiritual Haynes manual to be true.
It's only "easier" if you subscribe to the "Haynes car manual" view, which in the end creates far more problems than it solves. Scripture doesn't say that anywhere in so many words and one can live without it and still believe in the universality of sin. What the Genesis narrative of the creation of humankind tells me is that humanity is inherently different from animals because we have a moral conscience.
I don't know where you got that last bit from, but it cannot have escaped your notice that Jesus is also referred to as the son of God and while his Incarnation is portrayed as having a miraculous component, it certainly isn't on a par with the "ex terra" creation of Adam depicted in Genesis.
No, in the same way that there wouldn't be a first person who spoke French as opposed to Latin.
He looks at all the rational and empirical evidence through the wooden eyes of textism.
You understand perfectly. It's a pitiable situation. One shared by nearly all evangelicals, other catholics, all Muslims. Damnationists all. Textism.
Change is gradual. You can look at a text from 250AD and say "yep, that's Latin" and one from 1200AD and say "yep, that's French" but in between there is gradual change with no clear dividing line; if you had a recording of speech every 20 years between the two dates you'd find it impossible to categorise the ones in the middle into those categories. Similarly you can look at you, me or even Donald Trump and say "yup, human" and then look at a H. ergaster or A. afarensis and say "yup, not human", but if you had a line of photos of an individual every thousand years from 3mya to 10,000ya you'd have a lot of individuals in between (and especially in the last few hundred thousand) that you really would struggle to categorise.
While it is an actual text, its main function is of course that it's representative, not that all modern French derived from it
There is some evidence that representative communication (language and art) developed gradually. Homo sapiens means 'wise or clever human'. The evolution of humans over the past 3 million years or so demonstrates among other changes gradually increasing skull size implying gradually increasing brain capacity. So it seems likely that reasoning capability, symbolic representational capability (language and art) and abstract thinking were all gradual developments.
There is certainly some evidence of rudimentary language (meaningful sounds) in both other hominids and other animal species and researchers have found some capabilities for abstract thought as well.
This evidence seems to point away from a First Man and towards the gradual emergence of what we now see as human characteristics. Differences of degree, rather than of kind? Emerging cleverness?
Eutychus
I think what separates old earth and young earth creationists is not the possibility of gaps in the biblical record (particularly the genealogies) but differences of understanding of the six days of creation.
To clarify this point, MPaul, do you believe that the term 'day' in Genesis means a period of 24 hours? Or is it to be understood less literally than that?
Exactly - and stops many people exploring the faith.
Gene research can track shifts that show evolution in action. Charting how, since Roman times, Brits have become taller and fairer. One study shows how, in two generations, the effect of a gene that favours cigarette smoking has dwindled in some groups.
Genomic research.
A useful link.
It contains the following helpful comment.
Also, this observation
Which gives you some idea that the whole concept of different human species may give us the wrong impression of how human beings evolved - and are still evolving. It is a fact that fossils from different ages show developmental differences and that some of them are marked enough to use a different classification. But it seems unlikely from the record that homo sapiens suddenly emerged as a separate species; more likely that homo sapiens represents the accumulation of various advantages which existed in rudimentary form in earlier humans.
Of course I appreciate this point also from the article.
I'm just not clear in which sense MPaul was using the term "gap".
I took him to mean the "Gap creationism" in your quote, because he described himself as a "possible gap theorist". Which if so means criticism of him as a YECer is wide of the mark.
Neither of the two theories in your above post is the same as the "day-age" theory.
Thank you all for comments and links. I'll follow them through over the weekend. I do see genetics as being in a different category to language use, but that's about the only conclusion I've reached so far. Certainly not trying to fit any Adam-type into any model if by that is meant that is the person who fell. I don't see how Adam (or Eve for that matter) can be other than symbolic for mankind as a whole.
Really? It's my impression that evangelicalism has moved significantly over the years - or perhaps 'polarised' is a better way of putting it. There are vast numbers of evangelicals who hold to a more radical theology and yet keep the main points of their evangelical faith.
Not that I have an axe to grind, but I was one such 'radical evangelical' in a former life.
Well, they aren't the same, but I find parallels in the evolution of languages and organisms; in both cases the evolution happens to populations, not individuals, which is an important point.
If one were to hold that there is a spiritual component to being 'human' that other animals lack - which might include a significant development of consciousness, ethical sense, and the ability to have some better form of relationship with God - then that would not necessarily be an evolved trait. If God chose an individual (or couple, or group, of) African ape(s) at a particular point in history, and said to them "know me!" thus awakening that spiritual dimension in them from that moment, it seems to me that it would be entirely possible to believe in a literal Adam (a 'first human'), and also to believe that 'Adam' evolved.
There wouldn't necessarily be any way, now, to say which of our ancestors' relics are to be dated before or after such an Adam. God could, presumably, have given spiritual life to a being that we wouldn't be able to distinguish from a proto-chimpanzee, and equally could have delayed such an act well into the lineage of creatures that we'd definitely class as biologically human. I guess evidence of art and ritual would (on this view) be evidence of a spiritual life, but it's absence would not prove non-spirituality. All that's necessary for the Genesis story to represent spiritual history would be for there to have been, at some point, an 'Adam' who was given the opportunity to choose to be God's faithful steward of creation, but decided instead to disobey.
So it's firmly in "who knows, eh?" territory.
The question is also raised that is we imagine this had occurred, then we still have to ask whether (a) all of humanity is descended solely from these individuals and (b) whether that matters for theology.
I was reacting to 'shared by nearly all evangelicals'. The main tenets of evangelicalism for me are to do with salvation by faith alone, the resurrection, the trinity, and so on (perhaps most would adhere to the Apostle's Creed). I am very rusty. The radical bit would indicate that there is an acceptance of social justice and service of the poor etc.
This is only how I see it - and I am far removed now.
What am I missing? It seems such an obvious criticism.
Rather than accept that the Genesis account isn't literal history in the contemporary sense, it tries to maintain that idea whilst ignoring obvious objections such as the one Barnabas62 has raised.
That's how fundamentalist approaches work. Selectively.
nontheistfriend, I know that a significant all but deathly silent minority of evangelicals, who knows, maybe the silent as the grave majority, don't buy all of the 'plain meaning of scripture', but all the preaching, singing, public prayer, blogs, publications, radio stations appear to. In the UK. Apart from one Verdant Watering Hole in the desert.
I mean all.
Christianity is a spectacular failure.
Unless eastern Catholics redress that...
There seem to have been two explanations for the creation of the sun moon and stars on the fourth day.
1, God is light and so for light to shine on the earth before the creation of the sun moon and stars is no problem for him. Referring to Revelation 21, since the Holy City has no need of sun and moon, God is its light, they are simply temporary creations before the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. That does have the virtue of consistency with the text.
2, The earth was covered in cloud and the fourth day was when the sun moon and stars first became visible. Which to say the least is not a literal reading of the text.
I have looked in vain for the way Gap creation theorists explain Day 4. What the Wiki article tells me is something else.
Short summary. It is a rationalisation. It may seek to preserve the six day creation narrative but can only do so by taking it non-literally re the creation of sun, moon and stars. Keep the days as days, but rationalise the creation sequence.