Over at Don’t Stop Believing, Mike Wittmer makes an observation and asks a question that I hope we don’t find the answer to anytime soon, though such hopes are often disappointed.
He draws our attention to a recent issue of a science and Christianity journal:
This month’s issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (published by the American Scientific Affiliation) is devoted to this question, and three of its four essays conclude that we must dramatically revise the Christian faith in light of genetic research. Specifically, the authors claim that the human genome project has demonstrated that humans not only evolved from lower life forms but that we came on the scene by the thousands rather than from an original, historical Adam.
Yes, this would elicit a collective yawn from the outside world. But here’s where things start to get interesting in our evangelical Christian world:
Two of the contributors are Bible and Theology professors at Calvin College, Daniel Harlow and John Schneider, 
so I immediately wondered how their views mesh with their positions at this denominational school. Schneider concedes that his Christian Reformed Church “prohibits ‘espousal of theories that posit the reality of evolutionary forebears of human beings’ as ‘ruled out by Scripture and the Reformed confessions,’ yet oddly does not intend this prohibition to ‘limit further investigation and discussion on this topic’” (209)…
Harlow clearly does not believe in a historical Adam or a historical Fall… Both agree that the Apostle Paul believed in an actual Adam and a real Fall, but he did not have the benefit of the human genome project. Harlow explains that “Paul, like Luke, no doubt regarded Adam as a historical person… Paul had little reason not to regard Adam as a historical figure, whereas today we have many reasons for recognizing him as a strictly literary one” (190).
Schneider acknowledges that skepticism about a historical Adam means giving up the inerrancy of Scripture, for “it seems unlikely that Paul (or Luke) in the New Testament understood biblical Adam in this symbolic way” (200).
Calvin’s professors are free to do what they wish, “within the confessional standards of the college.”
From several friends whose children have recently attended Calvin, I have some hope that Calvin is capable of being a “different kind of evangelical” school. Clearly they have faculty who are not afraid of wrestling with difficult issues and striving to be faithful to both their own fields of study and to the gospel narrative we share in.
Let’s hope these professors are signals that it is possible to be evangelical Christian academics in a heliocentric universe. Abraham Kuyper, whose Dutch Reformed tradition Calvin is heir to, famously said that in this whole life of ours “there’s not one square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘It is mine!’” Let’s hope that includes the human genome.
Why do I care? Mostly, because belief in evolution is actually making the world a better place.
This weekend we had brunch with another family from our daughter’s school. He is a cancer researcher. He studies the evolution of cancer cells and uses that information to figure out what sorts of treatments might work for both prevention and cure. If the non-evolutionary world had its way, these endeavors would not be funded, would not be legal, would be written off as junk science that can never withstand the final authority of the word of God.
But this is our Father’s world. And if, as we study it, we discover that it holds some surprises, we must be as ready to receive these as the truly created world as we are willing, as I’ve argued for the past few days, to accept that a surprising book is the word of God written.
And, if we insist that the world as scientists know it is incompatible with the Christian faith, our children will believe us! And, when they go to college, they will learn beyond a shadow of a doubt why Christianity must be abandoned. As with certain views of the Bible, we have to learn how to hold on loosely (not to the story of God or the gospel, but our traditional understandings of how these impact other issues) or else seal the fate of future generations.
This is great. Scary as hell, but great. I wonder, as times goes on and we have more and more scientific discoveries, what we will cling tightly to? In other words, how long can we confess “this is our Father’s world,” and, “Jesus is the perfect revelation of God,” when we are continually finding out (scientific) information that informs us in ways we never imagined.
I don’t even know if that question makes sense, honestly.
Ask me why I’m a Christian, and I’ll say: because I believe that Jesus is making all things new. Let the human genome project learn and confirm what it will. This seems to open up so many possibilities for Christians to interact with the world. It is exciting. And scary.
To Christians grappling with evolution, see Francis Collins. Hopefully we can move past trivialities that threaten literal interpretations of the opening chapters of Genesis. It does not make the Bible any “less” truthful.
Cancer cells evolving and evolution of all species from a single (single-cell) ancestor are very different.
But the condemnation of evolution is typically so broadly conceived that it creates suspicion about both; and, the evolution of cancer cells is something that is only a field of science because the larger theory was put forward first. The larger theory provided an interpretive grid by which other scientific discoveries became possible. The same can’t be said for traditional Christian ways of telling the story.
Good science is inspired by “bad” science all the time. It doesn’t mean we have to accept the bad in order to accept the good that came from it. I also think it is difficult to have a good discussion about evolution without getting into the many different areas/types of “evolution.” People often mean different things when they use the word.
I understand your point and your perspective as someone outside the scientific community, but I would hate to see the church disregard scripture in favor of science that may well be overtaken by some new theory 20 years from now. (Not that I’m advocating for the church to be backward and ignorant of science, just skeptical–as even all good scientists ought to be.)
I appreciate that caution, Jamie. There is wisdom there!
But I still wonder, is it better to hold onto a view of origins that has already been overtaken just so we don’t have go give up the new one in 20 years?
Prediction: there will be a new theory in 20 years, and just as it comes around, the church will have finally adopted evolution and will proclaim it for the subsequent 150, just until the new theory falls aside–at which point the church will be all over it and defend it to the death…
P.S. I’m especially appreciative of folks like you who frequently disagree and yet keep coming around and giving me push-back. I learn from you, even if I fight. Thank you!
Thanks for welcoming me!
I figure you don’t mind when I disagree. And if I agree or am confused, I usually just don’t comment. 
Also wanted to mention that of course most within the scientific community would agree with you! But I feel like they have lost a healthy skepticism regarding this issue and sort of gloss over hard questions because it’s a beloved theory.
I’m with you on evolution, Daniel, but with Jamie kinda skeptical of your cancer example. For example, it’s hard to imagine any creationist considering the Philadelphia chromosome explanation (see wikipedia) for a subtype of leukemia to be junk science.
I don’t doubt that such results might be affirmed by creationists–and perhaps even applauded.
But is a literal creationist going to get a PhD in evolutionary cell biology so that s/he can make the world a better place by researching the evolution of cancer cells?
And, did literal creationism as a macro theory of origins produce good scientific theories that led to medical breakthroughs?
It’s all well and good for an inerrantist to affirm that the earth revolves around the sun, but that’s just snitching from the bag of heliocentric tricks that could only be had once the biblical perspective was abandoned.
Bravo! Nice essay.
I’m not sure if “the evolution of cancer cells” even has any meaning. Is the formerly human cell turning into a new species? I think its just a fancy term for “the mutation of cancer cells”. I don’t think the theory of evolution was required for the study of genetics at all. I don’t believe Mendel was an evolutionist, was he?
Sure, due to the current cultural climate in academia a creationist would have difficulty entering and engaging in the world of genetic science, but I see no reason, if the climate was different, that a creationist wouldn’t be able to make great contributions to the science. After all, truth is truth. You make a prediction based on your worldview, and you test to see if its true and reproducible. Even a flat-earther could do that (he just wouldn’t get any funding)
Once again there’s no discussion of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. I believe that the crucial debate must be over these chapters, among Christians who endorse the Bible’s authority and truth (not necessarily “inerrancy”).
As someone who is sceptical of evolution your assertion that cancer research wouldn’t happen and would even be illegal feels quite offensive. It’s a big claim – where did you get that sort of idea? Back that one up please. If “creationists” are actually saying that sort of thing we all need to denounce them too.
Lastly a person question so that any further discussion will be appropriate: how much of a biology/genetics background do you have?
Dannii, the question of Paul and Adam is an important one–probably the issue that makes the Adam question such a live issue for Christians wrestling with the OT.
There’s lots of discussion on this at the Biologos site, including a few posts I put up earlier this year.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
I’m sorry if my statement was unnecessarily provocative. However, the history of Christian power backs it up.
When Christians thought the earth revolved around the sun, the church imprisoned folks who taught otherwise. Christians, convinced that homosexuality is wrong, want to make it illegal. Etc. When Christians think something is wrong, and we have the power to do so, we legislate against it.
Thank you for attempting to address these issues – that’s more than most do. It might be that our disagreement stems from seeing a different purpose of the origin narratives. To paraphrase your posts, you believe their function is to connect the reader to the Biblical metanarrative, to show them that they’re part of the story, included in God’s plans for the universe. I think that an essential part of that function is another function: to explain the state of the universe. The origin narratives are polemic – the state of the world might be the same in other origin narratives but the causality chain that leads to it is different. The creator God had no lack of control over what he created, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t help but make it flawed. It was his people instead, and then Genesis tells us that God is committed to fixing our mistakes. His reputation is at stake. For this reason what happened matters.
Your view cuts out chapter one of the metanarrative and leaves to start at chapter two, seeing God’s dealings in this world, the slow process of fixing it. But all of the later chapters depend on chapter one. Even you want to reference it when you say “People were created to represent God’s reign to the world”. How can you justify that if Genesis 1-3 is disconnected from reality? The best that we can say is that God has chosen people to represent his reign in this world.
Without a first chapter of our metanarrative connected to reality (note I’m not saying that Gen 1-3 is necessarily historical) when you come to the NT I’m left seeing huge voids. Without a world changed by disobedience in reality this world is not broken, instead it’s all just like Job’s ostrich, how God wanted it, beauty in ways beyond our understanding. What Jesus did and does no longer has full purpose. Through Jesus God is finally proved to be all that he has said he is, righteous. It took an event in reality to do this, because only an event in reality could throw his reputation into doubt.
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul argues against the heresy of spiritual resurrection. Instead it is resurrection from the same death that Adam inflicted upon us. If you’re right then what does verse 21 mean? Does it have any meaning for us other than “oh what a nice antiquated belief Paul had!”
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The problem you are describing is the problem of theocracy, of power in generally. Sinful people do sinful things. If you’re only describing a hypothetical world where Christian fundamentalists are in charge of the earth, then sure, speculate away.
It sounds to me like we agree on more than we disagree about, Dannii. I do think that those stories speak truly, and that we can’t understand the world and our place in it and God’s work in it and Christ’s redemption of it without them.
What is the truth? Was there an act of disobedience that took an undying humanity and turned it into a corrupted dying humanity? That’s the crucial truth I need in my metanarrative. What’s yours?
You say “It’s all well and good for an inerrantist to affirm that the earth revolves around the sun, but that’s just snitching from the bag of heliocentric tricks that could only be had once the biblical perspective was abandoned.”
Where does the Bible assert that the Earth does not revolve around the sun?
The sun is in the dome that keeps the waters above the heavens from crashing down on the earth. It can freeze in the middle of the sky without anything untoward happening. Ecclesiastes speaks of the sun going from one end of the sky to another, then panting back to its place to run its course again the next day. It seems to be fairly consistently how the imagery works.
I am glad Calvin College is unlike Calvin Theological Seminary, which lied to have Ruth Tucker fired from her job because she is a woman, and they interpret the bible to say women must not teach men. No open discussion, no discourse, no disagreement or different view points tolerated. Glad to see that Calvin College is open minded to discussions on evolution.
As I posted on a related entry on this blog: I am glad that the latest issue of PSCF, and Danie Kirk’s blog, has generated discussion of origins issues. Discussion from different points of view is exactly what Christians need.
In my PSCF article “After Adam” I explain to an evangelical readership why most biblical scholars regard the early chapters of Genesis as story (divinely inspired!) and not history. The arguments are based on the text of Genesis itself, and on a comparison and contrast of early Genesis with other ancient Near Eastern creation accounts. So the issue, at least for me, is not “Do we believe Genesis or not?” but “Are we reading Genesis rightly? Do we understand the literary genre that the biblical author wrote in, and theological truths that the God-inspired author intended to communicate?” This is a question that can be answered independently of what secure findings of modern science show about the creation.
Remember, too, that the natural world is the area of God’s general revelation. This is God’s world; God created it; God holds it in existence at every moment; God sustains it; God empowers all creatures to exercise the type of secondary causality that is proper to them. God himself, though, is the primary cause of creation and not a competing secondary cause. And God has acted in Christ to renew the creation.
I also think that the theory of evolution is much more than a theory, in the popular understanding of that term. In science, theories are not just hunches or guesses; they are powerful explanatory models that account for loads of related data; they are able to generate testable hypothethes that can be subject to experimental confirmation or disconfirmation. The theory of evolution, then, is a theory on the same order as the theory of gravity or the germ theory of disease. It is a model with great explanatory power.
On Paul’s mention of Adam and Christ in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. I discuss these passages briefly in my PSCF article. Paul certainly regarded Adam as a historical figure. But he seems to introduce Adam in these passages less as a figure of history than as a typological counterpart to Christ–a representive, symbolic stand-in for fallen humanity. Note that Paul writes at great length about sin in Romans 1:18-3:20 without ever mentioning Adam. And even in Romans 5 he says that death entered the world “because ALL sinned.” Others may disagree, but many NT theologians, myself included, believe that Paul took the historicity of Adam for granted. But his doing so does not require us today to insist on Adam’s historicity. Paul’s assumptions about Adam may be seen as an example of divine accommodation: the Holy Spirit allowed the assumption because a lot of ancient people presumed that the entire human race descended from one primordial couple. Denis Lamoureux’s book “I Believe in Jesus & I Accept Evolution” is very helpful on this point.
The doctrines of the Fall and original sin can and should be maintained. But they do not REQUIRE a single historical couple living in Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago. The garden of Eden story is actually not central to the “grand biblical narrative”: Adam, Eve, and the serpent are never mentioned in the OT outside Genesis 2-3; and if you read the gospels, Acts, and general epistles, the story is not discussed either. Much more prominent in, and central to, biblical theology are Scripture’s many statements about the reality and effects of human sin, of the unity of the human race in the grip of sin, and of the absolute necessity of God’s saving grace in Christ to redeem humanity from sin.
— Dan Harlow, Professor of Religion, Calvin College.
Dan, what do you mean by the “doctrine of the fall”? It’s easy to assume we all mean the same thing by these terms, but we may not. I can’t see how the doctrine can be divorced from a single couple as it’s an event that takes the universe from uncorruption to corruption, and a huge humanity falling as a whole in a single moment just doesn’t seem feasible to me. So what do you mean by it?
Also, living in Mesopotamia? Really? I’m sorry but that shows you as quite ignorant of what most “creationists” believe. There could be no Mesopotamia until after the flood!
Danii,
Why cannot one than one couple have fallen? Why do only two human beings have to be involved? Why couldn’t the earliest humans been much larger in number? It is a mathematical impossibility for all modern humans to have descended from only two people. The number is around 10,000 interbreeding individuals in Africa. Your claim that a large group can’t have fallen makes no sense to me.
And who says the Fall has to have happened all at once, in the same place and at the same time? How can you possibly know that. The evidence of genomics shows otherwise. You take what Genesis pictures in a story as documentary fact, but Genesis itself, with two creation accounts differing in numerous details–many of the details having been adapted and shaped to form new stories–suggests that it is not reporting documentary fact.
The four rivers coming out of Eden include the Tigris and Euphrates. That suggests Mesopotamia, does it not? Mesopotamia is also the locaction of origin for the older ancient Near Eastern creation narratives on which Genesis draws (Enuma Elish, Atrahasis Epic, Gilgamesh). As for the flood, the Genesis flood story also draws on these older Mesopotamian creation epics, which no one takes as historical. And the geological record shows no signs of a global flood. All of these are problems for those who mistake the early narratives in Genesis for history.
I am indeed largely ignorant of what most young earth creationists believe. But I haven’t been discussing what they believe. I have been discussing Genesis.
Not that I should answer for Danii, but I couldn’t resist:
“Why cannot (more?) than one couple have fallen? Why do only two human beings have to be involved? Why couldn’t the earliest humans been much larger in number?”
How about “because that’s how the story reads”. If you don’t want to believe the bible on that very specific point why bother believing anything in the bible at all? why not get your story from the Koran or just make up your own…
“It is a mathematical impossibility for all modern humans to have descended from only two people. ”
I just googled “population growth calculator” and found this site http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php and entered 8 people starting year 0 and going to 4010 (to approximate the stereotypical estimate of the time from Noah’s Flood to the present). The population came out to 475,275,171,414,000,000,000 which sounds like this must be one of those population alarmist sites, but you get the idea that its far from “impossible”. Another factor is the aspect that people still lived a lot longer lifespans just after the flood, which would add to the population growth.
“The four rivers coming out of Eden include the Tigris and Euphrates.”
Ok, where are the other two rivers flowing from a single point (the Garden of Eden)? Maybe after the flood waters receded, Noah and the boys thought that the closest rivers were the Tigris and Euphrates, so they named them that. Or maybe they knew the original rivers couldn’t possibly have survived the flood, but named them that for old time sake, kind of like “New” York, or “New” Jersey.
“two creation accounts differing in numerous details”
I don’t see two separate stories slapped together as you seem to imply, but just different frames of reference in the same story, like two episodes of the same tv show focusing on different time frames or viewpoints.
“As for the flood, the Genesis flood story also draws on these older Mesopotamian creation epics, which no one takes as historical.”
I suppose if you were skeptical you could say that, but it works just as well that if the bible was (stay with me now…) actually true, that the other people that descended from Noah and didn’t stick around would also have stories about a flood. Maybe that’s why global flood stories are found in virtually every culture – because it actually happened.
“And the geological record shows no signs of a global flood.”
You’re kidding, right? Nautiloid (sea creature) fossils are found in mountain rock all over the globe. I think one explanation is that all that land was under water at some point in time. The continental shelves outline the former continents when they were above water. The mid Atlantic ridge could be one source of flood water. There’s tons of evidence out there if you have eyes to see it.
“I am indeed largely ignorant of what most young earth creationists believe. But I haven’t been discussing what they believe. I have been discussing Genesis.”
Yes you are, and so have they…
Dave answered for me in a number of ways. “Mesopotamia” means “land between the rivers”, two rivers with two sources which become one, not one source which splits into four. The only thing suggesting that is 2:14 which says the Edenic Tigris runs along Asshur, but I would put that down to an editor’s mistake who (like many) had no idea about geography. If the Tigris and the Euphrates had a common source like you just suggested we’d all know for certain where the Garden of Eden was!
I’m not really interested in your assertion that it’s impossible for all modern humans to have descended from two humans, but maybe you should at least put forward some evidence. Mitochondrial DNA is interesting but all dates published are calculated from unverifiable assumptions.
I’d love to know what genomics can tell us about the doctrine of the fall! Please do tell!
You didn’t explain what you meant by “doctrine of the fall”. I at least explained what I meant. It’s a universe-wide corruption initiated by the sin of the head of the universe – Adam. Do you propose that part of the universe was corrupted while another part wasn’t? How does that work with headship (a topic which Daniel K does assert these NT passages are about)?
“This month’s issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (published by the American Scientific Affiliation) is devoted to this question, and three of its four essays conclude that we must dramatically revise the Christian faith in light of genetic research. Specifically, the authors claim that the human genome project has demonstrated that humans not only evolved from lower life forms but that we came on the scene by the thousands rather than from an original, historical Adam.”
I don’t know any of the specifics from this article and I’m not well versed (at all) in genetics, but I generally have very little faith in the ability of scientists to draw appropriate conclusions from their research, or to be more accurate, to refrain from drawing unwarranted conclusions. There also seems to be quite a bit of ignorance surrounding the question of what a creationist view of the world in its stronger forms might entail and what could count as evidence against it.
One work I enjoyed very much on related questions (by an atheist convinced of evolutionary theory) was Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove. Stove is also simply one of the most entertaining philosophers to read, so that’s something of a unique mark in his favor.