The question faced in a growing number of churches is whether or not it is acceptable to claim respect for the authority and inerrancy of Scripture while at the same time denying that Adam and Eve were a special creation of God from the dust of the ground at a particular point in history and the First Parents of all mankind as described in Genesis (1.26-31; 2.4-23).

This article is the first part of a three-part series on the historical veracity of Adam.

There is nothing new about the question of how science relates to the Bible – it is as old as the Copernican Revolution of the 16th Century and older. There is, however, real urgency to the question in our present age when science is being increasingly exalted to an almost supreme status as the arbiter of what we can know and are to believe.

There are many areas in which this question affects Christian and non-Christian alike through the claims science makes and the way this affects our understanding of life. This is true most notably when it comes to how we frame our concept of good and evil and our views on whether or not there is a spiritual dimension to life.

It is an issue that affects people at different stages and circumstances of life. For those in school and college, it is something they are forced to face because, in secular institutions at least, only one perspective on these issues is taught: one that has no place for ‘god’ or any concept of the supernatural. For Christians who teach in such institutions, or who wish to venture into the working world of the applied sciences, it may well become an issue that will determine whether or not they will be offered employment.

The specific focus of this paper is to examine one particular area within this discussion that is posing a major challenge within the professing Christian church. It is the question of whether or not the Bible requires us to believe in an historical Adam.

Although this question has been debated for many decades in the broader Christian church, it has come home to churches that are more conservative in their theology with increasing force in recent times. Well-known Christian scholars have been publishing articles and books (not to mention influencing successive classes of seminary students) in which they openly challenge the notion of Adam’s historicity (the fact he was a real historical person).

It would be naïve to pretend these views are not in wide circulation, or to think that we do not need to meaningfully engage with them. That is what we will attempt to do in what follows; but in a way and at a level that is designed to raise awareness as opposed to providing exhaustive answers.

1. The Bible vs. Science on the Origins of Human Beings
Ever since Charles Darwin first published his thoughts about evolution in Origin of the Species in 1859, there has been significant debate over the relationship between science and the Bible with regard to understanding human origins. This debate has intensified in more recent times in part as theories of evolution have themselves been developed, but perhaps especially because of the emboldened ‘New Atheism’ popularized by Prof Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens and others like them. The publication of major research findings in relation to the Human Genome Project, as well as the level of publicity surrounding the CERN Project on the Franco-Swiss border in Europe have taken the debate to a new level.

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