“On Adam as the first human: All we can say at this point is that some 6 mya, a common ancestor to all primates evolved. Our best guess is that full-time bipedal hominids began to walk around 1.8 mya and…language evolved around 170 tya”

(Editor’s note: For those readers not familiar with evolution-theory language, mya = million years ago; tya = thousand years ago.)

On August 17, The Aquila Report published a commentary written by Albert Mohler, Jr., President of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky entitled: The Inerrancy of Scripture: The Fifty Years’ War . . . and Counting.

In that Commentary, Dr. Mohler said this:

The rejection of biblical inerrancy is bound up with a view of God that is, in the end, fatal for Christian orthodoxy. We are entering a new phase in the battle over the Bible’s truthfulness and authority. We should at least be thankful for undisguised arguments coming from the opponents of biblical inerrancy, even as we are ready, once again, to make clear where their arguments lead.

Little did he realize that just four days later Mohler would himself by attacked in the secular press. The attack came in a commentary published in The Huffington Post, probably the liberal web magazine with the largest circulation, from Karl Giberson, a Baptist professor teaching at Eastern Nazarene College since 1984. At Eastern Nazarene he teaches interdisciplinary honors seminars and the history of science. He is also the director of the Forum on Faith and Science at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., co-director of the Venice Summer School on Science & Religion and a fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation.

Oh yes, and one more credential, he is the Vice President of the BioLogos Foundation, an organization whose primary mission statement contains the following sentence: We believe that evolution, properly understood, best describes God’s work of creation.

Readers of The Aquila Report will recall the name BioLogos Foundation. It was Professor Bruce Waltke’s relationship with BioLogos, that he decided he would not terminate, that brought the leadership of Reformed Theological Seminary to the decision to accept his resignation.

The common thread through all of this is the controversy over the historicity of Adam and Eve and the related understandings of the Doctrine of Scripture. It was on this doctrine that Professor Giberson highlighted in this commentary on Huffington when he wrote: there are some fundamentalist beliefs that I just don’t think are true any more. The earth, for example, is not 10,000 years old.

Because this issue of evolution is so important to Dr. Mohler, he then responded with his own commentary, published in his blog, and republished in many venues over the past few days. In this response, Mohler said:

The theory of evolution is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ even as it is in direct conflict with any faithful reading of the Scriptures. Darwin’s historic role in the development of evolutionary theory is central and significant, but the theological objections to evolution are not centered in the person of Darwin, but in the structure and implications of his theory of natural selection.

All of this back and forth on the issue of creation and the doctrine of evolution got a number of men involved in the blogosphere to take another look at BioLogos. When one thinks about this discussion between those who are consistent confessionalists and hold to the long-standing doctrinal statements such as the Westminster Confession of Faith controversy, and those who try to combine their allegiance to the Bible with Darwin’s teaching of evolution, BioLogos is always there.

Many of those bloggers linked to the summary of the extensive writing by a PCA Teaching Elder named Ron Choong, the Director of the Academy of Christian Thought in New York City. One blogger provided an extensive summary of Choong’s teaching in the area of creation/evolution, which is the main theme of this story.

So, what does Choong believe about Adam? Allow me to publish a few items from his blog. From “Who Is the Adam of the Christian Confession?

(a) Was Adam created immortal?

The Westminster Confession contradicts the Scriptural description of a mortal Adam who had not yet eaten of the tree of life and who only knew of good and evil after he had eaten of the forbidden tree. In the WCF, Chapter IV.2, Adam is created with an “immortal soul”. Neither Matthew 10:28 nor Luke 23:42 referred to Adam but to the post-Fall humans who can inherit everlasting life. Adam was not created with an immortal soul (Genesis 3:22).

(b) Was Adam created righteous?

In the same chapter, the WCF describes Adam as “with knowledge, righteousness, and holiness” pointing to Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24. The problem is that both references describe the “new self” of the New Testament man, not Adam.

(c) Was Adam created with a conscience?

Chapter IV.2 of the WCF states that Adam and Eve were created with “the law of God written in their hearts.” The reference given is Romans 2:14 and 15. Paul was speaking not about pre-Fall Adam but about post-Fall people. Gentiles who do not possess the Mosaic laws have no excuse because they have a generic law written in their hearts by which they will be judged. This is not an appropriate reference text to infer the state of Adam’s conscience.

(d) What may be concluded and what may be merely conjectured?

The scriptures do not support the creedal claims of the WCF but we have no warrant to say that all such claims are wrong. According to the scriptures, Adam was clearly made mortal. Any subsequent immortality would not be by the fruit of the tree of life but due the resurrection of Christ that justifies Adam to everlasting life in the presence of God. We may also safely conclude that Adam was not created righteous for Romans 3:10 declares that not one of us is righteous.

On Adam as the first human:

All we can say at this point is that some 6 mya, a common ancestor to all primates evolved. Our best guess is that full-time bipedal hominids began to walk around 1.8 mya and compositional language evolved around 170 tya. The earliest trace of symbolic linguistic use and self-consciousness came with the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens about 100 tya. The modern mind, with cognitive fluidity arose some 80-60 tya.

Conclusion: Adam was probably not the first human being but he was most certainly the first one being human.

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On a transformative, evolutionary doctrine of creation:

Taking a critical realist postfoundational approach to constructing a transformative doctrine of creation, we are now ready to test our methodology against a real world question. How does a revelational natural theology (McGrath’s RNT) that acknowledges a postfoundational rationality (van Huysteen’s PFR) understand and explain what it means to be made in the imago Dei with specific reference to the role of consciousness, emotional intelligence, and synaptic memory, in the emergence of moral cognition in Homo sapiens sapiens?

By discovering the philosophical convergence between scientific findings of neurobiology and theological reflection of moral response in nolition, we can achieve a more robust redescription of the Christian doctrine for an evolutionary creatio continua as we anticipate the creatio nova to come.

If the biblical account of what we call the fall can be understood as ‘rising beasts’, ‘falling upwards’ to moral awareness, it would make better sense of biological evolution, theodicy and the human condition.

Having examined what theology claims about humanity, our next step is to consider what the natural sciences say about what makes humans human. To this, we shall turn to paleoanthropology and Steven Mithen’s notion of cognitive fluidity and the roles that emotions and memory play in the persistence of the conscious self-awareness.

Emails were flying back and forth starting Thursday and throughout the weekend among interested parties concerning this material, all of which (that this writer has viewed) were unanimous that the teaching of Teaching Elder Choong appears (at least on the surface) to be out of accord with the Westminster Standards to which all PCA officers must take vows to uphold in their teaching and writing.

How can we be so certain this is the case? Well, on two different occasions while this author was a member of New River Presbytery a case came from one of our churches through us and on to the Standing Judicial Commission. Without going into details, let me tell you the end result both times.

The SJC said, and the GA confirmed, that not only can you not be a Teaching Elder, or a Ruling Elder if you hold to any form of Theistic Evolution. You can’t even be a deacon. And wait, I’m not done yet. The SJC found that one was not even allowed to teach Sunday School or small group Bible studies if the teacher held to and form of Theistic Evolution. Have no doubt about this – this is a MAJOR issue in the PCA. And happily, in Founders Conference influenced SBC churches as well.

Because of the serious nature of this situation, The Aquila Report sent a draft of this story on Friday to Dr. Choong, to Dr. Tim Keller, Lead Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian, New York (and several of his staff in the possibility of not reaching Tim with email very quickly) and to the Stated Clerk of Metro New York Presbytery of the PCA, asking all for comment.

We sent the info Redeemer because the PCA Ministerial Directory indicates that Dr. Choong was an Assistant Pastor of the church from 1999-2003 and because of reports that, prior to that time, he was a Ruling Elder in the church. Choong was one of the early members of the church, having met Tim Keller in Central Park in 1989 and responding to Tim’s invitation to join them in worship at the new church that was just starting up.

Bruce Terrell, a Ruling Elder serving as Executive Director for Ministries at Redeemer New York responded on behalf of the church and they declined to make any formal response to this story.

We sent the material to Metro New York Presbytery because of the fact that the very public blogosphere and internet journals were filled with stories about Dr. Choong’s teaching and it definitely need to come to the attention of the Presbytery, who could then determine if any action needed to be taken.

When it became impossible to contact the Clerk of the Presbytery, we asked for and received help from Bruce Terrell, who informed us that the Clerk was on an extended vacation and that he would make sure the information from the story got in the hands of the appropriate Presbytery members.

And we sent the material to Dr. Choong himself to give him an opportunity to respond. He contacted The Aquila Report by both email and by telephone on Monday morning, August 30.

In the phone conversation, Dr. Choong spoke with the publisher of the Aquila Report. It was a very cordial conversation, during which Dr. Choong explained that he did not want to speak on the record about the details of the issue since short quotes are easy to take out of context of the broader issue.

He explained clearly that he had never been installed on the staff of Redeemer New York and that he had tried a number of times to get the record changed in that regard (although the PCA Ministerial Directory continues to show him as an Assistant Pastor from 1999-2003).

The most significant result of the conversation was the fact that Dr. Choong was not aware of some of the specific stances taken in the past by the PCA concerning evolutionary theory, in particular two Standing Judicial Commission decisions on the topic. He very much does not want to cause any problems in the church.

We feel confident that all the parties to this matter have sufficient information on which to take action and we look forward to the opportunity to report on the outcome of events in Metro New York Presbytery concerning this case in the near future.

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]