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?…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.

The opening reflections in this roundtable exchange are another reminder that my views on Adam and the fall strike most scholars as obscurantist, puerile, or just plainly absurd. Since my wife has called me far worse—alas, with due cause—experience compels me to sit up and pay attention. I know the drill; if I goofed up again, honey, I better man up, fess up, and shut up. But, in my defense, my initial piece gave one or two reasons why I’m in solidarity with the majority of Christians in the world today, and across church history, who take the traditional line on Adam. Let me add a few more reasons.

Consider these words from John Schneider: “[In] high school biology we learned that modern humans did not appear instantly, but evolved over time, that we came from a common ancestor with chimps, not from dust, and that the current human population could not have come from a single original pair—observable genetic diversity makes that impossible.” Several of the other contributions share this sentiment; they know that Adam and Eve are not historical because the scientists say so. The confidence in the scientific claims is unquestioned. But is it warranted? No one would put it so baldly, but it is as if the scientific consensus is more or less inerrant (while, as we keep being told, Scripture is not). Part of what’s going on, I think, is that people confuse the concepts of general revelation and science. Mistaken identity; they’re related yet distinct. Scientists investigate God’s general revelation using their fallible assumptions, categories, and conceptual tools. Scientific conclusions are not the thing itself; they are not identical to general revelation, which, if you like, is infallible. Our best scientific formulations gain imperfect access to general revelation. There is a “gap” between the two concepts, and that gap makes all the difference.

Let’s begin with the implications for how we understand the nature of sin. Karl Giberson writes: “Evolution has programmed men with unhealthy attitudes toward women and, when not checked, these attitudes express themselves in tragic ways.” That’s the point. Once a historical fall drops out of the picture, we have to conclude that evolution has “programmed” humanity to sin. Or, perhaps, we can dial it back by saying that we are programmed by evolution to have sinful predispositions. Neither option should thrill us—for if we have sinful predispositions, then we are not holy; if we’re not holy, then by definition we are sinful. Theological questions now come banging at the door.

If my sinful condition is rooted in (evolutionary) biology, what are the implications for the doctrine of sanctification? Is regeneration or progressive sanctification even possible apart from reversing or reengineering my biological programming? The cure should match the disease. In response, someone might say: while our sinful condition is a result of evolution, we are not responsible for it. We are only responsible for our willful sinful choices. We’re back, ironically, to the moralism of Pelagius: “we do neither good nor evil without the exercise of our will and always have the freedom to do one of the two, being always able to do either.”

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