On October 28, Dr. Peter Enns, one time professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, was among the four speakers at a conference hosted by the Metro New York Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America. The theme of the conference was the historicity of Adam. On his November 3 blog, Dr. Enns shared his comments about the conference.

Enns began by stating clearly that if one does not accept evolution, then there is really no problem accepting the historicity of Adam:

Evolution can either be accepted (in some form) or wholly rejected. If rejected, one has no problem with an historical Adam as first man, but then one has to find ways to neutralize the scientific data, which is attempted in various (but unconvincing) ways. (Google Al Mohler, Ken Ham, and Hugh Ross.)

However, what can those who claim to hold to the Bible but believe in evolution do with Adam? This was the subject of Enns’ talk. He described the issue in this way:

If one accepts evolution, the first thing to note is that one has left the biblical worldview. I think this is an obvious point, but needs to be stated clearly. As soon as evolution is accepted, the invariably result is some clear movement away from what the Bible says about Adam.

Enns made it clear he believed most of his listeners in Metro New York Presbytery did accept evolution, stating:

This group of pastors was already (largely) aware that evolution cannot be dismissed, and so we proceeded to other things.

That being the case, he went on to say that if one wants to retain Adam, he can posit one of two things:

1. “Adam” was a hominid chosen by God somewhere along the line to be the “first man”;

2. “Adam” was a group of hominids (a view that accounts best for the genomic data that the current human population stems from a few thousand ancestors, definitely not two ancestors).

Enns contends that if one takes either option, then the biblical view of Adam has to be redefined:

The “Adam” that results from these ad hoc maneuvers is not the Adam that the biblical authors were talking about (a chosen first pair or group of hominids). No biblical teaching is really protected by inventing “Adam” in this way.

Consequently, he proposed several options to the presbyters of Metro New York Presbytery: (1) Adam as a literary figure, (2) Adam as myth, or (3) seeing Adam as the story of Israel and not as the first human.

He concluded his blog post with a tease for his next article on the subject in which he will explain ‘which option(s) is(are) best depends on one thing: accounting well for the relevant exegetical and historical factors.’ Of course, The Aquila Report will continue to cover this topic.

You can read a critical review of the conference here. Dr. Enns’ entire blog comments are here.