Adam and Eve were Neolithic Farmers that God Chose?

Denis Alexander says that God called these two folks "into fellowship with himself so that they might know him as a personal God." This is what he writes in his book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, published in 2008.

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, brings up Alexander's teaching, as well as similar viewpoints from the BioLogos Forum, in his speech “Why Does the Universe Look So Old?” given on June 19 at the Ligonier Ministries 2010 National Conference. Mohler shows that "theological disaster ensues when the book of nature (general revelation) is used to trump God’s special revelation, when science is placed over Scripture as authoritative and compelling. That is the very heart of this discussion."

Below are more of Dr. Mohler's comments.

Selections from Why Does the Universe Look So Old? by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Ph.D

(These excerpts by Marko are from the article published by Institute of Creation Science Acts & Facts October 2010, also available at http://www.icr.org/article/why-does-universe-look-so-old/).


"Reconstruction" of Neolithic farmers at work

A couple of Neolithic farmers? Is that in any way a possible, legitimate exegetical reading of Genesis? More disturbing is not the contents of the book, but the endorsement from J. I. Packer on the front cover, who says, “Surely the best informed, clearest, and most judicious treatment of the question and title that you can find anywhere today.”

Peter Enns, a fellow at the BioLogos Forum, wrote a series of articles on “Paul’s Adam,” in which he states, “For Paul, Adam and Eve were the parents of the human race. This is possible but not satisfying for those familiar with either the scientific or archeological data.” He suggests that we must abandon Paul’s Adam; Paul, as far as he refers to Adam, was limited by his dependence on primitive understandings.

Karl Giberson, a professor at Eastern Nazarene University and Vice President of BioLogos, says, “Clearly the historicity of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace are hard to reconcile with natural history.” He continues:

One could believe, for example, that at some point in evolutionary history God “chose” two people from a group of evolving humans, gave them his image, and put them in Eden, which they promptly corrupted by sinning. But this solution is unsatisfactory, artificial, and certainly not what the writer of Genesis intended.

Was it true that, as Paul argues, when sin came, death also came?

Paul makes clear that, even though God has revealed Himself in nature—so that no one is with excuse—given the cloudiness of our vision and the corruption of our sight, we can no longer see what is clearly there. The heavens are telling the glory of God, but human sinfulness refuses to see what is plainly evident.

Theological disaster ensues when the book of nature (general revelation) is used to trump God’s special revelation, when science is placed over Scripture as authoritative and compelling. And that is the very heart of this discussion. While some would argue that the Scriptures are not in danger, the current conversation on this subject is leading down a path that will do irrevocable harm to our evangelical affirmation of the accuracy and authority of God’s Word.

Dr. Giberson is not someone attempting to defend the book of Genesis; his goal is to defend the theory of evolution.

Kenton Sparks, for example, writing for BioLogos, suggests that any rendering of the Bible as inerrant makes the acceptance of theistic evolution impossible.

Peter Enns, [recently terminated by Westminster Theological Seminary, Marko] one of the most frequent contributors to BioLogos, suggests that we have to come to the understanding that, when it comes to many of the scientific and historical claims, the writers of Scriptures were plainly wrong.

Are we going to take our cosmology or the redemptive historical understanding of Scripture and submit these to interrogation by what we are told are the assured results of modern science? Doing so will certainly lead to disaster, to a head-on collision that should compel Christians to understand just what is at stake theologically and to be prepared to give biblically-sound answers.

(For more on the very low view of God's Word found in Alexander's book, also see Paul Taylor's review at Answers in Genesis)