Enns - The evolution of Adam what the Bible does and doesnt say about human origins

Why This Book?

Evolutionary theory has been around for generations, but in recent years two factors are bringing the issue back into the public eye. The first is the relentless, articulate, and popular attacks on Christianity by the New Atheists. Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and others have aggressively promoted evolution and argued that evolution has destroyed the possibility of religious faith, especially a faith like Christianity, whose sacred writings contain the story of Adam, the first man created out of dust several thousand years ago. The second factor has been well-publicized advances in our understanding of evolution, particularly genetics. The Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, has shown beyond any reasonable scientific doubt that humans and primates share common ancestry.

Evolution has crept back into the popular consciousness and has become a pressing issue for many Christians because evolution is typically understood to challenge, if not simply undermine, the story of origins presented in the Bible. Here my goal is not to arrive at final solutions, and it is certainly not to cover the many vital, complex, interwoven issues that evolution has brought to the theological table.

My goal is to focus solely on how the Bible fits into all of this. The biblical authors tell a very different story of human origins than does science. For many Christians, the question that quickly surfaces is how to accept evolution and also value Scripture as Gods Word. In other words, If evolution is true, what do I do with my Bible? Even limiting the focus this way is far more than any one book can adequately handle. My intention here is somewhat modest. I hope to clear away some misunderstandings and suggest different ways of thinking through some perennial problems in order to put interested readers on a constructive path and thus hopefully encourage further substantive discussion.

Let me begin by explaining whom I see as my primary audience. I make two assumptions about my readers. The first is that they consider themselves Christian, of whatever tradition or stripe, and so respect Scripture and recognize that what it says must be accounted for somehow. A significant subset of this group is an evangelical readership, particularly in an American context. Evangelical readers generally tend to live more in the tensions between their deep, instinctual commitment to Scripture and the challenges to that commitment that arise in life in the modern world. Often those challenges come from the natural sciences. This type of burden does not seem to be as pressing in either mainline forms of Christianity or in fundamentalism, and in saying so I mean no slight to either. I am simply addressing here the audience that will likely connect more immediately to the types of arguments laid out in this book and the need for engagement that I presume about my readers. I also want to suggest that the matter of evolution, particularly as it touches notions of biblical authority and a historical Adam (the heart of the evolution challenge), seems to meat least in my experiencemore particularly an American evangelical problem than a British evangelical problem. I therefore expect that not all self-identified evangelicals will recognize their own frame of mind in this book (although I still hope something might be gained from reading it).

Second, these same people are convinced, for whatever reason, that evolution must be taken seriously. They may not all agree on how specifically life has evolved, but they accept that evolution is the proper word to describe the process. My aim, therefore, is not to convince people that the Bible is important, nor is it to make people see that evolution is true. My aim is to speak to those who feel that a synthesis between a biblically conversant Christian faith and evolution is a pressing concern. And my purpose here is certainly not to undermine the faith of those who see things differently.

I also wish to statehowever brieflymy own precommitments as I engage this topic. My Christian faith is summed up in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, which are expressions of broad Christian orthodoxy. More specifically to the points that will occupy us below, I believe in the universal and humanly unalterable grip of both death and sin, and the work of the Savior, by the deep love and mercy of the Father, in delivering humanity from them. I also try to follow the teachings of Scripture as a whole and Jesus in particular in my life as a follower of Christas a husband, father, churchgoer, scholar, and human being.