Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/trinitybcnh/sermons/88943/doctrine-of-creation/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] All righty, everybody. It is nine o'clock, so let's jump in to our class. Let's start with a word of prayer. Father God, thank you for this time that we have to consider your word and to think deeply and hopefully learn more about you.

[0:23] I ask that you would bless this time, allow us to glorify you with our thoughts, and I ask that you give me some clarity of speech as we discuss this topic.

[0:34] In Jesus' name, amen. All right. Well, we're going to continue our class on the doctrine of creation by considering human origins, which, you know, no sweat, right?

[0:54] But human origins actually, you know, it's a controversial subject for a reason. And when you think about the controversy surrounding like evolution and Christianity, the earlier initial sort of fundamentalist modernist controversy in the early 20th century was really revolving around the reliability of Scripture.

[1:17] And evolution was merely sort of a case study on the side. But if we think about our modern day, really the flashpoint is over anthropology. What does it mean to be human?

[1:30] And so as we'll discuss today, anthropology touches on many primary doctrines. And so for that reason, we must tread carefully as we consider it.

[1:44] With that, let's jump into our text. We're going to be reading Genesis 2, verses 4 through 25, which I take in the traditional way to be an expansion of day 6 from chapter 1.

[1:59] Does anybody have that open and is willing to read that for the rest of the class? That's Genesis 2, 4 through 25. All right, go for it.

[2:12] These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, and the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up.

[2:24] For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

[2:37] And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to sight, and good for food.

[2:50] The tree of life is in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon.

[3:02] It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havala, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Delam and Onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gimon.

[3:13] It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Eucrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

[3:26] And the Lord God planted the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

[3:36] Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God named every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

[3:49] And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not a found helper fit for him.

[4:01] So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man while he slept to one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

[4:13] Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called a woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

[4:26] And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. All right. What a beautiful start to the human story. Of course, it doesn't continue that way, as we all know.

[4:40] But I believe we're meant to read this account with a certain sense of nostalgia or longing. You know, this is where we want to be.

[4:52] You know, in this state of bliss. We must be careful to be attentive and do our best to be a good audience, though, here. And part of the effort should be in considering the illocution, if you guys remember our earlier discussion, or the intended meaning of the text.

[5:11] What are we meant to see here? Some faithful Christians would say that what we see is what you get. That what we're dealing with here is straight journalistic history, a sort of eyewitness account.

[5:24] Is that the best way for us to receive the text? It could be. But I think we have some reasons to think otherwise. For one, we have a long history of major church figures pointing out that what Moses is doing here is communicating unique narrative events in exalted prose or heightened everyday speech.

[5:50] You know, speech meant for the common people. Eusebius, the great church historian, says of Genesis, They did not think it necessary to make known accurately to the multitude nor teach the common people the causes of the nature of existing things except only so far as it was necessary for them to know that the universe has not been self-created, has not been produced causelessly and by chance from an irrational impulse, but is led on by the divine reason as its guide and governed by a powerful, ineffable wisdom.

[6:21] Or consider Augustine. But the scriptural style comes down to the level of the little ones and adjusts itself to their capacity by putting before them each single kind of creature one by one and then looking back at the eternal formula of each kind in the Word of God.

[6:41] Thomas Aquinas agrees, saying, But Moses describes what is obvious to sense out of condescension to an uneducated populace. That's us. Also, John Calvin says, Moses wrote in a popular style, things without instruction, all ordinary persons, a dude with common sense, are able to understand.

[7:02] I like it best said by someone, C.S. Lewis, who was making the same observation. He liked to quote this guy. This is a proto-reformer named John Collette, relatively unknown nowadays.

[7:17] But he said, Moses arranged his details in such a way as to give people a clearer notion, and he does so after the manner of a popular poet, in order that he may the more adapt himself to the spirit of simple rusticity.

[7:33] Well, what does this all mean? Well, I think what it means is that we're not dealing with a text that you need a PhD to understand the point. Or at least you didn't need one at the time of the original audience.

[7:46] We, of course, greatly benefit from our modern scholars. They help us to put ourselves in the seat of the original audience. They give us things like translations and commentaries.

[7:57] And some of the ways that we're helped in receiving the text with its correct intention is learning about things like pictorial description, anachronisms, and symbolic language, which would have been obvious to the original audience.

[8:10] These are figures of speech. So, do we have these kinds of things in this text that we've read today? Well, I think so. For example, what does it mean that man was created from the dust of the ground?

[8:23] Are we meant to understand this as an example of sculpting from actual mud in the story, like in the story of Prometheus, how he created humans? Anybody familiar with the myth of Prometheus?

[8:35] He was tasked with the gods. This is Greek mythology. He was tasked with the gods with creating helpers, like workers, and he forms men out of mud and gives them...

[8:46] In Greek mythology, Prometheus is actually the one who makes humanity. And then he gives them fire. We all remember this part. He gives them fire against the will of Zeus, and then he's put on a rock and his liver is eaten.

[9:00] You know, that's kind of unnecessary. But anyways, are we looking at the creation story in that way, where out of the mud, out of the dust, God is creating humanity? Or could this be an example of like pictorial description, wherein dust is a reference to material reality and earthly nature itself?

[9:21] Later in Genesis 3, we learn that Adam is called... God says, Adam is dust, and to dust he will return. Language like this gives us reason to not take the dust too literally, right?

[9:35] As Adam was not literally dust at the time God was saying that he is dust. You see the point there? We are also exposed to anachronisms.

[9:46] Anachronisms are elements in the text that are found earlier than they actually would appear in his history. So for instance, God is referred to in this passage as the Lord, as Yahweh.

[9:58] But he doesn't reveal himself in that way. He doesn't reveal that name until the time of Moses, right? So, these are elements of the text where we read it and we think, okay, something, it's not so much straight journalistic history.

[10:15] I just say there's like all kinds of other questions that the text presents that we're not given an answer to. where it's obvious that we're being shown the truth here, not necessarily being told it completely, right?

[10:28] So for instance, what is the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? And how do they work? Why are they there? Why is Adam not called by a proper name into like the middle of the narrative?

[10:42] How long did it take Adam to name all the animals? These, among other questions, are not answered explicitly in the text. Ultimately, you know, we should remember that the Bible was written to ordinary people like us with language fitting for that purpose, but is meant to convey divine truth which none of us are able to exhaust with even a lifetime of study.

[11:05] Okay? I mean, there's other elements of the text too. So for instance, when Adam initially sees Eve, right, we have this wonderful passage where he says, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

[11:21] She should be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now probably many of you have heard that in the Hebrew, Adam is kind of making a pun. Right?

[11:31] He's saying, you should be called Isha because you came out of Ish. Right? So he's making, he's using, he's playing with language there, but he's playing with language in Hebrew and I don't think the text requires us to believe that the original language spoken by man was Hebrew.

[11:50] Does that make sense? I think it's capturing the nature of what Adam's communication was. So, after all that, let's just give up, right?

[12:03] No. No, the whole point of my discussion here is to try to explain why our attempts to read the text with an eye towards scientific detail is often going to be frustrated.

[12:16] But, when we look at it with the eye of the regular reader, the magnificent truth of God's work is plainly revealed. So, let's recount some of the non-negotiable truths that are communicated by this passage as it refers to human origins.

[12:35] So, I'm going to give you three non-negotiables. Alright, we're going to be talking about, we're going to be referencing these as we go along. So, number one is that God made humans.

[12:46] God made us. As obvious as this sounds, it has to be emphasized because we cannot read this account without ascribing the origins of humans to God.

[12:59] While it's true that God can act through many secondary means, in other words, through His providence, I don't think we can approach this event and reinterpret the special activity of God that way.

[13:12] Okay? We can't really reinterpret the special activity of God away. We need to affirm our common sense intuition that human beings are significantly different than other beings and these differences are not adequately explained by secondary means alone.

[13:31] That there is indeed a gulf or gap between what we would expect to occur through natural means and the results we have observed here, which is, in this case, us, humans.

[13:43] There's something special, unique, or extraordinary in God's relationship to humans as opposed to the other animals. Right?

[13:54] I don't want to spend too much time on this point because, one, I think it's pretty self-evident if we think about it, that humans are different than other animals, and, two, I don't want to step on Pastor Nick's toes because next week we're discussing the image of God.

[14:07] So, I'll leave that to him. If we deny this understanding of humans, that God made us, then we're going to inevitably end up blurring the real distinctions between humans and other created beings.

[14:23] Okay? I think you see this happening, it's very obvious when you see this happening, when there's a blurred line between humans and other animals. I think the text today is reinforcing something that God made us different.

[14:37] God made us special. Okay? So that's non-negotiable number one. Non-negotiable number two is the historical existence of Adam and Eve and the fall.

[14:53] Okay? So work with me here. So, I think we're brought to this point through careful reading of the passage that Adam and Eve are historical personages.

[15:04] Figures that are included in genealogies are said to move and act as individuals and have affected humanity in ways that exist today. There are many passages of Scripture that seem to depend on this truth.

[15:18] Not only do we have the passage we considered earlier, right, where Adam and Eve, Adam is walking around saying things, right, but we have the continuing narrative of Adam and his family all the way through Genesis 5, right, with the Cain and Abel narratives, etc.

[15:32] And this narrative, the continuing narrative through Genesis 5, connects through genealogies to all the subsequent accounts of undoubtedly historical people like Abraham.

[15:44] So, I think it would be a bad reading of the text to wave off what the account, I think, is clearly intending to communicate, which is that Adam and Eve were actual people.

[15:58] But more importantly, the historical existence of Adam and Eve, supports the historical event of the fall. And this is a first-ranked primary doctrine, right?

[16:09] I told you that as we go through human origins, we're going to be hitting up, we're going to be bumping up into primary doctrines. This is one of those. The fall is a first-ranked primary doctrine.

[16:21] Do I say this because I'm just a downer on human nature? No, though maybe I am. But, no, it's crucial we affirm this because the Bible affirms it.

[16:33] Okay? Many who would seek to minimize the historical import of the Adam and Eve narrative will point out that some of the references to Adam in the New Testament could be explained by referring to a literary character.

[16:48] Right? So, for instance, when Christ is arguing for the inviability of marriage in Matthew 19, he points to this narrative saying, the narrative we just read, he points to the narrative saying, he answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two should become one flesh.

[17:11] So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. Everybody, we're all familiar with that passage, very famous. Now, the straightforward understanding, I think the straightforward way to understand this text is to affirm that Jesus takes Adam and Eve to be real people, and that these real people set the pattern for ideal marriage, and I think this is the way I would take it.

[17:37] However, some could say that Jesus is merely referring to the story of Adam and Eve as an authoritative teaching on marriage, while not really commenting on their historicity at all.

[17:51] In this view, it would be sort of like saying that since Gandalf wisely refused the ring of power out of his knowledge of the corrupting nature of power, we should also refuse to take on power without serious trepidation and humility.

[18:06] You see how that could work? It's like you're talking, it's an application from a work of influential literature. Right?

[18:16] This is how some try to argue that the references to Adam in the New Testament aren't actually meant to convey that he's a real person, are just meant to refer to that original story, which is in some sense authoritative.

[18:31] Right? But, maybe this may apply to some, this may be a way to understand some of the passages in the New Testament, but I think it's just simply not sufficient for some of the most pivotal passages in Scripture.

[18:50] Take, for example, the passage in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul is making this crucial argument. But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

[19:04] For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

[19:16] But each in his own order. Christ the first fruits, then it is coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and every power.

[19:29] And then, continuing a few verses later, Paul says, so it is with the resurrection with the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor.

[19:42] It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, then there is also a spiritual body.

[19:55] Thus it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual.

[20:07] The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As with the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

[20:19] Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. You guys see the parallelism here?

[20:31] I hope you can appreciate the central importance here of the historical Adam. This figure has affected the state of the world right now.

[20:43] Right? In reality, it can't just be a literary device. Right? I wouldn't say, I have to pay taxes now because Gandalf refused the ring of power.

[20:56] It's like, oh, nope, category mistake. Gandalf in the story doesn't affect my life here in reality. Does that make sense? So, here we're seeing a parallel between Adam, the real person, whose sin and fall in nature we all inherit, and then our need for the new Adam, in Christ.

[21:19] That's the parallel that's being driven in the passage. So, like I said, this real fall that Adam perpetrates has led to a real atonement, which is the heart of the gospel.

[21:33] Right? This is not something we can reject without doing serious damage to the central claims of Christianity. So, that's not negotiable number two.

[21:45] That there was a historical figure, Adam and Eve, figures, Adam and Eve, and that there was a real historical fall. Okay? Non-negotiable number three.

[21:57] Adam and Eve are our progenitors. Progenitors. So, I believe, finally, I believe that we must affirm that Adam and Eve are at the headwaters of humanity.

[22:09] That they are the progenitors of all human beings, and that we are all connected in the fact that we are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. Eve. This seems to be the implication of the naming of Eve in Genesis 3, where Adam names her as the mother of all living.

[22:25] Right? I think further, this seems to be implied in passages such as Romans 5, where Paul says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sin, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

[22:47] Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass.

[22:58] For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin.

[23:11] For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift of following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

[23:34] You guys start seeing in the passage already that second non-negotiable, this feeling that there's a real historical Adam, there was a real fall. Now, therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.

[23:54] For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. You guys see there, so in some sense, all humans are in Adam, are represented and led by him.

[24:14] This unifies all humanity in solidarity in sin, and also unites all of us in our need for the new Adam. Without this peace, we could be left scratching our heads over whether Native Americans need salvation, or whether Aboriginals in Australia need salvation, right?

[24:30] These sort of distinct people groups that are separated by time and place. Not to mention, if we deny this, we would damage our conception of the image of God and things like universal human rights.

[24:47] If we're not all one family, if we're all not connected somehow in Adam, then there are different kinds of humans.

[24:58] Different human, you know, different, does that make sense? Am I making sense here? Different kinds of humans. So this is, I think, a crucial part of the narrative as we receive it today, right?

[25:10] So, going over our three non-negotiable, God made us. There are historical personages, Adam and Eve, and there was a real fall, and three, this Adam and Eve were the progenitors of all that follow, okay, in some sense.

[25:28] So, we all agree. Good. Let's break. Now, so, into this place of agreement, we must thrust... I have a question.

[25:38] Oh, yeah, go ahead, Richard. So, if we invert that third point, so my question is, is it invertible? Can we say we are the literal descendants of Adam?

[25:51] We'll get into that in a little bit. I think... Oh, so it's not converted. I think there has to be a sense in which we are all in Adam, right?

[26:02] Now, there is, I think, a little bit of wiggle room into the genealogical and or genetic descendants piece. I think it'll make more sense in a little bit.

[26:14] Okay. Yeah. Let's see. Okay, so we have to actually now deal with sort of the confounding variable, which is what we make of the current evolutionary story of human origins as we receive it.

[26:32] Right? I think we're all probably mildly familiar with this story. We're in, through a long, unguided process of mutation and natural selection, humans evolved through a number of intermediate steps from some common ancestor of the primates.

[26:50] And this is based in part on the fossil evidence of hominids and hominin groups. Further, this changing population of pre-humans never could have reached a population of less than a thousand individuals based on current human genetic diversity.

[27:08] These two assertions from the sciences that humans developed from prior animal life in some way and that there was a large starting population of original humans are the ones that we actually need to contend with in our thinking about human origins today.

[27:22] Of course, just like any assertion made from any quarter, we must think carefully about the actual evidence supporting the story and not accept the story itself as the facts.

[27:39] Okay? This story, this evolutionary story that we have received, is a certain kind of inference made from the evidence. And it is our duty as thinking individuals to investigate the evidence and test the strength of these inferences.

[27:56] Does that make sense? I think a lot of times scientists have a bad habit of presenting a story, their inference from the data that we have, presenting that story as if it is the evidence that we have.

[28:15] Right? But that's not actually true. It's actually we're making conclusions based on the evidence that we see, and one of those conclusions could be strung together in this kind of story.

[28:27] The story is not the facts. So, what are we to make of these assertions? I think for one, the argument for the sequence and timing of the evolution of humans based on fossil evidence, in my opinion, is spectacularly opaque.

[28:50] It changes in radical ways from the addition of new data, which should indicate us that we don't need to take these pronouncements with a firm hand. Okay? Anybody who has spent a lot of time looking at the paleontological, anthropological data of fossil transition of pre-humans into humans will know that if you look at the history of it, the branches are like swapping all over the place, and even currently, there are probably five different competing arguments over where the branches are.

[29:23] This guy's like, oh, this guy is over here, and this other one's like, oh, this guy's over here, and this guy's like, I don't think these guys exist. I think these guys are over here. It's like, it is very confusing. Okay? And as a scientist who works in other fields, I sometimes am like, oh, man, it's pretty shaky stuff.

[29:45] You know, no offense to any paleontologists here, but on the other hand, we do have to acknowledge the existence of what we are calling, we can call hominins.

[29:56] Hominins, it used to be hominids, but now hominids means a more broad thing. Hominids includes the common ancestor of humans and like the great apes.

[30:08] Hominins with an N includes just the human lineage, whatever. Anyways, the hominins, these extinct human-like skeletons that we find in the ground, right?

[30:22] They don't have exactly the same anatomical features as modern humans, but they are significantly different from the great apes. So we have to acknowledge, like, these skeletons exist.

[30:35] So, like, what are they, what do they do? You know, you've probably gone to a natural history museum and seen, like, recreations of Neanderthal dudes. And I'm like, I always thought I kind of looked like a Neanderthal, but that's, maybe that factors into our interpretations.

[30:54] Yeah? I've been reading recently that there's five different types of humans. Yeah. They claim there's five different types of humans.

[31:05] Yeah, you have to be... We'll deal with that. Yeah, I mean, for one, I think we should, we have to be careful, because in, depending on what branch of the sciences you're discussing, the word human can mean totally different things.

[31:19] Okay? So, for instance, when we're talking about paleontology, they will separate modern humans, that's us, from what they would call other humans, which are hominins.

[31:33] Another name for hominins. So, sometimes you'll hear statements like, well, humans were once, you know, they did blah, blah, blah, or their heads were this shaped, or whatever, and you have to be like, okay, they're using the word human in a different way than we naturally use the word human, right?

[31:49] So, just to be careful. And, yeah, I mean, it all depends on how you splice or split up the skeletons, ultimately. You know? At some point, you have to look at a skeleton in the ground and say, this is different enough from the humans that are living here now, that this is a different thing.

[32:08] And that's a really, it's a hard cutoff sometimes. Yeah? Could some of the differences be explained away by nutritional issues? Honestly, I have this suspicion myself that maybe there's just, now this is, you know, this is just one man's opinion while looking at the sidelines, but it seems to me that there's quite a lot of variation among existing human beings.

[32:36] You know, they're like really short humans and like really tall ones and ones that have big heads and ones that have small heads. I'm one of the bigger head ones. And, you know, some people have big prominent foreheads.

[32:49] Other of us, you know, don't. You know, some of us have big noses. So, I don't know. Sometimes, sometimes I look at somebody who just pronounced me and they're like, well, this human is way too short to be an actual human.

[33:03] I'm like, oh, I don't know. Maybe he's just a short dude, you know? And, yeah, maybe nutrition had a, and we do know over time, in our known historical record, humans have been getting taller.

[33:15] Yeah. Okay? So, take that, yeah, yeah. More than Africa. Exactly, yeah. And like the average height, I think, in the medieval period was something like five foot six or something.

[33:29] Is it that, is it that the average height? I mean, it's less, it's less than modern times. I know, I'm kind of tall, so I sometimes don't keep track of what the average height is. What's the average height, people? 5'10".

[33:40] What's that? 5'10". 5'10". 5'10". Yeah, so I think it was like something like 5'5", 5'6". In the medieval period. So, you just rewind the tape, it could be getting shorter and shorter. I don't know.

[33:50] Anyways, I think a lot of those things are possible. That's kind of my feeling as well. Matt. One of the big things 50, 70 years ago was brain case size.

[34:06] Yeah. Mm-hmm. And the leakies and others made a big deal about, oh, this is 50 centimeters. Yeah. Big, cubic centimeters, bigger or smaller.

[34:17] Yeah. And current human population ranges, you know, individuals. Yeah. From 700 cc's to 2,200 cc's. Yeah, yeah.

[34:27] More than a factor of three. Yeah. With absolutely no correlation of intelligence. At all, yeah. And there are people who have what is called microcephaly.

[34:38] This is technically a developmental disorder where they can have brain cases that are as small as less than 500. And other than physical features, they are completely normal.

[34:52] So, I mean, no. Some cases of microcephaly actually come with severe developmental disabilities, for sure. But there are people who have, are way below the normal scale and are seemingly normal.

[35:08] So anyways, this is the kind of common sense we need to be bringing to some of this information, some of this data. Okay? On the human genetics side of the, so that's like pre, like development from pre-existing organisms.

[35:28] On the human genetics side, we have to be careful about understanding our initial conditions for a lot of these calculations and the assumptions that we use to produce them. Are we counting so-called pre-humans in the calculation?

[35:43] Where are the cutoffs in biological time that we're cutting off, where we are deciding, where this is start time and this is how long we need to explain the genetic diversity? How confident are we in mutation rates and whether there are any confounding variables?

[35:58] It's pretty complicated. I mean, these questions, among others, will greatly affect your output. Right? So possibly a good way to help parse some of this information is with the evidence of archaeology, which can help us date sort of the first appearance of human culture in the archaeological record.

[36:15] But even then, you know, anybody who studied archaeology knows that there's a lot of loss of artifacts over time. So all this to say, I think there is definitely wiggle room here in the data as someone who isn't necessarily an expert in definitely the paleontology side.

[36:36] I come at that as a lay person, a lay person with scientific training, I guess. The human genetic side, I am more familiar with and then it really depends on how you set up the initial conditions, honestly.

[36:51] What hypothesis of a starting pool are you getting? And stuff like mutation rate, which we can't measure over time.

[37:02] So anyways, in light of this, instead of me coming up here and claiming to provide the one true way of harmonizing the information from the sciences that we have and God's special revelation that we just read, I think a better way is for us to consider different scenarios by which we can hold on to the non-negotiables from the narrative and interact with the current state of the scientific evidence.

[37:30] Okay? So here are a few that are often presented different scenarios. So scenario one is young earth creationism. Okay? Most of us are probably familiar with this view.

[37:43] This is when we see Adam and Eve as created de novo, meaning from nothing, from dust, in a reading of the Genesis 2 account where we see it as an eyewitness journalistic history.

[37:55] In this view, we would definitely satisfy our non-negotiables, theologically, but we'd also have to reject in many ways the current scientific evidence as we receive it, especially as it concerns the timing.

[38:09] The hominin fossils may be descendants of Adam and Eve in this view, but they are definitely not ancient. Right? Adam and Eve are responsible for all the genetic diversity we observe, but the apparent mutation rate must be wrong because there's not enough time.

[38:26] Ultimately, I think this scenario will rely heavily on a reading of Genesis that requires a young earth and this new non-negotiable, right, is doing a lot of work in reinterpreting data.

[38:40] Right? And I think ultimately its strength will depend on whether you find arguments for a young earth compelling and or required by Scripture. Okay.

[38:51] That's scenario one. Scenario two is what I'm calling de novo or old earth creationism. Right? This second view is an old earth creationist view where Adam and Eve are still de novo creations, but they're placed at the headwaters of the modern human lineage some 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.

[39:14] Okay? And again, I'm using the term modern humans in the way that paleontologists anthropologists use it, which is talking about what we would consider normal anatomical features of today.

[39:27] Right? So that, so Adam and Eve were the first modern humans. This would allow for their explanation as the sole progenitors of all modern humans and explain the genetic evidence with some modifications.

[39:43] Right? We would have to fiddle, I think, with the timing a little bit. But it does reject a connection between humans and prior hominins where Neanderthals and other hominins are considered non-human animals that God created.

[39:59] Okay? This requires us to explain what differentiates Neanderthals and humans and why humans have Neanderthal DNA in their genome.

[40:10] Right? If this is an interesting scenario for you, this is, I think, well argued by Fazali Rana and Hugh Ross, if you guys are familiar.

[40:21] They're from the ministry Reasons to Believe. So if you're interested, you can look up their website or a book called Who Was Adam? It's a really great book if you want to get their comprehensive view of this scenario.

[40:35] I just mentioned them because like they have a whole book on this one scenario. Okay. Scenario three, this is sort of a similar view to the earlier view, the de novo old earth creationist view, but I call this refurbished hominin.

[40:53] Okay? So this view would consider Adam and Eve to be the first modern humans, but they were in some sense related to pre-existing hominins. In this view, God acts, God's act of creation would be refurbishing a member of those hominins and then they'd be, and then the hominins being referred to poetically as the dust of the earth.

[41:16] With the rest of the scenario shared between with the earlier de novo creation one. Just that there's now a connection, some sort of biological connection between Adam and Eve and prior hominins.

[41:28] The hominins are refurbished by God into Adam and Eve, into modern humans, and then the story continues from there. Augustine seemed to be open in some sense to this view.

[41:41] He asked, but in what manner did God make him from the mud of the earth? Was it straight away as an adult, that is, as a young man in the prime of life? Or was it as he forms human beings from then until now in their mother's wombs?

[41:56] So there's sort of a sense in which there could be a sense in which Adam was born in some way, right? This view would be able to accept the proposed common ancestry of hominins and humans while affirming that modern genetics, the modern genetic idea of genetic diversity with, again, some modifications.

[42:19] Other forms of this view would be like those of William Lane Craig. He would push Adam and Eve even past behind modern humans into the distant past as a refurbished member of a hominin that is called Homo Heidelbergensis around 750,000 to 500,000 years ago.

[42:39] This is the last supposed common ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans. And so this view would have the benefit of making those an explanation separating Neanderthals and humans kind of moot.

[42:52] They're both humans. They just kind of look a little different. And it also would require no modifications of the human genetic data. Scenario four is taking us a little bit farther afield.

[43:09] This view I'm calling Adam and Eve as head of a tribe. Okay? This view trades on the idea of a continuous population of modern humans as proposed by human genetics but sees the refurbishment of Adam and Eve from pre-existing hominins as involving a whole tribe of humans.

[43:29] Okay? When we think about this I think it's important to quote from C. John Collins someone I really like to re-center us on the non-negotiables here. Okay? He says if someone should decide that there were in fact more human beings than just Adam and Eve at the beginning of mankind then in order to maintain good sense he should envision these humans as a single tribe.

[43:54] Adam would then be the chieftain of this tribe preferably produced before the others and Eve would be his wife. This falls from the notion of solidarity in a representative.

[44:06] Right? Some may call this a form of polygenesis but this is quite distinct from the more conventional and unacceptable kind. Okay? That's his suggestion.

[44:17] If we're gonna say if we must say that there was a starting population of humans then Adam and Eve would be the heads like the king and queen of this population and sort of their representative.

[44:33] Okay? So he later C. John Collins later comments in such a scenario he says nevertheless a king and queen under the arrangement Kidner envisions are legitimately the father and mother of their people.

[44:46] Right? In the ancient sense. In the ancient world the king and queen were the father and mother of the nation. Right? And so if you can imagine a small tribe of humans with Adam and Eve as their king and queen this can kind of explain how all human beings even though possibly not every single human being is a direct genetic descendant from Adam and Eve proper how they're all descendant they're all in Adam because all human beings whether we're from some other members of that population are all under the headship of Adam as their federal head.

[45:25] Right? So in that sense Adam and Eve are the progenitors of all humans because they are the federal legal representatives of all humans and all humans are in the same tribe as them.

[45:36] Does that make sense? Sure. That's kind of the idea. So progenitors but not ancestors. Exactly. What's the difference? That would be the distinguishing here. Yeah. So I think here it would be trading on the the commonality between Adam and Eve and that single tribe you can think of that single tribe as like a family Adam and Eve being the head of that family and you are not necessarily related to Adam and Eve proper genetically but you are genealogically related to Adam and Eve because they are in charge of your whole family and the rest of you.

[46:08] They're the patriarch and matriarch of the family. So I'm not familiar. Yeah. I'm not really dealing with the definition of the word progenitor. Yeah.

[46:19] It has no biological implications. No I think it does. I think it does. I think that's the implication of the text but I'm saying in this view we would be kind of fiddling we'd be fiddling with that third non-negotiable and saying well Adam and Eve can be our sort of legal and federal progenitor while not being our biological progenitor but we're maintaining the sense that we're all in Adam which is what the progenitor-ness is trying to protect right?

[46:47] We're all in Adam and all human beings are justly considered represented by Adam in the fall. Right?

[46:59] Peter. Doesn't Noah make all this move? Yeah. So again that would depend on whether you take the the Noah story to be a local flood killing all humans or just regional humans or versus all humans.

[47:13] Right? So that also goes into it. Some of these so for instance the de novo old earth creationist view from reasons to believe they factor in the flood into their calculations and stuff so that actually is relevant but depending on the model depending on the scenario a global flood or a local flood doesn't really come into it.

[47:37] So if we must infer that there was in original populations of humans I think this is really the only way to maintain our non-negotiables is in this way.

[47:48] This warning will help us consider I think the last scenario we're about to talk to you about but this scenario as we understand it here as the head of a tribe would have some narrative benefits as it would help us understand the sort of perplexing exclamation of Cain in Genesis 4 where he's like hey I might what if somebody finds me and kills me?

[48:08] and I know most of us reading the text are like who? Your mom and your dad? Like they know. So like yeah oh and then also yeah where did Cain's wife come from?

[48:21] It's like the text doesn't tell us it just tells us that he has a wife right? Now of course there's obviously traditional and perfectly I think adequate explanations of these things but if we have an original tribe of humans then these questions just kind of become unnecessary right?

[48:41] Okay scenario five what I'm calling man in the mists of time okay this final scenario is actually taken from C.S. Lewis in his problem of pain where he posits a myth or what he would call a not unlikely story he says for long centuries God perfected the animal form which is to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself he gave it hands whose thumbs could be applied to each of the fingers and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated then in the fullness of time God caused to descend upon this organism both on its psychology and physiology a new kind of consciousness which could say I and me which could look upon itself as an object which knew God which could make judgments of truth beauty and goodness and which was so far above time that he could perceive time flowing past we do not know how many of these creatures God made nor how long they continued in the paradisical state but sooner or later they fell someone or something whispered that they could become as gods they wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to

[50:05] God this is our business not yours but there is no such corner they wanted to be nouns but they were and eternally must be mere adjectives we have no idea in what particular act or series of acts the self contradictory impossible wish found expression for all I can see it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit but the question is of no consequence so that's C.S. Lewis as you can see I think we're starting to get pretty far afield from the biblical story right but we still have seemingly kept a hold of our non negotiables God is making us right there is a real historical human beings and a real historical fall and that in some sense they're the progenitors of all humans however it's not really clear from this how we are all in

[51:08] Adam in this story right whether we are all descended from him or how he's the representative of all humanity well we may have the elements of sort of a bare minimum view I think this is a good example of sort of the edge or the limit of the kind of opaque scenarios that could actually work in our overall world view right I think this is the kind of story that we're starting to exit from the narrative as we receive it in the Bible does that make sense so I think this is a good example of sort of the edge so how do we end I think we finish by reiterating that the issues here are enormous right this isn't a question of just whether humans have in some sense developed from earlier life forms or whether Adam had a belly button right this issue is whether we can affirm the non-negotiables central to the gospel that humans were made by God were real progenitors of all humans in some sense and were the architects of our current fallen state a state that Christ comes to answer in the atonement okay the gospel that our rejection of God needs to be mended in a very real sense depends on this discussion but as we've seen there is some wiggle room in the different scenarios we've considered as it relates to the scientific data so as usual humility in our discussion is paramount right how different

[52:44] Christians see the strength of the evidence and how best to reconcile it to the narrative we've received is a complex issue okay but I think hopefully ultimately no matter which scenario you find compelling you can stop and glorify God for humanity saying in the words of Psalm 8 O Lord our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth you have set your glory above the heavens out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength because of your foes to steal the enemy and the avenger when I look at your heavens the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which you have set in place what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor you have given him dominion over the works of your hands you have put all things under his feet all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea whatever passes along the paths of the sea

[53:47] O Lord our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth all right that is it that's all I have to talk about please questions if you have any about human origins you guys seeing where the tensions are yeah it's it's complex and I think ultimately how strong you think the scientific evidence is is going to depend on which of these scenarios you find most compelling yeah yeah!

[54:24] yeah yeah yeah I I think you're right I think those categories are actually helpful there's a book I haven't actually gotten around to reading that I just got for Christmas about the reformation theology and evolutionary I think that's one of the arguments they make but I think we have to be careful because I don't think we want to say is that there was some dude in the Middle East right named Adam and he did something and he fell and God sort of put that on some Native American in America you know I feel like there's some we feel that there's a disconnect there in terms of like yeah technically we have those legal categories but I think there's a sense where we're like I don't know if that's really in what sense is all of humanity in

[55:26] Adam in that sense so I think there are limits to that but I think you're right I mean I think if we can think of God as electing a group or population of humans and saying and making Adam the federal head then some of those like biological restraints are kind of mitigated does that make sense yeah but not like there's not completely a way there yeah Matt I'm not I don't hold to this view yeah but one might say hey you know some dude in the Middle East died and rose and dead and now we can be part of it yes Native American can be part of his spiritual family yeah that's true I mean I think in that situation there's sort of a mechanism by which in faith we are grafted into the new Adam Adam's family right I think in the earlier view the difference there would be there really doesn't seem to be a mechanism by which the Native

[56:31]  American would say I'm with that guy and why would he say that you know honestly I mean I think in that situation I think the proponent would probably try to go the way of saying well there is a fall every generation like every human being falls individually but again I think that does it it does violence in some way to the storyline that scripture is trying to communicate right which there was initially a sense in which human beings were good and now we're not good and it's not just a matter of us doing bad things there's something about our nature that seems to have been changed some way right and if I think you make the argument that every generation falls then we're just really just saying human beings have always been this way and it's just a matter of you know getting up the pluck and will to just not sin which as all of you know by the time you're four you've already given up on that okay alright guys thanks so much yeah hold on let's see yeah hey