So, I made an attempt at transcribing Keller on Adam and Eve (from around the 9 minute mark).
I’m trying to get this laid out and punctuated for readability, and make sure I did not make an transcription errors. Anyone want to give this a shot? He has this tendency to stop mid-sentence, and then go down a rabbit trail, and then come back to his sentence. I’m not sure how to make that readable…currently, its a mess.
What I would say is that, not only, is there an actual Adam and Eve, otherwise I would not understand how the Pauline understanding of salvation works. I just do not know how Romans 5 works. But I’d even say, “look, I know what Christians who are scientists tell me, and that is, they say, that all human beings were not genetically related to a human couple.” Right now that is the consensus. I’ll be honest, I’ll just say that they say it is now the consensus. It was a little group of people somewhere, in sub-Saharan Africa, and that is where everybody came from. But when I read the text, I look, and sure looks like its saying that God created Adam and Eve, and he didn’t just adopt a former human-like being, and adopt him and put the Image of God on him. It doesn’t seem like that is what it is saying. It says “created out of the dust of the ground.” And I do think in the end, even if I could be wrong on reading that text, I’ve got to have my reading of the text correct my understanding of the science. I mean, in other words, science is a way of telling me truth, and the Scripture is a way of telling me truth, but if they are clashing, even though I know that science might show me that I am reading Scripture wrong, and that has happened in the past, where the science came and said, “Does the Bible really teach that the sun revolves around the earth?” So it is not impossible for the science to make you ask if you are reading the text right. But if you go back to the text, and you come to your conclusion as far as you can say, “Before God I’m trying my best to read this as I think what the Scripture says.” Right now, it says to me, you know, there is an Adam and Eve, and everyone came from Adam and Eve, and they were a special creation, and so even though I don’t have an answer to my scientist friends, that is where I stand.
Related to some other discussions,
The polytheistic approach is that the universe is a chaotic field of vying power structures. Actually that is what the modern secular view is too. There is no love behind the universe. It wasn’t really a work of art. It is just about power. It is not about love, it is about power. That is how we got here. Nature red in tooth and claw, and that is all we are. So how do you build a society of justice and peace, when you say Nature is all about power?