M-Eve and Y-Adam are completely irrelevant. Whole genome sequencing of ancient genomes from around the world show much more relevant and important information about who we are and how we got here.
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Personally, I still believe the available evidence for common ancestry with other primates is too strong to discard, but it is very encouraging to see strong theological thinkers wrestle with the intricate details of how the truth of God’s Word must cohesively interact with the truth of God’s Works.
Absolutely. Even though I might disagree with Keathley’s conclusions, thank God that we don’t have to have all the same conclusions to be amicable siblings in Christ.
Side note - what is a “structuralist”? I’m not familiar with the term.
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The point is that GAE is reshuffling the categories, redrawing lines. That is a good things. It demonstrates, moreover, that the key hang up is Adam and Eve, not some marriage to a particular notion of “kinds”.
I’m happy if the GAE eventually becomes OEC and EC. It seems OECs are far more interested right now. This is going to be an interesting ride.
@Patrick, if we create space for @kkeathley, all this will come in time. The point is that his theological concerns do not conflict. Once that question is settled, and it may take some time, there is new freedom available to engage the beauty we are seeing in science.
I have a hard time thinking that “every living thing came through evolutionary processes, except Adam and Eve” is not Evolutionary Creation but instead Old Earth Creation. However, I do think it perhaps represents as reconfiguring of the camps.
Maybe the bundled YEC/OEC/EC/TE camps, with their sociopolitical focus go away and maybe we see more discussion of individual issues like sequential vs nonsequential readings of Genesis 1 & 2, detectable vs non-detectable design, structuralist vs vocationalist Image of God. I could see a whole host of views of “what does it mean to be human?” that can be explored and debated in open and pluralistic ways, without the political and cultural baggage of needing to fit a particular narrative.
Maybe I’m being a bit idealistic here, but it would interesting to see individual issues (like human origins or divine action) being discussed for their own merits in revealing what truly is, rather than as rhetorical weapons to win the battle against the “other side”. Peaceful Science does that better than most. I think it takes valuing understanding above winning, and that doesn’t seem to be a natural human instinct.
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That is my exact aim. Let’s blur the lines between all the camps.
Would that not be a wonderful reordering? There is no reason why it can’t happen.
Of course, YEC/OEC/EC/TE are not going to go away all together, but those divisions could become less and less important, less and less salient. Evolutionary science (in the Church) could be reduced to merely another well-accepted variation on the traditional account. Defanged this way, the virulent forms scientific creationism become obsolete, even if they manage to cling to some devotees.
Would that not be a good world?
Having read @kkeathley’s article in more detail I have a few comments and questions.
- Thanks Ken for the clear and concise writing. I was in a couple workshop groups with you in St. Louis and appreciated your thoughtful insights. I think the article moves the discussion forward.
- Do you see the primary, distinguishing positions of Old Earth Creationism as 1) a 4.5+ billion year old earth and 2) the special creation of Adam and Eve ? Are there more essential positions that you would include?
- I’m a little surprised by “As stated, one could hold that all life, except human life, came about by evolutionary means and still be considered an old earth creationist.” I am aware that OEC often have allowed for some amount of evolution (usually more than Young Earth Creationists) but my impression is that RTB and others would still be quite a ways from “everything but Adam”. Is that an evolving stance? (pun not intended, but still kinda funny)
- I’m also very interested in the second sentence after that, “As a matter of fact, that probably describes the position of B. B. Warfield, the great nineteenth-century defender of the inerrancy of Scripture.” There has been an occasional “war” over Warfield by OEC and EC camps and it seems this could explain it, if Warfield affirmed the evolutionary origins of all life except humans (Adam & Eve, in particular).@TedDavis do you have any thoughts?
- I share @Guy_Coe’s question on Comments on Keathley: What is at Stake? about the helpfulness of a sequential reading of Genesis 1 & 2 rather than prologue & detailed account, and how that might help develop a theological understanding of evolved vs de novo humans.
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Tim Keller fits into this camp too. In light BioLogos strange reprimand of Keller, I think EC doesn’t have any claim to BB Warfield. I was pretty surprised to see that unfold.
And yet Tim Keller and BB Warfield have both been included in EC at times.
A quick search on BioLogos for Warfield gets:
- How Have Christians Responded to Darwin’s “Origin of Species”? - BioLogos
- B.B. Warfield, Biblical Inerrancy, and Evolution - BioLogos
And for Tim Keller:
- Tim Keller on Original Sin, Atonement, and Evolution - BioLogos
- Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople - BioLogos
While some at BioLogos (Haarsma, in particular) seem to disagree with Keller on historical Adam, others seem to agree with him (Kathryn Applegate) so I have a hard time seeing him as being outside of the Evolutionary Creation tent altogether. While BioLogos is not the same thing as EC, they are the largest organization promoting it. He’s done videos for BioLogos, they list his books as good resources, he’s not written about in a negative way on their website, so it’s really hard for me to to say “he’s definitely not an EC”. I haven’t seen anywhere where he said he was leaving that camp or didn’t want to be associated with that label, but I’m open for more information.
I think the question is, perhaps, are EC and OEC starting to merge?
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Not true at all.
Keller and Warfield have often been claimed by EC. Warfield is dead so he can’t object but there is no chance he would accept the mythological Adam that has come to be their primary theology. Keller is alive and has been very clear he is not in the EC camp. Same is true of @jack.collins and @kkeathley.
Not likely. BioLogos specifically rejects the traditional account of Adam and Eve and de Novo creation, perhaps they will change. Let’s see how they respond to my book. For now, they are 100% clear that I and the GAE are unwanted in their camp.
@jordan we not should expect the camps to merge. That is just exceedingly unlikely. Instead we want to have a seat at the table, helping everyone along including both OEC and EC.
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Given what we know of genetics and evolution, not to mention of biblical Hebrew and theology, I’m totally comfortable with Job’s description of the situation of his own origins, and God’s specific role in it.
‘Remember now, that You have made me as clay; And would You turn me into dust again? Did You not pour me out like milk And curdle me like cheese; Clothe me with skin and flesh, And knit me together with bones and sinews? You have granted me life and lovingkindness; And Your care has preserved my spirit.’ - Job 10:9-12 NASB
Job uses terms involving God’s skillful artistry in making him unique, “de novo” even, one of a kind, formed from dust --while not thereby denying his normal birth to a preexisting human mother --“evolving” from her, so to speak, and from his dad --but not being identical with either of them.
So, even normal human births involve God’s active artistry and superintendence… which means that both OEC and EC are not actually fundamentally at odds.
“De novo” and “evolved” are different, yes, but not incompatible.
Every human being is “de novo.” That’s both genetically AND spiritually true, even in the cases of identical twins, or in species where it occurs, parthogenesis.
So, what’s the real controversy, then?
Only whether one is explicitly denying God’s active artistry and superintendence in the history of life.
When using a term like “de novo” if you don’t say “in a way, every human is de novo”… then you are just setting people up for confusion.
And so is every de novo created photon when an electron spontaneously shifts from a higher energy shell to a lower one.
Glad to see you both seem to agree with my “theological” and semantical point. Of course, the genetic novelty, among other things, exceeds that of the “mere” instantiation of, say, new subnuclear particles, or photon emergence, in organization, specificity, and complexity.
This position has always piqued my interest. It seems very materialistic for a creationist theology in that it suggests that all we are boils down to our DNA. Many of the theologies I have seen take a more dualist approach where genetics is separate from soul. Also, it begs the strange question of what God’s genome would look like.
If anything, a genetic model is supported mostly by the inertia of creationist traditions.
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This gets down to the philosophical entailment that cropped up in “structuralism”, which have very little to do with Scripture.
@cwhenderson still plan to define this for you soon.
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I tend to agree. I view the “image of God” as much more of an immaterial description, rather than material. Since there is not much physically to separate us from our closest biological kin, I believe what separates humanity and allows us to fill the “image of God” uniquely must not be in the physical realm. For this reason, I personally don’t see that genealogical and/or genetic models are essential, although they may be of considerable benefit for others to coincide Genesis 1-3 with the physical evidence supporting evolution, including common descent.
It seems odd to me that anyone would have a physical/philosophical equivalent to a being made in the image of God that is not made in the image of God. I’m not defending a “structuralist view.” I find such labels and categorizations derail conversations from a simpler point I’m trying to assert. (Besides, I side with those who want it all… structuralist, vocational, functional, covenantal, etc.) Because, whatever labels others use to try to divide the wholeness of the image and the purpose of such image in humanity or who try to divide the qualities of humanity inside/outside garden, etc. seem only to create problems. A historical, sole progenitor pair has none of these issues.
The question remains, and will not be answered here today, whether a sole progenitor pair (of any historical date, or biological composition) is compatible with the scientific data.
I think this view belongs as a marker on one end of (and within) an OEC range of views, and as such would be at the (fuzzy) boundary with evolutionary creationism. [I’d love to see the old labels disappear and it become an issue by issue dialogue. But I’d love to see that happen in politics too!! No harm in wishing.]
The objection, in my opinion, to this position is not necessarily a theological one, but (and this is what most people don’t seem to understand, at least in my assessment, of RTB’s position) a lack of compelling science that necessitates a view that evolution has done it all, i.e. that evolution is that capable and powerful.
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pavlovian?
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