My review of Craig's Historical Adam book

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@deuteroKJ

I’ll take this a different (but not opposing) direction than @RonSewell’s response. In a sense, this misunderstands WLC’s project. It can be construed as “speculative theology”: If x is true, then what is the best way to incorporate x into our theologizing?

Yes, I understand that. I was referring to my perception of their worldviews and opinions, not the contents of their books.

I had watched Sean McDowell’s interview with WLC and I wasn’t surprised that Ken Ham later picked up on this quote.

Now, I would be disingenuous, Sean, if I were to say that I don’t want the young earth creationist interpretation to come out true. To me that is a nightmare, my greatest fear is that the young earth creationist might be right in his hermeneutical claim that Genesis does teach those things that I described earlier. And I say that would be a nightmare because if that’s what the Bible teaches, it puts the Bible into massive, I think irredeemable, conflict with modern science, history and linguistics and I don’t want that to happen.

To me, he obviously can’t imagine a world in which the consensus is wrong. I give WLC the benefit of the doubt here that he doesn’t want the Bible to be shown as non-authoritative in the things that it teaches. But it is kind of baffling to me that a Christian wouldn’t consider that if YEC is true the kind of conflict between what the Bible teaches and modern science, linguistics, and history is only is the same story repeated over and over in the Bible. That is not a nightmare. That is looking at a serpent on a stick to be healed when it sounds like the dumbest idea ever.

Why wouldn’t a Christian consider this is all true right now?

@thoughtful

Alternatively, sometimes God chooses not to fight at all—he sends His people into exile, because He is gracious and has a better plan once His people are ready to seek Him again.

When God does fight a battle using His people, scripture seems to emphasize that He almost always chooses an unfair fight: He puts the ones He loves at a disadvantage in order to glorify Himself when they win. God chose little children shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David” to defeat the religious elite (Matthew 21: 15-16). God chose runaway Jonah who hated Nineveh to preach there; only 300 of Gideon’s men to defeat the Midianites; a shepherd boy to kill a giant. God chose female nobodies Rahab, Esther and Mary who forfeited their lives to help deliver God’s people; and God chose a teenage eunuch who longed for Jerusalem but never returned and instead in exile converted two emperors who then proclaimed God throughout the world. God chose lowly shepherds to hear the proclamation of Christ’s birth; a woman embarrassing herself at Jesus’ feet in front of religious and educated men to be great example of love for him; a despised tax collector to be the writer of the gospel of the kingdom; uneducated fishermen to proclaim the fulfillment of the law, and a Jewish scholar to be a preacher to the Gentiles.

@structureoftruth

From what I understand of Craig’s work, this (“Gen 1-11 must be mythohistory because it seems too fantastic to me”) is either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of what he is saying. Or oversimplification to the point of falsehood. The argument is about the intent of the text and has nothing to do about Craig’s personal incredulity.

I agree it’s an oversimplification, but his personal incredulity and views on science seem to have still influenced his view of the text’s original intent, based on these quotes from the same interview.

I think it should prompt us not to be over literalistic in the way we read these narratives. And once you begin to look at them in terms of mytho-history it’s difficult to look at them any other way.

“It” there seems to be the conflict with science. So the conflict prompts one to read the narrative in a certain way. THEN one BEGINS to look at them in terms of mytho-history.

I have long been suspicious of things such as the creation of Eve from a rib out of Adam’s side as though God performed some sort of literal surgery on the man and built a woman out of it or that God shaped this figurine out of dirt and breathed into its nose the breath of life and the statue came alive. It seemed to me that this was clearly figurative language, but I didn’t have a reason for thinking that until I became acquainted with this genre called mytho-history.