I’m fairly certain he is deeply concerned about the truth, and his at a point in his life he doesn’t really care one way or another about “keeping his base.”
1 Like
You offered an opinion, so I asked you.
Thank you for finally answering.
I am still waiting for answers from you. Like, what do you know with certainty to be the truth regarding Adam and Eve?
John, this will be the last time I respond to you and I respectfully ask you not to reply to any more of my posts. Peace.
2 Likes
I just know that he said he was going off the Genealogical Adam paradigm - which is odd, because on any other “real Adam” hypothesis, all the truths of GA apply: interbreeding of populations, a theological definition of mankind and so on.
1 Like
I am fascinated by your refusal to acknowledge the conflation. You’d understand the genetics a whole lot more if you did.
On this, he’s clearly confounding ideas: by definition, any atheist has a problem with an Adam created de novo by God.
However, if one takes his core point, which is that they have no objection to the science, that’s good, but in the event trivial. In the days when no Western scientist questioned the existence of Adam and Eve, or had reason to, what mattered was the meaning of their existence.
The work of showing the biblical account is not (as claimed) scientifically implausible is necessary, but is only a first step; just as the discovery by archaeology that King David did exist as related in Scripture may scupper the minimalists, but leaves the question of his election by God open.
2 Likes
I don’t know about this. They personally don’t agree, but many do not care what we believe, as long as we aren’t saying stupid things in science.
I was questioning Bill’s choice of words here:
An agnostic might say that God could have created this couple: an atheist could only do so by denying his atheism. What Craig meant was obviously that nothing is objectionable in the facts scientifically. But anyone who has no problem saying that God created Adam and Eve de novo would be morally bound to seek its significance from the same God.
Laying all the creative emphasis on Adam and Eve like this seems to run counter to the overwhelming anthropological evidence for monogenesis. And, to my mind, positing their “special creation” (nowhere specified in the Hebrew --the verbs 'asah and 'yatsar are used, instead; and Job 10:9-12 makes it clear that “formed from dust” as a colloquialism is not a rejection of normal embryology), as distinct from the rest of humanity only exacerbates this problem, resulting in what @jongarvey just described as a “trivialization.”
They were, instead, specially chosen and situated, as God’s first closely discipled “priests,” which makes their failed response paradigmatic for the rest of humanity. It was a universal diminishment of God’s good plan, but not a permanent thwarting of it.
In that sense (though I think it rhetorically unnecessary and even counterproductive), the A&E narrative could be described as functioning mythically, without denying its historicity.
1 Like
Based on all his recent lectures in Defenders on Genesis 1, his newsletters and interviews, he seems to gravitate a lot toward C. John Collins writings. At the same time, he seems to be open to the idea that Genesis 2-3 might be a mythological account. It seems he’s ruled GA out, gravitates toward an ancient Adam, but is still leaving room for a MA. Don’t worry! He’s only doing his exegetical work right now. When he gets to his scientific portion, I’m sure he’s going to want your help wherever he comes down, even if it’s a MA, since he probably would never agree with Lamoureux’s gradualist model of emergence of the image of God.
1 Like
And for whatever reason, Collins seems to not be able to see the option of a sequential reading of the first two pericopes clearly enough to fairly evaluate it, much less reject based upon sound rhetorical or literary criteria. There’s a confounding of ideas there that I am personally determined to break apart.
Consider that a glove thrown to the ground, @jack.collins ! In every other way, I respect your work!
1 Like
@mark I’m not worried. I’m in regular contact with him and know it is far less clear cut.
1 Like
It certainly seems logical to me, though I accept that other interpretations are possible - or the traditional view would never have arisen.
In my view what GA does, by making the story compatible with the world we now know to have existec back then, is to restore a way of interpreting it more liely to be in keeping with the author’s worldview. In that context a sequential reading and your sequelae become very plausible.
Leave @jack.collins alone. Diversity is a good thing. Conversation with @deuteroKJ, @Andrew_Loke, and averbeck clarified that this is an open debate in OT, and it doesn’t really matter for the GAE any ways. Whether we take Genesis 1 and 2 as sequential or not, Genesis 1 is archetypal, talking anachronistically about “humanity”, and Genesis 2 is a focused narrative on Adam and Eve. As an archetypal passage, Genesis 1 could come before Genesis 2 or it could contain Genesis 2 within it. Whatever choice is made here, nothing much changes going forward.
Even if Genesis 1 is taken to be in reference to a single couple, this just leaves the people outside the Garden unmentioned. Genesis 4 makes very clear that there are people outside the garden anyway. This isn’t the place to be picking fights.
2 Likes
You are quite right here. WLC is surprisingly scholastic, almost like a non-catholic thomist. I think the real reason he struggles with the GAE is because it forces him to think about the ontogeny of humanity, when he has spent a great deal of thought on the ontology of humanity in present day. Metaphysics, however, is at a serious disadvantage in origins, where the focus is precisely on the ontogeny of our ontology.
1 Like
Only throwing down the gauntlet for anyone who refuses to acknowledge a sequential reading as a viable and orthodox interpretive possibility. I have not claimed it to be the only viable view. Collins himself would view the challenge in that light. No public scholar wants to insist on being left alone, just to be treated with due respect, at which his inner pedagogy is free to respond with his or her best scholarship, in weighing a response.
What the single couple approach does do, however, is leave open the questions whether those who are “unmentioned” are “imago Dei” or not, pretty much opening the door to RTB’s “bestiality” debacle. It’s still, however, a viable but unsavory implication of this particular view, which I do not prefer.
I agree that diversity is a good thing.
Unity in diversity is an even better thing, and we are united on the essentials.
I think Craig and I largely agree here. Both he and I think some sort of discontinuity between our hominid or ape common ancestors and ourselves is necessary if we are to have a solid ground for the intrinsic dignity and rights of humanity. Lamoureux’s model fails miserably at this. Lewis’s succeeds, as does Michael Denton’s actually (at least I think it does), despite Denton’s account being entirely naturalistic.
My view of the process is very close to this: The Historicity of Adam And Eve (Part IV: A Theological Synthesis) | Thomistic Evolution
At some point, I would like to once again discuss the theological implications of interbreeding between neanderthals and humans. But not yet.
1 Like