Christianity Today Searches for Adam – But Does Not Seem to Find Him

Christianity Today is searching for Adam but seems unlikely to find him.

Joel Kontinen

Christianity Today (CT) is probably the best-known Christian publication. Founded by Billy Graham in 1956, the magazine has since then at least occasionally digressed from traditional Christianity.

The cover story of CT's June issue searches for the historical Adam. Written by Richard N. Ostling, a former writer for Time magazine, the article initially gives the impression of approaching the issue objectively, but it soon becomes obvious that it lets theistic evolutionists set the rules of the game. He mostly quotes the views of Francis Collins and Karl W. Giberson of the BioLogos Foundation. They are known as defenders of theistic evolution, which makes their arguments rather predictable.

Their view is fraught with both scientific and theological problems.

Biologist Jonathan Wells, for instance, shows that the arguments Collins and Giberson make about "junk DNA" are outdated.

In like manner, their view of the genetic similarities of humans and chimpanzees (95–99 per cent) is based on outdated data and does not take into account the enormous differences in the Y chromosomes of H. sapiens and Pan troglodytes.

CT does say that Fazale Rana, a biochemist known for his progressive creationist views, criticises the figures Collins and Giberson present.

Ostling’s main argument stems from Francis Collins’ book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006). According to Collins, anatomically modern humans appeared approximately 100,000 years ago in a population that numbered around 10,000 individuals instead of two as Genesis predicts.

However, there was another genetic bottleneck at the time of the Flood.

In their fresh book The Language of Science and Faith (InterVarsity, 2011) Francis Collins and Karl W. Giberson claim that the evidence does not support the traditional view that Adam and Eve were historical individuals.

Ostling mentions – albeit in passing – criticism of this view that is by no means in short supply. But although he brings up the Answers in Genesis’ approach to Earth’s age, he does not seem to regard it as a viable option.

Despite the evidence, we might add.

The theologians affiliated with BioLogos assume that the apostle Paul might have erred in supposing that Adam was a real historical individual. Their organisation does not leave room for a historical Fall so they will ultimately have to claim that Jesus was wrong in His teaching on the historicity of the people and events mentioned in Genesis.

CT also lets two pastors who are critical of the BioLogos approach say what they think. Tim Keller suggests: "If Adam doesn't exist, Paul's whole argument—that both sin and grace work 'covenantally'—falls apart. You can't say that 'Paul was a man of his time' but we can accept his basic teaching about Adam. If you don't believe what he believes about Adam, you are denying the core of Paul's teaching."

Richard Phillips says that theistic evolution is a Trojan horse that tries to destroy Christianity from the inside.

Source:

Ostling, Richard N. 2011. The Search for the Historical Adam. Christianity Today (3 June).

A journey inside a cell

Joel Kontinen

Protein synthesis is not the product of chance but the digital information coded in DNA directs it. This brief video produced by the Discovery Institute shows that the cell has been designed to function intelligently.



The apostle Paul wrote in Romans (1:20), ”God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

Could Adam’s sin have retroactive effects?

In his new book, William Dembski discusses whether sin could have an effect on creation before Adam’s Fall.




Joel Kontinen

In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul explicitly writes that death came to the world because of man’s sin. For those who believe in an old earth this causes a problem since the fossil record suggests that many animals died long before Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.

William Dembski, who is known for his contributions to the ID movement, addresses this issue in his new book The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World. Dembski, a professor of philosophy, says that Christians are faced with a hard choice:

"They can go with a young earth, thereby maintaining theological orthodoxy but committing scientific heresy; or they can go with an old earth, thereby committing theological heresy but maintaining scientific orthodoxy."

Dembski’s solution is a creative compromise. He points out that the Greek New Testament has two words, kairos and chronos, that refer to time. He thinks that God’s idea of time differs greatly from ours. This, as such, is a logical conclusion. It is actually an old idea that goes back to the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

However, Dembski then builds a hypothesis on the basis of these words. He suggests that while human sin causes death, it can also have retroactive effects. Thus, animals could die because of Adam’s sin before the Fall.

Terry Mortenson has shown that Dembski’s hypothesis has serious theological problems. The New Testament often uses the words kairos and chronos in the same sense. Moreover, the Bible does not lend support to the view that God would punish anyone before they do wrong.

Dembski’s book is well-written and it addresses profound theological issues, making the reader think about the gravity of sin but it does not solve the problem of pain. I’d still follow Paul.

Sources:

Dembski, William A. 2009. The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World. Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing.

Mortenson, Terry. 2009. Christian Theodicy in Light of Genesis and Modern Science. A Young-Earth Creationist Response to William Dembski. Answers Research Journal 2, no. 1:151-167. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v2/n1/dembskis-theodicy-refuted

Is Barack Obama's Agenda Anti-Christian?

Image from Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

Senator Obama said St. Paul’s teaching on the consequences of rejecting the Creator is an “obscure passage in Romans”. This is a very odd claim. Paul was the greatest theologian of the Christian Church and Romans is probably the most comprehensive account of early Christian theology.

There is nothing obscure in Romans 1. Paul teaches that people intuitively know that there is a Creator God but have refused to acknowledge this. The New International Version puts verse 20 like this: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. “

Nothing very obscure here. The next verse describes how people reacted to God’s revelation in nature: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

Paul says that men exchanged “the truth of God for a lie.” They were immoral, murderers and full of “every kind of wickedness”.

Senator Obama’s views of abortion and same-sex relations are diametrically opposed to what the Bible clearly teaches. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul speaks about “the man of lawlessness” who will lead the rebellion against God. The Bible calls this man the Antichrist who, as his name implies, has an Anti-Christian agenda. Could he be Barack Obama?

The Old Testament Prophet Daniel says that this man “will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and the laws.”

History has already seen some little antichrists. The depression of the 1930s brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany. Like Obama, he succeeded in hypnotising the masses, both Christians and non-Christians, to vote him to power. Hitler changed many laws – to the detriment of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs who were unfortunate enough to live within the clutches of the German eagle.

Keeping this in mind, Obama’s low view of Scripture and his opinion on abortion seem extremely disturbing. In some European nations, abortion was followed by euthanasia. Like in Nazi Germany, it is the defenceless that are persecuted.

While I do not think that Senator Obama is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation, his views might make him into a little Antichrist that the Gospel writer John warned about in his first letter: “This is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.”


Source:

Riley, Jennifer. 2008. Obama Uses Jesus' Sermon to Bolster Gay Civil Unions. Christian Post (4 March). http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080304/obama-uses-jesus-sermon-to-bolster-gay-civil-unions.htm