I think your challenge to Stan is generally fair and I look forward to his response. However, wouldn’t your challenge be more fair if the latter half of (2) took into account all the biblical references to Adam and Eve and not just those in the first few chapters of Genesis? After all, if Genesis represented the only references we had to Adam and Eve the debate would take at least a slightly different shape.

(1) Scientists have changed their minds in the past

to

(2) Scientists are not to be trusted when their views conflict with a straightforward (and unjustified, in my view) literal reading of the first few chapters of Genesis?

Hmmm.

I’ll stick with God’s sure Word.

I agree that we need to read each book/portion of a book with a view to genre, history, culture. However we also need to understand how other books of Scripture handle that information too. Even if we took Gen 1-3/11 as a poetic story written in the form popular in that day it still describes creation and it is still relating historic events that are seen as such by OT and NT writers.

[Q] “You said: Enns and you are arguing that we should accommodate our biblical views to the evolutionary view.
[A] “I am not sure that is what Enns is arguing. He is not saying accommodate the biblical view to science. ”

Actually having read many of Enns articles on Biologos, I think that is what he is arguing. I deal with some of that in detail in my blog. But Enns clearly states that Paul understands Adam as a historical person through whom death/sin entered the world. But then says that is incompatible with evolution. He also says that he is not a scientist but a theologian and can’t contest the findings of the scientific community. Therefore since evolution is right (so says many scientists), we theologians will look to ANE, 2nd Temple writings, and reexamine Gen. Then he makes the case that Paul was teaching what he thought was correct (historic Adam) based on his 1st century understandings but which we now know is not correct based on scientific findings.

That certainly seems to me like he is changing his interpretation (and an otherwise straightforward reading) to match what he thinks science is pointing us towards.

MikeB

Thanks. With regard to your perspective, you may want to consider what B.C. Hodge is saying. Here’s a comment he wrote yesterday in response to my request that he write on this subject:

“Mike, I may in the future, but I have written a little about it before on this blog in a two part post addressing Mohler’s critique of Dr. Enns. My main question really surrounds what I discussed above, How does the rejection of an historical Adam support the gospel as we have it in the New Testament without, by necessity, undermining it by identifying the source as an evil and/or limited human ontology rather than a corrupted human ontology that was originally good and needs to be regained? In other words, how does such a denial not set in place a gnostic rationale for our rebellion against God where a New Testament one once was? I’m not saying this can’t be answered. I just haven’t heard a good answer for it thus far.”

To view this comment in context, here is his blog post in which he made it: http://bit.ly/yaUPd8

His perspective seems to drive at the pastoral concern that is important to you. You will see in his respective critiques of DeYoung and McGrath that he does not fall easily into one camp or the other.

As for myself, I recall Bible believers being among those calling for the abolition of slavery as well as among those who resisted it. As for heliocentricity over geocentricity, I can see myself being convinced in that age without having to change the way I interpreted the Bible (after all, the weather man still tells us when the sun is going to rise and set and we don’t accuse him of violating known scientific fact – the Bible’s cosmology is a practical one, not a scientific one, and that’s a kind of cosmology we still employ today). I can even understand evolutionary theory – to a point. But when I’m told that it can tell me what didn’t happen 6,000 (or however many) years ago I have to wonder: how does a theory “know” this? And when I’m pressured to believe it, I feel the same sort of pressure I feel when someone says to me, “but resurrections just don’t happen!” But if I accept biblical testimony that God recreated Jesus from a dead corpse, is it really a stretch to believe He created Adam from dust?

I am willing to believe that Adam and Eve are some literary convention that doesn’t require that there was a literal Adam and Eve who launched the human race, and consequently reorient my understanding of Scripture around that view, but to do so I need evidence that I do not see being provided. All the “evidence” I’ve seen is the same sort of scorn that was heaped on Paul when he preached on Mars Hill: “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer.” In other words, when I speak of Adam and Eve as having been real people I need to hear more than a multitude sneering to make me stop.

Thanks for interacting with me. God bless all your efforts for Him.

You said: Enns and you are arguing that we should accommodate our biblical views to the evolutionary view.

I am not sure that is what Enns is arguing. He is not saying accommodate the biblical view to science. He is saying that the biblical portions of the text, like Genesis, are not trying to touch in on the issues that are being addressed through modern scientific studies. We don’t have to pit the 2 against one another, or put one above the other, because they are not trying to directly speak to one another. An ancient writing is not trying to grapple with modern science. Modern science is looking at things outside the purview of ancient writings.

There is no cognitive dissonance really because the 2 are not fighting against one another.

Now, with evolution, I did not say I am convinced of anything. I am not a scientist, a biologist, etc. I am a pastor-teacher. I am trying to approach it by saying, if this is possible, and it is possible, then these are some things that are worth thinking through. Not only that, even if evolution were absolutely false, I think there is still a need for litterer, genre and purpose-intent calibration with our approach to not only Genesis, but all of Scripture.