Paul tells us that 'by one man sin entered the world' and 'by one man's offense death reigned'. (Rom 5:12-19).
What mark quotes is true enough but what he leaves out is fascinating:
As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ...
(Romans 5:12, KJV) [all quotations from here on will be from the ESV unless explicitly stated otherwise.]
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In this post I will first set out an overview of the entire discussion regarding origins theology, and then an overall direction for my position in this debate, finally replying a particular point mark has made. My next posts should follow the same pattern of a section of substantive explanation of my position followed by replies to selected parts of mark's posts.
My goal is not to convince readers that evolution that is true - such education is the province of minds far greater than my own. Rather, I wish to provide some guide to the theology of those of us who do accept evolution, for the help of those who don't. To those who have never seen the need to leave a conservative mindset, the choice seems bewildering. How can these evolutionists still call themselves Christian?
Historically speaking, the effect of evolution on theology has been felt (in roughly historical order, too) in three areas: the theology of Scripture and its inspiration, the theology of God as creator, and the theology of man and his biological being.
In the area of Scripture, evolution and an old earth seemed to challenge the literal interpretations that many Christians had grown used to. Historically, however, many conservative Christians, and even proto-fundamentalists like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield were able to reconcile the Bible with the new geological and biological facts the science discovered. The fact that they were able to come to this accommodation is important to current fundamentalist claims that evolution at heart destroys the place of the Bible in Christianity.
(With respect to that, mark is
almost right in saying that that geocentrism has no link to any important doctrine. But it is tied to precisely the doctrine of
inspiration! The geocentrists simply could not conceive of the Bible as being inspired in a heliocentric universe, just as many modern creationists simply cannot conceive of the Bible as being inspired in an evolutionary universe. However, it doesn't seem that inspiration
per se will be an important issue in this debate, and thus neither will geocentrism.)
In the area of God as creator, the seemingly random and wasteful mechanism of evolution could not be seen as commensurate with the workings of God as creator. Evolution was seen to directly impale Paley-esque arguments for God from design. However, many were already seeing teleology in the laws of nature rather than the details they evinced; and in this respect many prominent scientists such as Asa Gray and Theodosius Dobzhansky were able to reconcile the fact that God governs nature with the fact that He used evolution. After all, science explains many other facets of nature, and yet we do not consider God to no longer run the weather, the Solar System, or the internal workings of life.
In the area of man as a biological being, to say man was evolved seemed to place him squarely with the apes who were his predecessors. If man was no more than biology, who was he to think that the strange ethical and moral compulsions he felt were really pointing to a higher power? And if man was simply the descendent a thousand times removed of mindless beasts, in what sense could he still possess the image of God or a relationship with Him? Furthermore the question of why and how humanity is so sinful and needs God's rescue, once so easily answerable with the stories of snakes and fruit, now becomes maddeningly subtle.
It is in this area that mark and I will be expending most of our energy. And unfortunately it is also in this area that evolutionary Christians are themselves most divided. But mark rightfully sets his emphasis on this area, for it is here where evolution and Christianity might most come into conflict. Christianity can square with a non-literal reading of Genesis, much hinted at both within the form of the passages themselves and the nature of surrounding literature of the time; Christianity can square with the subtlety of a Creator who works through randomness, as is explicitly described when God is said to preside over the casting of lots and the falling of sparrows.
But the central message of Christianity has always been (and will always be) that man needed God to reconcile man to Himself, for he was in his own self incapacitated by sin and destruction. If evolution should conflict with this, then truly either evolution or Christianity must go.
And happily, I believe that in this area too evolution and Christianity are essentially reconcilable. That man evolved from apes in no way voids the fact that he was created for relationship with God, that he is unable to accomplish this on his own because of the depravity of his heart and the sinfulness of his actions, and that Christ came to take on the likeness of sinful man, thus achieving justification for all who would but believe in Him and receive the privilege of becoming sons and daughters of God.
This is, of course, precisely what conservatives are sceptical about. So in this next part of my post I will present my broad strategy, illustrated with the structure of the typical Pauline letter.
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How evolutionists deal with the theology of humanity depends essentially on how they deal with Adam and the story of Genesis 2-3. The most conservative of evolutionists are almost old-earth creationists in this respect: they conceive of Adam and Eve as historical ancestors of the entire human race, supernaturally set apart from other hominids. The events of the Garden of Eden actually took place perhaps in a different place, with a different sin, but there
was still a first sin, which spread throughout all humanity, leaving the doctrine of original sin essentially unchanged.
More liberal evolutionists will see Adam and Eve not as a first pair, but as a first community of humans. Even more liberal evolutionists will see in Adam and Eve a literary representation of the totality of humanity, so that the story of Genesis 2-3 is the story of the entire human race represented with two actors in a garden. Alternatively they may see Adam and Eve as symbols not of all humanity, but of every human: so that at every moment I, in my individual sin,
am Adam and Eve in the garden reaching for the fruit I shouldnt be reaching for.
I tend towards the more conservative end of the spectrum myself, but I dont think any of those who lean more towards the liberal side (as represented, for example, by Assyrian and gluadys, both regular posters in the OT forum) are committing an essential error. Basically, we need to distinguish between three ideas:
universal sin (or that all humanity is sinful),
original sin (or that the sin of all humanity stems from a single ancestor), and
special creation of humanity (essentially, that humanity did not at all evolve from apes in any way, for the purpose of this discussion). And what I hope to demonstrate are these:
- the concept of universal sin, on its own, is a sufficient prelude to the doctrine of justification by faith
- one can hold to universal sin without necessarily holding to original sin
- one can hold even to the concept of original sin as understood in orthodox theology without accepting the special creation of humanity.
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Part of what I dont like in online discussions is how quoting back and forth easily messes up threads answering a 5,000 word post by quoting every word of it will not be productive! Thus, at various points I will focus my thoughts into a particular question or two for mark.
For the reply section, the single quote of mark's that struck me was:
Paul is clear that all have sinned in Adam and that is the reason that we cannot keep the Mosaic law.
It is not at all clear. The single question I have for mark this time, to demonstrate this, is:
If original sin logically precedes justification by faith, then why does Romans 5 come after Romans 4 (and before Romans 6)?
To me the cardinal mistake creationists make in reading Romans 5 is to not read the rest of the book! (Or at least to act like they have not.) The very structure of Romans paints a different picture from the creationist reading of Romans 5.
Of all of Pauls letters, Romans is the closest Paul comes to delivering a systematic theology of salvation. He begins this systematic exposition with a description of
universal sin (not original sin; note the definitions above). In 1:18-32, Paul condemns the general wickedness of immoral Gentiles; in 2:1-16, Paul speaks most likely to the moralizing pagan (or perhaps to the moralizing Jew), convicting them of inner sin; in 2:17-3:8, Paul speaks to the Jew, accusing them both of pride and of inability to observe the Law in its entirety. In 3:9-20 he summarizes the state of affairs:
For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands; no one seeks for God.
(Romans 3:9b-11)
Paul then goes on in the rest of Romans 3 and then Romans 4 to describe the justification that is by faith, linking its coming by grace to human inability to be saved any other way:
[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
(Romans 3:23-25a)
After describing the benefits of justification in the first half of chapter 5, only then does Paul go on to describe original sin in that passage which creationists so often pluck out of its context in Romans. This question bears asking regardless of ones origins position: why did Paul leave it until then? Surely Paul could have introduced Adam in Romans 1. Paul could have described our ancestry from Adam, and then said how, since we all are descended from Adam, we are all sinful, Gentile and Jew alike, as mark would claim that Paul clearly teaches.
Instead, Paul sees no reason to invoke Adam until Romans 5. And what does Romans 5 accomplish? It sets us up for the arguments in Romans 6, where Paul again explains the doctrine of justification by faith, this time emphasizing that our ancestry in Adam has condemned us all to a flawed sinful nature wait, he doesnt! Romans 6 speaks instead of
sanctification, and the need for a Christian to avoid sin even though he is not saved by works.
Once we see Romans 6 in action it is easy to see what Romans 5 is leading up to: Paul sets up the situation of humanity as a choice between two factions. In the red corner, Adam started his fight with an act of sin, got his payment in death and separation from God, and paved the way for anyone following him to do the same. In the blue corner, Jesus started his fight with a life of obedience, won righteousness in grace not just for Himself but for all who are on His side, and invites anyone who is with Him to reign in life with Him. The setup in Romans 5 renders the rhetorical questions of Romans 6 (Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? and Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?) ridiculous.
The funny thing is that Paul accomplishes exactly the opposite of what the creationists think he does. After all, to creationists, the point of Romans 5:12-21 is that
we all have something to do with Adam namely being tainted with the consequences of his sin. But to Paul the point of Romans 5:12-21 (as demonstrated in Romans 6-8) is that
we Christians have nothing to do with Adam! Pauls point is diametrically opposite to that of the creationists.
How does Pauls reasoning work in the larger context of the rest of the Bible? In my next post I will describe a more nuanced and Biblical view of the idea of original sin, largely utilizing
The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin (1967) by Dubarle.
