Bruce Jones – Is Genesis 1-11 Historical and Accurate?
Written by Teddy on July 23, 2016
Part Eleven – “The Creation of Man – Adam and Eve”
Today as we continue our evaluation of progressive creationism I would like to make the point that their premise that the Bible is not a scientific textbook raises a logical dilemma for several reasons (1) First there is the critical doctrine of Inspiration which according to 2 Timothy 3:16 means the Bible is “God-breathed. So ultimately prophets and biblical authors only spoke as “they were carried along by the Holy Spirit “to say only what God breathed into them to say (2 Peter 2:20-21). In 1 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul says that the word of God’s message is to be accepted not as his word, but “for what is really is, the Word of God.” Therefore I find it unacceptable and blasphemous to say Genesis 1-3 is not a true and reliable account of Creation, which then implies God mislead Moses, and then us in the narrative. He is the ultimate Scientist and I have yet to hear, or see, a biblical justification for claiming (without proof) that the text is not true. For if it were not true then inspiration is not true. If it is not true then Jesus made a grave error when He said to His Father God’s Word “is truth”. (2) Then we know biblical explanations of nature are accurate centuries before science discovers it is so. Why would God get it scientifically right elsewhere in the Bible and not in Genesis 1-3?
Here’s a few examples: (a) Until the fifteenth century men thought the earth was flat But 2000 years before God said in Isaiah 40:22 “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.” (b) Psalm 8:8 talks about “the paths of the sea” which a man named Matthew Maury who died in 1873 found so intriguing that he investigated the subject inspired by the Bible to scientifically discover the warm and cold continental currents. (c) Job 36:27-28 says “He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind” which exactly describes the water cycle which was scientifically discovered by a Roman engineer named Vitruvius in 30 B.C. (d) Then there’s a contrast between progressive creationism and evolution thesis with the Genesis narrative in that the text says plants came into existence on the third day and then the sun came about on the fourth day and without the process of photosynthesis which only occurs through the rays of the sun, which is opposite their view, they could not survive. Furthermore for plants to survive they also need a pollination process that is provided by insects which were created on the fifth day. So day age theory based on theoretical science conflicts with true science. By the way for those of you who may not know about photosynthesis it is “a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy, normally from the Sun, into chemical energy that can be later released to fuel the organisms’ activities” The time and order of various phenomena by day age theorists is in direct conflict with both proven science and scripture. There are almost two dozen examples which show that the order of events in Genesis they profess are not scientifically demonstrable. And ‘The only way you can harmonize Genesis with the idea of millions of years is by rearranging the order of events in Genesis and stretching the days into millions of years.
THE GENESIS TWO AND THREE ACCOUNT
Again we face a conflict regarding the record in Genesis 2-3, in particular the creation and fall of Adam and Eve. Leaving aside other subjects I want to isolate two or three essential issues showing this conflict between progressive creationism and an historical biblical view. Here’s a few samples of what they say. (a) The Bible is ancient literature that speaks from an ancient point of view These stories clearly and undeniably look so very similar to the stories of other ancient cultures and have nothing to do with history or science as we think of those ideas today… Divorcing the creation stories of the Bible from their ancient settings forcing them to speak to contemporary scientific discussion over evolution isn’t just wrong or stubborn or misguided… It is sub-Christian. Oh! (b) “Modern Young Earthers honestly believe in alternate versions of virtually every science known, throwing away every shred of modern science that doesn’t point to the age of the Earth as 6,000 years. They literally believe in Adam and Eve”. Once again we see Science trumps Scripture (c) Another proponent also denies a literal Adam and Eve and is so bold as to say ‘as I see it, the scientific evidence we have for human origins and the literary evidence we have for the nature of ancient stories of origins are so overwhelmingly persuasive that belief in a first human, such as Paul understood him, is not a viable option” He further says “Evolution demands that the special creation of the first Adam as described in the Bible is not literally historical According to this apologist Adam is no more historical then a character from The Lord of The Rings fantasy stories.
Now there’s another apologist who believes in a literal Adam but adapts the account on three counts that reinterprets the text. He says first (1) that death occurred before Adam’s sin saying, “The spilling of blood before Adam’s sin in no way affects or detracts from the doctrine of atonement. Upholding that central doctrine in no way demands a Creation scenario in which none of God’s creatures received a scratch or other blood-letting wound before Adam and Eve sinned. Even in an ideal natural environment animals would be constantly scratched, pricked, bruised, and even killed by accidental events and each other… Could it be that God’s purposes are somehow fulfilled through our experiencing the ‘random, wasteful, inefficiencies’ of the natural realm He created?” So the Garden of Eden really wasn’t Paradise after all. And were waiting for a new one? (2) He also believes that there were pre-human like creatures called Hominids who were created by God about 2-4 million years ago and roamed the earth who looked like humans as they stood on two feet, had large brains, used tools, painted on cave walls and even buried their dead. But they no longer exist today as God replaced them with Adam and Eve. (3) And then finally somewhere between 25,000 to 40,000 years God then stepped into the final second of time to create Adam and Eve. I will hold comment on this third point until we study Genesis 4-5. So let’s compare the Biblical record on these two points the first being that death preceded Adam versus death followed Adam.
- Death before or after Adam. When I read the New Testament in Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15 it seems pretty clear that death came after as the text in Romans says so and also makes the point that Adam was an historical figure. It says in the Living Bible Translation “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.’ Romans 8:20-22 also says as a result ‘the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” We should also note I Timothy tells us “Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. So these texts require no reinterpretation but uniformly declare that Adam and Eve were both historical creations of God (as God described in Genesis 2) Only after they were created did sin enter into the world and only after sin did “the wages became death” (Romans 6:23) As one biblical scholar points out “Scripture itself does not allow Adam to be taken non-literally as many passages in Scripture require Adam to be a historical individual. Among them is Romans 5:12–21, where a historical Adam is contrasted with a historical Jesus. Paul is using a typology in this passage which requires Adam and Christ to be equally historical; he is arguing that both individuals acted in ways that had real and lasting consequences in human history. It is impossible for either to be symbolic for Paul’s argument to be coherent. Paul sees Adam and Christ as history’s two most important figures: Adam causing humanity’s downfall by his disobedience, Christ triumphing over that downfall by his obedience”. I Corinthians 15 confirms this idea when it further says Jesus is the “last Adam” as contrasted with the first man, Adam which is in incomplete opposition to those who deny an historical Adam.
- Hominoids before humans. Now don’t have a clear idea as to how PC people can claim there were human like creatures who existed before humans but there is absolutely no scriptural evidence of such which takes us back to the core problem their science trumps scripture. So they proclaim “modern young earther’s honestly believe in alternate versions of virtually every science known, throwing away every shred of modern science that doesn’t point to the age of the Earth as 6,000 years. They literally believe in Adam and Eve”. But I trust Jesus who said “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” – (Mark 10:6)
