Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/28/2011 6:28:00 AM (GMT-5)

Criteria, of course, is the relevant issue to me in either case. But if the latter is the case, criteria becomes irrelevant for certain purposes.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/28/2011 7:11:05 AM (GMT-5)

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* "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

"...for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God."

It seems very obvious to me (and N.T. Wright, I guess) that Paul believed in an actual "first couple" aligned with the Genesis accounts.

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/28/2011 8:00:04 AM (GMT-5)

Please note, Brandon, that Adam is DISTINGUISHED from Israel in this text.  Enns doesn't seem to mention this text.  But note again what N. T. Wright said in his Romans commentary...

Paul clearly believed that there had been a single first pair, whose male, Adam, had been given a commandment and had broken it. Paul was, we may be sure, aware of what we would call mythical or metaphorical dimensions to the story, but he would not have regarded these as throwing doubt on the existence, and primal sin, of the first historical pair.

This would throw a big monkey wrench into the "Adam and Israel" idea, don't you think, Brandon?

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/28/2011 7:48:30 AM (GMT-5)

I'm trying to think through this as much as the next guy. So my thoughts aren't as concrete at this point.  Trying to put the whole picture together.  So here's what we've got.

A. Peter Enns saying that Adam is Israel.  Thus Paul was wrong about there being a historical couple.  Evolution is true. (He doesn't come out and say it in either of the videos I posted but the assumption is that IF evolution is true then Paul was wrong.  He was an ancient man of his times etc).  Enns takes it out of the realm of origins.

B.The BioLogos people saying that evolution is true.  There wasn't an actual historical couple IN THE SENSE THAT WE HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED THERE TO BE.  In other words, there wasn't a time when there was a literal garden or a historical couple who were the only ones on the planet who were the progenitors of the human race.  I think we are SO REARED into thinking this way.  Not only from a surface reading of the Bible but from just being brought up in a Christian subculture that reinforces the view as well.

C.  Dwayne brings up this point:  "That doesn't help the issue..not really. No one in BioLogos is going to say that any "single pair" of human-divinus were the progenitors of all human beings. They will not say that this proposed human-divinus couple were the "historical parents of the entire human race." They've gone on record saying that there were other humans around at that time of human-divinus coming on the scene."

Post Edited (BBBCanada) : 6/28/2011 11:35:49 AM (GMT-5)

Enns writes about this issue in a recent blog post, and in today’s format, he reemphasizes a few key points—but namely that we must consider Paul within his first century context, and not in our contemporary one. What this means is that Paul wouldn’t have had 21st century scientific discovery and knowledge available to him at his point in time. He wouldn’t have understood the theory of common descent, so he would have seen Adam as a historical figure. “There is really little doubt that Paul understood Adam to be a real person, the first created human from whom all humans descended,” Enns says.

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“How Paul handles Adam does not determine modern scientific discoveries about the origin of humanity. Paul does not determine that for us. Paul is a first century man, and what he says about Jesus and Adam has to be understood in that context,” says Enns.

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/28/2011 1:01:37 PM (GMT-5)

But I think I’m agreeing with you to extent. Paul may have unwittingly believed that Adam and Eve as the first couple were the progenitors of the human race. But I don’t think he unwittingly believed that there was an actual historical couple. I think he may have been right on that. From what the BioLogos folk are telling us, though, is that if evolution is true then Paul was definitely wrong about Adam and Eve as progenitors of the human race. But he may have be correct that there was some historical couple ie., the homo divinus idea. We see this via what Denis Alexander says in “Part 2” above. Regardless, N.T. Wright says, that the “historicity of Adam is not central to the theology, it what Adam represents—which ultimately is revealed through Christ, who shows his faithfulness by keeping the original covenant between Israel and God the Father.” Paul’s Perspective on Adam

Let me show you what I mean. With a more dynamic view of inspiration, one can say that the Holy Spirit used Paul's beliefs about Adam, socialized as they were, to convey divinely directed thoughts and expressions.  With the verbal plenary view, one has to say that God SPECIFICALLY wanted him to articulate exactly the concepts and words the Paul said about Adam.  One definitely seems less problematic than the other.

With a dynamic view of inspiration, God used the categories that Paul already had in his "world" to express what God's desired, as errant as some of those categories may have been.  With this view, Paul may not exactly express what God wants people to know/believe about Adam...but what was useful for further growth in relationship, given who Paul was and what Paul believed.  With the verbal plenary view, God intensifies his influence over Paul so much, that Paul actually does exactly express what God wants people to know/believe about a historical Adam...basically giving divine authority to an un-truth.

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/28/2011 3:29:31 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/28/2011 3:46:58 PM (GMT-5)

I think Tom is right--none of us have what can be considered an inerrant answer. But that's precisely why we can't know that death preceded Adam/Eve. To get a taste of just what COULD be true, read "Forbidden Archaeology."

Then consider the fact that there are well-qualified earth scientists that think the earth not only expanded from a fraction of its current size, but they believe that the further back you go in time, the greater the proportion of the continents was under water (this is a mainstream belief with respect to a great deal of earth history). Is that radical? Not when you know as much about how non-explanatory most of the major historical paradigms actually are. Most of them explain a very trivial amount of the totality of data they need to explain to be considered viable. What does this imply? That we know very little about physics as applied to earth and universe history. We have no physical models that come anywhere near explaining close to what they need to explain. These paradigms are used for research guidance. They are not REAL, VIABLE models. They are all known to be contradictory to lots of data or to be woefully insufficient TO explain the relevant data.

This leaves as a possibility what Glenn Morton once argued when he first started shaking up the YEC'ers (including myself). He held at that time that the earth expanded and that the reason why the farther you go back in time, the more water was on the continents, is because the earth, during the early times was literally flooded. And then over a long time the earth expanded and exposed continents, etc. This on-going expansion created many more regional catastrophes which are still clearly inferred from the sediments/rocks. Indeed, in the last few decades, geologists finally gave up their dogma of uniformitarianism and now basically admit that most of the sediments were deposited rapidly.

Thus, the further we go back, the greater the proportion of marine facies, etc. In short, when viewed this way, we can't even prove that humans and other critters weren't here all along. Indeed, we don't even know if our dating methods are valid. There are known problems with them. Most physicists of any repute don't even rule out the possibility of secular variations in what are now deemed to be constants anyway.

We are so far from having any warrant in being dogmatic that I see no reason to sweat it yet. Stratigraphic ranges are increasing all the time--sometimes by 10's and 100's of million years of consensus-accepted time. Humans, by consensus dating methodology and consensus data filtering, are probably at least around 4 million years old. If humans can live 4 million years and live such a paucity of remains, then greater times for erosion, etc render it possible that humans really were around longer.

Cremo, author of "Forbidden Archaeology" has documented recent rejections of human remain finds simply on the fact that the remains were dated so old that they contradicted current theory--nothing more. And he documented a significantly larger number of less recent rejections. But data is data. To reject data as anomalous to salvage a theory may make good sense in terms of research guidance, but it doesn't when you want to know what is true and/or false NOW. The temporal gaps in the paleontological and archaeological records are too large for anyone to assume they can know what gap is impossible. One can guess, but that's it.

The one thing I do agree with is this: most Christians don't realize how problematic their over-simplified view of biblical history is in light of archaeological and paleontological data--the accepted and rejected data. And I'll hand it to you: I have no idea how to salvage the historical Adam apart from the expanding earth model. But that model has the potential of overturning all historical paradigms. But the evidence for it is quite good. But like all models/paradigms, it is too young to explain anything like everything that requires explanation. But that just puts it SQUARELY in the same position as its competitors.

So do I allow for the possibility that it might be the true historical model? Yes, I do. And that's why I can't agree that a supposed error of Paul is the most parsimonious explanation. Because to say an explanation is the most parsimonious, we have to know WHAT we're trying to explain. But like Tom says, once we allow for historical error of the kind Paul is supposedly guilty of, it's hard to know what we're all trying to explain. It seems we're explaining different things. I'm trying to explain what I think could be possible and then argue, on that basis, that we have no need YET of brain-storming the kind of criteria I'm incapable of figuring out on my own.

The fact is, when we start trying to see who is the most parsimonious with respect to earth/universe history paradigms, I think that is impossible. The quantity of data yet unexplained by these models is so huge no one could calculate who is the most parsimonious. Hawkins once said something like this: "the Big Bang model explains a lot, but it doesn't explain stars and galaxies." Hmmm. Not so impressive when put that way. And even that is an over-simplification. You have different versions of inflation, hot vs. cold big bang, etc. All of them do better than their competitors at some things, all of them require counter-intuitive beliefs, they posit different SOFA's (none of which are deducible from any initial conditions of the universe) to account for the age problem of galaxies, and NONE of them explain the stars and galaxies!! Why should I lose one night's sleep over this stuff?

Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/28/2011 7:10:22 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/29/2011 10:50:13 AM (GMT-5)