Dueling Reviews for Historical Adam Book Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, this review from Chad McIntosh is a little more positive. He titled his article, “A Bad Time for a Good Book”.^[1] Let’s find out why he thinks that. He writes,

William Lane Craig embarks on a quest to answer . . . two main questions: First, does the Bible present them as real, historical persons or mere literary figures used by biblical authors to illustrate theological truths? Second, if they are real [Adam and Eve], historical persons, then is belief in this original pair as the font of humanity in conflict with current science of human origins? . . . Were the genre of Genesis straightforward historical narrative, the answer to the first question would be settled. But matters aren’t so easy; according to Craig, Genesis 1–11 exhibits nearly all the hallmarks of the genre of myth. But we must be careful here: as literary scholars use the term, a “myth” is not a popular idea or falsehood, but a traditional, sacred narrative believed by members of a society that explains present realities by anchoring them in the prehistoric past. Yet at the same time, historical interest is not absent from the author of Genesis, as the genealogies show. Thus Craig thinks that Thorkild Jacobsen’s genre of “mytho-history”—a genre where real, historical events are narrated but with nonliteral literary devices used to communicate theological truths—is therefore an apt classification of Genesis, popular aversions to the word myth notwithstanding.

That’s the end of the quote. I think that’s a pretty good thumbnail of the book.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, isn’t it wonderful how a philosopher like Chad McIntosh can so succinctly and accurately summarize the contents of a book and present the argument. It is such a contrast to the review by Ahn who is a theologian.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing the article, he writes,

Of the dozen (or so) relevant New Testament texts, Craig finds only a handful in Paul’s letters that plausibly assert a historical Adam. The rest, he argues, require the pair to be no more than literary figures that illustrate theological truths. For instance, when Jesus refers to the monogamous union of Adam and Eve, he does so “to discern its implication for marriage and divorce, not asserting its historicity” (221). By contrast, Paul’s theology requires a historical Adam (and Eve), for Paul identifies Adam as responsible for a real-world event (the Fall) that led in time to other real-world effects, most importantly Christ’s atonement (see 1 Cor. 15:21–22, 45–46; Rom. 5:12–21). For Craig, this “suffices for the affirmation of a historical Adam” (242).

As far as most people are concerned, we can sing a song and take up an offering and go home after that part. They just want to hear some sort of affirmation of Adam and Eve.

DR. CRAIG: That’s exactly what I give. On the basis of the genealogies and then Paul’s ascribing real world effects to Adam’s sin shows that the Bible is committed to the historicity of Adam and Even as real historical persons.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing, next Chad writes,

Having completed the first leg of his quest, Craig sets out on the second—that is, to determine whether belief in an original pair as the font of humanity is in conflict with current science of human origins. The main objections to this, considered in the book’s penultimate chapter, turn out to be surprisingly weak so long as the primordial pair are located far enough in the distant past to account for the genetic and geographic diversity that we see in the human population around the world today. This is exactly what the evidence already surveyed in the third part of the book indicates: paleoneurological and archaeological evidence concerning when the first humans emerged places them within the Pleistocene epoch, commonly known as the Ice Age, from 2.5 million to 12 thousand years ago. To establish this, of course, one must first determine what counts as “human.”

We’ll delve into that next, but you may want to remind listeners what paleoneurology is.

DR. CRAIG: Paleoneurology is the study of the brains of ancient hominins like Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis, and so forth primarily based upon the evidence of skulls and what are called endocasts. They take a mold or a cast of the interior of the skull to help determine the brain size and configuration, and you can derive some idea of the cognitive capacities of such an individual. We want to, I think, say that any hominin that had an insufficient brain capacity to maintain modern cognitive behaviors could not have been human.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he writes,

Craig cautions against simplistically equating the natural kind of “human” with organisms scientifically classified as Homo. There is a wide variety of organisms within Homo that are plausibly not human, and others that are plausibly human but not Homo sapien (e.g., Homo neanderthalis). To be human in the relevant sense is to exhibit sufficient anatomical and cognitive similarity with modern humans. . . . One of the more interesting (and dramatic!) aspects of Craig’s study is how multiple lines of evidence across several disciplines slowly converge, pointing to the common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens as the earliest species with the anatomical features and cognitive capacity to count as fully human. This was Homo heidelbergensis, whose image the book’s dust jacket bears. Craig therefore identifies Adam and Eve as members of this group, having lived between 750,000 and 1,000,000 years ago.

That’s the second caution mentioned.

DR. CRAIG: This is a critical issue because, as Chad notes, not every species that is classified as Homo was genuinely human. When geologists or paleontologists developed these classifications, they only had basically two – either Australopithecines or Homo. They just lumped almost indiscriminately different hominins into these two categories without a great deal of discrimination. So there are a good number of these early Homo hominin forms that I think are plausibly not human like early Homo erectus or Homo naledi. They had a brain capacity that is not much more than a modern ape and therefore would not be justifiably called human. What we need to look for would be hominins that exhibited cognitive behavior comparable to modern cognitive capacity – things like planning for the future, technological innovation, symbolic thinking and representative thinking. It is striking how, through the examination of archeology, you can find what are called archeological signatures of that modern cognitive capacity going back literally hundreds of thousands of years. I’m so glad that Chad draws attention to this in the book because I think one of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the review it offers of these incredible archeological signatures that suggest that modern cognitive behaviors go back beyond Homo sapiens to Neanderthals and even beyond that to Homo heidelbergensis (or Heidelberg Man), the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

KEVIN HARRIS: Up next, I think he seems to wish you had written more on what it means to be made in the image of God. He writes,

In particular, what it means for man to be made in the image of God is left unclear, which is a surprising lacuna given the book’s topic. To be made in the image of God, Craig argues, is to “have certain faculties like rationality, self-consciousness, freedom of the will, and so forth” —that is, to be “persons in the same way that God is personal and thus have the attributes of personhood. It is precisely the properties of personhood that are manifested by the cognitive behaviors to which we have appeals as evidence of humanity” (370). This can’t be quite right, since angels and demons are persons in this sense but are not human and not created in God’s image (or at least not explicitly stated in the Bible to be so). There must be something else about bearing God’s image that makes one human. But what?. . . “The stubborn fact is that Genesis leaves the image and likeness of God undefined” (367). That may be so, but can’t we as Christian philosophers say more?

DR. CRAIG: I think there is some confusion here on Chad’s part. I think my characterization of the image of God as having faculties like rationality, self-consciousness, freedom of the will, and so forth is quite adequate to understand what it means to be made in God’s image. It would have the implication that, yes, angels and demons are also created in the image of God. I see nothing objectionable about that biblically. In fact, in Genesis 1:26-27 when God creates man in his image and likeness, it is so interesting that he uses the plural – “let us make man in our image and likeness.” Many Old Testament commentators think that this is a reference to the angelic court to whom God speaks. In that case, angels and fallen angels are also, like us, created in the image of God. The reason they are not human is because they don’t have a hominin body as we do. We are persons just as they are persons, but we are human persons in virtue of having a hominin body as well as a rational soul.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here’s the conclusion.

Finally, I can’t help but wonder about the book’s reception and impact. The chapters on the genre of Genesis are a tour de force, and they could be an invaluable contribution to popular debates about the meaning and interpretation of Genesis. But will they be? I have my doubts. Despite being described as a “popular-level book” (320), Craig’s quest may be too challenging for the average layperson. . . . So, are we to despair at the prospect of a responsible position ever becoming mainstream among evangelicals?

. . . Craig just does not appreciate how steep of a mountain the word myth will create for Evangelical Christians. It is in my estimation insurmountable. That word and the book’s cover will almost certainly alienate a large and important audience who wrestle with reconciling their faith with the claims of (popular) scientific accounts of human origins. That said, as all Christians know, a precious gift can be refused for foolish reasons.

Before you wrap it up for us, I want to say I was very moved by that last sentence. “A precious gift can be refused for foolish reasons.”

DR. CRAIG: I have often asked myself what will be the long range impact of this book even after I have shuffled off this mortal coil and am no longer on the scene. I don’t know what to predict, but I do sense that the evangelical community is changing, that they do exhibit a remarkable openness to understandings of Genesis that are not based upon a wooden literalism such as Young Earth Creationists espouse. I think that point of view and that interpretation is a rapidly shrinking minority, at least in the West. Therefore, I am hopeful for the impact of the book. I used the word “myth” self-consciously and deliberately because I wanted to be straight up with my reader, to not use euphemisms or mince words, but to explain how the word is used by students of folklore and by classicists, and then to use the word in that sense. The irony is that many other evangelical New Testament commentators are already saying the same thing, but they are using different less emotionally loaded words. For example, Gordon Wenham refers to Genesis 1-11 as proto-history. John Collins calls it worldview history. John Walton calls it imagistic history. All of these are really talking about the same thing that Thorkild Jacobsen called mytho-history but they don’t want to use the word “myth” because, as Chad McIntosh notes, in popular culture this is loaded with the connotations of falsehood and unreliability. So it is important that we understand how the word is being used in the literary sense of the classicist.^[2]