N.T. Wright, Francis Collins, and the Historical Adam: William Lane Craig Responds

Kevin Harris: Well, Francis Collins is a brilliant scientist and N.T. Wright is a brilliant biblical scholar, but can they sing? We’ll find out today and explore Adam and Eve, genetics, the book of Genesis, and more. Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I’m Kevin Harris. Dr. Collins is famous for the Human Genome Project. Professor Wright is famous for his brilliant biblical scholarship and theology. This is familiar territory today. As you probably know, Dr. Craig has written a celebrated book on the topic called In Quest of the Historical Adam. So, what does Dr. Craig think about Collins’ and Wright’s views that were recently proclaimed in a public question-and-answer session? We’ll hear from Dr. Craig. And as we go to the studio, as always, we want to tell you how much we appreciate your prayer and financial support of the work of Dr. Craig and Reasonable Faith. Give online today at ReasonableFaith.org, and thank you very much.

Well, a few weeks ago, Francis Collins and N.T. Wright took audience questions after a public conversation, and several of them landed right on the subject of your book, Bill, In Quest of the Historical Adam. They talked about population genetics, Adam and Eve’s historicity, how one squares all of that with Genesis. We’re going to play a few clips from that exchange and then get your take. But first, I looked for any public record of Francis Collins and N.T. Wright interacting with your book on this topic and couldn’t find anything. Your book is considered a must-read on this topic, and I’m sure Tom Wright is familiar with it, but Dr. Collins should be referencing you in this exchange, and sadly he’s not. Do you know if BioLogos has reviewed your book, and have you had any interaction with Francis Collins?

Dr. Craig: Well, for our listeners who don’t know BioLogos, this is an organization that Francis Collins helped to found to promote the dialogue between science and Christian theology. And yes, folks at BioLogos have reviewed the book favorably, but not Collins himself. I don’t think he has any awareness of it.

Kevin Harris: Let’s go to the first clip. Here’s Collins laying out the core genetics objection to a single ancestral couple. First clip.

Dr. Collins: We know that if we look at the human genome in the population of this current planet and we’ve sequenced a lot of genomes now, that there’s a lot of diversity there. We’re 99.9% the same, but that still leaves, because it’s such a big denominator, a lot of variation. And you can’t work back from where we are right now to just two people and come up with that kind of diversity. It doesn’t work. Our founder pool appears to be more like 10 [thousand] or 20,000. So how do you put that together with the description of that first couple?

Kevin Harris: Well, so Collins says the genetic diversity we see today just doesn’t work if you run the clock back to two people. His number is a founding population of about 10,000-20,000. You deal with this in your book, as does Josh Swamidass. Does that data actually rule out a historical Adam and Eve, or does it rule out something narrower like a very recent two-person bottleneck?

Dr. Craig: Well, I’m afraid that what Francis Collins is giving his listeners here is very dated information. Already in 2017, the scientist Richard Buggs pointed out that the hypothesis of a bottleneck of two had never in fact been tested scientifically. The same year, Joshua Swamidass, who is an information biologist at Washington University, showed that while a recent bottleneck is ruled out by the genetic divergence exhibited by today’s human population, a bottleneck before 500,000 years ago is possible and undetectable. And even members of BioLogos who had asserted that we know with heliocentric certainty that the human population was never below 10,000-20,000 people, like Dennis Venema, came to agree with Swamidass’ conclusions and therefore withdrew those extravagant claims that, unfortunately, Collins is still making.

Then in the fall of 2023, a Chinese team of population geneticists showed that the human population actually did go through what they call a severe population bottleneck, on average of less than 1,300 breeding individuals over a window of time of around 100,000 years between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago. And what’s so important to understand is that these population size estimates are not estimates of the minimum population. They are averages over a window of time. So between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, over that window of 100,000 years, there was a population bottleneck of, on average, less than 1,300 breeding human beings on this planet. And that is perfectly consistent with going back to a founding human pair who are the progenitors of the entire human race.

Kevin Harris: This next clip is Collins weighing whether Genesis was meant to be read literally, particularly Adam and Eve, and he runs straight into the Apostle Paul. Clip number two.

Dr. Collins: There are various solutions to that, and I don’t know which one is right. One would be to say that that part of the Bible was not intended to be literal. It was teaching us about God’s plan for humanity. That runs into an objection which the question points to, that from what we read in the writings of Paul, Paul did seem to believe that Adam was a literal human being, the first man, and not allegorical. And as soon as somebody says, “Well, maybe Paul was wrong,” then some people’s hair catches on fire.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, I think my hair would catch on fire if the authority of Paul were undermined. We know from your book, Bill, that it’s hard to get around Paul’s affirmation of a literal Adam, especially in Romans 5. Review that for us if you would. And is there room in your view to read Paul’s argument as working even if Adam is treated typologically?

Dr. Craig: I agree with Collins that Genesis chapters 1–3 need not be read literally, but I do think that Paul commits us to a historical Adam. But notice this is not simply because he believed in it, but because he taught it. In Romans 5, he ascribes to Adam effects upon the real world outside the world of the story in Genesis 3. A purely fictional or symbolic figure, say, for example, Hamlet, has no effects upon the real world outside the Shakespearean play. But Paul ascribes to Adam real-world effects outside the story. And therefore, anyone who believes in the inspiration and authority of the Bible, I think, is committed by Paul’s teaching to the existence of a historical Adam.

Kevin Harris: In the next clip, Collins lands on the option he says he’s most comfortable with.

Dr. Collins: Another attractive option is that, in fact, God chose a particular couple in that ancestral pool and infused into them the knowledge of good and evil, the spirit, and the opportunity to then pass that on to the rest of humanity. That would explain a few other things that people have a little trouble with, like where did Cain find his wife and how did that city get built and where did all those other people come from all of a sudden? Maybe they were already there. So, I’m kind of comfortable with that.

Kevin Harris: Okay. A couple selected out of an existing population and endowed with something new. Where does Collins’ version here actually match the model that you defend in In Quest of the Historical Adam, and where does it diverge, Bill?

Dr. Craig: This hypothesis is much closer to Josh Swamidass’s view than it is to mine. The idea is that there was a sort of human population out of which God elected just two people and then blesses their descendants, and from that root eventually calls Abraham and the people of Israel. Now this view, I think, is unacceptable because it gives up the universal progenitorship of Adam and Eve.

I think there are three reasons that this is not the most plausible interpretation of Genesis. First of all would be the very purpose of the primeval history of Genesis 1–11. Old Testament scholars have wondered why didn’t Genesis just begin with chapter 12 and the call of Abraham and the founding of the nation of Israel. Why do you have prefixed to that the primeval history going back to Adam and Eve? And the answer to that question is the universalizing interest of the author of Genesis. He wants to show that God’s primary intention is not just to bless a select people but all people, the entire human race descended from Adam and Eve. And that Israel is elected simply as a means for fulfilling that original intention to bless all of mankind. And that universal interest is denied on the part of those who would say that Adam and Eve are not the progenitors of all mankind.

Secondly, a comparison of the story of the creation of man in Genesis 2 with other ancient Near Eastern creation stories show that such stories share what’s called an etiological interest in telling how mankind in general came to exist. They want to answer the question, where did humanity come from? Where did human beings come from? And the similarities between the Genesis account and these other ancient creation stories suggest that they have this sort of universal interest and not an interest just in a select couple and their descendants.

And finally, the narrative itself indicates that Adam was alone. It says in Genesis, there was no man until God created Adam to till the ground.

So, on my hypothesis, there’s just no problem with a founding pair of the entire human race if we locate them far enough back in the prehistoric past.

Kevin Harris: Again, and maybe I’m just biased, but it seems to me that Dr. Collins should be familiar with your and Josh Swamidass’ work on this. I know that he shouldn’t be expected to read everything ever published, but your work was not done in a corner, to quote the Apostle Paul. I’m just saying. Any thoughts?

Dr. Craig: I think it’s evident from this interview that Professor Collins hasn’t kept up with current developments in the field.

Kevin Harris: Up next, Collins explaining the option that he’s not comfortable with. Here it is.

Dr. Collins: And there are certainly people who think, well, God must have done something to speed up human variation. And maybe there were just two people, but when we look at it now, it looks like there were more, but God could have done that. I’m not so comfortable with that. That feels like God is turning into a bit of a magician.

Kevin Harris: Do you agree with that, Bill? Is it problematic to cast God in terms of a magician who constantly intervenes in the laws of nature?

Dr. Craig: When I first began to explore this problem, this was actually one of the hypotheses that I entertained. Suppose that the mutation rate over time was accelerated in the past. Well, then greater genetic divergence could be produced in the current human population. So this seemed to be a possible solution to how the divergence exhibited by population genetics could be traced back to a single human pair. The problem with that hypothesis is not that it appeals to miracles or God the magician, but rather, as Josh Swamidass explained to me, a greatly increased mutation rate in the past would have had other deleterious effects upon the human race, and so this is not the most plausible hypothesis.

Kevin Harris: Just a little side road because it’s something I’m curious about. Would the study of when and how often God directly intervenes in his creation fall under the heading of divine psychology? I mean, do we assess the biblical data, for example, to try to make an educated analysis of what God might do in design or creation? Is that under that heading?

Dr. Craig: I don’t know if we should categorize this as divine psychology. But one thing I do notice about biblical miracles is that apart from the original creation of the world out of nothing, all subsequent miracles are done with an accompanying revelatory word from God that interprets the miracle. So it is a word-deed revelation on God’s part. Constant interventions in the evolutionary process prior to human beings would be quite out of that biblical pattern of a revelatory word always accompanying any miracles that God performs.

Kevin Harris: Let’s get to N.T. Wright. Here’s his take based on Genesis 12.

Dr. Wright: I have tended to take the view that just as in Genesis 12 God says to one specific couple, Abraham and Sarah, “Okay, guys, got a job for you. Here it is.” Out of all the people that were around at the time, right? So that in Genesis 2 and 3 and so on, what we’re looking at is precisely out of such hominids that were around God says, “You are to have a specific job to reflect my love into the creation and to reflect the praises of creation back to me.” And as you say, that doesn’t mean that there was nobody around before. This is obviously not my field, but as a Pauline scholar, naturally when you read Romans 5 or 1 Corinthians 15, you meet Adam. There he is.

Kevin Harris: Just to synopsize, God picks Abraham and Sarah out of everyone else and gives them a job. And Wright suggests Genesis 2 and 3 could work the same way with Adam and Eve chosen out of an existing population of hominids. You’ve worked through the biblical and scientific data, Bill? Does that analogy hold up?

Dr. Craig: No, it does not. Genesis 1–11 belong to a different literary genre than chapters 12 and following, and therefore it is a huge mistake to appeal to Abraham and Sarah to interpret Adam and Eve. Moreover, this runs into those problems that I raised before concerning the view that Adam and Eve are not the universal progenitors of the human race. Why doesn’t the book of Genesis just begin with the call of Abraham and his election as the father of Israel? It’s because of its universalizing interest. It wants to show that God’s concern is with the entire human race and his later election of Israel is intended to be merely a means of his fulfilling his original intention of blessing the entire human race.

Kevin Harris: In the next clip, Collins answers a direct question from the floor. A biology student asked him point blank whether there are any real challenges to his view. Here it is.

Dr. Collins: As I said earlier, I think the science is pretty solid that we can’t by the usual explanations of what happens with populations over time, about which we have a lot of data, basically turn the clock back for all of humanity and end up with two people. It doesn’t work. You’d have to say that somehow the clock runs differently in God’s plan so that we are led to believe that we are all descended from that single pool by the Bible and somehow God has taken care of the science problem. I find that uncomfortable, as I said earlier, but I totally respect the people who are troubled about the way in which they interpret Genesis.

Keep in mind that people have always wondered why there are two stories in Genesis about Adam and Eve. It’s not one, it’s two, and they’re not quite the same. And so it might make you wonder whether we were supposed to be ultra-literal in how we interpreted that information. Almost like there was a little sign there saying the message here is not about the sort of scientific description. It’s about a relationship between humans and God. And that’s the part we should be watching over.

If you haven’t read John Walton’s book called The Lost World of Genesis 1, pick that up because here’s an Old Testament theologian, teaches at Wheaton College, not exactly a liberal establishment, and who tries to help us see through the eyes of the people who first read Genesis 1. And it’s a very different interpretation than what we in our 21st century are trying to turn those words into.

Kevin Harris: We’ll get to the two creation accounts when N.T. Wright comments on it in a moment. But Collins reasserts that the population genetics is settled and points the questioner to John Walton’s nonliteral functional reading of Genesis. And as I recall, Bill, you and John Walton haven’t always exactly walked down the primrose path of agreement.

Dr. Craig: Collins is just out of date on the solid science. As Swamidass and even Venema have agreed, it is not true that prior to 500,000 years ago population genetics rules out a founding human pair for the human race.

Moreover, Collins is biblically uninformed. There are not two stories about Adam and Eve in Genesis. Just read your Bible. The claim is that there are two creation accounts in Genesis, first in chapter 1 and then in chapter 2. But as Claus Westermann has shown in his magisterial commentary on Genesis, the first is an account of the creation of the universe, whereas the second is the story of the origin of humanity. So these are two quite different stories with different intentions.

Now the clue that Genesis 1–11 is not to be read literalistically is the literary genre of these chapters. And I cannot believe that Collins is recommending John Walton’s book. The functional interpretation of Genesis is hopeless. According to Walton, Genesis is not about the creation of life or objects on the planet at all. It’s just about God specifying their functions. And this is not only completely out of sync with other creation myths in the ancient world, but it also gives a completely implausible interpretation of Genesis 1.

Kevin Harris: Here’s one more clip. N.T. Wright comments on the two creation accounts in Genesis. Check it out.

Dr. Wright: And what you said about the two stories, I won’t go on, but what you said about the two stories is so typical of so much in the Old Testament where something is said here and then something cognate but significantly different is said there. Sometimes verses in the Psalms work like this, that there’s this and then there’s that. And it’s almost as though the writer is saying the truth is somewhere in between these, and it’s so big and powerful and important that all we can do is point to it from different directions. And if we learned to read the Bible like that, we would be actually taking it much more seriously than somebody who comes to it with a wooden “either it happened or it didn’t” kind of approach.

But this gets us into all the questions of what it means to be literal, which is much more complicated than people realize.

Kevin Harris: Genesis 1 and 2 are two cognate but different accounts pointing at a truth from different directions rather than a single literal report. And Collins adds that not being strictly literal doesn’t mean nothing happened in this exchange. Is that a fair way to read the relationship between these two creation accounts?

Dr. Craig: Well, without wanting to deny Wright’s general point, the question is whether his point of these doublets is relevant to the interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2. And that doesn’t seem to be the case. The subject matter of these two stories is quite different. As I said, one is about the origin of the universe, the creation of the universe. The other one is about the beginning of mankind on this planet.

Now, I agree that Genesis 1–11 should not be read with a sort of wooden literalism. But the reason for that is because of the literary analysis of the genre of these chapters. The Psalms to which Wright appeals are a completely different literary genre and are therefore irrelevant to the interpretation of Genesis 1–11.

Kevin Harris: Well, I said that that was the last clip, but actually there’s one more. Francis and Tom perform a little song that they wrote, a parody of a familiar song. They both play guitar and sing. And we just want a little portion of this, Bill. Here’s about a minute and a half of that performance.

Dr. Wright: Genesis, Earth and heaven in a cosmic kiss. Evolution must have been like this. Oh, I believe in Genesis.

Dr. Collins: DNA, shaping creatures from the dust and clay. Double helix in the Milky Way. Oh, Genesis meant DNA.

Dr. Wright/Dr. Collins Duet: How he made it all 14 billion years ago. Wisdom, grace, and love, for he spoke and it was so.

Dr. Wright: Genesis, even Adam in a world of bliss, in the paradise we all now miss. Oh, I believe in Genesis.

Kevin Harris: Well, they’re not exactly Simon and Garfunkel, but close enough. And by the way, I’ve heard you sing in church, Bill. You and I could do a song like that . . .

Dr. Craig: Oh, for goodness sake!

Kevin Harris: Wrap us up today. Tell us about your section on this topic and your Systematic Philosophical Theology.

Dr. Craig: Volume three of my Systematic Philosophical Theology, which I’ve just delivered to the publisher for production, deals with the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of man. And so it will deal with all of the things that we’ve talked about today, both the creation of the universe as well as the origin of humanity on this planet and the credibility of a historical Adam and Eve as the progenitors of the entire human race.

And you don’t need to believe me about these things. The book provides all of the references to the scientific literature on the cutting edge of population genetics as well as biblical scholarship. So if you’re interested in these subjects, I would commend to you volume three, “Doctrine of Creation and Doctrine of Man.”