Given your acceptance of the scientific consensus on the age of the cosmos, why do you reject the consensus regarding human evolution? So went the original prompt, intended to stimulate discussion on a recurring question faced by old earth creationists. Put another way, is there a consistent way to be an old earth creationist while…

I am an old earth creationist (OEC). The question posed to me is straightforward: since I accept what science says about the age of the earth, why don’t I also accept what science seems to be saying about human evolution? In short, my answer is twofold: 1) the science concerning human origins (particularly the Darwinian…

First, let me outline my approach to Scripture and science briefly. In seeking to integrate Scripture and science as the “two books” of God, I allow each to critique the other. This makes many people uncomfortable: some would allow science to critique the Bible, but never the other way around (the “eager-to-please” position), while others…

No topic within the doctrine of creation has been more unsettled by modern science than theological anthropology. Increased knowledge of the physical world has raised new difficulties for traditional views of the human person—are human minds as separable from the body as previous ages believed? Is belief in an immaterial soul scientifically naïve? More recently,…

I am grateful to Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight for their work in Adam and the Genome, and I am also thankful for the engagement provided by the scholars who have contributed to this symposium. This conversation is exactly the sort of forthright, well-informed, and charitable discussion that the church needs, and it is just…

Dennis and I were both honored and wary that the Creation Project would take on our book for a wider public discussion, honored because they chose our book and wary because it was a five-to-two ratio of reviews to responses and because we know that many in the evangelical community will agree with neither Dennis…

I am grateful that our book, Adam and the Genome, was selected by the Creation Project for this discussion. This is a timely issue for the church that affects both our witness to those outside our communities whom we long to reach with the gospel, and for those among us who have come to accept…

In the age of genomes, new information is reshaping our understanding of life on Earth. This information cannot be ignored, and questions are rising in the Church. How much does evolution press on theology? Was Adam a real person from whom all mankind descends? In Adam and the Genome, the scientist Dennis Venema explains our…

Adam and the Genome reviews selected highlights in the scholarly discussion about human evolution and Scripture. In what follows I focus on Venema’s approach to arguing support for evolution, and McKnight’s claims about a literary vs. historical Adam. Challenges with Venema’s Method The first chapter emphasizes predictive power and independent lines of evidence as strategies for…

In Adam and the Genome, my friend Scot McKnight presents his biblically rooted case for claiming that the term historical Adam is really about a literary or archetypal Adam. It is the argument of Chapters 5-8. To drive the point home the term historical is placed in quotes (“historical”) as he introduces the topic (p….

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that evangelicals are embroiled in a lively debate about Adam and Eve. On one side are those who insist that Adam and Eve were the first and sole progenitors of the entire human race. The other side cautions against reading too much dogma into Genesis 2-3;…

Gavin Ortlund joins the Creation Project after recently earning a PhD in historical theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. His dissertation, which will soon be published by Brill, is titled “Ascending Toward the Beatific Vision: Heaven as the Climax of Anselm’s Proslogion” and focuses on St. Anselm’s doctrine of heaven in the Proslogion. As one might guess from…