Imagine a young man in his late teen years. He has recently moved to the city to go to school. In the course of his study, he becomes convinced that Genesis 1 is no longer consistent with the most sophisticated intellectual trends of the day. He rejects the Christian faith in which he was raised,…

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…

On and off between the years 1542-1563, Calvin wrestled with and returned to Genesis; his commentaries have been known and loved ever since, especially in the English-speaking world. They remain a well-worn resource for preachers and teachers, with Genesis not the least within the Canon. The Calvin Studies Society translations are widely available. Calvin’s sermons are…

Becoming reasonably conversant with contemporary developments and bringing biblical teaching to bear on commonplace assumptions is a perennial challenge for thoughtful Christians. One of the more pressing questions the church now confronts is a perceived conflict between the findings of the Human Genome Project and the Christian tradition regarding the common origin of humanity in…

Martin Luther, so the conventional wisdom says, was a “Pauline” theologian, the doctor of justification by grace through faith alone. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to learn that his work as professor of Bible was not centered in Paul, nor even in the New Testament. Instead, he lectured mostly on the Old…

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 a well-known passage from his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas makes a distinction between two different kinds of doctrine, each of which “pertain to the faith” in different ways. First, there are doctrines that constitute “the substance of the faith in itself” (per se substantia fidei); second, there are doctrines…

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;…