The War on Adam and Eve

It’s an age old cold war that has recently become hot again. I’m speaking about the controversy concerning whether or not Adam and Eve were real people. The Bible says they were. And I’ll get back to that in a moment, but here is some information about the current controversy.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty of National Public Radio produced a program about this topic recently. Her report was a clear sign that even the secular world now recognizes that the historical veracity of Adam and Eve is central to Christianity’s integrity. Hagerty spoke with theologians, biology professors and church leaders.

Dennis Venema, a professor of biology at Trinity Western University, was asked if all humans descended from Adam and Eve. He responded, “That would be against all genomics evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.” Venema went on to say that there is simply too much genetic diversity among human beings than would be possible with an original reproducing pair. Professor Venema preached the standard evolutionary creed and explained that, in Hagerty’s words, “modern humans emerged from other primates as a large population long before the Genesis time frame of a few thousand years ago.”

Hagerty also profiled John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College for many years. Hagerty reported: “Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently, says it’s time to face the facts: there was no Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.” Schneider then took the battle flag further down the field saying, “Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise lost. So Christians, I think, have a challenge; have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings.”

OK, I agree (surprised?), let’s face facts…there was no apple. The Bible never says anything about an apple (really, go look it up). But Schneider is dead wrong on everything else. What we are dealing with is a rejection of the Bible’s account of the beginning. Schneider’s comments are a Molotov cocktail thrown not only on the subject of Adam and Eve, but also on Eden and man’s fall into sin. Read again the professor’s words, “There never was any such paradise to be lost.” Without the information we are given at the beginning of the Bible, about paradise and man’s fall into sin, there is no reason for the redemption prophesied in the rest of the Old Testament and realized in the New Testament. This is the reason for the new attacks on the first couple.

The startling thing about this new skirmish is not that secularists deny Adam and Eve; it’s that the new Storm Troopers are Christian theologians! And their numbers are growing. From the time of Darwin’s first shot, people have argued that Genesis chapters 1-3 should not be taken literally. Hagerty asked Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist denomination about this. He made the following comment, “While no honest reader of the Bible would deny the literary character of Genesis 1-3, the fact remains that significant truth claims are being presented in those chapters. Furthermore, it is clear that the historical character of these chapters is crucial to understanding the Bible’s central message—the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Indeed, Mohler is right.

So what does biology really say about this subject and what does the Bible say? First, biology. A group of scientists working with Alan Wilson from the University of California at Berkeley found that by analyzing DNA from mitochondria, which is passed from each woman to her female child, they had traced the maternal lineage of all humans back to a single woman. MtDNA is passed down nearly unchanged from generation to generation. So we share the same mtDNA-type as our mother, our maternal grandmother, our maternal great-grandmother and on and on. Can anyone say, “Eve”? Yes! It’s funny, but science calls this original mother “Mitochondrial Eve”.

Also, because the Y chromosome is passed down exclusively from father to son, all human Y chromosomes today trace back to a single father called

“Y chromosomal Adam.” Most scientists have little trouble believing that one woman and one man were the progenitors of all of humanity. Those who say otherwise do so from an a priori position—they’ve dug themselves into a foxhole and they don’t want out.

What about the Bible? The Bible’s account of the creation of Adam and Eve and their descendants reads as if one is reading real history, not fiction. Adam and Eve have sons and daughters (Genesis 5:4 – yep, many of them not just Cain and Abel). And the genealogy moves on through Seth, Enosh, Cainan and on and on all the way to Noah and then on to Abraham. All were real people. No one denies that Abraham was real. So do real people descend from fictional characters?

The Word of God presents the results of the mtDNA study this way: “He [God] has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth (Acts 17:11).” Also, the New Testament presents Adam as a real person. Luke, presenting the genealogy of Jesus Christ works backwards from Jesus (Luke 3: 23) to Adam (verse 38). Jesus Christ mentioned our first parents when dealing with a question about marriage (Mark 10: 5-7). Was he wrong?

The apostle Paul understood Adam to be an historical person who was the genetic father of the entire human race and the reason for our fall into sin. He wrote that, “through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death through sin (Romans 5:12).” He went on to write, “For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many…For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:15, 17).” See also 1 Corinthians 15: 20-23.

Adam was a real person and his fall into sin is the reason why we need to be saved from the power and penalty of sin. God’s first created man had a choice: obey God and live or disobey and forfeit life. But God so loved the world that by another act of direct creation (Luke 1: 26-33) Jesus Christ came into existence. He had a choice too and he humbly obeyed even to the point of death, a death that fully paid for our sins.

The real controversy over Adam and Eve is not a scientific one. There are people at war with God (Romans 8:7). They hate the fact that there is a God, that we are not, and that we are sinners in need of redemption. The Bible reveals that there are people, “who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).” But we suppress biblical truth and reject it to our own peril. The penalty for sin is death—permanent annihilation and the only remedy is Jesus Christ. Scripture says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).” Adam and Eve were real. Sin and death is real. So is Jesus Christ: trust him with your life.