William Lane Craig has taken a lot of heat for his In Quest of the Historical Adam, where he tries to sidestep historical issues. Jason Lisle at the Biblical Science Institute offers an eight part series on the topic; this is from the wrap-up, where he addresses Craig’s suggestion that Jesus did not take Genesis literally re Adam and Eve:
Craig: He [Jesus] then cites Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them,” and weds this statement with Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” This forms the basis for Jesus’s teaching on divorce. Jesus is interpreting the story of Adam and Eve to discern its implications for marriage and divorce, not asserting its -historicity.
Lisle: Hardly. Jesus is not referencing an allegorical or mythical story to illustrate marriage. Rather, Jesus is citing the historical basis for marriage! The very text Jesus quotes specifically says this, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Matthew 19:5; Genesis 2:24). That is, the reason people get married today is because God created Eve from Adam’s rib as a helper suitable for him (Genesis 2:20-22).
A non-historical story cannot have “implications for marriage and divorce” in the real world. If Jesus were referring to a non-historical, allegorical, or mythical story, then He made a bad argument; fiction cannot explain why marriage is what it is. Only history can do that. But, of course, Jesus is God and would therefore never make a bad argument. Matthew 19 shows that Jesus believed in the literal historical details of the creation of Adam and Eve as recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, and that such details are the reason why marriage is what it is today.
As I illustrated in a previous article, imagine someone said, “The reason we celebrate Independence Day on July 4th is because that is the day David Levinson and Steve Hiller saved the world from invading extra-terrestrials in the movie Independence Day.” That would be absurd because the fictional events in a movie do not affect the real world. Rather, The United States celebrates Independence Day on July 4th because that is historically when the final draft of the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. Many other nations celebrate their Independence on a different date because of the various events that actually happened in their respective histories.
Jason Lisle, “The Historical Adam – Part 8: Closing Remarks” at Biblical Science Institute (January 7, 2022)
Life might be easier for Craig if he just became a theistic evolutionist, embraced Darwinism, and sidestepped issues around what the Bible says about human history.
You may also wish to read: Casey Luskin: The mytho-history of Adam, Eve, and William Lane Craig. Long a defender of orthodoxy, Craig seems to want to prune the orthodoxies he is expected to defend. But the pruning process in which he is engaged can never really stop. The “sensible God” is most likely the one looking back at us from our medicine cabinet mirrors.
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Dr. Craig, for someone who has impressed me very much in the past with his philosophical take-down of atheism, i.e. ‘metaphysical naturalism’, does not seem to be, in this case, examining the philosophical presuppositions of his present argument very carefully.
As Lisle pointed out “fiction cannot explain why marriage is what it is.”
If marriage is based on a historical narrative that is, in reality, a fiction, (as Dr. Craig is presently holding), then that, necessarily, entails that the entire institution of marriage must also be a fiction too. That much should be blatantly obvious to even the most philosophically illiterate person in the world, much more so should it be blatantly obvious to a philosopher of Craig’s caliber.
But alas, compromising one’s Christianity with the philosophical presuppositions of atheistic materialism, (i.e. Darwinian evolution), can apparently make even a philosopher of Craig’s caliber look embarrassingly bad as a philosopher.
The atheistic materialism that undergirds Darwinian evolution simply cannot ground the immaterial ‘legal contract’ of marriage as being ‘real’ in the first place, (nor can Atheistic materialism possibly ground any other immaterial concept that we hold as being ‘real’).
Indeed, instead of marriage being a fiction, and/or illusion, as it is held to be within Darwinian materialism, within Christianity the immaterial ‘legal contract’ of marriage is considered, by the vast majority of Christians, to be a sacred institution, holy ordinance, holy sacrament, and/or sacred mystery of God.
Indeed, within Christianity, Christ himself is held to be the ‘bridegroom’ and the church itself is held to be His, quote-unquote, ‘bride’.
Needless to say, God Himself, apparently, takes marriage very seriously. Much more seriously than we ourselves apparently do, (as is made evident by the high divorce rate).
Thus Craig, in denying to historical reality of Adam and Eve, and thus, unwittingly or not, undermining the Theistic foundation of the institution of marriage itself, is, in fact, undermining a ‘sacred mystery’ that is central to Christian theology.
Again, this rather large philosophical/theological ‘faux pas’ on the part of Dr. Craig is simply embarrassing for a philosopher of Craig’s caliber.
Moreover, what is reality sad is that, (although Dr. Craig apparently felt the need to make such philosophically embarrassing compromises between his Christianity and Darwinian materialism in order to remain, supposedly, ‘scientific’ and respectable), the fact of the matter is that, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, Darwinian evolution is simply a non-starter in so far as explaining the origin of humans, (or in so far as explaining the origin of any other species on the face of earth for that matter).
Verse:
It’s hard, as a non-Christian, not to savor–and perhaps gloat a little bit at–the deep irony of this whole Adam and Eve internecine war stuff. Christianity’s greatest theologian, WLC, is being excoriated by his lessers for trying to harmonize the myth of Adam and Eve with contemporary science. Some are even calling for his exile to the hinterland of “evolutionary creationism.” It’s enough to make Heidelberg man’s disarticulated head spin.
ChuckyD claims that William Lane Craig is “Christianity’s greatest theologian”
Excuse me??? That is a flagrant exaggeration that even WLC himself would disagree with.. WLC, although a decent philosopher, doesn’t even make it into the top 100 Christian Theologians.
ChuckyD, Antony Flew, who truly was considered one of the world’s leading atheistic philosophers, converted to Theism because of the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design, And he was nothing less than scathing of the supposed ‘science’ behind Richard Dawkins ‘selfish gene’.
As noted, WLC in NOT a theologian. Decent philosopher and good debater…but not a theologian.
Theology started with Pentecost and ended in 787 (Seventh.and last. of the Ecumenical Councils).
After this period there are not really theologians but only interpreters of theology in the modern language.
Unfortunatelly in protestant and catholic area 99,99% became makers/inventors of a new Christian theology =heresies.
WLC maybe has a good goal in mind : to attract into the church the evolutionist atheists , but WLC himself is not in the real Church (The Real Church =Church that kept all the decissions from the Primary Church between years 1-787)
BA77,
Sometimes I think you have no sense of humor.
Of course, WJC is not the greatest Christian theologian, now, or ever, although I believe he was ranked fourth most influential theologian of the past decade or two by Forbes, recently. I tried finding the article (I heard it on Craig’s podcast a few weeks back). He and Plantinga were also listed in the top ten current philosophers, which is an equally absurd ranking. https://academicinfluence.com/people?year-min=1990&discipline=philosophy and https://academicinfluence.com/people?year-min=1990&discipline=philosophy.
I’m not sure what Anthony Flew has to do with any of this, I was merely enjoying the fact that Casey Luskin and Jason Lisle seemed positively giddy ripping on Craig over Adam and Eve. That all these folks would waste so much time and energy trying to argue that Adam and Eve were actually real people seems really pointless. Why can’t they just accept Genesis as a creation story?
ChuckyD, (the ‘never say die’ Black Knight of Monty Python fame 🙂 ), asks, “Why can’t they, (Luskin and Lisle), just accept Genesis as a creation story?”
Perhaps precisely because the creation of Adam and Eve by God is not just some science free ‘just-so story’ that Darwinists are infamous for telling about human origins?
Last May, via an article from the American Museum of Natural History no less, (which is certainly no creationist organization), it was stated that the human evolution ‘narrative’, (as it is portrayed to the general public by evolutionists) is “just a big mess — there’s no consensus whatsoever.”
Even leading Darwinists Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr themselves honestly admitted that the purported fossil evidence for human evolution is, basically, just “elaborate storytelling” and “historical narrative”.
As should be obvious to even someone as biased as you are ChuckyD, having a senior research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould, and Ernst Mayr all say that the fossil evidence for human evolution boils down to, basically, “elaborate storytelling” and “historical narrative”, certainly does not bode well for any Darwinist who tries to claim that human evolution is beyond all dispute.
In fact, as I listed in post 1, there are several lines of scientific evidence that falsify core presuppositions in the ‘just-so story’ of human evolution.
Which, since the ‘just-so story’ for human evolution is obviously, ‘scientifically’, false, begs the question of, “Why can’t you ChuckyD just accept the fact that an initial human pair, i.e. Adam and Eve, must have been created by God in the ‘image of God’?”
I mean really ChuckyD, it is not as if I have to go to any great length to prove that humans must have been created by God in the ‘image of God.
For instance, every time you simply write a short sentence, you yourself ChuckyD are, pretty much, giving us irrefutable direct evidence that you yourself must have been made in the image of God by God!
In 2014, an veritable ‘who’s who’ list and leading Darwinian scientists, who specialize in the area of language research, issued a paper in which they honestly admitted that they have “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,,”
The reason why this honest confession by leading Darwinian scientists is so interesting to look at is that it is language, in and of itself, which is profoundly immaterial and ‘abstract’ in its foundational essence, that proves number 1 that, as Dr. Egnor puts it, “We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses.,,,”
And number 2, it is this unique human ability to understand, communicate, create, and more specifically, to infuse immaterial ‘abstract’ information into material substates, that has allowed humans, (directly contrary to the ‘red in tooth and claw’ thinking of Darwinists), to become ‘masters of the planet’.
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create immaterial ‘abstract’ information, and, (directly contrary to the ‘red in tooth and claw’ thinking of Darwinists), have come to ‘master the planet’ through the ‘top-down’ infusion of immaterial information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational essence.
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are ‘made in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create immaterial information, and have come to ‘master the planet’, not via brute force as is presupposed in Darwinian thought, but precisely because of our ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates.
Perhaps a more convincing proof that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then defeated death itself on a cross.
And that just so happens to be precisely the proof that is claimed within Christianity.
Of supplemental note, via George Ellis, the ‘bottom-up’ vs. ‘top-down’ explanations of Darwinists and Theists are, in essence, diametrically opposed to one another.
Moreover, the ‘top down’ explanations of Theists makes complete ‘scientific’ sense of the world, whereas, on the other hand, the ‘bottom-up’ explanations of Darwinian atheists end up unscientifically postulating ‘uncaused changes in the world’, (which is, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to postulating ‘magic’ as a cause).
“Life might be easier for Craig if he just became a theistic evolutionist, embraced Darwinism, and sidestepped issues around what the Bible says about human history. … Long a defender of orthodoxy, Craig seems to want to prune the orthodoxies he is expected to defend. But the pruning process in which he is engaged can never really stop.”
So true! The more one compromises with “evolution”, the more one has to re-interpret the Bible to make it fit. Craig is finding this out. His ideas have become more and more unorthodox over time.
He wants to be thought of as “scientific” and “orthodox” but in taking the positions he takes, he loses on both fronts!
After the fall:
To remain Christian we must believe in the resurrection of our body which will have returned to dust. On that great day God will fashion countless bodies from the dust to which they returned. So why do many refuse to remain open to the possibility that God actually did fashion the body of Adam from dust? Do these people believe in the resurrection?