At first glance, this looks too simple a solution. At second glance, it
raises all sorts of questions, such as
* how did sin enter into the world?
* how did Mankind (?) "morally degenerate?"
* how do we read the story of the eating of the forbidden fruit?
* why were Adam and Eve driven out of the Garden of Eden and what
does it signify?
* how do we interpret the curse of "thorns and thistles" and "pain
in childbirth?"
etc., etc.
Chuck Vandergraaf
> ----------
> From: RDehaan237@aol.com[SMTP:RDehaan237@aol.com]
> Sent: June 12, 1998 3:48 PM
> To: dfischer@mnsinc.com; asa-owner@udomo2.calvin.edu;
> bjmcarth@pacbell.net
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Drawing Lines
>
>
> In a message dated 6/12/98 1:39:49 AM, (Dick Fischer)
> dfischer@mnsinc.com
> wrote:
>
> <<Now there is a short collection of data that points toward Adam's
> position in the stream of humanity at a point far downstream
> from the Australopithicines, or H. habilis, or H. erectus, or
> even the anatomically modern Cro Magnon. Where is there even a
> shred of evidence that would put Adam back millions of years
> just so he can start the human race?
>
> The historical evidence is entirely one-sided. The question is:
> Can we be comfortable with Adam as the first man to have a
> covenant with God and to be accountable, but not at the apex of
> humanity. In short, can we live with the realization that the
> Old Testament, written entirely by the Jews, is the history of
> their people, and not the history of mankind.
> >>
>
> Dick has it right, IMHO. The hypothesis that Adam was the head of the
> biological human race poses such intractible problems that it needs to
> be
> ruled out. Here's just one. If Adam is placed among the
> Australopithicines
> as the head of humanity, how could he have named the animals that God
> presented to him, as described in Gen. 2, given A.'s lack of
> sophisticated
> language and the intellectual capacity required for the task? Any
> placement of
> Adam in the human genealogy is purely arbitrary.
>
> There is an answer to the biological head of the human race, that is
> given in
> the first chapter of Genesis. Here God consults within the godhead to
> create
> human
> beings in his image-- "male and female created he them". This is the
> beginning of the lineage that developed into the human race. This
> lineage is
> what Glenn has argued was becoming human long before most Christians
> thought
> they were. It was far down in this lineage, having become morally
> deteriorated, that Adam was inserted as a real historical person, as
> the first
> bearer of the covenant, the first to have a real relationship with
> God. Adam
> was created into a peopled world, as Dick has emphasized. The
> covenant was
> initiated in Adam, and realized via the Jewish nation and eventually
> in
> Christ, the Second Adam. In Christ the human race became one, no Jew
> or
> Greek, slave or free, male or female.
>
> Bob
>