A Flawed Mirror: A Response to the Book “Theistic Evolution”

Thanks Dr. Haarsma. Aside from one matter, I think this article is fantastic, and I am impressed with the posture of humility it assumes and for the clarity that it brings to this conversation. I’m glad to see concern with making sure that our definition for a view corresponds to the what the person holding that view actually believes.

I’m concerned about this sentence:
“Regarding the biological origin of Adam and Eve, it is true that evolutionary creationists cannot affirm the traditional de novo view of human origins (in which God miraculously creates the first pair roughly 10,000 years ago, with this pair as the sole genetic progenitors of all humans today), because there is abundant evidence in God’s creation that the early humans were a population of at least several thousand individuals roughly 200,000 years ago.”

When I read that sentence, I was surprised, frustrated, and just deeply disappointed, because it seemed initially to me to be saying that the “de novo” view necessarily includes an affirmation that Adam and Eve were the “sole genetic progenitors.” Wouldn’t you agree that it is entirely possible for someone to believe in the “de novo” creation of Adam and Even without believing that they are the “sole genetic progenitors”, that God could have created them specially (just as Jesus’ virgin birth was special) and their children could have intermarried with other hominids who had evolved in accord with evolutionary science? In fact, this is the view I currently find most convincing. In referring to the “traditional de novo view”, were you distinguishing it from other non traditional “de novo” views? I can see now that perhaps that is what was meant, although I didn’t see that at first and I don’t think it is clear.

Ultimately, it’s not the terms here that are important to me, but rather the concepts behind them. Although we are dealing with a subtle distinction, I’ve become convinced that the failure to make this distinction clear over the years may have been the source of a fairly profound amount of unnecessary disagreement. I myself suffered much cognitive dissonance in trying to reconcile population genetics with the claims of Romans 5, and the solution came in realizing that I could affirm that affirm Adam and Eve as the sole Imago Dei progenitors without having to affirm that they were the sole genetic progenitors. Perhaps you have found other ways of reconciling these things, but I haven’t found any others that were satisfying, and I suspect many others are in the same boat as me.

I want to highlight that I am not alone in wishing that Biologos would have more clarity on the “de novo”/”sole genetic progenitor” distinction. I believe it was this issue that Josh Swamidass was addressing in his defense of Tim Keller after Biologos’ interaction with a Gospel Coalition video last fall In Defense of Tim Keller I was hopeful that the conversation then marked a turning point. I’m still hopeful, that we can eventually find a way to make this distinction more clear.

I hate to focus so much on a single sentence. Thanks again for this article as a whole. I very much appreciate it and I hope it will be the catalyst for more charitable discussion around evolutionary creation.

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