This past week I had the privilege of attending the 2012 EFCA Theology Conference at Trinity in Deerfield, IL. Dr. Bob Yarbrough and Dr. D.A. Carson were the speakers for the topic of ‘Understanding the Complimentarian Position.’ It was a very helpful conference and took a look at what the Bible says about gender roles and how that affects us today. Over the next couple weeks (if I can get it done) I’ll be putting up some summaries from the different sessions up here.

The first pre-conference session was about the “hot topic” of the historicity of Adam and Eve. This presentation was given by my “dear old dad” Greg Strand and Hans Madueme.

The purpose of this preconference was to discuss this debate with the issues of inerrancy and the authority of the Word of God. The goal was to not become minimalists or maximalists, but instead major on the majors and minor on the minors. In light of that, how are we to think about the historical Adam and Eve, as under attack from the modern liberal views of them being a group of people?

At the core of this denial of Adam’s historicity were listed 3 groups or individuals: Francis Collins, BioLogos, and Peter Enns.

Francis Collins was a part of the Human Genome Project and has written a couple books about science and God, specifically in relation to creation. In his first book The Language of God, he claims that humans emerged from primates about 100,000 years ago, and in his later book The Language of Science and Faith, says that Adam and Ever “do not fit the evidence” that science has presented.

BioLogos was launched in 2007 by Francis Collins, the “atheist turned Christian” to promote theistic evolution. Many people look to BioLogos as the authority in this scientific discussion, and while there are many good Christian scientist who are a part of this organization, we need to be careful of their theological view.

BioLogos group does affirm that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative Word of God. They have not yet adopted a statement of faith, but affirm 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 and the ancient creeds of the early church. While those are good and necessary to affirm, they aren’t the only things that need to be affirmed. The Bible as a whole is God’s inspired Word given to us. There is no realm that isn’t affected by Scripture. Many people at BioLogos are seeking to make the Bible fit into their science instead of seeing how science ultimately points us to Christ (Romans 1).

The final person that was addressed was Peter Enns who wrote Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. In this, Enns suggests that we read the Bible incarnationally. We must avoid the error of Docetism (that Christ only appeared to be human). The final conclusion he comes to is that because the Bible was written by humans, we must accept errors because of their ignorance, i.e. the biblical writers weren’t as scientifically advanced as us and therefore wouldn’t have written what they did if they knew the whole story. He therefore suggests that Adam is not the beginning of humanity, but the beginning of the nation of Israel. This leads him to say that a strictly literal reading of the Adam story no longer fits with what we know from secular science.

It seems that at the root of the previous 3 arguments is the questioning of the validity and authority of Scripture. This is exactly why point 3 of the new EFCA Statement of Faith states “We believe that God created Adam and Eve in His image, but they sinned when tempted by Satan.” For more information about the EFCA’s position on these issues, see Evangelical Convictions, pages 34-35 and75-77.