Modern theologians feel the need to repackage the Bible to pacify the proclivities of pretentious people. One day it's the gender issue and another day homosexual marriage. Now it is the gospel, or more specifically, how to repackage the need for the gospel without an historical Adam.
Since prevailing scientific attitudes have dispensed with the existence of a real Adam made in the image of God -- and who fell from that blessed estate -- pandering theologians must follow suit. It's as if the theologian and the scientist are dancing and the scientist is the lead partner. Enter J. R. Daniel Kirk of Fuller Theological Seminary, musing whether Paul’s Christ Requires a Historical Adam? He seems to conclude that “...the gospel does not, in fact, depend on a historical Adam or historical Fall...”
“In short, if there is no historical Adam with whom we are enmeshed in the guilt and power of sin, how can we affirm that in Christ we participate in the justification and freedom of grace?”
“Where, then, are we left, if the pressures of scientific inquiry lead us to take down the spire of a literal, historical Adam?...Might it be possible that we could retell the stories of both Adam and evolutionary sciences such that they continued to reflect our conviction that the endpoint of God’s great story is nothing else than new creation in the crucified and risen Christ? For many, the cognitive dissonance between the sciences and a historical Adam has already become too great to continue holding both...To accompany Paul on the task of telling the story of the beginning in light of Christ, while parting ways with his first-century understanding of science and history, is not to abandon the Christian faith in favor of science.”
J. R. Daniel Kirk's article notwithstanding, this theory attacks the biblical record, questions the inerrancy of the Bible, and compromises man's need for redemption. It seems even to contradict the doctrinal statement of the very institution that employs Kirk, Fuller Theological Seminary:
“IV. God, by his word and for his glory, freely created the world out of nothing. He made man and woman in his own image, as the crown of creation, that they might have fellowship with him. Tempted by Satan, they rebelled against God. Being estranged from their Maker, yet responsible to him, they became subject to divine wrath, inwardly depraved and, apart from grace, incapable of returning to God.”
Let us accompany Paul in continuing to tell the story of the beginning in light of Christ, while parting ways with the likes of Daniel Kirk and their twenty-first-century understanding of science and history. They have abandoned the Christian faith in favor of science. Let God be true, but every man a liar.
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