When Did Sin Begin?

Human Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin

Haarsma, Loren

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493430697
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion et sciences

The question of the "historical Adam" is a flashpoint for many evangelical readers and churches. Science-and-theology scholar Loren Haarsma--who has studied, written, and spoken on science and faith for decades--shows it is possible both to affirm what science tells us about human evolution and to maintain belief in the doctrine of original sin. Haarsma argues that there are several possible ways of harmonizing evolution and original sin, taking seriously both Scripture and science. He presents a range of approaches without privileging one over the others, examining the strengths and challenges of each.

1

Scripture, Science, and the Holy Spirit

WHEN SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE both speak about a topic, such as human origins, which has more authority? How might they rightly influence each other?

For centuries, most theologians understandably interpreted Genesis 2–3 in a more or less literal-historical way that implied that a specific first couple, Adam and Eve, were the sole progenitors of all of humanity. Discoveries in science and archaeology are making the church reconsider this interpretation. The church has learned not to ignore the discoveries of science simply because they challenge long-held interpretations of particular passages of Scripture. The church has also learned not to simply accept the first new interpretation of Scripture that fits with the new science.

Theology provides a foundation for doing science, and theology provides an interpretive framework for the results of science. Science by itself never dictates how we interpret Scripture. Discoveries from the natural sciences provide new data for theology and sometimes prompt consideration of new interpretations, but it is ultimately theology that decides on the best interpretation of Scripture. History has taught us that the church can maintain the core doctrines that Scripture is inspired, authoritative, and inerrant in what it intends to teach while adjusting—with appropriate care—its theories about the best interpretations of particular passages.1

This chapter summarizes what the church has learned from history about how theology and science can work in harmonious counterpoint to improve our understanding of both Scripture and the natural world. Chapter 6 applies these lessons to Adam and Eve.

How Scripture Rightly Affects Science

If we consider only those historical cases in which our interpretation of Scripture changed because of science (such as Galileo’s evidence that the earth moves around the sun or later discoveries about the great age of the earth), the relationship between science and theology can feel like a one-way relationship in which science steps in from time to time and “corrects” our interpretation of some Scripture passages. But the relationship is not so one-sided. There are many ways in which Scripture provides a lens for Christians through which we look at the natural world as we do science.

Modern science has some foundational philosophical presuppositions that are supported by the success of science but originate beyond science. Nearly all scientists today, regardless of their religion, hold a set of common beliefs that enable them to do science, including the following: human beings can understand the natural world, at least in part; nature typically operates according to regular, repeatable, universal patterns of cause and effect so that things we learn in the lab today will also hold true halfway around the world a week from now; simply theorizing how the world ought to work is not enough—we must test our theories; the study of the natural world is a worthwhile pursuit. These presuppositions might seem obvious to us today, but for most of human history, many people did not hold them all. For example, animists who believed that gods or spirits inhabit many aspects of the world doubted that nature operates according to regular, repeatable, universal patterns of cause and effect; instead, they believed that nature is controlled by gods and spirits who needed to be appeased or manipulated by ritual. And some brilliant philosophers of the ancient world did not see the need to do experiments, because they thought it was possible to derive from logic and first principles how the world ought to behave.

Some of the earliest scientists justified their belief in these foundational presuppositions of science because of what the Bible teaches. We are able to partially understand how the natural world works, they thought, because we are made in God’s image and God has given us the gifts to study his creation. Nature operates according to regular, repeatable, universal patterns of cause and effect because nature is not filled with capricious gods but is ruled by one God in a faithful and consistent manner. God could have created in any way God chose that was consistent with his nature, but we humans are limited and sinful, so we need to test our theories with experiments. Science is worth doing because in studying the world we are studying God’s handiwork.

Historically, Christian theology played an important role in bringing together these foundational presuppositions for doing science. But that does not imply that only Christians can do science. Non-Christians can also affirm those philosophical presuppositions, even when they don’t accept the underlying theological beliefs held by Christians. Because of God’s common grace,2 Christians and non-Christians can do science together.

Christians find in Scripture not only motivation to study God’s creation but also teachings that support the foundational principles for doing science. Therefore, it should not surprise us that there are so few historical examples of genuine scientific hypotheses conflicting with what Scripture teaches, although there may be a few such cases. (Radical behaviorism might be one such historical case.)3

A far more common way that Scripture affects the way we look at the natural world is not in the scientific theories themselves but in the philosophical and religious interpretations that can be added to scientific results. Very often, Christians and non-Christians look at the same scientific results, agree about the scientific theories that best explain the data, but have very different philosophical or religious interpretations of those theories.

For example, Christians and non-Christians agree that planets orbit around the sun in stable, repeatable patterns that we can model with natural laws of gravity and motion. A deist might interpret this as saying that the solar system was set up by God, but God is now distant and no longer involved. A Christian can look at the same scientific data and theories through the lens of Scripture and come to a different interpretation. God is not absent from events that we can explain scientifically; rather, God continually sustains creation, and natural laws describe how God usually governs creation.

Similarly, Christians and non-Christians together can conclude scientifically that many events in the natural world have outcomes that include an element of randomness. The final outcomes cannot be completely predicted in terms of initial conditions and natural laws but must be modeled probabilistically. An atheist might look at randomness in the natural world and conclude that random events are fundamentally uncaused and undirected. A Christian can look at the same randomness in the natural world and conclude that this is another means that God can use in governing the natural world. A Christian might quote Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD,” to say that God can directly influence the outcome of events that appear random to human beings.

There are many examples in which Christians and non-Christians agree on which scientific theory best fits the data but disagree about the philosophical and religious implications of the theory. For those of us Christians who are scientists, Scripture provides a lens through which we see the natural world as God’s handiwork and something for which God continually cares. Scripture helps us take scientific data and theories and fit them into a larger theological framework of God as Creator and humanity as God’s image bearers.

Theology, Not Science, Determines How We Reinterpret Scripture

Science doesn’t dictate how we interpret Scripture. But science does sometimes alert us to new theological problems that we had not considered before.

For example, prior to Galileo’s work, there were very few theological problems with interpreting Psalm 93:1 and other passages as actually teaching that the earth is fixed in place. Galileo and others made scientific discoveries that strongly indicated that the earth moves. However, these scientific discoveries by themselves did not require the church to change its interpretation of Scripture. It is still possible today to believe that Scripture truthfully teaches that the earth is fixed in place. For someone who wants to believe that the earth is fixed, one possibility is to say that God is tricking (or permitting the devil to trick) all our measurements into giving false data about a moving earth. A second possibility is that we humans, because we are finite and sinful, simply should not trust our senses and our reasoning ability, despite the mountains of evidence that the earth is moving. A third possibility is that there is an enormous conspiracy among atheistic scientists who create false data because they want to undermine belief in God and Scripture.

Nearly all Christians reject those three possibilities because each of them carries vast theological problems. They are logically possible, but we judge them to be inconsistent with what we believe about God and about ourselves as God’s image bearers. The evidence for a moving earth, by itself, does not require us to give up a fixed-earth interpretation of Scripture. The scientific evidence only points out that there are huge theological problems with fixed-earth interpretations. Prior to Galileo’s work, the church did not face those problems.

Science provides new information, but theology decides which interpretation of Scripture is best.

Principles for Interpreting Scripture

Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, theologians and biblical scholars have developed hermeneutical methods that might be thought of as “best practices” for interpreting Scripture. Entire books have been written on them. Seminaries teach courses about these best practices. Listed here are just a few principles that have been particularly helpful to the church on those occasions when science, in particular, prompted another look at Scripture.4

We strive for the best translation of the words, phrases, and sentences in their grammatical context.

We look at the literary genre of each passage. Is it clearly poetry, song, history, parable? Is it a literary form commonly used today, or a form commonly used in ancient times but seldom used today? Understanding literary genre helps us understand what the passage intends to teach.

We look at each Scripture passage within the context of the entire Bible. We don’t take one passage of Scripture and interpret it in a simplistic way that contradicts other parts of the Bible. We look at how later Scripture writers made use of earlier texts. We use all of Scripture to build, insofar as we are able, a coherent story and theology of what all of Scripture teaches. This helps us better understand individual passages.

We look at the cultural and historical context of the original author and audience. What was the original author thinking and what was the original audience hearing when the passage was written? By putting ourselves in the mindset of the original human author and intended audience, we sometimes come to a better understanding of how the message of that passage applies to us today. We also look at the cultural-historical context of when texts were added to the canon, where they were placed, and why they were added.

These principles help us understand when passages should be interpreted literally and when they should be interpreted nonliterally, and thereby help us avoid debates about slippery slopes.5 For example, Psalm 91:2–4 says, “I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” The original author and audience did not think those feathers and wings were literal. Some of the surrounding cultures when that psalm was written did picture gods with wings and feathers, but the children of Israel were forbidden from making such images of God. They understood the wings and feathers in that passage as metaphors, and so should we.

When the prophet Nathan confronted King David after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed Uriah, Nathan told a story about a rich man who had many sheep but stole the only lamb of a poor neighbor. David, eager to dispense justice as the king, assumed that Nathan’s story was a literal-historical event, and so he missed the story’s message. Nathan had to correct David’s interpretation. When David understood Nathan’s story figuratively, he understood its message.

When we apply these hermeneutical methods to other passages, we are led to more literal-historical readings. Luke 1:1–4 reads, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” That sounds to us today like something close to modern historical scholarship. The original author and audience thought that the events that Luke recorded really did happen historically. That was the intended message of the original author, that’s how the original audience heard it, and that’s how the church interprets it today.

Historical Examples: Discoveries about the Earth and Solar System

These hermeneutical methods helped the church through several historical episodes in which the church’s traditional interpretation of certain passages conflicted with new scientific data. The most famous example is the Galileo story. Many Christians at the time interpreted passages such as Psalm 96:10, “The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved,” as teaching that the earth stood still. Eventually, however, the church concluded that the literary context of Psalm 96 is teaching about God’s faithfulness. The purpose of the passage is not to teach astronomy but to teach how God’s promises are reliable. Moreover, the historical context of that passage is a culture in which the original author and audience really did believe that the earth didn’t move.

There is no need for us today to try to “rescue” a semiliteral interpretation of this passage consistent with modern science—for example, by saying that God “fixed” the earth in its orbit around the sun. The original author and audience were not thinking about planetary orbits. They were thinking about an earth formed out of watery chaos and firmly fixed in one place, unmoving, by the power of the Creator God. When God inspired Psalm 96, he didn’t use Scripture to correct the astronomy of the original au...