Was Adam an historical figure?

[Calminian]

I think the KJV has been a fantastic translation for the English-speaking world. It has helped bring the Bible to the people, and was created by men who loved the Lord and did astonishingly well with the material they were given.

But I don't use it, because the English language has changed since then. And we now have better and more ancient sources. So today my personal favs are the ESV for reading and the NET Bible for it's copious footnotes.

I think the irony is, the KJV translators would have agreed with you.

 

[gluadys]

Yeah, IOWs God created them, and then didn't do anything outside of them in the creative process. Every creationist I know believes God both upholds normal processes, and then occasionally acts beyond them, miraculously. I'd like you to give me an example of a creationist that doesn't believe this. Yes, you have been challenged. Name someone. If you refuse then we'll have to assume you're fibbing.

And I'm willing to allow you to prove yourself. Name the creationists that deny God upholds natural laws, and only acts miraculously. If you can't you really need to apologize for making this whole story up. I'm going to keep demanding sources from you until you fess up.

Just to note that I will get back to you on this: but it will take a fair bit of research and I have limited time to do that right now.

I see the conversation has gone in other directions, but I really had no time to follow up on this challenge until now. One of the problems is digging up old archives. I had hoped to use some from this site, but some of my initial conversations on this topic are well before the earliest posts I could find. So I had to go to a different forum to find a representative. He goes by the handle osoclasi and I have been conversing with him for about three years. I have respect for his knowledge of scripture and his commitment to Reform theology. These are just a few typical snippets on God, nature and miracles.

Mon May 31, 2010
osoclasi: It is only reasonable if one presumes a naturalistic view of the
world. I have no problem with supernatural events taking place because I believe
in God who also acts in history. So logically, if one were to accept my view of
God, then their is nothing illogical about believing in a God who acts in
history and can cause a global flood.

Notice that he starts off by affirming that he has “no problem with supernatural events taking place” He then goes on to point to Noah’s flood as an instance of a supernatural event because “God can cause a global flood”

In short, he is contrasting “science” to “supernatural” and “miracle” to “naturalistic”.

This, I have found by experience to be the typical first response of a creationist. But to me, it makes significant theological assumptions that I can find no basis for in scripture or traditional Christian teaching.

Here are some of the questions I want to raise.

Does scripture affirm that Noah’s flood was supernaturally caused?
You may hasten to answer “yes” because, obviously, God decided to send a flood to wipe out life on earth. But does “divinely caused” necessarily mean “supernaturally caused”? Must God subvert the powers of nature to bring about an event like Noah’s flood? Or can he simply have the powers of nature act to carry out his purpose?

Are the powers with which God invested nature incapable of producing a global flood?
If this is the case, then, clearly, no global flood can occur unless God subverts the powers of nature and makes something happen that could not happen naturally, IOW a supernatural miracle. But do we have any suggestion from scripture that natural powers, acting in obedience to God’s will, cannot bring about a global flood? If anything, the reverse, for the flood story only mentions natural means such as rain. Perhaps the fountains of the deep were supernaturally opened; perhaps they were opened by tectonic forces such as occur naturally.

Now there are scientific reasons for saying no flood of global extent ever occurred in the history of the planet—mostly that there is no evidence of such and much evidence counter to that possibility. And there are plausible interpretations of scripture to suggest the flood was not actually global in extent. But I am not going in to those. What I am saying is that even if we accept completely the typical creationist interpretation of a historical global flood, there is no reason to contrast that event with “a naturalistic view” since scripture does not present it as a non-natural event.

Why then, jump to the defence of supernatural miracles as if it is only this which supports the story of a global flood? To me, this seems to betray a view that God cannot (or does not) act in nature except in the mode of supernatural intervention. Typically creationists don’t even think of God using nature in a natural way.

And that really short-changes the whole doctrine of creation.

Wed Jun 9, 2010
osoclasi: Ah, but what if one of those Christian scientist rejected evolution
and believed that the creator created everything just as the Bible says, what
would happen. It is ok to keep your beliefs to yourself, but if a scientist
believes in the supernatural, he gets looked at crossed eyed.

Here we see that he cannot conceive of a Christian scientist who believes “that the creator created everything just as the Bible says” unless the scientist rejects evolution. But if the scientist is a Christian he already does believe “that the creator created everything just as the Bible says” without rejecting evolution.

He is still opposing science and the supernatural, and assuming that creation has to be supernatural. He is leaving no room for God to ordain things to happen within the framework of the powers granted to nature. In my perspective, this is putting handcuffs on God’s creativity.

The citations above are a typical opening gambit and come from three years ago. The rest are more recent but still show a deep hesitancy to view anything natural as connected with God's activity.

Tue Jan 29, 2013
Because [natural selection is] dependent upon conditions in nature, not the sovereign
will of God. It is specific circumstances in the enviroment that allow a
particular individual to survive and reproduce. So it's either nature shuffling
the deck and natural selection selecting the winning hand or God doing it.

Notice how three years later, he actually exclude God from natural events!!

For him, “conditions in nature” have nothing to do with “the sovereign will of God”. He sets out a complete, mutually exclusive dichotomy “it’s either nature. . . or God.” No wonder a person who thinks like this sees scientific explanations as “godless”.

A person who thinks like this must, logically, think nothing in nature, nothing for which we have figured out a natural mechanism, occurs by God’s will and intention. Medicine, for him, doesn’t work because God heals through medicine. Medicine heals “naturally” and we only need God when the natural medicine fails. If we can thank the doctor and the scientists who developed the medicine, we have no reason to thank God.

When I hear this kind of language from creationists, (and I do, all the time) I wonder if they still believe God sends rain or blesses a garden with fertility. Just what do creationists believe about God and the ordinary processes of nature if they believe in this hard dichotomy between nature and God? If any and every natural process or mechanism, such as natural selection means God is doing nothing, then most of the time we have to say that God is doing nothing! One may as well be a Deist.

I have called him on this hard dichotomy several times, and when I do, I get a different tune; see for example this exchange:

Thu Mar 7, 2013
Me: Can we say that, for a theist, God is always acting in nature?

osoclasi: In the Christian worldview yes.

Now this shows that he does know real Christian doctrine. Ask him a point-blank question, and he snaps back with the answer that is appropriate for a Christian. Yet he wants to exclude the natural processes related to evolutionary change. And when he defends that exclusion he goes back to the dichotomy of nature and God. Just two days later, we get this exchange:

Mon Mar 11, 2013
Me: That is not difficult. There are plenty of scriptural passages which depict
God acting along with nature or in a natural way, without using miracles to
accomplish the effect. A good one is Psalm 139:13. But there are plenty of
others as well.

osoclasi: Except for the fact that when you add God to it, DNA no longer
randomly mutates and natural selection no longer blindly selects, then the
process is no longer Darwinian

This is so nonsensical. How can a person read scriptures which depict the use of lots to make decisions or choose a candidate and then say if God is involved, DNA no longer randomly mutates? Scripture sees no contradiction between random events and God in action. Why invent such a contradiction solely in relation to evolution?

If, as this person stated earlier “God is always acting in nature” how does this process become non-Darwinian when we affirm, as believers, that God is acting in the process of natural selection?

It seems this person can’t decide whether God really acts in nature all the time or not. When the issue is presented as pure theology, he agrees with the position you set out: "Every creationist I know believes God both upholds normal processes, and then occasionally acts beyond them, miraculously." (btw, that goes for every TE I know as well.)

Yet as soon as he is asked to apply this to the normal processes of evolution, he assumes God is excluded because it is natural. So suddenly, God no longer upholds normal processes? What happened to his Christian worldview? It would seem that creationists of this sort think that human intelligence, coming to understand how something in nature works, has the capacity to eject God from that aspect of creation.

Here is a final example from one of our last conversations. The quote is a little longer to give the context.

May 22, 2013
Me: Let's put it this way. Do you agree that God planned for and created you as
an individual?

osoclasi: Sure.

Me: Do you know or need to know what action God took in the bodies of your
mother and father to put together the unique combination of DNA which resulted
in you?

osoclasi: No but I'd like to know if God was involved or not.

Me: Does not knowing what God did mean God did not create you?

If you agree that it is not hard to say "Hey I don't know what God did, but I
still know that God created me." Then, sure, I can agree that "Hey, I don't know
exactly what God does in the evolutionary process to create species, but I still
know that God created all species through evolution."

osoclasi: How do you know that as opposed to nature just acting on it's own?

I throw up my hands in dismay. If someone really has a theology which affirms God's constant upholding and involvement in normal natural processes without resort to the miraculous, how can they even ask that question?

How can one even visualize a situation in which nature "just acts on its own"?

Yet, having affirmed that God always acts in nature, that God acts in another normal process (the creation of a single individual) the very same person erects the dichotomy between God acting and nature acting on its own without God.

And I have seen enough of this from enough creationists to think this is a widespread view. I hesitate therefore to simply accept a profession that "God continually upholds normal processes" from creationists, because once removed from the context of a formal profession of faith, their own language tells me again and again that they either don't really believe it, or they have never thought out the implications. They don't see the irony of believing God upholds normal natural processes and at the same time rejecting a normal process such as evolution on the grounds it is natural and therefore excludes God.

It is inconsistent and illogical like trying to ride two horses in different directions at the same time.

Oh, btw, you will find these in the archives on Origins Talk. OriginsTalk : OriginTalk Discussion Group
Do a search on author=osoclasi.