"Star Wars," Spirituality, and Scripture--in the Christian Post

I had my first Christian Post piece published!

"Star Wars," Spirituality, and Scripture

Are Mormons Christian? A Letter to Fellow Evangelical Elders

* I recently was in a conversation with some elders of another church.  The topic of Mormonism came up and someone asked me why I would engage in evangelism toward Mormons since they "are Christians."  I gave my answer in that context and then followed-up with a letter.  The majority of that letter is reproduced below with the appropriate deletions to cover the identity of the church.  I post this here for its scriptural reasoning and its quotations from Joseph Smith.
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... Usually among such evangelicals there is a common theological core which it is recognized the LDS church does not embrace.  You will recall that I briefly mentioned that the LDS teaching regarding God denies monotheism in favor of tri-theism, that LDS teaching denies salvation by grace through faith, and that the LDS church believes in a different Jesus.  These are not minor or secondary issues on which Christians of good will and orthodox belief can and do differ—such as eschatological systems or even the proper recipients of baptism.  Rather, these issues are centrally located in the Christian theological system and cannot be modified in the ways that the LDS church does without ceasing to be Christian.

Why is this important?  The Scriptures give us the requirements for an elder.  One of those requirements is that elders in Christ’s church be those who are “holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.  Titus 1.9  Not only must we as elders hold to the truth personally but we must be able to teach the truth and to refute those who teach against the truth.  Failure to upheld these duties brings pain to the church as false teachers are then able to upset whole families (Titus 1.11).  The apostle Paul provides us an example of his fighting for the truth of the gospel in the book of Galatians.  He begins this epistle with forceful words because the truth of the gospel is at stake.

⁶I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; ⁷which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  ⁸But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!  ⁹As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!  --Galatians 1.6-9

The apostle Paul can also challenge the Corinthian church because they are allowing the preaching of “another Jesus.”

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.  –2 Corinthians 11.4

And who is doing this preaching of “another Jesus” and a “different gospel”—“false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11.13).

Just because a group says they are “Christian” or has the word “Christ” in their name (e.g., “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”) does not make them Christian in reality.  We need to examine the teaching of these groups to discern whether they are teaching a false view of God, Christ, or salvation.  When the Mormon religion is examined in this regard it fails to meet the most basic requirements of Christian theism.

Consider the central biblical and creedal teaching regarding monotheism—the belief in one God.  Orthodox Christianity has always affirmed monotheism even as it has confessed the doctrine of the Trinity.  The founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, unequivocally denies the doctrine of the Trinity and the monotheism which is crucial to this doctrine.  Consider the following words from Joseph Smith from what is known as the “King Follett Discourse.”

I will preach on the plurality of Gods.  I have selected this text for that express purpose.  I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods.  It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years.

I have always declared God to be a distinct personage.  Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.  If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural; and who can contradict it?  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 370.

Many men say there is one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are only one God.  I say that is a strange God anyhow—three in one and one in three! … All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 372.

Not only did Joseph Smith affirm polytheism and deny the Trinity, he also spoke of how God himself was not always God but was a man like us but attained to Godhood.

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!  That is the great secret.  If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 345.

…it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God.  We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity.  I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple.  It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 345-346.

Joseph Smith argues that God the Father himself had a Father!

If Abraham reasoned thus—If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also.  Where was there ever a son without a father?  And where was there ever a father without first being a son? … Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also?  I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 373.

These teachings by Joseph Smith are still affirmed today in the official teaching of the LDS church.[1]  These teachings are at radical variance from the Bible’s teaching regarding God.  ...

These are no small matters.  I have only looked at the issue of monotheism and the Trinity but the same massive departure from central truth also is found in the LDS doctrines of Christ and salvation.[2]

I would urge you as elders in the church of God to faithfully hold to the essentials of the faith.  If you as elders and leaders in the church will not affirm and defend the truth then those under your charge will not be properly fed and led.  If you don’t believe that Mormons are in need of the true gospel then your people will erroneously believe the same.  They will not seek to share the real Jesus of the Bible with their Mormon neighbors nor will they pray for the conversion of those caught in the deceptions of LDS teaching.

I know that I have spoken directly and my desire is not to cause offense.  Ultimately the gospel message and the authority of the Word of God are at stake.  If you are willing perhaps we can continue to discuss these matters for our edification and the strengthening of Christ’s church.

For the Gospel,

Richard J. Klaus

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     [1] For demonstration of this fact see the recent article by Robert Bowman “Are Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy? A Response to Richard Mouw.”  Online: http://mit.irr.org/are-mormons-approaching-orthodoxy-response-richard-mouw.

     [2] For a short but helpful introduction to these matters please see the article “Is Mormonism Christian?”  Online: http://mit.irr.org/mormonism-christian.  

Jesus Loved the Scriptures

* One of the occasional meditations I write for our church bulletin.

Jesus loved the scriptures.  When he was being tempted by the devil he turned to the Scriptures repeatedly to answer the temptation.  In the very midst of that temptation Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 8.3: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”  Jesus saw the Scriptures as the word which proceeds from the mouth of God.  When Jesus began his ministry he again turned to the Scriptures to define his calling and describe his ministry.  He quoted from Isaiah 61.1-2 and declared that its fulfillment was to be found in him (Luke 4.14-21).  In his on-going arguments with religious leaders Jesus repeatedly pointed to the Scriptures as his authority.  He declared that “the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10.35) and when his opponents refused to see the truth he could simply declare, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?” (Mark 12.24).  When asked about which commandment is the greatest Jesus, again, pointed to the Scriptures (Mark 12.29-31 quoting Deuteronomy 6.4-5 and Leviticus 19.18). 

Jesus understood the ancient Scriptures to be not merely the words of men but also the word of God.  Notice how he refers to Psalm 110.1:

David himself said in the Holy Spirit, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies beneath your feet.”

Jesus recognizes that the words of David are spoken “in the Holy Spirit”—there is both a human element and a divine element.  And the human and divine do not cancel each other out.  At other times Jesus could simply quote the Scriptures and say “God said…” (Matthew 15.5) thus showing his view of the Scriptures—they are the very words of God.

In his pain on the cross Jesus would again turn to the Scriptures to give vent to his suffering—“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22.1).  After his resurrection he did not stop looking to the Scriptures.  Rather he taught his disciples how to read the Scriptures rightly so as to see him in the fullness of God’s revelation (Luke 24.44-47).

If we would be faithful followers of Jesus Christ then we should also adopt his view of the Scriptures.  May we see them and honor them as the very word of God by which we live.

Herman Bavinck on the Ethical Battle Against Scripture

This fascinating quotation by Herman Bavinck regarding Scripture was posted by Chris Castaldo at his blog.

Many and very serious objections are raised against this view of the inspiration of Scripture. They derive from the historical criticism that questions the authenticity and credibility of many biblical books. The challenge comes from the mutual contradictions that occur time after time in Scripture; from the manner in which OT texts are cited and interpreted in the NT; and it comes from the secular history with which the narratives of Scripture can often not be harmonized. . ..¹ It is vain to ignore these objections and to act as if they don’t exist. Still, we must first of all call attention to the ethical battle, which at all times has been carried on against Scripture. If Scripture is the word of God, that battle is not accidental but necessary and completely understandable. If Scripture is the account of the revelation of God in Christ, it is bound to arouse the same opposition as Christ himself who came into the world for judgment (κρισις) and is “set for the falling and rising of many” [Luke 2:34]. He brings separation between light and darkness and reveals the thoughts of many hearts. . . By itself, therefore, it need not surprise us in the least that Scripture has at all times encountered contradiction and opposition. Christ bore a cross, and the servant [Scripture] is not greater than its master. Scripture is the handmaiden of Christ. It shares in his defamation and arouses the hostility of sinful humanity. . .

The battle against the Bible is, in the first place, a revelation of the hostility of the human heart.²

Footnotes:

¹ Bavinck is not arguing that there are errors; rather, he is arguing that there are many apparent difficulties. For further explanation, see Herman Bavinck, Prolegomena, in Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 447-448.

²Ibid., 439-440.

Jesus in Habakkuk (Part 1)

I finished up a sermon series on Habakkuk yesterday.  One of my goals in preaching through this Old Testament prophet was to see Christ Jesus in the book.  I stressed that the name of Jesus is not in the book--not in Hebrew or in any sort of "Bible Code!"  So the challenge was to relate the content of Habakkuk to Christ Jesus without forcing themes or arbitrarily just switching topics ("Now I'm going to speak about Jesus.") without any connection in the text itself.  I won't claim to have a great job at this but it was a conscious thought as I prepped and preached.  In this series of blog posts I will articulate some of the connections I brought out in the preaching series.

One of the first things to do in coming to an Old Testament book is to check for any explicit quotations of that book in the New Testament.  This is important because these quotations in their New Testament contexts form the basis for understanding how the New Testament authors saw Jesus Christ in the Scriptures and how they understood the previous revelation to be speaking to their time in light of the coming of the Messiah.

Habakkuk 1.5 is the first such passage that is picked up in the New Testament.  It reads:

Look among the nations!  Observe!  Be astonished!  Wonder!  Because I am doing something in your days--you would not believe if you were told.

These are the Lord's first words in response to the cries of Habakkuk in his painful confusion and questioning as to why God is not responding to the evil in the midst of Judah (1.2-4).  God's response is to begin speaking of the judgment that is to come upon Judah at the hands of the Chaldeans (1.6).  Verse five is an arresting declaration of God's sovereign judgment about to begin.  Context is important here because I've seen this verse used as the theme verse for a mission's conference year's ago.  The organizers of the conference saw the language of "nations" and how God was doing something "astonishing" and, presto--theme verse for world missions!  Not a good use of Scripture.  The context is God's just judgment upon his own people for their willful rebellion against his law and the subsequent violence that ensues.  (Note: the language of "violence" is used seven times--1.2, 3, 9; 2.8, 12, 17--as well as related words such as "destruction" and "strife")

The apostle Paul quotes Habakkuk 1.5 in his sermon at Pisidian Antioch found in Acts 13.16-41.  Acts 13 is a significant chapter.  It deals with the beginnings of Paul's first missionary journey.  It gives us Luke's recitation of Paul's first sermon to the Jewish synagogue.  It also serves as the transition point of Paul's moving to the Gentiles as the Jewish community of Pisidian Antioch rejects the message of Messiah Jesus (Acts 13.44-47).

Paul's sermon in Acts 13 begins by setting the covenantal context with particular focus on the Davidic promises (the parallels with Peter's first sermon in Acts are noteworthy even including the use of the same prooftext--Psalm 16).  Paul speaks of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is through this one who has been raised from the dead that forgiveness of sins in offered:

Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.  (Acts 13.38-39)

It is at this point, in the conclusion, that Paul urges a response by the use of Habakkuk 1.5.

Therefore, take heed, so that the thing spoken of in the Prophets may not come upon you: "Behold, you scoffers, and marvel, and perish; for I am accomplishing a work in your days,  a work which you will never believe, though someone should describe it to you."

That is how Paul ends the sermon.  It is meant to be an exhortative prod that moves his hearers to belief in Jesus.  The failure to heed this message of the risen Messiah will bring judgment--a judgment like what the Prophets spoke about in the time of Judah's rebellion against the word of the Lord.

Where is Jesus in Habakkuk?  The threat of divine judgment administered in a striking and sovereign manner cannot be dismissed as "just for them" way back in history.  God's surprising ways include a crucified and risen Messiah.  Judgment will be a reality for all those who do not heed this message of the risen Jesus and find their refuge in him (Psalm 2.12).  But for those who heed this message the threat of judgment is no more: "Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him" (Romans 5.9).

 

"Like a Warrior...Like a Woman"

In preaching through Habakkuk 3.8-15 I spoke of how God is a warrior coming to do battle against the house of evil (Hab 3.13) and on behalf of his people.  I began by quoting Exodus 15.3 in which Israel sings that "Yahweh is a warrior, Yahweh is his name."  They sing this after their deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea.  God is a warrior who comes for the deliverance (salvation) of his people.

This morning I came across more "warrior" language but also something else.  Isaiah 42.13-14 reads:

The LORD will go forth like a warrior, he will arouse his zeal like a man of war.  He will utter a shout, yes, he will raise a war cry.  He will prevail against his enemies.

I have kept silent for a long time, I have kept still and restrained myself.  Now like a woman in labor I will groan, I will both gasp and pant. 

Here is a wonderful multiplication of images which is startling.  God is like a warrior raising a war cry against his enemies.  He is also like a woman panting in labor for the deliverance of his people.  Both images are captured in the same context.  Now I reject all notions of calling God "our Mother."  This is a trend for some.  I was reminded of the words of Mark Driscoll when he states his concerns regarding this growing trend among some in the "emergent" church.

I am particularly concerned, however, with some growing trends among some people...the rejection of biblical names for God, such as Father, which is essentially apologizing before the unbelieving world for the prayer life of the flamboyantly heterosexual Jesus, who uttered the horrendously politically incorrect "Our Father" without ever having the decency to apologize for being a misogynist patriarchal meanie."  Confessions of a Reformission Rev (p. 22)

So our God is Father.  And yet he uses this profoundly and uniquely feminine image of a woman in labor to communicate his grace.  Regarding this image E. J. Young writes:

A strong figure introduces the second line and is placed first for emphasis.  As the travailing woman shrieks in pain, so will God also do, for, as Calvin justly remarks, it is only by such figures of speech that God's ardent love toward us can be expressed.  The implication is that it has been difficult for God to hold His peace when He beheld wicked men forming a kingdom with the express purpose of destroying His own kingdom and bringing His purposes to naught.  His own loved ones were the objects of the enemies' wrath, and yet God must constrain Himself.  Yet He longs to deliver His own, and now shrieks aloud, as though unable to endure longer.  The time for action has arrived.  The Book of Isaiah (vol. 3), p. 129

These images of the warrior and the laboring woman are powerful communications of the character and action of our God in his sovereign quest for salvation and deliverance.

One final thought: any doctrinal formulation of impassibility must make its peace with theses images without muting them or gutting them of their force.  D. A. Carson has short but insightful discussion of this issue in his little book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God:

It is no answer to espouse a form of impassibility that denies that God has an emotional life and that insists that all of the biblical evidence to the contrary is nothing more than anthropopathism.  The price is too heavy.  You may then rest in God's sovereignty, but you can no longer rejoice in his love.  You may rejoice only in a linguistic expression that is an accommodation of some reality of which we cannot conceive, couched in the anthropopathism of love.  Give me a break.  Paul did not pray that his readers might be able to grasp the height and depth and length and breadth of an anthropopathism and know this anthropopathism that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:14-21).  (pp. 58-59)

God is like a warrior roused to do battle for his beloved.  God is like a woman crying out in labor that now is the time of deliverance.  Praise God for his revelation of his heart of grace!

 

Adam and the Epistemic Status of Scripture

The recent controversy over the historicity of Adam has hit the front page of the latest issue of Christianity Today (June 2011).  The tendency is to portray this as one more incidence of "faith" vs. "reason" or "the bible" vs. "science."  Such simplistic portrayals often hide deeper issues that need to be probed.  For example, underlying the debate are differing conceptions of authority that impinge upon the understandings of science, scripture, and their inter-relationships.  In the current edition of Christianity Today Bruce Waltke, an Old Testament scholar, is mentioned.

"That dismissal was overshadowed at the seminary by a related dustup over noted Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke.  The administration abruptly accepted his offer of resignation due to a BioLogos video in which Waltke remarked that 'if the data is overwhelming in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult.'  Waltke began teaching at Knox Theological Seminary this year.

"Though that dispute concerned theistic evolution, not the historical Adam, Waltke is open to the new thinking.  In an interview, the former president of the Evangelical Theological Society affirmed the 'inerrancy of the Bible, but not of interpretations.'  He sees Adam and Eve as historical individuals.  But if genetics produces the conclusion that 'Scripture has a collectivity represented as an individual, that doesn't bother me,' he said.  'We have to go with the scientific evidence.  I don't think we can ignore it.  I have full confidence in Scripture, but it does not represent what science represents.'"  (p. 26)

Aside from the fact that it is questionable whether an Old Testament scholar is qualified to assess whether the "data is overwhelming in favor of evolution," the bigger concern is the epistemological paradigm being promoted by Waltke in his comments.  He states: "We have to go with the scientific evidence.  I don't think we can ignore it.  I have full confidence in Scripture, but it does not represent what science represents." Implicit in his remarks is a view of of the authority of science in relationship to the authority of scripture.  Two issues are important to appreciate here.  First, there is the relationship between science and scripture.  There are several models of integration that are put forward.  J. P. Moreland in his introduction to The Creation Hypothesis (IVP, 1994) lists out six such models.

1.  Science and theology are concerned with two distinct realms of reality (natural-supernatural, spatiotemporal-eternal), and science and theology are subservient to very different objects (e.g., the material universe and God) and can be defined only in relation to them.

2.  Science and theology are noninteracting, complementary approaches to the same reality; as such, they adopt very different standpoints, ask and answer very different kinds of questions, involve different levels of description, employ very different cognitive attitudes (e.g., objectivity and logical neutrality in science, personal involvement and commitment in theology), and are constituted by very different language games.  These different, authentic perspectives are partial and incomplete and therefore must be integrated into a coherent whole.  However, each level of description is complete at its own level, with no gaps at that level for the other perspective to fill and with no possibility of direct competition and conflict.

3.  Science generates a metaphysic in terms of which theology is then formulated.

4.  Theology provides a context wherein the presuppositions of science (understood in a realistic way--i.e., with science seen as a rational, progressive intellectual activity that secures true and truer theories about the external theory-independent world) are most easily justified.

5.  Science can fill out details and help to apply theological principles, and vice versa.

6.  Science and theology are interacting approaches to the same reality that can be in conflict in various ways (e.g., mutually exclusive, or logically consistent but not mutually reinforcing) or can be in concord in various ways.  (pp. 11-12)

The reason Moreland lists these out and discusses them is to show that there are various options.  Oftentimes it is assumed that when the Bible and science conflict that it is the Bible that must give way because it is not a work that speaks to the scientific arena.  How often is it stated, "The Bible is not a text book on science!"  Well, yes, of course, that is true but the proponents usually want to imply more than a simple classification of genre.  They want to make it so that the Bible does not come into conflict with the statements of modern science so they re-evaulate the biblical data as only pertaining to the moral or "spiritual" side of life.  Therefore, from the get-go it is impossible for the Bible and science to ever conflict because they speak to different realms that do not impinge upon one another.  This seems to be the assumed view of Bruce Waltke.

Waltke's comments appear to presuppose the second model listed above--a complementary, noninteracting approach.  The idea here is that by keeping the discipline of theology separate from science there is no reason for the two to come into conflict.  The potential of conflict is defined away in that the two disciplines are not speaking of the same realms.  The cost of such separation is high and leads to the second issue, namely the epistemic status and authority of the scripture.  Does the Bible speak to matters that intersect with the world of science and history?  Does the Bible make claims about the world that have truth value?  The answer is "yes!"  But theistic evolutionists want to compartmentalize the Bible off from the "real world" of science so as to keep it safe from attack from science.  This approach has been tried again and again but it continues to be ineffective against the inroads of naturalism.  Such a compartmentalizing approach makes the Bible irrelevant as to its "facticity"--its ability to speak in a factual matter on areas that impinge on the real world of science.  J. P. Moreland, in his recent book The Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007) makes the following observation that is helpful in the current discussion:

Theistic evolution is intellectual pacifism that lulls people to sleep while the barbarians are at the gates.  In my experience, theistic evolutionists are usually trying to create a safe truce with science so Christians can be left alone to practice their privatized religion while retaining the respect of the dominant intellectual culture....While there are exceptions, many theistic evolutionists simply fail to provide a convincing response to the question of why one should adopt a theological layer of explanation for the origin and development of life in the first place.  Given scientism, theistic evolution greases the skids toward placing nonscientific claims in a privatized, make-believe realm in which their factual, cognitive status is undermined.  (p. 46)

Waltke, and other theistic evolutionists, thus, make two fundamental moves that must be questioned.  First, they opt for a model of theological/scientific integration that is flawed.  This is rarely seen because the model is assumed and not argued for in any sort of rigorous manner.  Second, their view of the scriptures does not allow them to have it speak in an authoritative manner to issues that impinge upon the natural world.  Science as a naturalistically driven method of discovery is given pride of place as authoritative and scripture must make its peace with the dictates of those who speak in the name of "science."  The words of Robert Lewis Dabney are old (1871) but apropos:

Again, the whole posture and tone of this class of physicists toward revelation is hostile and depreciatory; their postulates, with their manner of making them, imply a claim of far more authority for human science than is allowed to inspiration....But these physicists never dream of surrendering a deduction simply to the Bible contradiction of it.  Thus they betray very plainly whether they think human science more certain than revelation.  The very attempt to bring the truth of their scientific conclusions to the test of the Bible is resisted as an "infringement of the rights of science," an unjust restraint upon the freedom of their intellects.  Now these men will scarcely claim for a man a right to argue himself into the belief of demonstrated falsehoods.  The implication is, that the Scriptures really settle nothing by their own testimony; that is, that they have no true authority with these scholars. "A Caution Against Anti-Christian Science" in Discussions of Robert L. Dabney Vol. 3 (Banner of Truth, 1982) p. 155.

The quest for the historical Adam is not merely a question of genetics, population dispersion over time, fossils, etc.  It is a question about the epistemic status of Scripture.  Is it authoritative?  And, if so, to what extent is it authoritative?  Does its authority encompass science and history or is it allowed only to "speak" to those areas of human thinking regarded as the "spiritual" or "moral?"  These questions cannot be ignored for answers are presupposed no matter what one says about Adam.