Category Archives: Genealogical Adam

Kicking off the series proper, here is the first suggested “model” for understanding Adam named by David L Wilcox. Generic Head – Sin originated with Adam, and has been passed along to all his descendents (which is everybody) like a genetic inheritance. (? Does this mean Adam was the only ancestor for the race –or just a particular man who is in all our genealogies? – AKA, Y chromosome Adam). 

As mentioned in my last post my foolish decision to respond to Melanogaster on BioLogos was a mistake. If you look at that thread (or any other in which he has participated) every response he makes is a long list of sins one has supposedly committed, with a demand for lengthy and abject penance. Any further reply just gets added to the list of sins. It’s a bit like being in a confession meeting in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, or at least on National Service, where answering a charge just earns you another. An interesting discussion style, that – if  communication is low on your priorities.

I’ve been reading a book brought to my attention by Penman (you might want to add some thoughts of your own, if you’re around, P), called Adam’s Ancestors by David N Livingstone. It’s a history of the various theories about pre-adamic man since the idea was first suggested by Isaac La Peyrère in the 17th century, which if it seems esoteric, is. It was of interest to me in general because of modern attempts to retain a historical Adam in an evolutionary scheme, on which I thought it might cast some light.

I’m glad that penman’s double blog has gained approbation from regular readers. We’ve been tossing such ideas around for a year or two now – in my case since I first toyed with the concept of MRCA. The take home message was the possibility of taking the spiritual creation of mankind as a historical event more or less in the time-frame of the Genesis account. Penman refines that a bit, taking Adam and Eve as chosen members of a Homo divinus race recently endowed with the imago dei. He sees that endowment as a kind of species-wide spiritual awakening. I note that John H Walton has recently been thinking along … Continue reading →

I had reason to dig around in some of the Patristic literature recently, and came across Irenaeus’ (late 2nd century) teaching on Adam and sin whilst looking for something else. It reminded me that I haven’t yet recorded in this blog what Irenaeus actually teaches, which is an oversight as many modern writers in the evolution/theology field, and outside it, question the traditional teaching on original sin, most often by attributing it to Augustine in the west. The Eastern Church, they say, never taught the idea of hereditary sin. Even John H Walton, much of whose excellent work I have been reading of late, mentions this as a plain fact … Continue reading →

There’s been a lively exchange on the website of Catholic philosopher Ed Feser in response to a paper by Kenneth Kemp, putting forward a version of the Homo divinus model of anthropology. You may know that this is the theory that seeks to reconcile scientific accounts of human origins with a historical first couple, and I’ve expressed qualified support for it before, eg here . The discussion has provoked some reaction from Uncommon Descent’s Vincent Torley both on Ed’s blog and in his own articles. One of his main problems is with the concept that newly ensouled/rational humans would then necessarily intermarry with irrational “pre-Adamic” men, a concept which seems … Continue reading →