Briefly, Clouser's view is that however man arrived on the scene physically
-- whether God used evolution or PC or whatever, that the essential event
that makes man man is God's revealing Himself to the man and making a
covenant with him. The following may not be the most apropos quote from
Clouser's paper, but I'm tired. I'd be happy to fax the whole paper to
you:
"Because of the essentially religious focus of the text, (Genesis) and the
essentially religious nature of humans, , I find the Biblical account to be
giving us an account of the origin of the human race in the sense of
telling us about the initial appearance of religious consciousness in
creatures. It is not interested in the time span or biological causes
which preceded the capacity for religious belief, but only in the last step
of the processes which produced humans. That last step was the one that
actualized the religious capacity of the first being in which such capacity
appeared, and the Scripture indicates that this last step was God's
speaking to Adam and establishing His covenant with him. Whatever physical
and biological pre-conditions may have led to the development of the
capacity for religious consciousness, it was the revelation of God which
was the last condition needed to actualize that capacity. Thus it was
precisely by responding to God's revelation that the possessor of that
religious capacity became completely human and was therefore the first
human. For this reason, when the text says that God breathed into Adam the
breath of life, it should not be understood to mean only "breath" in the
ordinary sense. The word for "breath" is the same as the word for "spirit"
in Hebrew, so that there is a pun here in which both senses of the word are
intended. It is by God's will that the man exists and breathes (is
biologically alive), but it is also because of God's Spirit that man stands
in proper covenantal relation to God (is alive in the full religious
sense)."
Thanks. However...
>
>Never one to let a criticism go by :-) I would ask which is more
>repugnant?
>
>1. Being evolved from an ape with no Adam and Eve and the possibility that
>there was no Fall and thus no redemption?
I simply cannot admit the possibility that there was no fall, nor can any
Christian, because the Bible teaches that there was. The fact that I
cannot describe all the details of who, when and where does not change the
fact that there was a real fall.
>
>2. Having a God who goes out of his way to create the appearance of a
>relationship to the ape (the pseudogenes I spoke of a couple of days ago)
>when in fact we are not related to the ape? This, of course, raises the
>possibility that God can not be trusted!
You know I reject that. That's a reasonably good defense of EC, although I
suspect it can be harmonized with some versions of PC also.
>
>3. What I have suggested?
I just don't think God has to resurrect a miscarriage to make a human.
This may simply be something I'm squeamish about, and not worth any further
discussion.
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William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
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Rochester, MI 48306
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