Various on the Historicity of Adam and Eve

There seems to be a fair bit of stuff floating around at the moment on the historicity, or otherwise, of Adam and Eve.

1. A new book by C. John Collins – Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? – published by Crossway in the United States (with an excerpt here) and by IVP in the UK. Collins writes:

‘My goal in this study is to show why I believe we should retain a version of the traditional view, in spite of any pressures to abandon it. I intend to argue that the traditional position on Adam and Eve, or some variation of it, does the best job of accounting not only for the Biblical materials but also for our everyday experience as human beings – an experience that includes sin as something that must be forgiven (by God and our fellow human beings) and that must be struggled against as defiling and disrupting a good human life’ (13).

2. An article by Tim Keller on the Gospel Coalition website – ‘Sinned in a Literal Adam, Raised in a Literal Christ’:

‘When Paul speaks of being “in” someone he means to be covenantally linked to them so their historical actions are credited to you. It is impossible to be “in” someone who doesn’t historically exist. If Adam doesn’t exist, Paul’s whole argument – that both sin and grace work “covenantally” – falls apart. You can’t say that Paul was a man of his time but accept his basic teaching about Adam. If you don’t believe what he believes about Adam, you are denying the core of Paul’s teaching.

3. In part picking up on the Collins book and the Keller article, Christianity Today has carried a few pieces on the topic, notably ‘The Search for the Historical Adam’ by Richard N. Ostling.

4. The latest issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology – 15, 1 (Spring 2011) – is devoted to the topic. In the editorial, Stephen J. Wellum writes:

‘We are seeking to stake a claim that to deny an historic Adam and fall and go the way of recent evangelicals is not only unnecessary, it is unbiblical in the strongest of terms. In the end, it will lead to a denial of other parts of Scripture, and ultimately it will undercut the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why our wide-ranging essays and forum pieces are seeking, in some small way, to demonstrate that from Scripture, theology, science, and more, debating an historic Adam matters’ (3).