Now that the dust has settled over universal salvation, it seems Evangelicals are going to war over “the historical Adam.” Here’s Christianity Today’s cover story on the matter. It seems faculty at Calvin College are under investigation for having publicly questioned whether Adam ever existed; scholars elsewhere have lost their jobs. For those of us on the outside, the question whether Adam and Eve once lived and were the progenitors of all of humanity may seem a bit silly. The scientific evidence is clear–the human genome is virtually identical with the genome of Chimpanzees and it seems that we are descended from a community of at least several thousand hominids, not two.
But it’s not just the historical (and scientific) accuracy of Genesis at stake. If Adam never existed then Pauline theology is in trouble, and if Pauline theology goes, then what remains of the whole Reformed edifice? If Adam never existed, then humans didn’t inherit sin from him, and our shared fallenness can’t be redeemed, needn’t be redeemed by Jesus Christ
Much of the work trying to flesh out the theological implications of contemporary science for Evangelicalism is followed on the BioLogos website, founded by Francis Collins. Their take on this controversy is here: http://biologos.org/blog/biologos-and-the-june-2011-christianity-today-cover-story/.
We might be tempted to laugh at this controversy, just as many of us laughed at the Rapture theology of Harold Camping, but there are significant implications for traditional theology and to the extent that contemporary Christian theology, and churches, like the Episcopal Church, claim continuity with the past, there are implications for us as well.
One of the reasons I am so fascinated by scientific advances in the understanding human beings, especially neuroscience, is that it challenges traditional notions of human nature-the body/soul dichotomy, for example. It is incumbent on us to develop a robust theology that remains faithful to the tradition, but also takes into account these scientific discoveries. If we can’t make our imagery and symbolism meaningful for the twenty-first century, we will no longer be able to help people orient themselves in the world and in their own lives. We will sound like we are speaking in a foreign language, describing a fantasy world.
Preaching Grace on the Square 
The long article in Christianity Today gives some valuable insight into the fractious character of the Evangelical fraternity. BioLogos, on the other hand, is mainly seeking to square the circle with them, or as they put it,”The purpose of BioLogos is to show that there can be harmony between mainstream science and evangelical Christianity.” What would that require?
The BioLogos article asserts, “Here’s hoping that some of our greatest theological minds will work on the question of what a model based on “Federal Headship” would look like. ”
I know that we should not find these “controversies” funny, but I cannot help wondering, once the issue about a historical Adam and Eve is resolved — even if it is “solved” by treating Adam and Eve as a “Federal Headship” or a group of humanoids rather than just a single pair — How will they explain the talking snake?
The more I have to deal with them the more convinced I am that many forms that Fundamentalism takes are not, in fact Christian, but rather pre-Christian paganism with Christian names on the mythology. This is different from, say, when the early Christians repurposed Saturnalia as Christmas (one glance at the tale of shepherds watching over the lambs will tell you that wasn’t December!) but rather a wholesale abandonment of those things that make Christianity a viable faith to be replaced with magical thinking. The synthesis of Greek philosophy and Jewish philosophy that represents something very alien to a Fundamentalism that fears change and uncertainty above all else. True faith requires constant change, constant growth, constant uncertainty that what you are doing is what God wants and that you can only come to conclusions carefully and within that growth and change.
It’s not really relevant, to me, if these people can’t handle the idea that Genesis creation stories were written as metaphors to help people learn and grow; that it is Truth rather than literally true.