Dr. Loren Haarsma, professor of physics and astronomy at Calvin University, joins the show to talk about his recent book, When Did Sin Begin? Human Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin.

TRANSCRIPT 0:01 Hey everyone. Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore

0:04 and your co host Rex gurney.

0:05 And Rex on the show. Today, we pulled out the big guns we got Dr. Loren Haarsma. Here is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin University. And his recent book is when did send begin human evolution in the doctrine of original sin.

0:20 And this is not an esoteric discussion, it is something that I actually am very interested in personally, and I found his book very helpful. And so I'm, I'm really looking forward to our conversation with Lauren.

0:32 It's an issue that is important for our students. It's an issue that's important for the church. We hope you enjoy.

0:45 Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on the show to talk about your new book. And we think it's such an important topic. And it's something that hits close to home to our students here at Jessup, and we talk about it every semester. So just thank you so much for joining. And I

0:59 think actually, uh, Mark and I were mentioning that both of us have already used your book, or at least read a couple things from it in our in our classes. So I'm really helpful.

1:09 Oh, well, thank you very much. And thank you for this invitation. I'm happy to be here.

1:13 Wonderful. Well, as we get going and looking at at the book, when did send began, it'd be great for our listeners, if you could just set up the the basic problem here this this tension between the doctrine of original sin and human evolution.

1:29 So there's sort of a core doctrine of original sin, which most of the churches had for most the time and, and sin Augustine, in particular, was really trying to preserve certain core teachings, that God is good and just and holy, that human sin is rebellion against God's will. And that no one can be righteous apart from Christ redeeming work. And I think all that still stands. We're gonna continue to hold all that. Now, Augustine was facing also a number of other questions that were important at that time, like, what is how does God create new each new human soul and his guilt from passed from one generation to the next or not? So Augustine came up with a theory, a way of putting it all together, which worked for him. And for Augustine. He included the assumption that Genesis chapters two and three, were referring to Adam and Eve as literal historical persons only to individuals who lived a few 1000 years ago, from whom we all descend it well, that assumption doesn't fit with what we've learned about human history in the last few centuries. So we want to preserve that core doctrine that theologians have agreed about throughout the centuries now, throughout the centuries, theologians have actually discussed and debated some of those other peripheral issues. There has been disagreement. A few centuries after Augustine, Aquinas came up with another version, which agreed with, uh, with Augustine on many points, disagreed on some other points. And all of this theological history is a really nice treasure trove to sort of use to read from to learn, and and to think about to say, okay, what are we going to do now, to preserve the core doctrine of original sin? It looks like humans didn't all descend from a single pair just a few 1000 years ago.

3:35 Right? I often will will kind of couch it like this. When I talk about the science and faith issues in my Christian perspective class, it's like, there's no like silver bullet here. It's like, if you're a young earth creationist, you sort of have a Genesis one problem. But if you're a theistic evolutionist you sort of have a Genesis two and three problem. So, you know, we can't like stop thinking about these things and the implications of of these positions that we hold.

4:00 That's right. Science gives us new information to think about, ultimately, our theology guides us in how we're going to interpret Scripture, but science process to think, think through some things from time to time.

4:15 Yeah, and there seems to be this, you know, in in the book, he talks about this relationship between science and scripture, and how science, how they both can help us read each other, but but they're not the underlying thing. Well, at least science is not the underlying thing that draws meaning out of Scripture. You use the phrase of science doesn't interpret Scripture, but theology does. And I thought that was that was a really important part because when you're reading, Genesis one, two, and three, the purpose I don't think of reading those is to understand the science of what's going on, but rather to understand the theology of what's happening. Yeah,

4:59 So, there there have been some times occasionally in the past where science and theology seem at first to be saying dissonant things and are hard to reconcile. And I once had a theologian sort of asked me this question, Why does it always seem like science is coming into correct theology? Shouldn't it be the other way? Sometimes? Shouldn't it go both ways. So I thought a lot about that, as I was working on this book. There, there are a lot of positive interactions between theology and science. Theology gives us a philosophical and religious framework for doing science. A Christian? Well, any scientist has to believe that if you're going to do science, that there's regular, repeatable patterns of cause and effect in the world, and that science is worth doing, and that you got to do experiments and, and a Christian can hold those beliefs for very biblical reasons about God's governance of the world, and God's freedom to create, and, and the worth of studying God's creation. So theology actually gives a very positive basis for doing science. Another great thing that theology does for us is, when we get a scientific results, often that allows for multiple philosophical interpretations. So you know, we can say that nuclear fusion powers the sun, and it'll run out in a few billion years. Okay. Scientists had many worldviews can agree on that. But what do we do with that they're atheists, there's multiple different atheist interpretations, multiple Christian interpretations, maybe multiple Buddhist interpretations. What good theology does is give us a lens for thinking about the implications of those results. Now, when the influence goes the other way, when science gives new information to theology, I like to think of that is just another example of life experiences. I think many of us have had experiences where an experience in life prompted us to rethink how we were interpreting a certain passage of scripture or, or maybe looking at things going on society or history prompts and say, Oh, what the church was doing there wasn't good. So we learn things, by by, I think this is the Holy Spirit, prompting us to say, hey, here's something to think about. Ultimately, theology decides theology decides how we interpret Scripture, but life experiences in which science is one can sometimes say, let's look at this, again, let's maybe weigh the pros and cons of certain interpretations a little differently.

7:32 I think bringing in science as life experience is really helpful. Because because we do understand that and we may have an experience, we may lose a loved one. I mean, I've I've also pastored a church. So I've counseled many people, and they lose a loved one. And that affects how they read scripture, that that affects like, Hey, I'm rethinking just going up to someone and saying, God has a plan for everything. Right. And, and so understanding science and new scientific data, as hey, this is us experiencing the world. And bringing that in. I think that's really helpful. We will be right back after this short message. Rex, did you know that there are somewhere between 303,000 different versions of Cinderella, I can honestly say I did not know that. And our theater department this fall is going to be doing Rodgers and Hammerstein classic version of Cinderella starting on Thursday, November 12, running through November 24.

8:33 And tickets can be found at just.edu/shows. And the price ranges from 10 to $22.

8:40 And doors are going to open an hour before so you can get in and reserve your seat and enjoy the living Christmas Village is the best show in Placer. County. Welcome back to our conversation with Lauren haarsma.

8:51 So you basically mentioned a number of different possibilities for dealing with Genesis chapter three and, and sin in our world. I actually read those different possibilities to my students in class. I did not elaborate on them, but I read them just last week. And so I think, at least in my copy of your book, there's four that's in the pages there. But I also looked at the footnotes, and I noticed that there actually were eight. And so I don't know if you want to explicate all eight, but just sort of briefly just talk about what some of the options are if one wants to take the reality of sin, and Scripture seriously, but also wants to take scientific consensus seriously as well.

9:40 Yeah, um, I could summarize a little bit about what science says about human evolution and then some of the questions and then maybe go through some of those options.

9:48 That'd be helpful.

9:50 So what are some things that science has been sort of teaching us well, humans share common ancestry with Animals that's especially other more recently with with other primates. And there's a lot of different kinds of evidence, multiple different kinds of genetic evidence and other evidence for that the human ancestral population was always more than two individuals, it looks from genetics like the there was a bottleneck in the human ancestral population around 120,000 years ago of at least a few 1000 individuals and, and our ancestral population was larger than that most of that time. Humans are unique from animals, in many ways, the level of our intelligence and our language skills and cooperation, but, but it looks like God gave us those capabilities, gradually, through evolutionary processes with sort of no sharp demarcation, where there was a huge sudden change. And it also looks like our ancestors would have had a mixture of behavioral dispositions to be nice to each other and to be nasty to each other. So but But nevertheless, we're all geologically and genetically one unified species together. So science can tell us that but it doesn't answer the question. When did sin enter the story sin as a rebellion against God? for that? There are some interesting questions we could ask, we could ask, Well, did it happen? But there's, there's some possibilities question might be, how long ago was it? Maybe you feel it a few million years ago, maybe 150,000 years ago, maybe 10, or 20,000 years ago, each of those are possibilities. There's pros and cons. For each of those. How best you interpret Adam and Eve and Genesis two and three, maybe God specially selected a pair of individuals out of a larger population, to act as representatives of all individuals. And when when they send everybody sort of became centers or, or maybe they were a pair of individuals. And when they send send them spread through social contact or other means to the rest of the population. Or maybe we should think of Adam and Eve as sort of a compression of many individuals, a literary retelling of many individuals, many centuries of human prehistory of people who receive special revelation rebelled against God. Or maybe we should think of them symbolically as representing all of our ancestors over a very long period of time as they collectively rebelled against God. Those are all possibilities. Another question you could ask is, well, for the first individuals, among our ancestors who sinned, how did it spread? Were they sort of acting as legal representatives? Did it spread? Socially by learning? Did it spread sort of parent to offspring, Genie illogically? These are all different possibilities. And you can answer each in different ways. And each sort of is worth thinking about. And there you can probably think of, Oh, these are some strong theological reasons to favorite and these are some theological reasons to say, maybe, maybe not, there's, there's pros and cons, I would say all of them preserve the core doctrine of original sin. And so all are worth having on the table and thinking about, and they all lead to sort of the current state, what I call the core doctrine, how all humans today are centres, and no one is I just apart from apart from the rescue of Christ. So that sort of lays out the range. And the four I sort of highlight in the book I mentioned in my in my answer here, but I also expanded it with a few other questions. Right,

13:34 so how important is this? I guess, core doctrine of original sin, it's, it's usually thought of in the Christian community to explaining the situation that we're sort of in, I've often heard this statement, and it's been attributed to all kinds of people often Mark Twain, but whenever somebody says that Mark Twain said it, he probably didn't, but whatever. And that is that original sin or something like that is one of the only empirically verifiable doctrines of in the Bible. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's out there. And, and there is a, I guess, a narrative behind it. And how important is that narrative? How important is it to somehow privilege historical ways that narrative has been transmitted?

14:25 So the right so so it's obvious that we are all nasty to each other and we're, none of us are as good as we want to be. Right? Yeah. And if God's if God says, apart from Christ, you don't really belong in my presence, unless you're perfect and you're obviously not perfect. Then everybody needs Christ. Going back to the time of Augustine, this was actually a debate going on in the church. Was it in theory possible for someone to live a sinless life or not? And Augustine and other theologians said, No, we need to preserve the uniqueness of Christ, there is no way to be right with God apart from Christ. And so simply to say that everybody's nasty to each other, that's easy to verify. But to say that this is a huge problem in in that it disrupts our relationship with God and what separates us from God, eternally apart from Christ rescue Well, that's, that's for that we need sort of major. And, and that's something we want to preserve. And there's a few other things I mentioned that God is good and Justin holy and our sin is, is a rebellion against God's revealed will. Those things are taught in many places in Scripture. And so I think it's important that whichever sort of model, we think about it and sort of look at the range of possible models for how to put together the doctrine of original sin and human evolution, I sort of didn't spend a lot of time on versions that didn't preserve that core doctrine. Other Other people may want to look at those. I was interested in keeping those, because I think they're very important because I believe they're taught in many places in Scripture,

16:09 and something we simply can't avoid wrestling with. Right, simply can't do that.

16:15 And that that highlights the right that tension between theology and and maybe what we're learning in science is there. There are things theologically that we can't give up that that are taught throughout Scripture. And so that that becomes that issue of okay, how do I harmonize, harmonize that now, now, Rex, I don't know about Mark Twain, but Reinhold Niebuhr did say that in nature and destiny of man, that that, that human sin is the only empirical doctrine in the Bible. And that was kind of you know, that was that from Mark Twain or not, or Yeah, that's true, he could have been quoting Mark Twain, but it kind of captures that, you know, the mid 20th century, Christian realism that Niebuhr represents, but that realism that we are not we are not good as human beings, we, the more we progressed, actually, the more violent we get, the more power hungry we get. And, and so yeah, I think I think it is interesting that, that we can see that I feel like a lot of culture recognizes that. And so understanding that as a as a core doctrine, I think is is really important. And understanding then that solution in the sense of salvation in Christ and His death and resurrection that seems to sum it up, you know, in class, I, we were talking about, you know, Genesis three and Adam and Eve and and kind of playing off of your lead, Lauren, I asked them, hey, what's what's the theological meaning of Genesis three, and had a player he was a baseball player, student in the back, not always engaged in class, but I won't sell him out on the podcast. And he just raised a hand, he said, we're all sinners, okay, just like, hey, you like we understand that, I mean, some of these and in class, we were kind of having this debate. Some of these seem to center around or some of the the arguments or these options sent around the historicity of Adam and Eve. And, and, and I would love for us to explore that a little bit more, I'd love to hear from you learn about the, you know, some stress that that it is, it's vital. Like if you give up historical Adam and Eve, you give up the doctrine of original sin. How do you understand that conversation?

18:36 So as I was writing this book, I decided, well, the way I let me back up a step, the way I approach any of these issues were at first, there seems to be a dissonance between science and and a theology I learned growing up. I say, Well, I want to make sure I understand the science and learn some philosophy of science. But I also want to read biblical scholars learn more hermeneutics, and I want to read systematic theology. And when I do, I often find there's more than one way to put it together. There's, there's not just one way to find harmony. I sometimes joke that the problem after writing this book is not that there's no way to reconcile human evolution is that accurate originals, and there's too many of them. And we got to sort through all the pros and cons. Well, right in the middle of my book, I spent a lot of time with biblical scholars to study that question of the historicity. And I spent a lot of time quoting six in particular, biblical scholars, although although I refer to more, both Old and New Testament scholars, and half of them would say something like the following. As I study the scriptures and read the text, it looks to me like the best interpretation is that Adam and Eve were real individuals. Maybe not of that name, maybe that living in bed epidemia but real individuals who were part of this larger population, and this historicity seems to be there, however, they would say, the doctrine doesn't rise or fall on that. They think that's the best interpretation of Scripture. They didn't think it's the only faithful interpretive interpretation of Scripture. The other scholars I looked at said, as we look at Genesis two and three and other passages through the Bible, it looks to us like the best interpretation is to have a more literary or symbolic understanding of Adam and Eve. And there's lots of various hermeneutical reasons, one could make in favor of that. But they also would say, while we think the better interpretation is to read them as not historical, it's certainly possible to read them as a historical pair, without getting into trouble with science and still maintaining all the core theology. So, again, I think it's important to look at the possibilities, see the best arguments and realize, well, this is an interesting and important question, the doctrine itself doesn't rise or rise or fall on that question,

21:14 you made an interesting distinction in your book, between the plain reading of Scripture, and the plain lesson of Scripture, and I actually, you know, highlighted that, because that, that I thought was really, really a good distinction and might actually help us to sort of find our way out of this box that we've put ourselves in, in, in trying to uphold biblical authority and even biblical inerrancy in some way, and yet, you know, accept scientific consensus. And so, um, could you tell me a little bit about about the difference between those things, the plane lesson in the plane reading?

21:56 Yes. So one of my favorite examples of that goes back to when I was in middle school, and the pastor asked us, in our class, or Sunday school class, the Bible says, you know, God is responsible for the stars, moons as motion of the planets, but, but sciences, gravity keeps planets in orbit around the Sun do we have to choose? And after letting us think, of course, the pastor helped us understand that no, we don't have to choose. And that was an important lesson, it taught me something important about science, namely, that a scientific explanation doesn't replace God. Both can be true. But it also taught me something about the Bible, the Bible doesn't mention gravity. Nor should it have done that wouldn't have made sense to the original audience, they thought in terms of a flat earth and a solid dome with waters above the earth and, and the earth and everything. Yeah. And, and, and the, the, the planets moving along this dome. Now, science advanced from there, the ancient Greeks figured out that the Earth was spherical. So then people picture these these spherical shells around a stationary Earth and, and then they figured out that the earth moved, and then they figured out moved into elliptical orbits, and then they figured out Newton's laws of gravity, and then they figured out general relativity. But as our scientific understanding, changed, the message of Scripture didn't change, because it was written in a way the original audience could understand. The plain lesson of those original passages was about God being sovereign over these things that the sun, moon, and stars and planets are not the gods of the other pantheons. They are just things that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob made. That's the plain lesson they would have read now, you know, the plain reading of a passage of scripture might change from culture to culture, language, or language, which historical idea and how much science you have, you just read the text, what's the plane reading, but the plane lesson is the one the original audience and author would have heard and that doesn't change. And so I've been very grateful learning from from biblical scholars, that what we need to do is get ourselves in the mindset of the original audience and author hear the message they heard, and that helps us understand today, what we should be getting. That's helpful.

24:21 I think some some students that that I work with, can sometimes and this happens within the church as well can get overwhelmed by the amount of options to approach something and, and sometimes it can make them you know, maybe they've grown up only hearing one option. And so when they when they hear, there's different ways to approach scripture, different ways to interpret, they can sometimes leave feeling well, no one knows anything, then, you know, there's you know, and it's kind of this, sometimes I termed it theological agnosticism where there's just a there's there's too many options here. So it It highlights we don't know anything. So I wondered if it might be helpful for our students and I think people within the church, how do you counsel people to as they wade into all of these options.

25:13 So if it ever seems surprising, and maybe disturbing to find out, there's more theological options, and answers to a question than the one you necessarily grew up with. I find it helpful to think about the fact that scientists deal with this all the time. In science, we are very used to being in a situation where the data is limited. And there's multiple theories that could explain it. And we don't yet know which one is best. So what we do is we go to work, we start testing and thinking about it and try and narrow it down. And every now and then some new data comes along, that surprises us, and says, actually, the models you're working with, they have some truth, but they're going to need further work and refinement. So then you go back to that, and you sort of expand your, your theories, and you test some more. We do this because this is how we make progress and understand the natural world. I think the same can be true in our sort of theological thinking, as we build models in our mind about our relationship to God and how God relates to the world. Sometimes we're surprised sometimes we learn new ideas. Sometimes life gives us new data. But there's an underlying truth behind it. In science, we don't doubt that there's an underlying truth. But we know our own understanding as partial. And we can say the same in theology, there is an underlying truth there. And what we've learned from the past, there's a lot of surety to it. But we shouldn't be surprised if we have to do some rethinking from time to time when some new data comes along. So I personally love reading more theology and, and biblical scholarship, I actually feel called by God to dive in every now and then on these hard topics. But I know not everybody gets the same joy I do out of reading a dense theological tome that everybody's called to spend lots of time. But that's why we have the church together. We have theologians and biblical scholars and scientists and experts. But we can then ask, can you help? Can you summarize this? Can you help us see what are the possibilities? What are the options? Where do you think it falls within the range of historical Christianity? Where do you think might be outside of it? And how can we try and figure out harmony, also in science is okay for a while to live with some uncertainty and say, I don't quite know yet how this is all going to work together. So also, we can say, in our life of faith, I know there's truth there. I don't quite see how it all works together best. But I trust that if I keep working at it, I'll keep learning more, and maybe make some progress.

27:58 Yeah, that tension between certainty and uncertainty and being able to live with both of those, I think is so important as as a Christian. And as as you're dealing with this. And, and perhaps the highlighting the certainty is really focusing on those theological meanings we've been talking about, you know, that that deeper theological, meaning that we are all broken, and in need of a Savior, like we can, we can at least be certain of that. And then we can look at the possibilities of when that entered, how how that happens. And there's always going to be this tension, I think helping helping people live and helping students live in the tension is really important.

28:43 There's so much that I would actually like to continue to talk about here, but I'm looking at our time, and probably don't have it right now. But this, this can be a plug for your book, actually. So there's other things that you wrote about that I know, I'm not the only person that would be fascinated with and so, you know, get the book talking about, you know, the issue with God of the gaps and episodic deism and the issues that come that arise from that, or, or focusing on the fall and having the fall shape creation, and that perhaps giving a little bit too much play to the force of evil. And then, you know, the whole issue of false apparent history, because that just comes up a lot, especially with with young earth creationist models. And those things are are fascinating. And so, you know, buy the book and read the book.

29:32 Thank you. I've did a lot of listening, as well as reading over the last 2030 years. So a lot of the content and structure of the book are based on questions. I've heard discussions I've had with people in the pew. So if you see a lot of questions reflected that students in people in the PU have that's because I've been trying to you know, I'm trying to say, What's the best enter I have at the moment for that really good question.

29:59 Yeah. Dr. Hoffman, thank you so much for joining us on the show. And thank you for for kind of taking your life experience and your expertise and and putting it in this book because I do think it's going to be extremely helpful for our students and for the church.

30:15 Thank you very much. Thanks for the invitation and you're very good questions.

30:20 Congratulations on making it to the end of the podcast. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Jessup think, where we'll be posting updates and some behind the scenes content. We would love to hear your thoughts on the episode and engage with any questions you might have to leave us a comment or email us at think@jessup.edu. Our aim is to provide a framework for further reflection and deeper exploration of these important topics. If you want to support the show, leave us a review on iTunes we can reach more people. Until then, I'm Matthew Todd outro reader extraordinare and this is Ben Jessup thing.

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