Dr. Craig's Response to Andrew Loke on The Origin of Humanity and Evolution | EPS/ETS 2023

Dr. Craig shares his critique of Andrew Loke's book, The Origin of Humanity and Evolution, at the 2023 joint conference of the Evangelical Theological and Evangelical Philosophical Societies.

Reviewing my comments written earlier, I thought to myself, “Oh, that's rather severe!” And so I think I should preface my remarks today by saying that the severity of my criticisms are no reflection at all upon my personal affection and esteem for my colleague, Andrew Loke, who has worked on so many of the same areas that I have and with whom I've partnered in ministry.

According to the recent genealogical Adam (hereafter RGA) hypothesis, Adam and Eve were historical persons who lived relatively recently and were the ancestors of everyone alive today, and indeed everyone alive at the time the New Testament was written. According to one version of this view, there were human persons living outside the Garden of Eden prior to and contemporaneous with Adam and Eve – a population that had evolved from lower hominids in accordance with the customary evolutionary story. This version of the hypothesis sacrifices Adam and Eve's universal progenitorship of mankind in order to maintain their recency.

Unfortunately, this version of the view faces the insuperable objection that the Bible demands the truly universal progenitorship of Adam and Eve. But Loke’s version of RGA avoids that objection by denying that the people outside the Garden are, in fact, human. They are qualitatively indistinguishable from us humans – anatomically, cognitively, and behaviorally – and can even be rightly called persons. But such persons cannot truly be called human because they are not the image of God. That is to say, they have not been elected by God to serve as his royal representatives while having the capacity for a unique kind of dominion, for a responsibility to God for this dominion, and for conformity to Christ.

Now, Andrew reminds me that he does entertain in the book a view of Adam and Eve that is relatively more ancient than the recent existence of Adam and Eve. But nevertheless the view doesn't make them ancient enough in order to be the universal progenitors of mankind, specifically Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens. So even with his early dating of Adam and Eve, it's still a version, I think, of RGA.

How shall we assess this proposal? Let's first consider it hermeneutically. No one, including Andrew himself, would maintain that such a bizarre view is taught in the Bible. But Loke's contention is merely that it is not incompatible with the Bible. That implies that the entire justification for the model must lie with its scientific merits since any number of speculative views might be compatible with the Bible. I have my doubts that the view is, in fact, compatible with the Bible, specifically with biblical teaching concerning the image of God. Leave to the side the adequacy of Loke's understanding of what it is to be created in God's image. The more fundamental problem is that Loke's hypothesis is predicated upon a view of the image of God which distinguishes between people who are in God's image and people who are not. This assumption is, I think, foreign to the teachings of Genesis 1:26 and 27, 5:1-3, and 9:6 which neither knows nor permits any distinction between anatomical humans and image-bearing humans. Rather, to be human just is to be in the image of God. The extension of these predicates is identical. In Genesis, it is the image of God that distinguishes man from the animals.

Loke gives away his case, I think, when he grants that these non-human persons might be beneficiaries of Christ's atoning death and recipients of salvation for that is an exclusive prerogative of human persons. Seen in this light, Loke's proposal is really that there are truly human persons outside the Garden but these unfortunates are not elected to be royal representatives. Loke's hypothesis turns out to be a sort of pre-Israelite election which is incompatible with the biblical emphasis on God's original plan for all of humanity.

Let's say a word about the scientific issue. The plausibility of Loke's hypothesis rests upon its ability to bring our biblical commitments concerning the historical Adam into concord with contemporary science. Here I think the view fails rather miserably. It is scientifically absurd to say that people who exhibit the modern cognitive capacities described by Andrew are not human. By proposing an unscientific definition of what it is to be human the account divides the biblical view from modern science. Not only so, but the cognitive capacities described by Andrew are precisely those that give the person “the capacity to have a right relationship with God essential to the definition of humanity.” Moreover, the view is morally unconscionable. If ancient Homo sapiens and others who were just like us are non-human then theoretically there could be people today – our spouses and friends – who are qualitatively indistinguishable from us and yet are not human and therefore not invested with human rights. It's no good replying to this objection that according to the hypothesis everyone today is in fact a descendant of Adam and so human, for we are talking about a hypothetical possibility. Loke’s view dehumanizes other people who are just like us except that they lived a long time ago.

In conclusion, lacking any genre analysis of Genesis 1-11, Loke's proposal cannot pretend to be a plausible interpretation of Genesis 1-11 but merely compatible with it. But it is far from clear that it is even compatible, as he claims, for he proposes an unbiblical pre-Israelite election and an account of what it is to be a human being that is unbiblical, unscientific, and morally unconscionable.