Why Is It Theologically Important That Adam & Eve Actually Existed?

INTERVIEWER: Why is it important theologically that Adam and Eve actually existed as people and not just metaphorically as a representative of human evolution?

DR. CRAIG: Well, for many Christians, say, in the Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant Reformation traditions who hold to the doctrine of Original Sin, the historicity of Adam is absolutely crucial because if there was no such person then the doctrine of Original Sin is just a fiction, and we can be held neither culpable for Adam's sin nor corrupted by it if there was no such person as Adam. For me, that's not a very important consideration because I don't think that the doctrine of Original Sin as it's classically understood is taught in Scripture; I don't think it's there in Genesis 3, the story of the Fall, or in Romans 5. But I do think that Paul commits us to the historicity of Adam in that Adam was the floodgate, as it were, through which sin and evil entered the human race and then spread to all people. So it seems to me that we are committed to the historical Adam, not only by Genesis 3 but also by what Paul says in Romans 5. Now, if you then deny that there ever was such a person, this is going to have a major impact upon your doctrine of inspiration and upon the person of Christ. It will affect your doctrine of inspiration because now you've got to say that the Bible teaches falsehoods, that the Bible teaches that there was a historical Adam, and there wasn't. And so how are you going to adjust your doctrine of inspiration so as to allow that? That's a difficult process that I'd rather not go through. The other thing is Christ himself; if Christ is divine then he must be omniscient, and that means among other things that he cannot hold any false beliefs. But I think it's very clear that Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were real historical persons. So if you say that Jesus was wrong in this, that he held false beliefs, how do you preserve his omniscience? And if you can't preserve his omniscience, how do you preserve his deity? So if we deny the historical Adam, I think this is going to cause major reverberations in our doctrine of Scripture and in our doctrine of Christ.