Age Neutral Design

[atpollard]

Who said there were humans before Adam and Eve?

Every paleontologist and Natural History Museum says that there were humans more than 6000 years ago … a lot more than 6000 years ago, but the Bible is clear that Adam begot Able and Cain and Seth about 6000 years ago. So who is buried in those 30,000 year old graves (Cro-Magnon)? Whose 10,000 year old body is recovered from peat bogs (Koelbjerg man)?

 

[Carbon]

We don’t need lots. One will do. At least one at a time, anyway. That is my preference.

ok

Which one shall we look at first?

This one?

A beginning of the universe.

 

[Carbon]

Was Adam the first man or not?

I believe he was

Did Adam live 6000 years ago or not?

Yes, around 6000

 

[Carbon]

Every paleontologist and Natural History Museum says that there were humans more than 6000 years ago … a lot more than 6000 years ago, but the Bible is clear that Adam begot Able and Cain and Seth about 6000 years ago. So who is buried in those 30,000 year old graves (Cro-Magnon)? Whose 10,000 year old body is recovered from peat bogs (Koelbjerg man)?

Hmmm, interesting. I have no issue or see any problem with Adam being 6000 years old with no humans before him. This does not harm an OE or a YE.

 

[John Bauer]

I am presupposing that Adam was the first man (as Jesus and Paul claim) and he lived 6000 years ago when he begot his first son (as the genealogies claim).

I am not aware of any reason to think that either Jesus or Paul claimed that Adam was the first man taxonomically. There are good reasons for thinking they were speaking in covenantal and redemptive-historical terms, not biological or scientific.

When Jesus said that God made them male and female “from the beginning,” on what exegetical basis do you read that as the start of natural history? Or do you simply assume it as traditional? Jesus is obviously referring to Genesis 1. Is that text about material origins, the dawn of natural history? If you think so, you will need to make that case.

And we should not introduce equivocations in Pauline theology. Adam was the “first man” in the same sense that Christ was the “second man” (redemptive-historical contrast), just as one was the first Adam and the other was the last Adam (covenantal-typological contrast). Since it’s very obvious that billions of people existed between Adam and Christ, then Christ was not literally the second man. Thus, thinking that Adam was literally the first man trades on an equivocation.

I am comparing this fact with the evidence of Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens 30,000 years ago.

Since there is evidence of interbreeding with Homo neanderthalensis, they had to be older than that (because H. neanderthalensis disappeared around 40,000 years ago).

I am asking what Y’ALL (old earther’s) do with this incongruity.

Was Adam the first man or not?

That depends on how “first man” is being used (i.e., in what sense). Was he the first man taxonomically, the first H. sapiens individual to ever exist? No. Was he the first man in a redemptive-historical sense, as the head of an entire humanity? Yes.

Did Adam live 6,000 years ago or not?

Yes, more or less. I put it around 7,000 years ago, personally.

Is it wrong to see any “issue” between these paradoxical facts?

Of course not. But it’s worth noting that increased knowledge decreases paradoxes. For example, the paradoxes in the genealogies for Jesus Christ disappear once you understand what Matthew and Luke are each doing.

 

[makesends]

I am presupposing that ADAM was the first man (as Jesus and Paul claim) and he lived 6000 years ago when he begot his first son (as the genealogies claim).

I am comparing this fact with the evidence of Cro-Magnon Homo Sapien Sapiens 30,000 years ago.

I am asking what Y’ALL (old earther’s) do with this incongruity.

Was Adam the first man or not?
Did Adam live 6000 years ago or not?
Is it wrong to see any “issue” between these paradoxical facts?

FWIW, I'm not an old earther. And, I too wonder what the thinking is, there. I've asked that question, and didn't see an answer. If Adam was not the first, at what point in evolution did man become morally responsible? If Adam was the first morally responsible, did he not have many contemporaries, and did they become morally responsible when he fell, or what? Paul speaks as though Adam was biological father to all mankind. Did Adam's contemporaries not have offspring?

Though I have these questions, and though I see young earth answers to the questions of to whom Seth and Cain married, etc., and though I have considerable doubts about Darwinistic evolution, I still admit that I don't know that it CAN'T be somewhat representative of the facts in the matter. I doubt very much that any one proponent has it all straight, but as many different representations as I have heard about young earth, I have to say that I doubt any of us have that straight, either.

 

[makesends]

Hmmm, interesting. I have no issue or see any problem with Adam being 6000 years old with no humans before him. This does not harm an OE or a YE.

Does not OE generally claim an ancestry before Adam, per Darwin? If Adam was the first, what of these skeletons on Darwin's front porch?

 

[makesends]

There is a massive problem with that view: It turns God into a deceiver, because nature would present a history that never happened.

That humans see from their stunted POV what God has done, does not make God a deceiver. Even if he intended that they not understand for the whole of this temporal order, does not make him a deceiver.

 

[John Bauer]

That humans see from their stunted POV what God has done, does not make God a deceiver. Even if he intended that they not understand for the whole of this temporal order, does not make him a deceiver.

You are shifting the goal posts with your customary limited-point-of-view trope. The issue is not creaturely finitude. Of course our knowledge is limited and perspectival. The issue is whether, under meticulous divine sovereignty, God has embedded within creation a detailed record of events that never occurred—like a supernova two million years ago in a universe that is only 6,000 years old. That isn’t an issue of human limitations, where we misinterpret what is true. It is an issue of veracity, where nature presents something as true when actually it’s not.

If a universe that is 6,000 years old contains light from a supernova that never exploded, if ice cores register volcanic eruptions that never happened, or if tree rings encode drought cycles that never occurred, then the created order is testifying to a counterfactual past. God embedded those sulfate aerosols within the ice at creation; they were not deposited by a volcanic eruption. This isn’t the created order merely exceeding our interpretive capacity; it positively testifies to a fictional past, an entirely different ballgame from creaturely finitude.

The theological tension arises because general revelation is real revelation. Psalm 19 and Romans 1 do not describe nature as a divine stage set with false props. They describe it as truth-bearing. Reformed theology has historically affirmed that the works of God and the Word of God are mutually coherent because both are self-disclosures of the same truthful God. To posit a systematically false historical signal in creation fractures that coherence.

And I am a presuppositionalist, so for me the issue cuts even deeper. The very possibility of science depends on the trustworthiness of God’s covenantal faithfulness (e.g., Jer 33:25-26). If God can embed coherent and empirically accessible falsehoods into the fabric of creation, then empirical reasoning is undercut at its root—for the reliability of induction presupposes that God is not capricious or misleading in his works. Divine sovereignty is never abstracted from divine character; God, as God, cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2:13). Sovereignty doesn’t license non-veridical self-disclosure; otherwise, the preconditions of intelligibility collapse, including the theological claims being advanced.

Your claim that God could intend that humans “not understand for the whole of this temporal order” really intensifies the difficulty. Concealment is one thing. But if God intentionally structured the cosmos so that all rational investigation would converge on a detailed history that never happened, that is well beyond concealment. Undetectable, universal, counterfactual encoding is indistinguishable from deception for any rational creature. The created order functions as false testimony, and the moral category does not disappear simply by invoking transcendence. God may withhold information, or give people over to their own suppression of truth, or permit interpretive error. But none of these entail God positively structuring creation to represent as historical fact events that never occurred.

Those who wish to maintain the “apparent age” model must answer a precise question: Is the created evidence veridical with respect to real historical events, or does it systematically represent events that never occurred? Those who choose the latter owe an account of how that doesn’t conflict with divine truthfulness.

Invoking “human POV” does not resolve that tension. It only sidesteps it.

Post script: We should distinguish three positions clearly. One may affirm created maturity, like Adam being created ex nihilo as an adult. That is a tenable position and consistent with Scripture. It doesn’t imply a fictional history, like Adam being created as an adult but also with a healed fracture in his arm. One may also argue that all the available evidence reflects real events but are presently misinterpreted; for example, we are wrong about the speed of light. However, the view under discussion is that the world encodes specific historical signals of events that, in reality, never took place. My critique addresses that third claim.

 

[atpollard]

I am not aware of any reason to think that either Jesus or Paul claimed that Adam was the first man taxonomically. There are good reasons for thinking they were speaking in covenantal and redemptive-historical terms, not biological or scientific.

• In what sense does “death” come to “ALL MEN” through Adam’s sin (if potentially the majority of men are NOT descended from Adam)?
• What qualifies Adam to be the “head” of the human family?
• Has the curse of Genesis 3 nothing more to do with me than the Covenant of Moses (since my fathers were never in Egypt, we were in Northern Europe at that time)?

 

[Carbon]

Does not OE generally claim an ancestry before Adam, per Darwin? If Adam was the first, what of these skeletons on Darwin's front porch?

See, here is one of the issues. Darwinism is the default thinking anytime OE is mentiond.
I do not see how there would have to be any humans before Adam. It seems to YE, there must be.

 

[John Bauer]

For what it’s worth, I'm not an old-earther. And I, too, wonder what the thinking is here. I've asked that question and didn't see an answer.

You asked it where, and to whom? I usually answer those questions, especially if they are directed to me. If I missed one, I apologize.

If Adam was not the first, at what point in evolution did man become morally responsible?

Morally responsible—to whom? To one’s family? Tribe? God?

Moral agency, which is related but different, may have developed as far back as 100,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic explosion—cave art, figurines, structured burials—indicates advanced symbolic cognition sufficient for socially enforced norms. Burying their dead with meaningful objects, for example, implies beliefs about post-mortem persistence. We find this at sites like Qafzeh and Skhul in (what is now) Israel, where Homo sapiens were interred with red ochre, deer antlers, and other tools, items likely intended for use in an afterlife. Shanidar Neanderthals likewise not only practiced burial but also cared for injured group members long-term. (Just to be clear, sustained care of non-productive individuals implies altruism governed by norms.)

Now, whether these things constitute reflective moral agency or simply evolved social bonding is debatable, but the evidence seems to suggest that humans have been exhibiting moral agency for well over 50,000 years—that is, long before Adam. It is an untenable and indefensible idea that modern moral psychology appeared fully developed 6,000 years ago; the archaeological record contradicts that.

Interesting side note: Paul Pettitt, a British archaeologist and professor at Durham University who specializes in the Paleolithic era, proposed four evolutionary stages along the path leading from animal-like responses to death to the funerary behaviors of contemporary humans.

• There is first a chemical stimulus, where many animals—including insects—detect necromones (chemical compounds released by decaying corpses) and respond by avoiding, eating, or even burying corpses.
  
  ​
• The second stage is emotional, being upset by a particular individual’s death, which is exhibited by numerous social species like birds, elephants, and primates.
  
  ​
• Third, there is cognitive rationalization, which may be unique to humans and entails understanding that death is inevitable, that all organisms will die, including oneself. According to Pettitt, this understanding leads to attempts at explaining death—and in many cases overcome it through beliefs in the afterlife.
  
  ​
• Finally, there are cultural elaborations, the appearance and diversification of funerary practices. How to handle the dead became governed by norms and laws, specific to each society.

I doubt very much that any one proponent has it all straight.

Notwithstanding your personal doubt, I think I’ve got it mostly all straightened out. If there is some area you think I’ve neglected, please bring it to my attention.

 

[John Bauer]

In what sense does “death” come to “all men” through Adam’s sin [in your scenario where people were not descended from Adam]?

That would be a covenantal sense, wherein Adam was the federal head and representative of an entire humanity.

What qualifies Adam to be the “head” of the human family?

In Scripture, federal headship is a juridical–representative category grounded in divine appointment. Adam is head because God constituted him such.

From Adam’s disobedience to Christ’s righteousness, these are reckoned through union with the covenant head. Headship, therefore, is forensic and covenantal, not biological or genealogical—as justification in Christ makes obvious.

Has the curse of Genesis 3 nothing more to do with me than the Mosaic covenant?

Well, since you along with everyone else are not living in the garden of Eden with immediate communion with God, I would say the curse impacts you, too. We are all in exile and awaiting the eschatological consummation. (And Moses never had headship over an entire humanity, so that can’t be analogous. There were only two such covenant heads, the first and last Adam.)

 

[makesends]

You are shifting the goal posts with your customary limited-point-of-view trope. The issue is not creaturely finitude. Of course our knowledge is limited and perspectival. The issue is whether, under meticulous divine sovereignty, God has embedded within creation a detailed record of events that never occurred—like a supernova two million years ago in a universe that is only 6,000 years old. That isn’t an issue of human limitations, where we misinterpret what is true. It is an issue of veracity, where nature presents something as true when actually it’s not.

I'm proposing God embedding (if that's what he does) within creation that detail because (in your scenario) the supernova actually happened two million years ago (if the science is correct in its calculations) according to one perspective, and that, in keeping with true physics. As far as I in my admitted ignorance can tell, relativity allows for that.

If a universe that is 6,000 years old contains light from a supernova that never exploded, if ice cores register volcanic eruptions that never happened, or if tree rings encode drought cycles that never occurred, then the created order is testifying to a counterfactual past. God embedded those sulfate aerosols within the ice at creation; they were not deposited by a volcanic eruption. This isn’t the created order merely exceeding our interpretive capacity; it positively testifies to a fictional past, an entirely different ballgame from creaturely finitude.

I'm not saying it never exploded. Now, if by my introducing this notion of mine, I'm moving the goalposts, or maybe taking away from a two-sided debate, my bad. I'm not arguing for either of the two sides. I don't see why it has to be either one as opposed to the other. They may not be mutually exclusive, except "in the same way".

The theological tension arises because general revelation is real revelation. Psalm 19 and Romans 1 do not describe nature as a divine stage set with false props. They describe it as truth-bearing. Reformed theology has historically affirmed that the works of God and the Word of God are mutually coherent because both are self-disclosures of the same truthful God. To posit a systematically false historical signal in creation fractures that coherence.

I'm not proposing a systematically false historical signal. I'm proposing our ignorance.

And I am a presuppositionalist, so for me the issue cuts even deeper. The very possibility of science depends on the trustworthiness of God’s covenantal faithfulness (e.g., Jer 33:25-26). If God can embed coherent and empirically accessible falsehoods into the fabric of creation, then empirical reasoning is undercut at its root—for the reliability of induction presupposes that God is not capricious or misleading in his works. Divine sovereignty is never abstracted from divine character; God, as God, cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2:13). Sovereignty doesn’t license non-veridical self-disclosure; otherwise, the preconditions of intelligibility collapse, including the theological claims being advanced.

To this point, it seems to me that you are taking me wrong. You are running along the lines of, "It either did, or it didn't, actually happen". I'm saying it did, but that we don't see from both perspectives. While I grant there are a lot of incongruities I can't resolve, (eg, were there, or were there not people before Adam, not his progeny), I don't think the first few days of Genesis 1 have to be 24 hr days, and I don't think they have to not be actually millions of years, in God's work upon them. I'm just saying there is an awful lot we don't know, and an awful lot we don't have to know, and that whatever the truth is, I'm pretty sure it's going to make us all look like fools for our presumptuous declarations.

Your claim that God could intend that humans “not understand for the whole of this temporal order” really intensifies the difficulty. Concealment is one thing. But if God intentionally structured the cosmos so that all rational investigation would converge on a detailed history that never happened, that is well beyond concealment. Undetectable, universal, counterfactual encoding is indistinguishable from deception for any rational creature. The created order functions as false testimony, and the moral category does not disappear simply by invoking transcendence. God may withhold information, or give people over to their own suppression of truth, or permit interpretive error. But none of these entail God positively structuring creation to represent as historical fact events that never occurred.

God intentionally blinds the blind to spiritual truth. Why should he not do the same with physical truth? Is it any less spiritual, in the end, than what we call spiritual? It is all supernatural, whether according to the usual way that word is used or not.

If we say, "Wow", when we finally understand, why should we necessarily say, "Well, we were on the right track."

Those who wish to maintain the “apparent age” model must answer a precise question: Is the created evidence veridical with respect to real historical events, or does it systematically represent events that never occurred? Those who choose the latter owe an account of how that doesn’t conflict with divine truthfulness.

Still with the "only two POV's are possible".

Invoking “human POV” does not resolve that tension. It only sidesteps it.

I agree it doesn't deal with it; it claims that there may be no such tension.

Post script: We should distinguish three positions clearly. One may affirm created maturity, like Adam being created ex nihilo as an adult. That is a tenable position and consistent with Scripture. It doesn’t imply a fictional history, like Adam being created as an adult but also with a healed fracture in his arm. One may also argue that all the available evidence reflects real events but are presently misinterpreted; for example, we are wrong about the speed of light. However, the view under discussion is that the world encodes specific historical signals of events that, in reality, never took place. My critique addresses that third claim.

The third claim is not mine. I'm saying the universe may be old, whether our calculations are correct or not, and much of it may have happened even before Genesis 1, though my favorite notion has God creating particles before Genesis 1, and organizing them on the first day (or even before, depending on where the first day starts). I really have no problem (admittedly, again, in my ignorance) with it being millions of years from one perspective --perhaps one position or from one motion in the universe-- and another --perhaps our current perspective. If time is indeed relative, is it only sorta relative? My usual mantra applies: What does God see?

I'm sorry if it is off topic for me to present an undefined third view (not the third you showed) but I don't see that either of the two usual views need be the way of things. They are only OUR look at reality. If God does something we don't understand --even if we don't understand from now till the resurrection-- does that make it any less real or true? Who are we to demand God live up to our physical axioms? He owes us nothing.

General revelation, while I agree it is true, I don't agree need be understood by us in more than a utilitarian way. God is easily that much beyond us.

 

[makesends]

Morally responsible—to whom? To one’s family? Tribe? God?

Moral agency, which is related but different, may have developed as far back as 100,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic explosion—cave art, figurines, structured burials—indicates advanced symbolic cognition sufficient for socially enforced norms. Burying their dead with meaningful objects, for example, implies beliefs about post-mortem persistence. We find this at sites like Qafzeh and Skhul in (what is now) Israel, where Homo sapiens were interred with red ochre, deer antlers, and other tools, items likely intended for use in an afterlife. Shanidar Neanderthals likewise not only practiced burial but also cared for injured group members long-term. (Just to be clear, sustained care of non-productive individuals implies altruism governed by norms.)

Now, whether these things constitute reflective moral agency or simply evolved social bonding is debatable, but the evidence seems to suggest that humans have been exhibiting moral agency for well over 50,000 years—that is, long before Adam. It is an untenable and indefensible idea that modern moral psychology appeared fully developed 6,000 years ago; the archaeological record contradicts that.

makesends said:
I doubt very much that any one proponent has it all straight.

Notwithstanding your personal doubt, I think I’ve got it mostly all straightened out. If there is some area you think I’ve neglected, please bring it to my attention.

Maybe this you've said here helps to congeal what I'm trying to get at. It's not that you've neglected anything available to humanity. It's that humanity is necessarily ignorant. In some way that I can't explain, it is probably closer related to the principle of the mind of the flesh unable to discern spiritual things, but even then, the mind of the SPIRIT OF GOD being altogether valid in its assumptions, parameters and dynamics, WE are, if at all, only IN HIM. That rarely translates into words and meaning coming from our mouths and fingers. It is very much hidden from our consciousness. Our concepts cannot encompass it, nevermind our intentional expressions of it, much less what listeners garner from it.

I think that our amazement at what we will see, when we seem HIM as HE is, will not even then be, "Now we finally understand" except as helps us accept what happened in temporal history, so much as it will be a constant learning of Him, ALWAYS new, ALWAYS full of delight and substance --never completely known, but always increasing. This physics we comprehend --and not saying it is wrong-- is (granted, "perhaps") only for the sake of our being all the more amazed at the facts, when we see Him as He is.

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love him—

 

[makesends]

That would be a covenantal sense, wherein Adam was the federal head and representative of an entire humanity.



In Scripture, federal headship is a juridical–representative category grounded in divine appointment. Adam is head because God constituted him such.

From Adam’s disobedience to Christ’s righteousness, these are reckoned through union with the covenant head. Headship, therefore, is forensic and covenantal, not biological or genealogical—as justification in Christ makes obvious.



Well, since you along with everyone else are not living in the garden of Eden with immediate communion with God, I would say the curse impacts you, too. We are all in exile and awaiting the eschatological consummation. (And Moses never had headship over an entire humanity, so that can’t be analogous. There were only two such covenant heads, the first and last Adam.)

Were there a pre-Adamic race of men who also are under Adam's covenant headship? Were they morally responsible. And yes, re. your other post, I mean responsible to God. I am not talking morality as far as duty towards peers only. That, frankly is not morals except as God requires.

 

[John Bauer]

I'm proposing God embedding (if that's what he does) within creation that detail because (in your scenario) the supernova actually happened two million years ago (if the science is correct in its calculations) according to one perspective, and that in keeping with true physics. As far as I (in my admitted ignorance) can tell, relativity allows for that.

If you are not defending the claim that God has embedded within creation a detailed record of events that never occurred, if you are granting that the supernova actually happened two million years ago, then my original critique doesn’t apply to you—a critique which targets the specific view that the world contains detailed historical signals of events that never actually happened (Wikipedia, s.v. Omphalos hypothesis). It is that view which “turns God into a deceiver” (here). If you are instead suggesting that the events actually occurred but that our temporal framework is perspectival or relativized, then that is a different discussion entirely and would need its own thread.

The remaining question between us is this: Are you affirming that the relevant events truly happened? If yes, then we are within the domain of old-earth models, not young-earth models trying to explain away the “apparent age” of very old things. Old-earth models are live and internally coherent options within Christian orthodoxy and they don’t implicate divine deception.

To this point, it seems to me that you are taking me wrong. You are running along the lines of, "It either did, or it didn't, actually happen". I'm saying it did [happen], but that we don't see from both perspectives.

Saying “both” perspectives implies two perspectives. What are those two perspectives? Are you talking about two physically defined relativistic frames—“billions” of years from one motion in the universe and “thousands” from ours? Or are you talking about something more loosely theological—from God’s perspective versus from ours?

You said, “I really don’t have a problem with the universe being billions of years old from one perspective (e.g., a different position or motion in the universe) and a different age from another (e.g., our current perspective). If time is indeed relative, is it only sort of relative?” That framing makes me think you mean the former.

But then you added, “My usual mantra applies: What does God see?” And that makes me think you mean the latter.

(On a related note, relativity doesn’t allow an event to both occur and not occur. It alters elapsed time measurements between observers, not whether historical sequences happened.)

As for your mantra (“What does God see?”), that question doesn’t dissolve logical categories. Divine transcendence does not obliterate the logical distinction between event and non-event, truth and fiction (i.e., counterfactual representation). God’s perspective does not make contradictions true. If something happened, then it happened. If it did not, then it did not. Relativity adjusts coordinate descriptions, not ontological facts.

God intentionally blinds the blind to spiritual truth. Why should he not do the same with physical truth?

That is concealment, which I already addressed. “Concealment is one thing,” I said. “But if God intentionally structured the cosmos so that all rational investigation would converge on a detailed history that never happened, that is well beyond concealment.”

I am happy to grant that humans can misunderstand what God has done. However, that is an epistemological point. We should have no difficulty with that, for Scripture affirms the noetic effects of sin and God judicially giving us over to our depravity.

But the “apparent age” or omphalos problem arises when the claim shifts from “humans misread real history” to “the world encodes a detailed history that never took place.” That’s not epistemology; that is veracity. That is about the ontological status of the world’s historical signals. If distant starlight represents a supernova that never happened, if tree rings signal non-existent drought cycles, then the created order is counterfactual in its testimony.

God intentionally blinds the blind to spiritual truth. Why should he not do the same with physical truth? Is it any less spiritual, in the end, than what we call spiritual? It is all supernatural, whether according to the usual way that word is used or not.

Speaking to the topic of this thread, when God blinds spiritually, he judicially withholds saving illumination. That is concealment. He does not fabricate false revelation. That is quite a different thing from concealment. And the suppression described in Romans 1 concerns the sinful distortion of real, genuine revelation, not God deceiving us with historical signals of events that never happened.

So, we are left with a clarifying fork, Either the events actually occurred as signaled in the evidence (even if our measurements or frameworks are incomplete), or they did not occur but creation represents them as having occurred.

For those who affirm 1, there is no veracity tension. But for those who affirm 2, the doctrine of divine truthfulness must be reconciled with systematic counterfactual encoding.

I'm sorry if it is off topic for me to present an undefined third view (not the third you showed) but I don't see that either of the two usual views need be the way of things.

Given the law of excluded middle, there can be no third option. Either the supernova happened, the real age option (x), or it did not, the apparent age option (¬x)—whatever the proposed age is.

Who are we to demand God live up to our physical axioms? He owes us nothing.

No one is demanding that God conform to our physical axioms. The claim is narrower: God does not contradict his own nature. Meticulous divine sovereignty doesn’t negate truthfulness. If creation is revelation, it cannot function as false testimony. That is a theological entailment, not a human imposition.

 

[John Bauer]

Maybe [what] you've said here helps to congeal what I'm trying to get at. It's not that you've neglected anything available to humanity. It's that humanity is necessarily ignorant. In some way that I can't explain, it is probably closer related to the principle of the mind of the flesh unable to discern spiritual things, but even then, the mind of the SPIRIT OF GOD being altogether valid in its assumptions, parameters and dynamics, WE are, if at all, only IN HIM. That rarely translates into words and meaning coming from our mouths and fingers. It is very much hidden from our consciousness. Our concepts cannot encompass it, nevermind our intentional expressions of it, much less what listeners garner from it.

I think that our amazement at what we will see, when we seem HIM as HE is, will not even then be, "Now we finally understand" except as helps us accept what happened in temporal history, so much as it will be a constant learning of Him, ALWAYS new, ALWAYS full of delight and substance --never completely known, but always increasing. This physics we comprehend --and not saying it is wrong-- is (granted, "perhaps") only for the sake of our being all the more amazed at the facts, when we see Him as He is.

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love him—

You keep shifting categories, though I must grant that perhaps you’re not aware of doing so. I was talking about the historical emergence of moral agency. You responded by first moving to epistemology and the noetic effects of sin, and then to eschatological beatific knowledge. Those are not the same domains (despite being related). If we don’t distinguish them, the discussion will blur—as it is already doing.

I agree that fallen humanity cannot rightly discern spiritual reality. In that narrow theological sense, unaided natural cognition does not yield saving or covenantal knowledge of God. But that claim concerns spiritual discernment, not the natural history of moral psychology. My argument about symbolic behavior and norm-governed altruism is operating at the level of created human capacities, not redemptive illumination. The Reformed tradition itself distinguishes these: the sensus divinitatis, natural law, and conscience remain operative even in fallen humanity, though suppressed and distorted. But none of this undercuts my anthropological claim.

Moreover, it’s a category mistake to conflate moral agency and regenerate spiritual cognition. Scripture holds pagans morally accountable without presupposing saving knowledge. Moral responsibility before God does not require spiritual comprehension; it requires creaturely status as image-bearer under divine law. Thus, the question is covenantal: When and how were humans made accountable to God? That is distinct from the natural history of moral psychology.

And the answer is, “Six millennia ago in the garden of Eden.”

Relatedly, your eschatological reflection (“always learning”) is certainly orthodox but irrelevant to the historical question. The beatific vision concerns the consummation of knowledge, not the origin of moral agency. One may grant your point entirely and my argument remains untouched.

 

[John Bauer]

Was there a pre-Adamic race of men who were also under Adam's covenant headship?

Yes—his contemporaries.

All those who lived and died before Adam were not under his headship.

Were they morally responsible [to God]?

Adam and the entire humanity over which he had headship were morally responsible to God from Eden onward.

I am not talking morality as far as duty towards peers only. That, frankly, is not morals except as God requires.

I disagree.

 

[makesends]

You asked it where, and to whom? I usually answer those questions, especially if they are directed to me. If I missed one, I apologize.



Morally responsible—to whom? To one’s family? Tribe? God?

Moral agency, which is related but different, may have developed as far back as 100,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic explosion—cave art, figurines, structured burials—indicates advanced symbolic cognition sufficient for socially enforced norms. Burying their dead with meaningful objects, for example, implies beliefs about post-mortem persistence. We find this at sites like Qafzeh and Skhul in (what is now) Israel, where Homo sapiens were interred with red ochre, deer antlers, and other tools, items likely intended for use in an afterlife. Shanidar Neanderthals likewise not only practiced burial but also cared for injured group members long-term. (Just to be clear, sustained care of non-productive individuals implies altruism governed by norms.)

Now, whether these things constitute reflective moral agency or simply evolved social bonding is debatable, but the evidence seems to suggest that humans have been exhibiting moral agency for well over 50,000 years—that is, long before Adam. It is an untenable and indefensible idea that modern moral psychology appeared fully developed 6,000 years ago; the archaeological record contradicts that.

Interesting side note: Paul Pettitt, a British archaeologist and professor at Durham University who specializes in the Paleolithic era, proposed four evolutionary stages along the path leading from animal-like responses to death to the funerary behaviors of contemporary humans.

• There is first a chemical stimulus, where many animals—including insects—detect necromones (chemical compounds released by decaying corpses) and respond by avoiding, eating, or even burying corpses.
  
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• The second stage is emotional, being upset by a particular individual’s death, which is exhibited by numerous social species like birds, elephants, and primates.
  
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• Third, there is cognitive rationalization, which may be unique to humans and entails understanding that death is inevitable, that all organisms will die, including oneself. According to Pettitt, this understanding leads to attempts at explaining death—and in many cases overcome it through beliefs in the afterlife.
  
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• Finally, there are cultural elaborations, the appearance and diversification of funerary practices. How to handle the dead became governed by norms and laws, specific to each society.

Notwithstanding your personal doubt, I think I’ve got it mostly all straightened out. If there is some area you think I’ve neglected, please bring it to my attention.

So, if they were morally responsible before God, unlike how we assess animals, why all the sudden, Adam? Were these not also included under Adam's federal headship? Did these not have lines of progeny that persist til today, apart from Adam?