DialecticSkeptic
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Old-earth creationist who accepts evolution sounds like a type of theistic evolutionist.
There is a vast and categorical difference between a creationist and an evolutionist. As an evanglical Christian with a biblical worldview, I am fundamentally a creationist—not an evolutionist, theistic or otherwise. This is a subject worth exploring, but it's not relevant to the question raised by the original post (so it would need to be explored elsewhere).
It sounds like you don't accept the part where Adam was made from the dust the Eve from Adam's rib. It sounds like you believe God used evolution to create humans from lesser animals over time. Then what? Six thousand years ago, did the entire population decide they wanted to be their own authority?
There is so much to unpack here that I scarcely know where to begin. Let's just pick the highlights.
1. "It sounds like you don't accept the part where Adam was made from the dust the Eve from Adam's rib."
I am still working through that question, exegetically, but we may assume for the sake of argument that I believe Adam and Eve were specially created by God as fully formed adults 6,000 years ago.
2. "It sounds like you believe God used evolution to create humans from lesser animals over time."
I believe that God uses evolution, yes, just as I believe God uses meiosis, and electrostatic attraction, and photosynthesis, and so on.
However, I reject the idea that non-human animals are varying degrees of "lesser." Horses, for example, are different from us but not lesser than us.
That being said, humans are the only creatures made in the image of God.
3. "Then what? Six thousand years ago, did the entire population decide they wanted to be their own authority?"
No, "sin entered the world through one man and death through sin." That one man was Adam. On this view, both Adam's sin and Christ's righteousness are covenant realities of federal headship, and imputation refers to covenant union, not biological union.
As Derek Kidner wrote in his commentary on Genesis (1967),
Again, it may be significant that, with one possible exception, the unity of mankind "in Adam" and our common status as sinners through his offense are expressed in Scripture in terms not of heredity but simply of solidarity. We nowhere find applied to us any argument from physical descent [expressed in such terms as found in Hebrews 7:9-10] ... Rather, Adam's sin is shown to have implicated all men because he was the federal head of humanity, somewhat as in Christ's death "one died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14).
Not much, sorry, considering the follow-up questions required to ascertain your actual view.
You may not understand the answer just yet, hence the follow-up questions, but you do have the answer.
I've heard some say there was some sort of sin mutation. Do you believe that?
I don't believe that sin is something we can identify and isolate biologically, as if there is something in the human genome to which we could point and say, "Here is the sin gene and the nucleotide sequence that codes for it." And if sin is not a gene, then it's not a component of the reproductive cells (gametes) involved in procreation, something passed along through biological continuity. I don’t think humans can be genetically modified to be sinless. Even a young-earth creationist should be able to agree with this. Scripture and our confessional standards commit us to the belief that our sinful condition is a physical reality, insofar as we can see the effects of sin in the physical world, including our biology, but they do not commit us to believing that there is something like a sin gene that we pass along biologically.
Remember, Adam and Eve were mortal but had access to eternal life through the tree of life (cf. Gen 3:22). Apart from God and exiled from the garden, human mortality runs unchecked. Immortality is a product of divine grace, not human nature; God alone possesses immortality (1 Tim 6:16), and life and immortality are brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim 1:10)—that is, by access to the tree of life, the cross of Christ.
As I understand it, sin is passed along theologically (via covenantal solidarity), not biologically (via the gene pool), because sin pertains to the covenantal relationship between God and man. And arguing that those with no genetic relationship with Adam would therefore not inherit original sin only makes sense if sin is genetic, something contained in gametes, something passed along biologically, and I'm not aware of any reason for thinking it is. Both Adam's sin and Christ's righteousness are covenant realities of federal headship, and imputation refers to covenantal solidarity, not biological inheritance.
Here's the question: If man evolved, then why did they sin? When did they sin? Was it the entire population at once, or just one man and it eventually spread to the rest of the population as their progeny was born?
I have answered those questions, and more fully in this post.
Did sin happen when man was a Neanderthal or prior to that?
If it happened 6,000 years ago, as I believe, then it was a very long time after the Neanderthals died out.
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