Genesis lays the foundation for all of Scripture. If its account of creation isn’t reliable, then neither is the rest of the Bible which rests upon it; and Christ is proven not to be God and Savior, but a mere man who foolishly took a mythological story of Adam and Eve literally (Matthew:19:4And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
See All...,5). Yet Pope John Paul II, as John Tagliabue, writing for the New York Times, reported, “has put the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church firmly behind the view that the human body…is the product of a gradual process of evolution.”
Adam is mentioned about 30 times in nine books of the Bible. Thus to discredit the biblical account of Adam’s creation punctures so many holes in the Bible that it can no longer contain a consistent theology. For example, Luke:3:23-28 [23] And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
[24] Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph,
[25] Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge,
[26] Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda,
[27] Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri,
[28] Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er,
See All... traces Christ’s genealogy to Adam, and Christ is even called “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians:15:45And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
See All...). That title would be demeaning in the extreme if Adam were a prehumen creature that had evolved from lower life forms, as Catholicism officially affirms.
Christianity Today was not the only popular evangelical magazine to favor theistic evolution. So did New Man, at that time the official magazine of “Promise Keepers,” the men’s movement that sprang up a few years ago under the leadership of University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney and has since grown phenomenally. That periodical expressed its agreement with the Pope’s position on evolution even before he stated it. Furthermore, New Man argued:
“Remember, however, that the debate over how God created the world—through millions of years of evolutionary work or through a few words spoken over a few days—is not the central tenet of Christianity.”
The truth is that Christianity is not an isolated development of the New Testament but is inextricably linked with all of the Old Testament and therefore stands or falls upon its accuracy or inaccuracy. Paul declared that the gospel which he preached was “the gospel of God” and that it had been foretold by the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament (Romans:1:1-3 [1] Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
[2] (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)
[3] Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
See All...) and was the fulfillment thereof. The Bible is one Book. If any part contradicts any other part, then the whole of Scripture is undermined. If the Bible is wrong in its account of man’s origin, then why should we trust its teaching about man’s redemption?
To support evolution to any degree and in any form is in fact to demolish Christianity. Interestingly enough, the Satanic Bible declares, “Satan represents man as nothing more than another animal, sometimes better, but more often worse than those who walk on four paws, because by the pretext of his ‘divine intellectual and spiritual development,’ he has become the most vicious animal of all.” The American Atheist knows what is at stake:
“Destroy Adam and Eve and original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God and take away the meaning of his death.”