Defending Sin: A Response to the Challenges of Evolution and the Natural Sciences

The conflict between the natural sciences and Christian theology has been going on for centuries. Recent advances in the fields of evolutionary biology, behavioral genetics, and neuroscience have intensified this conflict, particularly in relation to origins, the fall, and sin. These debates are crucial to our understanding of human sinfulness and necessarily involve the doctrine of salvation. Theistic evolutionists have labored hard to resolve these tensions between science and faith, but Hans Madueme argues that the majority of their proposals do injustice both to biblical teaching and to long-standing doctrines held by the mainstream Christian tradition. In this major contribution to the field of science and religion, Madueme demonstrates that the classical notion of sin reflected in Scripture, the creeds, and tradition offers the most compelling and theologically coherent account of the human condition. He answers pressing challenges from the physical sciences on both methodological and substantive levels. Scholars, pastors, students, and interested lay readers will profit from interacting with the arguments presented here.

Publisher: Baker
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9780801098000

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Hans Madueme (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He previously served as the managing director of the Henry Center for Theological Understanding and the associate director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Madueme is on the editorial board of Themelios and is a senior editor for Sapientia. He is also the coeditor of Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin and Reading Christian Theology in the Protestant Tradition.

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"The best scientists know that their theories (stories) catch only certain aspects of reality. Isaac Newton once said that 'what we don't know is an ocean.' Hans Madueme rightly insists that the ocean of human reality contains mysterious currents and depths that evolutionary biology cannot reach, hence the need for a robust, biblically grounded account of the human condition and an equally robust doctrine of sin. This is a brave and bracing argument for prioritizing dogma over Darwin--and for retaining the doctrine of original sin as essential to biblical realism, coherent systematic theology, and the gospel itself." Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School