the human sacredness and value of people that Bethlehem Elohim is always destroyed when we accommodate our theology to these social constructs.

Welcome to the Alisa Childers Podcast. Today we're going to explore the question, how important is it that Christians sort of stand our ground on the idea that Adam and Eve were actual people who lived in history?

This is something that there's a lot of debate about. Right now, of course there are views like theistic evolution where Christians are taking the view that maybe it's not as important to view Adam and Eve as historical people or if we view them as historical people, they were just one of possibly many.

But this idea of special creation, God creating Adam from the dust of the ground and Eve from Adam's side, how important is it that we take this literally? I'm going to talk with an expert today. Dr. J.R. Miller has more than a decade of experience in teaching and 20 plus years of pastoral ministry.

And this is supported by just a really diverse educational background. He's got a background in science and theology, philosophy and ethics. He's able to look at certain topics from lots of different angles.

And so currently he's the president and co-founder for the Center for Cultural Apologetics and Campus Director for Racheal Christie.

He's authored multiple books on church history, build a cult theology and leadership. So Joe and his wife, Suzanne, enjoy the sun and surf with their three sons in San Diego. So beautiful. Joe, it's great to have you on the show today.

Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I've enjoyed your show for a long time and been watching you take on some really good issues. So I'm glad to be one of the probably many, many people to come on your show, talk about these critical cultural issues that are going on.

Yeah, for sure. And I want you to start by telling us your PhD work because I think this is such a fascinating topic. Tell us a little bit about that and then we'll dive deeper into today's topic.

Yeah, one of the issues with PhD thing is, man, you've got to really have a clear idea of what you want to do. And I for a long time struggle, what would I even care that much about to study for three, four or five years in my life?

Like that that I want to focus that much on it. And it was a few years back, really the, the confidence of a lot of issues came to bear. And I realized, I think one of the most important aspects of the young Christians were facing one of the things that were driving them away from faith was this idea of evolution versus creation.

And I felt like one of the things we were sacrificing often was the doctrine of Adam and Eve in that conversation. And I said, well, how do, why do people care about this? How can I help people care about biblical theology? Why does it even matter?

Because I've always taught my students for ethics, you know, it doesn't matter if you have right. The question is, can you live that theology? Because the right doctrine that can't be lived is still bad doctrine.

And how do we live out the truth of Adam and Eve? If it's true, does it matter for our daily lives? And so that's where I kind of started to realize and see, you know, half dozen or so years ago, you know, the importance of race and how, how polarizing that had become.

And I felt like the church didn't have a great answer to the issue of race and racism. And so I kind of those two things I felt kind of came together with the doctrine of Adam and Eve.

And so my premise is that I think the doctrine of Adam and Eve provides us with the most coherent framework for making an argument against racism.

And when we get rid of that doctrine, whether it's the naturalist evolutionist, you know, that doesn't believe in God, or whether it's even the theistic, I think they sacrifice a key component of a comprehensive argument that says, yes, racism is objectively.

Objectively, trans, culturally, in all ages, in all civilizations, wrong. And I think Adam and Eve gives us the best way of saying that that is absolutely wrong in all those circumstances.

So that's where I kind of came down. That's what it's been the last four or five years studying.

So I'm excited to ask you more about that, but just to give some context for our listeners to this topic, you know, this is a topic, historical Adam and Eve that became hugely important to me when I was in faith crisis because some of my friends were saying, well, it doesn't really matter how God did it.

But, you know, if he used evolution or some kind of like Darwinian type of understanding of evolution, it doesn't really matter if God can do it however he wants, but it became very clear to me really early on as I began to think that stuff through that if you don't have a historical Adam and Eve, you know, Romans 5 starts to fall apart.

You have even elements of the gospel falling apart. You have original sin going away, some sort of idea of the fall and the sin nature being passed down. All of that kind of goes away if you don't have a historical Adam and Eve or at least it becomes extremely problematic to explain.

...