Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the creation of life and biological diversity, part 24.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

To review what we said last week, there are several crucial distinctions that we need to keep in mind

as we explore New Testament teaching about the person of Adam. You'll remember we distinguished

between the literary atom of the Genesis stories and the historical Adam.

We distinguish between truth in a story and just plain truth.

And we distinguish between using a text illustratively

and using that text aceratorically to teach a certain truth.

And we need to keep these distinctions in mind,

and therefore to be cautious about using New Testament texts

or citations of Old Testament passages,

lest we fall into overly easy proofs of Old Testament passages, lest we fall into overly easy proofs of Old Testament historicity.

We need to do this because otherwise we're going to find ourselves committed to the existence of Janus and Jambras, for example, or to the authenticity of First Enoch.

And so we cannot, for example, simply prove Jonah's historicity by citing the words of Jesus,

just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so the

Son of Man will be in the earth three days and three nights.

If Jesus is using this text illustratively, then that doesn't commit him or us to the historicity

of Jonah.

Now obviously that doesn't mean Jonah isn't historical, but what we're cautioning against is overly

easy proofs of historicity simply on the basis of New Testament citations of Old Testament texts.

So, returning to our list of texts that we read last week concerning Adam in the New Testament, we find

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