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Peter Enns (PhD, Harvard) author of The Evolution of Adam(Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011)

Sujin Pak (PhD, Duke) assistant professor of the History of Christianity at Duke Divinity School

On April 12^th, 2012 the InterVarsity Grad & Faculty Ministries co-hosted and co-sponsored with Ratio Christi our first annual public symposium on issues of faith and scholarship at NC State: Biblical Faith in an Age of Science; Adam & Eve, Evolution, and Evangelicalism.  Old Testament scholar Peter Enns,  Sujin Pak, assistant professor of Christian History at Duke Divinity School, and Greg Reeves, professor of Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering at NC State, presented papers and participated in a panel on the intersections of Christian faith and evolutionary theory.  Here’s a link to the original promo page.

More than a hundred peopled joined us for this very special event where our panel of distinguished guests offered informed perspectives from biblical scholarship, the history of Christian thought, and modern science to address these vexing modern questions.

Highly acclaimed Old Testament scholar and author, Peter Enns (PhD, Harvard University), looked at what the relevant biblical texts would have meant in their original historical contexts, and at how knowing what those texts meant back then informs how we think of what they might mean for us today.  According to Dr. Enns, Adam is a mythic figure who embodies and whose story encapsulates the story of Israel which unfolds in the Old Testament and climaxes in the Person of Christ.

Greg Reeves (PhD, Princeton) assistant professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering at NC State University

The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn;t Say About Human Origins (Brazos Press, 2011)

Sujin Pak (PhD, Duke University), professor of Christian history at Duke Divinity School offered us an overview of the various ways in which the biblical creation narratives of Genesis 1 has been interpreted over the course of the Church’s history.  Did Saint Augustine read Genesis 1 literally?  Did John Calvin think the Bible conflicted with science?  As it turns out, from the earliest days of the Church spiritual, allegorical, and non-literal readings of Genesis have abounded.

NC State’s own Gregory Reeves (PhD, Princeton University), assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, addressed these issues from the perspective of someone who is both a practitioner of the natural sciences and also a deeply committed Christian.  Dr. Reeves is deeply engaged in matters concerning the interaction of faith and science.