"Defending Sin" by Hans Madueme. A Review

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

Hans Madueme

Baker Academic

BakerAcademic.com

ISBN: 9780801098000; May 2024; $36.99

 

It often feels weird to be part of something so old school as to actually believe that God specifically created all things out of nothing. Or that humankind is actually not part of a long and natural process of climbing upward out of a millions-of-years evolving framework. Especially when scientists assume it, academicians presume it, Psychologists accept it, and an increasing number of Christian scholars and theologians try hard to make it a suitable part of Christianity. Recently Hans Madueme has come to the aid of those of us who feel like we’re in the weird group with his 368-page paperback, “Defending Sin: A Response to the Challenges of Evolution and the Natural Sciences”. Madueme is professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and senior editor of Sapientia. This scholastic work studiously attempts to engage core Christian doctrines inside the tussle between the traditional doctrine of sin and the natural sciences.

 

The book “lays out a doctrine of sin that pays attention to the challenges from the natural sciences, especially biological evolution” which includes evolutionary psychology, genetics, and theistic evolution. “My thesis is that the classical notion of sin reflected in Scripture, the ecumenical creeds, and the Protestant confessions remains enduringly true, even in our post-Darwinian context, and offers the most compelling and theologically coherent account of the human predicament” (5). A reader should remember that this is the central focus of the book from start to finish, because the author will take up a number of subjects, theorists, and concepts that all try to make Scripture compatible to science. In fact, with each of these outlooks, science takes the lead and sets the pace for the team while religious concepts are only allowed to run along and try to catch up. “Tellingly, science can refute the empirical claims of religious traditions, but theology must never adjudicate scientific theories” (47). But, as the author clearly warns, theology “that marries science today will file for divorce tomorrow” (30).

 

Throughout the book Madueme helps readers to respect and appreciate science as a discipline. It is a valuation that includes what he terms “scientific fallibilism,” the recognition that scientific theories may often “work” even though later generations of scientists will prove that the theory itself is shown to be false. He gives examples of this by addressing the caloric and phlogiston theories. And he also reminds readers that science, as such, is fallible and shaped by human finitude, epistemic limitations and more. But the author brings to scientific fallibilism what he names as “biblical realism,” where the default idea is to accept the scientific consensus provisionally. The provisional is because “biblical realists are…warranted in believing that one or more unconceived theories exist that do explain the data and are compatible with Scripture, even if they presently have no idea what those theories are” (61). That may sound like “whistling in the dark” but it’s how science works as it reaches for better explanations of the facts, a better explanation that is not yet landed on.

 

The author especially addresses theistic evolution and how, by accepting evolutionary theories first, and then trying to make Scripture conform, it has created a conundrum. If creation was not originally good, but only “nature, red in tooth and claw,” then theistic evolution has driven a wedge between creation and redemption. They have pitted the God of creation who suffuses nature with suffering, pain, death, and catastrophe from the very beginning to advance the evolutionary process, against the God of redemption who vanquishes sin, death, and suffering in the new creation. “God’s work of creation contradicts his work of redemption” (157). In other words, theistic evolution sets up an ontological problem: “the God of creation is fundamentally different from God as revealed in redemption.” And with regard to sin, if there was no original goodness from which humankind fell, then sin was part of the original project from its conception.

 

The author moves beyond theistic evolution to also address genetics and evolutionary psychology, and how evolutionary notions impact ethics and morality, and can end up reducing human vice and virtue “to biological forces that long predate the dawn of humanity” (254). All told, Madueme’s observations should slow down the quick acceptance of evolution by Christians, give us pause, and bring us to reflect on how close we are being drawn to the murky waters of Gnosticism and Marcionism with their bad creator/good redeemer perspectives.

 

There is much more to “Defending Sin” than what I have highlighted. But hopefully this will give readers a good sense of the value of the work whether they agree with his conclusions or not. I think the concluding statement of the work actually guides the whole premise of his argument and gives us hopeful recognition that we’re really not as weird as it sometimes feels: “If Christians can embrace the reality of the resurrection, then nothing within this book should trouble the thoughtful believer. If this colossus of a miracle stands at the very core of biblical Christianity, then a full-throated doctrine of sin is not only what we would expect but precisely what we need – now more than ever” (323). I highly recommend the book.

 

I’m grateful the author and publisher sent me an unsolicited copy of the work. No demands were made on me; not even a request to write a review. Therefore, this evaluation is all mine, freely made and freely given.