Deus Misereatur

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 . T...

Over the years I have discussed “Original Sin” with those from an Eastern Orthodox persuasion. Normally they cringe when they find out I’m a conscientious Calvinist. The first is because they misunderstand what we mean by “Total Depravity” (as do many Calvinists, I might add), and then because they assert that “guilt” is not “legal” passed on in Original Sin, just the curse of death. So here are a few quotations from 2 heroes of the earlier Church (Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus), and then a couple of quotations from John Calvin (all bold italics mine). “For seeing that man by the commission of the Divine blessing had been elevated to a lofty pre-eminence (for he was appointed king over the earth and all things on it; he was beautiful in his form, being created an image of the archetypal beauty; he was without passion in his nature, for he was an imitation of the unimpassioned; he was full of frankness, delighting in a face-to-face manifestation of the personal Deity...