Open Letter to Ron Choong at Redeemer Presbyterian Church

(This letter posted below from Ron conveys why teachers and elders at Redeemer Presbyterian NYC are not known for their humility! Daniel Mann is a Christian who believes that, as a Christian, we look to the Bible as authoritative. Daniel leads a ministry of evangelism in Washington Square Park and also teaches at NY School of the Bible. Ron Choong is a teacher at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Daniel lists many Bible verses, yet not one Bible verse is found in Ron's response to Daniel.)

From Daniel Mann:

Perhaps you might recall a letter I had sent to Ron Choong, Academy of Christian Thought, about two months ago, regarding my concerns about his teaching that Adam and Eve were simply a collection of pre-human hominids into which God breathed intelligence. Well, he finally responded. (His letter is right below my response to him – just below. My original letter is last!)

Ron,

Thanks for your response. These issues regarding what the Bible teaches – whether just spiritual or both spiritual and physical – go far beyond the two of us, to the very heart of the Gospel, the Church, and the Christian faith. The ideas with which we wrestle are powerful, able to penetrate so deeply that they can transform many of the other things that we believe and hold sacred. Regarding this, I like what the Christian evolutionist Karl Giberson wrote in his book Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. Borrowing from Daniel Dennett, he talked about the corrosive power of Darwin’s theory as an acid, dissolving away many other beliefs in its path:

“Acid is an appropriate metaphor for the erosion of my fundamentalism, as I slowly lost confidence in the Genesis story of creation and the scientific creationism that placed this ancient story within the framework of modern science…[Darwin’s] acid dissolved Adam and Eve; it ate through the Garden of Eden; it destroyed the historicity of the events of creation week. It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to the stories—the fall, “Christ as the second Adam,” the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred.” (9-10)

I mention this because I think that the Church needs to be cognizant of the corrosive effects of this theory upon everything that we hold sacred. You responded,

“No one should get their knickers in a twist over whether Adam was a collective or a singularity. We simply have no idea, so we go with evidence from as broad a compass as possible. To cite 'biblical evidence' is naive. The Bible does not offer evidence. It offers trustworthy 'accounts' by those who believe and should not be degenerated to become 'evidence. This cheapens the high view of scriptures that we ought to hold. Ironically, to make the bible proof of God is to reduce its status to that of mere historical or scientific values.”

While I’m glad that you’re willing to go with the evidence regarding Adam and Eve, it seems that you’re only willing to go with some of it, because you claim that “The Bible does not offer evidence.” I’m therefore assuming that you are going with the “evidence” provided by the theory of evolution to the exclusion of the “non-existent” Biblical evidence.

In excluding the Biblical evidence, because it allegedly “cheapens the high view of scriptures to which we ought to hold,” you seem to be committing the “either-or” fallacy. Either the Bible is evidence or it’s something far more transcendent. Why limit Scripture to one or the other? Why not both?

Clearly, Scripture is multi-layered and shouldn’t be limited to one perspective. Rather, it is more than wholistic. It nurtures both spirit and also intellect, in that it provides evidences – and many of them. It gives testimony to miracles performed before nations, prophecies which have found fulfillment even before the unbelieving disciples:

• Acts 1:3 After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

• Deut. 4:35-39 You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire… Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

Our Lord never intended faith to be a leap into the darkness, but rather a step out into the manifest light of supportive evidences that He has made apparent to His people. Faith was never intended as something that would just warm the heart, but also as a gift that would illuminate the mind. When John sent his disciples to Jesus to confirm that He was the Messiah, Jesus didn’t send them back to the imprisoned John with the message, “Just tell Him to believe,” but instead satisfied his legitimate rational yearnings with the evidences of His miracles (Matthew 11).

After God had encountered Moses in the desert, Moses asked Him why the Israelites should believe that he had had an encounter with God. God didn’t tell Moses, “Just tell the Israelites to believe.” Instead, he equipped Moses with a set of miraculous evidences to prove that God was truly with them (Exodus 3-4).

In contrast, you refuse to regard the Biblical evidence consisting of what the NT says about Adam and Eve. Instead, you assert:

“To cite 'biblical evidence' is naive. The Bible does not offer evidence. It offers trustworthy 'accounts' by those who believe and should not be degenerated to become 'evidence. This cheapens the high view of scriptures…”

How does this “cheapen Scriptures?” Did the NT writers “cheapen Scripture” by quoting the OT as evidence in support of their teachings?

By denying proofs and the verifying physical-world evidences, theistic (Christian) evolutionists are undermining the very cognitive foundations of the Christian faith that have contributed to our confidence since the first century. They attempt to illegitimately divide the world into its physical (science) and spiritual (Scripture) in order to make peace with Darwin, thereby seemingly to confine Darwin to the physical world and Scripture to the spiritual.

However, there is nothing, either in science or in Scripture that gives warrant to this separation. Science attempts to say a lot about the spiritual world of prayer, ecstatic experience, and even the origins of morality, while Scripture says a lot about the physical/historical world. They are inseparable. As we can’t separate the history of the Cross from the theology of the Cross, we also can’t separate Adam and Eve from the bundles of intersecting theological teachings derived from their lives. Nor can we deny their historicity without doing damage to the rest of the Bible, which builds its theology from their real and historical lives.


While neither of us wants to eliminate either Scripture or science from our worldview considerations, you seem to have placed the contemporary scientific consensus in the drivers’ seat to lord-it over Scripture. Therefore, “Adam and Eve” have become collective terms for groupings of pre-human hominids against everything that Scripture affirms about them. In positing this, you have undermined the confidence of your students regarding the clear meaning and unity of Scripture. If we can’t believe what Paul and Jesus said about Adam and Eve, how can we believe their theological formulations? If we can’t believe what the Bible says about the physical world, how should we even begin to believe what it teaches about the spiritual?

In this, you have given us a poignant example of what happens when we try to serve two masters (Matthew 6:23-24). One must prevail! And it always seems to be Darwin over Jesus. However, for the Christian, the Word of God must prevail (2 Cor. 10:4-5) over all rivals. (Although I agree with you that science can play an interpretive role as can all scholarship and experience, properly understood.)

Once again, thank you for responding. These issues are just too important to not be aired. The Church needs to know the profound implications of the doctrinal turns it takes. I look forward to any further communication.

Your Brother in Christ, Daniel

From Ron Choong (Redeemer Pres. Church NYC):


Hello Daniel,

Thank you for your response. I remember answering your questions with reasons for my conclusions but again, your 'response' here did not engage with my thoughts. I can only conclude that you are not really serious about an intelligent and mutually respectful engagement among fellow believers but rather, seek a name-calling polemic. Unfortunately, as a missionary, I have to be accountable to the time I spend on such encounters.

You have followed my seminars for years now with the same questions to which I have always answered in a civil fashion. This is then followed by public writings denouncing my conclusions. If by copying Tim Keller and Terry Gyger, you hope to draw their attention to my views, I can save you a lot of trouble. All my views about Adam and Eve have been published for more than 10 years and Redeemer as a church as well as Dr Keller as a minister have never had any objections to my non-doctrinal interpretations. This means that while I hold to a certain view of who Adam might mean, no church doctrine in the history of the church has ever made this a litmus test of faith. No one should get their knickers in a twist over whether Adam was a collective or a singularity. We simply have no idea, so we go with evidence from as broad a compass as possible. To cite 'biblical evidence' is naive. The Bible does not offer evidence. It offers trustworthy 'accounts' by those who believe and should not be degenerated to become 'evidence. This cheapens the high view of scriptures that we ought to hold. Ironically, to make the bible proof of God is to reduce its status to that of mere historical or scientific values.

This is an unworthy and feeble attempt at apologetics. Both historical analyses and scientific inferences are second-order cognitive operations that we are learning to use as we decipher God's general revelation to us. Spiritual accounts need not bow down to any adjudication by either history or the sciences. Rather, these fields of inquiry are useful in helping us weed our our false premises and biased judgments.

For me, that Adam is a collective name is so satisfying because it explains a great deal about the loving God whose mightiness science is only just beginning to appreciate. I hope one day, you too will marvel at the greatness and goodness of God.

Indeed, anyone who has attended any seminary will soon learn that no creedal statements about the specific identity of Adam exists. The name is not mentioned in any ancient creed and Paul uses the word metaphorically (it is a good idea to do some real, reputable reading of the NT commentaries).

Since you have already made this a public statement in your copies to others, I can only assume that it is not in fact, a pre-publication invitation to respond.

Let me close by assuring you that the reason I remain a very committed biblical christian because - science in itself is merely an explanatory evidence of data, it has no competence to adjudicate the existence of God. The Bible, on the other hand, is a marvelous account of God's encounter with human ancestors and gives us so much data that it draws us to the sciences to explain much of that data. Science cannot add data. It only explains data we receive from our 5 senses.

E.g., the telescope did not invent the size of the universe to undermine our early beliefs that the stars are attached to a fixed cloth 'above' a flat Earth and the microscope did not invent germs to undermine many of our beliefs that all illnesses were caused by demons. They change our understanding of what we already observe with our eyes. So evolutionary by natural selection did not create the specific shapes of the tortoise shells on the Galapagos Islands. The animals were already there long before Darwin saw and measured them.

Like philosophy, Christians should not avoid science, but rather do good science because there is so much bad science around - as when Richard Dawkins use his incredible talents to force biology to make a theological statement.

We should also beware not to do this ourselves, i.e., by using theology to make scientific statements.

Daniel, my brother in the Lord, I wish you well in your endeavors for the Lord.

God bless,

Ron

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Original Letter from Daniel Mann:

Ron,

I was glad to be able to sit in your class several weeks ago. Below, I attached a mini-essay written in response. Before I send it out, I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond.

Your Brother in Christ,

Daniel Mann

Choose You this Day

In February 2010, my wife and attended a Ron Choong (Academy for Christian Thought) seminar at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC, on the doctrine of humanity. Choong concluded,

“Adam and Eve were probably collective names describing a community of hominids [pre-humans] selected by God for moral cognition.”

As innocuous to the Christian faith as this statement might sound, it contradicts NT teaching and consequently, the credibility of the entire Bible.

In opposition to Choong’s thesis, Luke regarded Adam as a single actual individual – “son of God” – according to the genealogy that he recounts (3:38). As all the other people in Luke’s genealogy were actual individuals, we should assume that this also pertains to Adam. (Through its genealogies, the OT also identifies Adam as an historic individual.) Jude 1:14 also suggests that Adam was a single man from whom all others descended.

Although Jesus didn’t mention Adam and Eve by name, He indisputably made reference to them as individuals, not a “community of hominids”: “…at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'" (Matthew 19:4-6 quoting Gen. 1:27 and then Gen. 2:24). Jesus then states that because God had joined man and woman together, they should not be separated. This couldn’t possibly refer to not separating a “community of hominids.” Nevertheless, according to Choong, God had separated them from their ape-like brethren to make them human.

Paul literally identifies Adam as “one man” (Romans 5:12, 15, 17). He also identifies Jesus as his corollary, the One who will correct the chaos created by the other man. As Jesus isn’t a “community,” so too Adam isn’t!

Furthermore, in both this passage and also 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, Paul validates the account of the Fall (Genesis 3) in which sin and death entered into the world entered the world through one man. In contrast to this, according to Choong, death, and perhaps sin also, had already been in the world for millions of years.

Once again, in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49, Paul affirms the Genesis 2 account, where God breathed into Adam who then became a single “living soul” – singular! He also corroborates the fact that, while Eve succumbed to the temptation, the single individual Adam, not a community, had not been deceived (1 Tim. 2:13-14 quoting Gen. 3).

Paul also attests to the fact that Adam was formed before Eve (1 Tim. 2:13). If “Adam and Eve” had been “collective names” for a tribe of hominids, it would be impossible to say that Adam was formed first.

The biblical evidence is overwhelmingly uniform that “Adam and Eve” were two individuals and not a collection of hominids. The choice is very straight-forward. Either we allow evolution to determine what the Bible is teaching or we embrace the Bible as pre-eminent and allow it to determine how we should think (2 Cor. 10:4-5).

We can’t have it both ways (Matthew 6:23-24). We can’t add to the Word interpretations that just aren’t there (Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Rev 22:18-19). Paul warns that the stakes are indeed high:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Col. 2:8).