Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, American culture was characterized by a life on the go, pursuing public interests by day and personal amusements by night. Being away from home defined national life in America.
All that changed after March 11, 2020. Families were forced to play at home, work at home, and virtually learn at home. Busy lives were halted and homelife went through a profound shift.
The Psalmist assures us home is a wondrous gift (Psalm 128). In fact, we are told that God esteems life in a home the happiest place for one to be. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have put our first parents in Eden. In its original form, home is best.
Adam and Eve were vanquished from the ideal home because of their unbelief. Instead of delight, they now had a spiritual discomfort and dis-ease with home. Nonetheless, while being escorted out of Arcadia, our first parents’ little domestic circle clung to the promise that covenantal love would one day fill the womb and bring forth the Redeemer (Gen. 3:15), bringing with him a new and better home.
Home is the domestic sanctum of our lives. It is where values are born, spiritual appetites emerge, dreams arise, inner truth is lived out, affections are raised to God and others, and the deeper realities of faith and our place in the world are explored and tested. It is the center of human life. Our Lord gives it high honor by opening the way to his Father’s home through His atoning death and resurrection.
But there are two subtle forces at work in western culture against God’s design. In his excellent book, Defending Sin: A Response to the Challenges of Evolution and the Natural Sciences (Baker Academic, 2024), Hans Madueme shows how these two forces, evolution and the nature sciences, are radically reshaping the narrative regarding sin as it pertains to the human soul. And the fallout is keenly felt in the God-appointed cradle of human development: the home. Although the author does not raise the issues of homelife, this review is written through my personal and academic interest in the subject.
Madueme lays out the conflict between the biblical doctrine of sin, biological evolution, and the natural sciences in three compelling parts.
In part one, Madueme begins with two chapters on the authority of Scripture. Who gets to tell the story of the cosmos? Madueme asserts that the reformed doctrine of Scripture includes a belief in its inspiration, inerrancy, and absolute authority. As such there is a higher authority to which all scientific endeavors are called to submit. Any scientific theory or hypothesis that contradicts a clear teaching of Scripture must be viewed as wrong.
In part two, Madueme’s defense of sin focuses on the questions on human origins that need resolution before the doctrine of sin can be thoroughly explored (6). Madueme scores high marks in re-establishing original goodness and a cosmic fall as the two door posts that confidently usher the reader into a robust dogmatic account of sin and redemption, which is sketched out in part three (198).
In part three, Madueme serves up his best reformed analysis of the tension with three chapters explaining hamartiology, particularly the doctrines of the fall, original sin, and the human person in a dialogue with the scientific claims that have led many Christians to question the biblical doctrines of sin and redemption (6). It is the third part where the application to homelife is most apparent.
Our First Home
By affirming the historicity of Genesis 1, Madueme introduces us to the first home, which was the ideal home. He pushes back, through biblical analysis, the concepts that have sought to denigrate the canonical story of its goodness and beauty. He points out that for quite some time evolutionary biology and non-lapsarian theology have sought to revise the story by rejecting original righteousness. But in so doing he asserts that the redemptive link between Adam’s fall and Christ’s atonement are obliterated. He reminds the reader that these two realities are unchangeable facts that hold all history together (246).
The reader will also find that Madueme does a thorough job of engaging these theological issues in a scientifically informed way that is both winsome and accessible. His medical and theological backgrounds help him engage the core issues in the cross hares of the natural sciences.
The net effect on the reader is a better confidence in who God is and what he has called human beings to be and do within his glorious creation. The orderliness of the first home reflects the wisdom and kindness of the Creator. We are created for beauty and splendor, for companionship and commitment, for a close abiding relationship with the Triune God. Though our hearts and minds this side of Eden have no recollection of the ideal home, and our brains have no neurological pathways containing memories of our first home. We were made from the same dust that gave life to Adam.
Sinners On the Move
This being God’s intention for our first home, what happened? It is no surprise that the doctrine of sin defended by Madueme finds its greatest traction pushing back against the notion that depravity is simply a biological condition. Through careful analysis of Genesis 3 and the growing data of genetic inquiry, Madueme establishes a workable explanation of shame, sin, and moral responsibility (288).
This explains why God reached out to Adam and Eve as quickly as he did in the garden and set in motion his plan of redemption, starting in Genesis 3:15. It was mercy that exiled them out of the ideal home. Madueme helps the reader imagine what our first parents would have made of Eden if left to themselves. He helps the reader remember why we, too, are people on the move. Why we all live outside of paradise and find our present home unsettling.
Returning Home
Our exile however is what gave birth to a deep yearning. Madueme reassures the reader that this too is part of God’s redemptive plan. All of God’s children feel it. As Christians we should find comfort in knowing that our forebears, like Abraham, and our brothers and sisters all around the world, are with us on the pilgrimage to return home.
The journey home however requires something of us. This is the effect of sin. Because our first parents chose not to depend upon God, but rather to sin and hide from God, and in so doing create pseudo strategies to function and resolve their sin problem, the door back into the ideal home requires a face-to-face encounter with the God who escorted us out of Arcadia.
But here lies the beauty of God’s grace, and thus the great power contained within a full-throated doctrine of sin. God isn’t sitting on a porch passively waiting for our return. He knows, because of the nature of sin, we are unable to make the journey home. And so, just as he did with our first parents, he is taking the initiative. He is out in the land of exile pursuing us with a question that magnifies the deep longing of our hearts: Where are you? (Genesis 3:9), which ultimately pulls us home.
I believe this to be the most humbling aspect of the doctrine of sin defended by Madueme. It reveals just how grand and glorious the plan of redemption truly is. The One who mercifully cast us out of our ideal home is also the One who pursues us and welcomes us back, and ultimately brings us to the Father-home in glory.
But this welcome requires a face-to-face encounter with the Son, who is historic and ever-present. In this encounter there is no moral hiding. No biological blame shifting. The gravity of our sin and the feebleness of our excuses or fashioned solutions to live apart from him must all be confessed in the light of his holy and loving countenance. There is no return, no rest, no freedom from shame and guilt, and no deep and abiding peace in our domestic sanctums until we do.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I believe Hans Madueme’s book to be a timely and necessary read for every Christian. I believe the argument of the book would have been strengthened if he had integrated a covenantal analysis. Original sin, the fall, and redemption in my opinion are best understood in the light of the covenant of grace. But overall, there is no better resource that engages the conflict between science and the orthodox faith, as they pertain to the doctrine of sin.
It is clear that the horizon on the cultural landscape is run over with forces bent on assaulting God’s good creation (not the least of which is the home). Science is one of the banners leading the charge.
But science, as Madueme points out, is predicated on a religious axiom. Without God there is no true science because every hypothesis is founded upon the idea of biblical realism or truth. For those who wish to learn how to respect science and steward it well while affirming the finer teachings of redemptive history, I can think of no better resource than this one. The applications are far-reaching.
Dr. Duane Otto serves as assistant pastor of Christ Church (PCA) in Normal, Illinois and founding director of Ithaka Fellowship.