In my book, JOHN STOTT: A Summary of his Teaching, I condense my mentor’s conclusions on the vexed question of human origins as written in Genesis. How to reconcile the historicity of Adam and Eve with the scientific theory of evolution? This is a subject of much discussion and disagreement among many biblical scholars and Christian believers. Stott endeavors to thread the needle between the different interpretations of Scripture. Good Christians can disagree because none of us can afford to be dogmatic about this issue since different generations have adopted differing views. No human being was an observer who could write an objective account. All we have is the revelation God has given us to satisfy our curiosity. It should suffice. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote in my book. To read the whole context you need to get a copy from Amazon.

Stott’s belief in the historical view of the creation and fall of Adam and Eve flies in the face of a more generalized view of human origins. He believed that Scripture does not allow a mythical view of the first three chapters of Genesis despite acknowledging that there are some figurative elements in the narrative. He did not want to dogmatize about the seven days, the serpent, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However he insisted that Adam and Eve were real people who were created good (innocent or ignorant of evil?) but were disobedient.¹ He argued that, while evolution may have occurred over a long period of time, he was convinced that it did not account for the creation of men and women, for the gap between humans and hominids was too wide. While our anatomy and physiology is linked to the animal world, there is a radical discontinuity of our uniqueness as the image of God.²

He backed up this interpretation by reference to the theological analogy of Adam and Christ in Romans 5:12-19 and 1 Corinthians 15:21,22,45-49. Paul depends on its validity on the historicity of both. “Each is presented as the head of a race – fallen humanity owing to its ruin in Adam, and redeemed humanity owing its salvation to Christ. Death and condemnation are traced to Adam’s disobedience, life and justification to Christ’s obedience. The whole argument is built on two historical acts – the self-willed disobedience of Adam and the self-sacrificing obedience of Christ.”³

Nothing in modern science contradicts this. Rather the reverse. This homogeneity of the human species is best explained by positing our descent from a common ancestor. Human fossil records were likely to have been pre-Adamic hominids. Adam, then, was a special creation of God, either formed literally from the dust of the ground or whether he was created out of an already existing hominid. “The vital truth we cannot surrender is that, though our bodies are related to the primates, we ourselves in our fundamental identity are related to God.” How did Adam’s special creation and subsequent fall relate to the other pre-Adamic hominids? Derek Kidner suggests that, God conferred his image on Adam’s collaterals, to bring them into the same realm of being. Adam’s “federal” headship of humanity extended, if that was the case, outwards to his contemporaries as well as onwards to his offspring, and his disobedience disinherited both alike. Why did Adam die? “Death entered the world through sin.” (Rom.5:12) Scripture regards human death as unnatural, an alien intrusion, the penalty for sin, and not God’s original intention for his human creation. It was not just spiritual death or separation from God. Physical death was included in the curse, and Adam became mortal when he disobeyed. It appears that God had something better in mind for Adam and his successors. Something less degrading and squalid than death, decay and decomposition, something which acknowledged that human beings are not animals.⁴

1 Stott, Men Made New, an exposition of Romans 5-8, 24f., Inter-Varsity Press, 1966

2 David L. Edwards and John Stott, Essentials, A liberal-evangelical dialogue, 262, Hodder & Stoughton, 1988

3 Stott, Men Made New, 24f.

4 Stott, Romans, 162-166