"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men (John 1:1a, 3-4).

A second excuse that some use to allege that the Genesis accounts do not add up is the apparent difference in the sequence of events. In chapter 2, the sequence is man, trees, beasts, and woman. This sequence is different from that listed in chapter 1. But the sequence of chapter 2 is logical, rather than chronological. The purpose of chapter 2 is to set the stage for chapter 3 by adding supplementary details to chapter 1. Chapter 2 does this by telling about the garden (where the Fall took place), the trees (the objects of God's revelation), and woman (the accomplice of man and the prime target of the temptation). In addition, different vocabulary is used in chapter 2 than in chapter 1. The change in subject matter, not in authorship, best accounts for this difference.

Second, if the early chapters of Genesis are considered to be historically reliable, Adam and Eve are the parents of the human race (Genesis 1:26-28). To verify the reliability of these chapters, see also Romans 5:12ff, I Timothy 2:14ff, and Matthew 19:1ff.

"This Genesis story further is the foundation of the Scripture doctrine of all human responsibility, and accountability to God. A lowered anthropology means a lowered theology, for if man was [sic] not a direct creation of God, if he was [sic] a mere indirect development, through slow and painful process, of no one knows what, or how, or why, or when or where, the main spring of moral accountability is gone. The fatalistic conception of man's personal and moral life is the deadly gift of naturalistic evolution to our age"

-D.A. Curtis, quoted in Canon Dyson Hague, The Fundamentals, vol. 1, ed. by R. A. Torrey and A. C. Dixon (Baker Book House, 1988), 1:284.

Finally, since the whole human race originated from the same parents, two things become possible: (1) original sin (at this point defined as the effect of Adam's sin upon the whole human race) becomes a very possible explanation of what is observable in every human being (i.e., selfishness), and (2) a true brotherhood of man, based upon the human race's relationship to God as one of creature/Creator, is possible. The advantage of this idea over the liberal concept of "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is that the good we do for one another in the realm of social needs is based, not on our Christianity, but on our common humanity, and therefore a "social gospel" does not replace the Gospel of God's grace in Christ.