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Just asking the question, “Did Jesus tell a lie?” makes me feel blasphemous.  The answer for Christians is an unequivocal ‘no.’  And the reason should be obvious: if He did, then He wasn’t the perfect sacrifice, the spotless Lamb who takes away the sins of the world – including our own.  If Christ wasn’t perfect, His sacrifice wasn’t perfect, and we are still in our sins.

That’s why it is so preposterous to even ponder.  Sadly, a Christian publishing company (the Baker Publishing Group), while passing on great books like 78: How Christians Can Save America (shameless, isn’t it?), are allowing one of their divisions known as Brazos Press to publish a book called The Evolution of Adam that suggests this very Christianity-undoing thesis.  It’s kind of like a group of rats manufacturing D-Con (no offense meant by the rat analogy).

Here’s the scoop, covered by our friends over at Answers in Genesis:

This scholar (Dr. Peter Enns) is now a professor at a supposed Christian university (Eastern University in Philadelphia). He has written a book—The Evolution of Adam—in an attempt to influence the church in which he states there was no literal Adam or Eve and no literal Fall into sin. But even more than this, he essentially accuses Jesus Christ of lying and being a sinner! Yes, he really does.

Recently, two AiG writers and researchers wrote an article about a statement Peter Enns made in The Evolution of Adam. Enns rejects Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, and in dealing with Bible passages where Jesus directly attritubes the authorship of these books to Moses, Enns states, “Rather, Jesus here reflects the tradition that he himself inherited as a first-century Jew and that his hearers assumed to be the case” (Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2012), p. 153.).

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The AiG authors then stated the following:

The idea advanced by Dr. Enns here is known as the accommodation theory and was first advanced in the eighteenth century by Johann Semler, the father of German rationalism. The accommodation theory is very popular among liberal theologians and basically asserts that Jesus accommodated (accepted and taught) the various ideas of His day, even if they were wrong. Allegedly, since Jesus was primarily concerned with spiritual matters, He didn’t bother to correct some of their false historical or scientific beliefs because doing so might have distracted from His real message.

Nice to see Christian book companies publishing today the very theories that were once advanced by the father of German rationalism.  Unbelievable.  In case you don’t see the logical un-doing of Christianity by this flawed theory, the AiG authors explain it well:

So what’s the big deal if Jesus accommodated the errors of His day? Well, if Jesus taught error, then He would have lied to His listeners, in which case He would have been a sinner. If He unwittingly taught error, then He would have misled His followers, making Him a false teacher. Either option leaves us with a Jesus who is sinful and less than God. If Jesus had sinned, then He could not have been the spotless Lamb who appeased God’s wrath by His sacrificial death on the Cross, because He would have needed to die for His own sins. If Jesus did not die for our sins, then we are still in our sins and are headed for an eternity in the lake of fire.

“Headed for the lake of fire.”  Lovely.  You can contact the Baker Publishing Company here.  Let them know they’d be much better off sticking with texts that defend the faith rather than those that would usher in its demise.